Three West Papuan students have reportedly been shot in their dormitories by militia groups amid growing tensions in the region, as disturbing footage emerged of Indonesian soldiers firing on peaceful demonstrators during clashes last week in which protesters say six died.
The Papuan students were attacked in a dormitory in Abepura district, Jayapura, by police-backed armed militias on Sunday. One student was killed by a bullet wound to the chest. The students were reportedly attacked as they tried to defend themselves from vigilantes from a pro-Jakarta group calling itself Masyarakat Nusantara (Archipelago Community).
Papuan protesters allege non-Papuan vigilante groups are being encouraged by police and military to attack Papuans during what has been more than a fortnight of protests over racial discrimination and abuse as well as calls for independence from Indonesia.
Despite an internet blackout across Papua and West Papua, footage has emerged showing soldiers firing at a crowd of demonstrators outside a government office in Deiyai last week: some of the demonstrators are standing with their hands in the air, as soldiers move in.
Protesters say six people were killed in the confrontation, and more than a dozen injured, after a police opened fire on a peaceful demonstration that had occupied the regent’s office in the middle of Deiyai city.
Victor Yeimo from the West Papua National Committee said: “They [went] inside peacefully, but suddenly, without any provocation police opened fire into the mass of demonstrators. Then … people attacked with bow and arrow.”
Photos have emerged of the body of one Indonesian soldier killed in the clash last Wednesday, his body pierced with arrows.
Papua police spokesperson Commander Anton Ampang has disputed the death count, saying one protester was killed, and that security forces opened fire only after being attacked. “Around 1,000 people armed with arrows, spears and machetes joined the protesters and started to dance the Waita dance [a traditional war dance] and threw rocks at the security forces,” Anton said in a statement.
Military personnel in a car were attacked, he said.
What is West Papua?
Papua and West Papua form the western half of the island of New Guinea and is officially part of Indonesia. The government in Jakarta maintains Papua and West Papua are integral and indivisible parts of the state of Indonesia: this position has the support of major powers in the region and around the world. Known as Irian Jaya until 2000, it was split into two provinces, Papua and West Papua, in 2003. They have semi-autonomous status. The provinces have suffered from systemic underdevelopment but they are rich with natural resources, including gold, copper, and timber and generate billions of dollars for Indonesia.
Why is independence a big issue?
Political control of the region has been contested for more than half a century and Indonesia has consistently been accused of human rights violations and violent suppression of the region’s independence movement. The people indigenous to the province are Melanesian, ethnically distinct from most of the rest of Indonesia and more closely linked to the people of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia.
So how did it become part of Indonesia?
Formerly the Netherlands New Guinea, Papua was retained by the Dutch after Indonesian independence in 1945 but the province was annexed by Jakarta in 1963. Indonesia formalised its control over West Papua in 1969 when its military hand-picked 1,025 of West Papua’s population and compelled them into publicly voting in favour of the takeover under a UN-supervised, but undemocratic, process known as the Act of Free Choice. The British and Foreign Commonwealth Office reported at the time “the process of consultation did not allow a genuinely free choice to be made”, while the US embassy reported it was “unfolding like a Greek tragedy, the conclusion pre-ordained”.
How much support does the independence movement have?
Many Papuans regard the Indonesian takeover as an illegal annexation. In 2017, an illegal petition calling for a free vote on independence, signed by 1.8 million people (about 70% of the Papuan population) and secretly carried around the provinces, was presented to the UN’s decolonisation committee, and the human rights commissioner.
Is there an armed struggle?
The Free Papua Movement has led a low-level insurgency for decades. That insurgency has long been the rationale for significant Indonesian military involvement in Papua. With the heightened police and military presence, there have been reports of security force abuses including extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary detention, excessive use of force and mistreatment of peaceful protesters. Dozens of Papuans remain behind bars for peaceful demonstration or expressing solidarity with the independence movement. West Papuan sources have claimed white phosphorous, a banned chemical weapon, has been used to attack civilians, though this has not been categorically proven. This claim has been strenuously denied by Indonesia.
Is there any outside support for independence?
There has always been concern about the annexation of the region. A report in 2004 by the International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School said Indonesian military leaders “began making public threats against Papuan leaders … vowing to shoot them on the spot if they did not vote for Indonesian control”. In May 2019, the then UK government’s minister for Asia and the Pacific, Mark Field, described the Act of Free Choice as an “utterly flawed process”, but said there was no appetite in the international community to revisit the question of the legitimacy of Indonesia’s control. The Free West Papua movement has strong support from Melanesian neighbours, in particular Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, but regional powers, such as Australia, support Indonesian control of the province.
“The crowd shot arrows and threw rocks at security personnel in front of the Deiyai regent’s office and there were even sounds of gunfire from the direction of the crowd, leading security personnel to shoot at the attackers,” he said.
Demonstrations have broken out across Papua and West Papua, often descending into violence after being opposed by security forces and vigilante groups. Because of an internet shutdown across the remote provinces, information on clashes is emerging slowly, and is hard to verify.
Footage from Fakfak on the south-west coast of Papua on 21 August has also emerged, showing armed militia, some carrying Indonesian flags, clashing with Papuan protesters. Police and military personnel move among the pro-Jakarta militia, and gunshots can be heard.
Alfa Isnaeni of the nationalist Banser militia, the paramilitary wing of Indonesia’s largest independent Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama, said 2,000 members were conducting “combing out” operations, seeking information on anti-Indonesia groups, but said militia members were prepared to conduct security operations if requested. “If the TNI [Indonesian military] commander or the defence minister asks us, the only thing we can say is that we’re ready,” Isnaeni said.
And in Jayapura, a lone protester scaled a giant flagpole to tear down the Indonesian national flag, replacing it with the Morning Star flag on West Papua, an act that carries a potential 15-year jail term.
Police have responded to weeks of demonstrations by banning “anarchist” demonstration, and arresting dozens on Papuans accused of rioting in the region’s capital.
“Everyone is forbidden from carrying out demonstrations and conveying opinions in public that could give rise to anarchist acts, damage, and burning of public facilities,” a six-point police order said.
Indonesia earlier said it would deploy about 2,500 more police and troops to Papua, adding to about 1,200 personnel it had already sent after unrest first broke out.
The mineral-rich but under-developed and impoverished region of Papua has been the scene of a low-level insurgency against Indonesia’s rule for decades.
But protests marking the August anniversaries of the New York Agreement and the Act of Free Choice - the political acts which formalised Indonesian control of Papua - have been further sparked by racist bullying of Papuan students in Java, and police reprisals against them for demonstrating.
The exiled leader of the United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua Benny Wenda said the independence movement was peaceful and that a free and fair referendum was the only solution to the long-running contestation of the region.
“As Indonesia deliberately tries to create ethnic conflict in West Papua with militia, I must stress that for West Papuans our enemy is not the Indonesian people. Our enemy is only the system of colonisation. We will not be provoked. Our peaceful struggle is for a referendum.”
Dame Meg Taylor, the secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum, said she was deeply concerned by the escalating violence, and called for calm and restraint from all parties. She said the “root causes of the conflict” must be addressed by peaceful means. “These events make the proposed visit of the UN high commissioner for human rights to West Papua even more important.”
