The Indonesian military announced the deployment of five battalions — an estimated 5000 soldiers — to occupied West Papua on October 2 to protect key government projects and help the expansion of industrial development.
Indonesian army general Agus Subiyanto said the soldiers will “assist the government in accelerating development and improving the prosperity of the Papuan people”, the Jakarta Globe reported on October 3.
Subiyanto said that the troops will secure key government projects, such as the food security program covering more than 1000 hectares of crops in Merauke Regency, southeastern West Papua, and road construction projects across Papua.
The military will also be involved in land-clearing for the world’s biggest deforestation project to grow sugarcane and rice in Merauke. This is part of Indonesia’s efforts to secure its future food security — President Joko Widodo has described Merauke as Indonesia’s potential “food barn”.
The sugarcane project is a land grab in a region with rich biodiversity — home to half of New Guinea’s bird species and endemic animals — which Indonesia forced through with forged licences and military pressure. It is located next to the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate, which has destroyed millions of hectares of ancestral land over the past decade.
Thousands of Indonesian soldiers were already deployed throughout West Papua, including Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Intan Jaya, Puncak, Puncak Jaya, Star Mountain and the PNG-West Papua border. The deployment of five battalions is part of a wider militarisation of West Papua, which poses a significant risk to Indigenous Papuan tribes, clans and families.
Indonesia’s hidden frontier wars against the Indigenous Papuans are an insidious agenda masked by the euphemisms of “development”, “prosperity” and “security”.
The Indonesian government’s creation of regencies, districts and provinces in Papua is an important tool for implementing its policy of control and occupation in the region.
Jakarta has divided West Papua into six provinces — Papua, West Papua, South Papua, Mountain Papua, Central Papua and West Papua Daya — 42 regencies and 755 districts. The newly created Indonesian colonial administrative regions were expected to attract large numbers of Indonesian settlers with administrative and technical skills to further Jakarta’s agenda.
Indonesian settlers have already caused a stark demographic disparity in West Papua, which is a major concern for those working to protect the rights of Indigenous Papuans.
Depopulation
The Indonesian population in Papua was 36,000 in 1971, while the Indigenous Papuan population was more than 887,000. By early 2022, there were 2.3 million Indigenous Papuans out of a total population of 5.77 million.
As a result, Indonesian settlers are increasingly influencing parliamentary politics and governance — they control 14 of the 42 regencies in Tanah Papua.
The administrative regions have also caused complex communal conflicts, undermining unity. Human Rights Monitor (HRM) reported that the proposal to build these centres has disrupted local family, clan and tribal networks, undermining their traditional systems of subsistence agriculture, ancestral homelands and Indigenous land tenure.
This situation has shattered trust between family members, clan networks and tribal affiliations, leaving people vulnerable. The Indonesian military exploits the conflicts to advance their colonial ambitions, further dividing Papuan families.
The administrative centres are a method of taking control of West Papuan territory, which are secured by the Indonesian military to crush any Papuans who resist.
Al Araf, Indonesian lecturer at Brawijaya University’s law faculty and a military observer, said that “Papua is still occupied by the Indonesian government as a colony and a conflict zone that needs to be reinforced by military force.”
HRM reports that more than 76,000 Indigenous Papuans are still displaced since the current Indonesian military crackdown began in 2018.
ReliefWeb reported that many Papuan children are being born on the run in the jungle; many old and injured people have died and been buried; and young people are being captured, tortured and brutally executed, while their mothers suffer unspeakable abuse and trauma.
World Council of Churches’ Commission on International Affairs director Peter Prove, speaking to a forum held as a side event of the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva on October 1, said that the situation in West Papua “probably qualifies as the worst and longest standing human rights and humanitarian crisis that most people have never heard of — and we haven’t heard of it for a very specific reason”.
“It’s not an accident; it’s a deliberate consequence of the lack of access that Indonesia allows for representatives of the international community to the territory.”
'Slow motion genocide'
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) held public hearings at the Queen Mary University of London from June 27–29, organised by the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice in partnership with a coalition of international and Indonesian human and environmental rights organisations.
The PPT details a range of violations committed by Indonesia in West Papua, including: taking Indigenous Papuan land while employing racial discrimination that leads to the loss of Indigenous culture, traditions and knowledge; using violent repression, such as unlawful detention, extrajudicial killing and population displacement, as a means of expanding industrial development; destroying ecosystems, contaminating land and poisoning river systems; and colluding with national and foreign companies to cause environmental damage.
Scholars have described this as “slow-motion genocide” and “cold genocide”, enforced by the substantial Indonesian military forces in West Papua that interfere in almost every facet of Papuan life.
Jakarta’s overarching policy for West Papua is what settler-colonialism scholar Patrick Wolfe has called the “logic of elimination” — the mechanism by which settler-colonial societies seek to eliminate Indigenous populations to gain control of land and resources.
The deployment of five new battalions in Merauke is best understood in terms of Wolfe’s logic of elimination.
West Papua remains an unresolved international issue, having been on the UN decolonisation agenda since the 1950s, prior to Indonesia’s May 1963 invasion. The situation is exacerbated by the international community’s lack of awareness of the continuing plight of West Papuans, whose sovereignty is entangled in the UN decolonisation framework.
It is critical that West Papuans, their allies and UN member states and legal experts unite to challenge the severe and deadly consequences of Indonesia’s illegal occupation.
[Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea.]