Forgotten genocide in Indonesia : mass violence, resource exploitation and struggle for independence in West Papua

With the withdrawal of the Dutch colonial administration from the Netherlands New Guinea in 1962, the implementation of Indonesian governance in 1963 and the formal absorption of Papua into Indonesia in 1969, the Free Papua Movement has engaged in a struggle to achieve independence from Jakarta or union with Papua New Guinea. The price of resistance has also meant mass violence, torture and rape for the indigenous population of the territory. The West Papua territory consists of the province of Papua and West Papua situated on the eastern most edge of the Indonesian archipelago and is Indonesia’s only territory in Oceania. For the sake of clarity, this chapter will refer to the Melanesian term for West Papua, meaning the entirety of Western New Guinea, and not the Indonesian administrative term referring to the province of West Papua in the northwest of the island. The ongoing Papua conflict since 1962 is one of the longest continuous insurgencies that has pitted the Indonesian government and large elements of the indigenous populations against each other. In the process of attempting to defeat the Papuan insurgency, the Indonesian military has engaged in a prolonged genocidal campaign against the indigenous inhabitants which has included mass violence, torture and rape. This chapter will explore why this genocide is occurring in relation to Jakarta’s energy interests, resistance to the genocide and reactions from Indonesia’s neighbours, primarily the Melanesian states of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu, as well as from Australia and the United States.