Indonesia's reign of violence in West Papua

Last June I hung up the phone after a conversion with my West Papuan friend Victor Yeimo with a heavy heart. Victor is the spokesperson for a popular student organization called KNPB (West Papua National Committee) that organises peaceful protests for independence from Indonesia. Victor was very worried for his own safety and that of his friends. The deputy of KNPB, Mako Tabuni, had just been assassinated in broad daylight by the Indonesian police, for lobbying for an independent investigation into the spate of killings that had taken place in West Papua over May and June 2012. Several other KNPB members had been murdered, as had a German tourist in West Papua just one week after Germany had criticized Indonesia’s human-rights record in West Papua in the UN periodic Review of the Human Rights Council. The Indonesian security forces apparently scapegoated KNPB members as suspects for the killings. This was a somewhat illogical move – as Victor had asked, why would the KNPB be shooting their own members? Several KNPB members had been arrested. Five members’ names circulated on a most-wanted list, and five were allegedly detained by forces from Densus (Detachment) 88, Indonesia’s counter-terrorism squad, trained and partly funded by Australia. In addition to these killings, which took place in West Papua’s largest city, Jayapura, soldiers from a battalion stationed in the highlands town of Wamena had run amok in early June, lighting fires, shooting into crowds, and vandalizing property, in retaliation for the killing of a soldier who hit a West Papuan child on his motorcycle. The Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, chided the soldiers for their “inappropriate actions” but called the violence “small-scale” compared to that afflicting the Middle East. Up to 500,000 West Papuans have died as a result of Indonesia’s occupation of the territory since 1962. This dire situation, paired with a characteristically inadequate response from Indonesia’s leader, explains why West Papuans have had to take politics into their own hands. So, what kind of political leadership have West Papuans set up for themselves, and how has Indonesia reacted?