A West Papuan resistance leader has condemned the United Nations role in allowing Indonesia to “integrate” the Melanesian Pacific region in what is claimed to be an “egregious act of inhumanity” on 1 May 1963.

In an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM (Free Papua Organisation) leader Jeffrey P Bomanak has also claimed that this was the “beginning of genocide” that could only have happened through the failure of the global body to “legally uphold its decolonisation responsibilities in accordance with the UN Charter”.

Bomanak says in the letter dated yesterday that the UN failed to confront the “relentless barbarity of the Indonesian invasion force and expose the lie of the fraudulent 1969 gun-barrel ‘Act of No Choice’”.

The open letter follows one released on the eve of Anzac Day last month which strongly criticised the role of Australia and the United States, accusing both countries of “betrayal” in Papuan aspirations for independence.

According to RNZ News today, an Australian statement in response to the earlier OPM letter said the federal government “unreservedly recognises Indonesia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over the Papua provinces”.

The White House has not responded.

The OPM says it has compiled a “prima facie pictorial ‘integration’ history” of Indonesia’s actions in integrating the Pacific region into an Asian nation. It plans to present this evidence of “six decades of crimes against humanity” to Secretary-General Guterres and new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.

The open letter states:

May 1, 2024

Dear Secretary-General Guterres,

I am addressing you in an open letter which I will be releasing to media and governments because I have previously brought to your attention the history of the illegal annexation of West Papua on May 1st, 1963, and the role of your office in the fraudulent UN referendum in 1969, called an Act of Free Choice and I have never received a reply.

After six decades of OPM letters and Papuan appeals to the UN Secretariat, I am providing the transparency and accountability of an “open letter”, so that historians of the future can
investigate the moral and ethical credibility of the UN Secretariat.

May 1st is a day of mourning for Papuans. A day of grief over the illegal annexation of our ancestral Melanesian homeland by a violent occupation force from Southeast Asia.

Indonesia’s annexation of Western New Guinea (Irian Jaya/West Papua) on May 1, 1963, is
commemorated in Indonesia’s Parliament as a day of integration. The photos on these pages on these pages show a different story. The reality these photos portray is, in fact, one of the longest ongoing acts of genocide since the end of the Second World War.

An invasion and an illegal annexation not unlike Nazi Germany’s annexation in 1938 of
its neighbouring country, Austria. The difference for Papuans is that the UN and the USA were co-conspirators in preventing our right to determine a future that was our right to have under the UN decolonisation process: independence and nation-state sovereignty.

A very chilling contradiction — the Allies we fought alongside, nursed back to life, and died with during WWII had joined forces with a mass-murderer not unlike Hitler — the Indonesian president Suharto (see Photo collage #2: Axis of Evil).

Some scholars have called the May 1, 1963 annexation “Indonesia’s Anschluss”. Suharto and the conspirators goal of colonial invasion and conquest had been achieved through
the illegal annexation of my people’s ancestral homeland, my homeland.

General and president-in-waiting Suharto signed a contract in 1967 with American mining giant Freeport, another company associated with David Rockefeller, two years before we were to determine our future through the aforementioned gun-barrel UN referendum project-managed by a brutal occupation force. Our future had already been determined by Suharto, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and Suharto’s friend, UN secretary-General U Thant. U Thant had succeeded Dag Hammarskjöld who had been assassinated for his controversial view that human rights and freedom were absolutely universal and should not be subjected to the criminal whims of either tyrants like Suharto or a resource industry with views on human rights and freedom that resembled Suharto’s.

I do not need to give you a blow-by-blow history for your edification — you already know the entire history and the victim tally — 350,000 adults and 150,000 children and babies. And rising. You are, after all, a man of some principle — Portugal’s former prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, as well as a member of the Portuguese Socialist Party. And presiding as Portuguese prime minster during the final years of Fretilin’s war of liberation in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony invaded by Indonesia in 1975 with anywhere up to 250,000 victims of genocide. Please explain to me the difference between the Indonesia’s
invasion and “integration” of East Timor and Indonesia’s invasion and “integration” of my homeland, Western New Guinea (West Papua).

Apart from the oil in the Timor Gap and the gold and copper all over my homeland — the wealth of someone else’s resources promoting the “integration” policies pictured over these pages.

As a member of a socialist party, you might be attending May Day ceremonies today. I will be counselling victims and the families of loved ones who have been “integrated” today. Yes, the freedom-loving Papuans are holding rallies to protest the annexation of our homeland . . .  to protest the failure — your failure — to apply justice and to end this nightmare.

The cost of the UN-approved annexation to Papuans in pain and suffering: massacres, torture, systemic rape by TNI and Polri, mutilation and dismemberment as a signature of your barbarity. Relentless barbarity causing six decades of physical and cultural genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and wave after wave of ethnic cleansing.

The cost to Papuans in the theft and plunder of our natural resources: genocide by starvation and famine.

The cost to Papuans from the foreign resource industry plundering our natural resources: the devastation of pristine environments, whole ecosystems poisoned by the resource industry’s chemical toxicity, called tailings, released into rivers thereby destroying whole riverine catchments along with food sources from fishing and farming — catchment rivers and nearby farming lands contaminated by Freeport, and other’s. A failure to apply any international standards for risk management to prevent the associated birth defects
in villages now living in contaminated catchments.

That we would choose to become part of any nation so brutal defies credibility. That the UN approved integration should have been impossible based on the evidence of the ever-increasing numbers of defence and security forces landing in West Papua and undertaking military campaigns that include ever-increasing victims and internally displaced Papuans, the bombing of central highland villages a current example? Such courage! Why are foreign
media not allowed into my people’s homeland?

Secretary-General Guterres, future historians will judge the efficacy of the United Nations. The integrity. West Papua will feature as a part the UN Secretariat’s legacy. To this endeavour, as the leader of Organisasi Papua Merdeka, I ask, and demand that you comply with your obligations under article 85 part 2 and sundry articles of your Charter of United Nations which requires that you inform the Trusteeship Council about your General Assembly resolution 1752, with which you are subjugating our people and homelands of West New Guinea which we call West Papua.

The agreement which your resolution 1752 is authorising, begins with the words “The Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, having in mind the interests and welfare of the people of the territory of West New Guinea (West Irian)”

Your agreement is clearly a trusteeship agreement written according to your rules of Chapter XII of your Charter of the United Nations.

The West Papuan people have always opposed your use of United Nations military to make our people’s human rights subject to the whim of your two administrators, UNTEA and from 1st May 1963 the Republic of Indonesia that is your current administrator.

We refer to your organisation’s last official record about West Papua which still suffers your ongoing unjust administration managed by UNTEA and Indonesia:

Because you also used article 81 and Chapter XII of your Charter to seize control of our homelands when you created your General Assembly resolution 1752, the Netherlands was excused by article 73(e), “to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply”, from transmitting further reports about our people and the extrajudicial killings that your new administrators began using to silence our demands for our liberty and independence.

We therefore demand your Trusteeship Council begin its unfinished duty of preparing your United Nations reports as articles 85 part 2, 87 and 88 of your Charter requires.

West Papua is entitled to independence, and article 76 requires you assist. It is illegal for Indonesia to invade us and to impede our independence, and to subsequently subject us to six decades of every classification for crimes against humanity listed by the International Criminal Court.

We know this trusteeship agreement was first proposed by the American lawyer John Henderson in 1959, and was discussed with Indonesian officials in 1961 six months before the death of your Dag Hammarskjöld. We think it is shameful that you then elected Indonesia’s friend U Thant as Secretary-General, and we demand that you permit the Secretariat to perform its proper duty of revealing your current annexation of West Papua (Resolution 1752) to your Trusteeship Council.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Jeffrey P Bomanak
Chairman-Commander OPM
Markas Victoria, May 1, 2024

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Papuan independence rebels are playing a desperate game of cat and mouse with Indonesian authorities over their hostage taking last week with a New Zealand pilot caught in the middle.

Christchurch-raised Philip Mehrtens, 37, a pilot for the national feeder airline Susi Air owned by a former cabinet minister and with Jakarta government supply contracts, was seized by rebels last Tuesday, February 7, shortly after he had touched down at the remote Paro airstrip near Nduga in the Papuan highlands.

Five Indigenous Papuans on board the aircraft were set free and the plane was set on fire.

After initial reports saying the authorities were trying to pinpoint the actual place where the rebels are in hiding and that a rescue operation is under way, the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) played a trump card today by releasing “proof of life” video footage and photos.

“Papua Merdeka!,” said Mehrtens in one of the obviously coached video messages. “The Papuan military have taken me captive in the fight for Papuan independence,” he added hesitantly while surrounded by a group of armed rebels.

Dressed in a denim jacket, he also wore a black tee-shirt displaying a clenched fist in the colours of the West Papuan Morning Star flag, banned under Indonesian law. The tee also sported the slogan “Papua Merdeka” (Papuan Freedom).

The rebels have gone to great pains to make it appear their captive is relaxed and in good health.

A video of the “proof of life” messages from the TPNPB rebels.       Source: Times on YouTube

High stakes
The stakes are high with the Papuan rebels trying to attract world attention to their cause for independence, “forgotten” by the world for more than the past half century.

But analysts warn that there is a risk of a tragic outcome if a botched rescue takes place as happened the last time Indonesian security forces raided rebels of the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM – Free Papua Movement) who had seized hostages at Mapenduma in 1996, also in the Papuan highlands.

Although in that operation on 15 May 1996 nine hostages were freed, two were killed by the captors while eight OPM guerrillas were killed and two captured.

Six days earlier another rescue bid had ended in disaster when an Indonesian military helicopter crashed killing all five soldiers on board.

Originally, on 8 January 1996, 29 members of a World Wildlife Fund research mission had been seized. However, the rebels promptly released 19 captives while holding 11 – four British, two Dutch and five Indonesians.

There were also international repercussions with the International Red Cross (ICRC) being accused of collaborating with the Indonesian military – later admitted by Jakarta after it was reported that they had used a white helicopter that had been involved in negotiations with soldiers on board.

White mercenaries were also accused of being part of the operation.

Rebel leader Kelly Kwalik had dropped a plan to release the remaining hostages, accusing the ICRC of not honouring their agreement. “We took the researchers hostage because we had no other way for our cause to be acknowledged,” he told the New Internationalist.

Human rights violations
The rescue raid mounted by Kopassus special forces – codenamed Operation Cenderawasih (Bird of Paradise) — was under the command of general Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of the President Suharto.

Prabowo was two years later dishonourably discharged from the military over allegations of human rights violations. Today he is a politician and Minister of Defence under President Joko Widodo.

The Papuan rebels are trying to reverse the narrative that is projected by Jakarta that the Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua (now increased to five) adjoining the independent country of Papua New Guinea are an integral part of Indonesia and those Indigenous people resisting are “terrorists”.

The rebels and also peaceful groups seeking self-determination argue that a 1969 referendum with 1025 handpicked voters supervised by the United Nations in the former Dutch colony voting “unanimously” for Indonesian rule in a so-called Act of Free Choice was a “sham”.

The lesson from this latest hostage-taking crisis, according to Australian academic Dr Camellia Webb-Gannon, who is author of Morning Star Rising: The Politics of Decolonisation in West Papua, is that there needs to be serious negotiations.

Echoing some of the demands of the rebels, she wrote in a backgrounder on the deeper issues of Indonesian colonialism that New Zealand, Australia – both accused of collaborating militarily with Jakarta — and other governments needed to seriously engage about human rights violations in Papua.

Webb-Gannon admitted it may not be enough to resolve the current crisis, “but it would be a long overdue and critical step in the right direction.”

Avoiding disproportionate response
As she stressed, negotiations for the release of Mehrtens must be handled carefully to “avoid further disproportionate responses” by the Indonesian military.

“The kidnapping is not justified, but neither is Indonesia’s violence against West Papuans — or the international community’s refusal to address the violence.”

There are other Papuan pro-independence players that are seeking a peaceful path to self-determination, such as the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) that is seeking to become a full member of the Port Vila-based Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG).

Exiled leader Benny Wenda issued a statement offering his “deepest sympathies” to the friends and family of hostage Mehrtens.

“At the same time, the ULMWP executive reiterates and reassures the New Zealand government and the world that we are [committed] to a peaceful, diplomatic approach,” he said in his statement condemning the Indonesian divide and rule policies.

“Our roadmap is very clear: we are pursuing the unified West Papuan goal of Merdeka – national liberation – peacefully, through diplomatic political mechanisms.

“We must not lose sight of the fact that Indonesia uses this kind of violence as part of a distinct strategy of occupation.

Stronger colonial grip
“Their aim is to intensify militarisation in West Papua as a way of strengthening their colonial grip on our land.”

Wenda highlighted how Indonesia’s Parliament had last year passed a law creating three new provinces in West Papua, as part of the renewal of the 2001 ‘Special Autonomy’ programme.

“West Papuans overwhelmingly reject ‘Special Autonomy’, more than 700,000 of us having signed a petition against it. Provincial division is a justification for increased militarisation in West Papua, pure and simple,” he said.

“By creating new administrative divisions, Indonesia justifies the establishment of new colonial infrastructure and new military posts.

“They do not want dialogue or peaceful protest — they want chaos and violence, for West Papua to remain a war zone.

“As our land is militarised and destroyed, our people are forcibly displaced.

“Depopulation is another key part of Indonesia’s colonial strategy: by removing West Papuans from our ancestral lands, they allow for massive exploitation of our natural resources.”

100,000 Papuans displaced
Wenda said that up to 100,000 West Papuans had been internally displaced since 2019, including close to half of Nduga’s entire population.

“They continue to live in the bush, deprived of education, food, and adequate medical facilities, unable to return to their homes.

“Indonesia labels us as terrorists while committing state terrorism in our lands.”
The ULMWP’s peaceful demands are:

• The withdrawal of all Indonesian troops from West Papua;
• Immediate access to West Papua for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights;
• Cancellation of ‘Special Autonomy’, including the new provincial division; and
• An immediate referendum on independence.

“The kidnap of a foreign pilot naturally brings West Papua to the attention of international media,” Wenda said. “But West Papuans are tortured and murdered daily by Indonesian forces, and international media are banned from seeing it.”

Meanwhile, Jubi News reports three New Zealand diplomats and two staff of the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have travelled to Timika, the capital of Mimika Regency, in the new Central Papua province this week to check on progress with the rescue operation.

They met military officers, including the commander of Timika region, Lieutenant-General Nyoman Cantiasa. He appealed for “international support” to discuss the crisis with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Hopefully, a peaceful resolution can be found.

‘Proof of life’: Papua hostage takers say images show NZ pilot is alive https://t.co/b3aLjgkizm

— ABC News (@abcnews) February 14, 2023

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

It is an unlikely combination: the white stars of the West Papuan and Myanmar flags, side by side.

“West Papua Stands with Myanmar,” the sign said, posted by Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman. In another poignant picture, a small group of West Papuans stand at Simora Bay at the port town of Kaimana holding a sign that reads: “We Stand With Myanmar.”

Popular activist Twitter account @AllianceMilkTea responds: “And solidarity with you West Papua!”

The latest member of the Milk Tea Alliance is a little-known region in ASEAN, south of the Pacific Ocean and bordered by the Halmahera, Ceram and Banda seas.

West Papua is better known for its Raja Ampat or “Four Kings” Islands, the majestic archipelago which contains the richest marine biodiversity on earth. But, like other members of the Milk Tea Alliance, it is a region scarred by subjugation and tyranny.

While the brutality of Min Aung Hlaing’s army is horrifyingly public, West Papuans protest killings and an independence movement that has largely been erased from history.

In December 2020, Benny Wenda, a political exile in Britain, declared himself head of West Papua’s first government-in-exile under the Papua Merdeka “Free West Papua” movement. That same month, the United Nations Human Rights Office called on all sides – West Papuan separatists and the Indonesian security forces – to de-escalate violence in the territory that has seen the deaths of activists, church workers and Indonesian officials.

As the Papua Merdeka campaign picks back up, this article surveys the history and recent state violence in the region. Flickers of a “Papuan Spring” seem faint in a March that has emboldened Southeast Asian dictators. But that the voices of a region long suppressed are being heard is an achievement in and of itself.

fascinating (and inspiring) article on the Milk Tree Alliance https://t.co/tLSVWCYz9m

— Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) October 15, 2020

History of West Papuan independence claims
History is always a fraught tool in the battle between states and their challengers. Indonesian claims to control over West Papua date back to the “restoration” of the region to the Republic of Indonesia in a pivotal 1969 referendum, the ironically named “Act of Free Choice” (AFC).

Central to the AFC’s controversy was the musyawarah (consultation) system, agreed upon by the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia and Netherlands, which decreed that the vote for West Papuan “restoration” would be conducted by a select group of representatives rather than the entire West Papuan population.

The AFC was overseen by representatives from the UN Secretary-General’s team, giving the Indonesian government its desired stamp of international legitimacy.

Yet, as studies produced by the University of Sydney show, since 1963 President Suharto’s military government worked to deliberately quash expressions of a unique Papuan identity. Shows of Papuan culture were declared “subversion”, West Papuan nationalists were placed under detention, and representatives were carefully selected for what the musyawarah.

The script is familiar to any observer of Thailand’s equally controversial 2016 “constitutional referendum”. As an AFP correspondent noted in 1969, “Indonesian troops and officials are waging a widespread campaign of intimidation to force the Act of Free Choice in favor of the Republic.”

President Suharto declared that voting against the AFC was an act of treason. Eventually, 1026 voters were chosen of a population of 815,906, all of whom voted unanimously for integration.

In the aftermath of the AFC vote, West Papua was immediately declared a Military Operation Zone. West Papuan historians like John Rumbiak highlighted the military and police repression that soon followed, especially against activists protesting the appropriation of traditional land and forests by mining firms and timber estates.

Thousands of troops were deployed in response to growing protest movements in the 1990s, with planned “black operations” against independence leaders.

Ever since, West Papua has been caught in a cycle of violence. Indonesian armed forces accuse guerillas of inciting separatist violence, justifying their crackdowns on various villages.

Under Indonesian law, raising the West Papuan flag carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. Separatists like the armed West Papua National Liberation Army continue to wage a low-key insurgency in their quest for self-rule.

According to rights group Human Rights and Peace in Papua, 60,000 West Papuans have been displaced in the conflict.

“Our independent nation was stolen in 1963 by the Indonesian government,” Wenda said in an interview with the New York Times, “We are taking another step toward reclaiming our legal and moral rights.”

Wenda, like the authors of the University of Sydney study, argues that there is a “silent genocide” taking place in West Papua, as thousands of Indonesians are killed by Indonesian state actors in their battle against West Papuan separatists.

A 2004 Yale Law School report similarly concluded that “the Indonesian government has committed proscribed acts with the intent to destroy the West Papuans,” including subjecting Papuan men and women to “acts of torture, disappearance, rape, and sexual violence.”

This is compounded systematic resource exploitation, compulsory (and often unpaid) labor, as well as the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS and malnutrition.

West Papuan claims to independence date back to 1961, according to then Papua People’s Congress leader Theys Hiyo Eluay.

Eluay, later murdered by Indonesian Kopassus soldiers, insisted that Papua had never been culturally and politically integrated with Indonesia – a claim seemingly reinforced by the ethnic difference of the majority Papua population that inhabit the region.

In the narrative both Eluay and Wenda have shared, West Papua declared sovereignty on 1 December 1961 as the Dutch gave up claims to Indonesia.

“This same vision of West Papua’s history and sovereignty can be found among ordinary Papuan people,” writes academic Nino Viartasiwi.

Papuan Spring? The 2019 Uprising
West Papuans’ newfound alliance with the Milk Tea Alliance is part of its renewed attempt to bring international attention to the violence they have faced at the hands of Indonesian security forces for half a century.

Last year, a #PapuanLives Matter campaign spotlighted the death of a 19-year old student at the hand of security forces as part of the global focus on police brutality. Activists highlighted the racialized elements of the West Papuan struggle.

In the words of UK-born Indonesian actor and activist Hannah Al Rashid, quoted in The Guardian: “I stand in solidarity with Papuan Lives Matter, because…I have observed the way in which people of darker skin [in Indonesia] have been treated unfairly.”

These 2020-2021 movements are smaller resurrections of the larger 2019 West Papua Uprising, or simply, ‘The Uprising.’ From August to September 2019, protests swept 22 towns in West Papua and 3 cities in Indonesia in response to an incident in which Indonesian soldiers shouted ‘monkey’ repeatedly at West Papuan students in Malang.

In response, over 6000 members of the Indonesian security forces were deployed to quell the Uprising. 61 civilians – including 35 indigenous West Papuans – died in the crackdown.

According to TAPOL, a campaigning platform for human rights, peace and democracy in Indonesia, 22,800 civilians were displaced during the Uprising.

The cycle of resistance and crackdown is not new to Southeast Asia. West Papuans face the additional struggle of opposing a security force that they do not claim as their own, but it is an experience the Karen, Kachin, Chin or Wa peoples in Myanmar currently share.

Their solidarity with the Milk Tea Alliance is fitting, drawing on a movement that has built regional solidarity and momentum for other struggles against authoritarianism.

With any luck, the unlikely solidarity across the two starred flags may bring the West Papuan struggle back into the international spotlight. If not, the conflict will continue in the shadows, as it has done since the dawn of the 21st century.

Jasmine Chia is a writer and contributor to the Thai Enquirer.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch

The Covid-19 coronavirus is “exacerbating tensions” in Indonesia’s West Papua region and exposing the “shortcomings” of Jakarta government policy, warns a conflict watchdog group.

The Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) says President Joko Widodo’s government needs to urgently appoint a senior official to “focus exclusively on Papua” province to ensure that immediate humanitarian needs and longer term issues are effectively addressed.

It has appealed for greater transparency and more support for the local papuan administrations in coping with the spread of the virus.

READ MORE: Al Jazeera coronavirus live updates – New York state virus death toll surpasses 10,000

In a policy briefing released last night, IPAC said:

“The virus arrived in Papua as tensions left over from deadly communal violence in August-September 2019 remained high, and pro-independence guerrillas from the Free Papua Organisation (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM) were intensifying attacks in the central highlands.

“Papua’s major faultlines – indigenous vs migrant, central control vs local autonomy, independence movement vs the state – affected both how Papuans interpreted the pandemic and the central government’s response.”

The pandemic has also added new complications to the already formidable obstacles to addressing the virus in Indonesia’s most remote province, says IPAC.

‘Hostility and suspicion’
“Many Papuans already are portraying the virus as being brought in by non-Papuan migrants and the military, adding to accumulated hostility and suspicion toward both,” says the briefing report.

“Papua is supposed to enjoy ‘special autonomy’ but Jakarta’s attempt to overrule a provincial ban on travel into the province in the wake of the virus showed the limitations of that status.

“It also convinced many Papuans that the central government had little concern for their welfare.

“All this was taking place as the OPM was stepping up its low-intensity conflict with the Indonesian state in the area around the giant Freeport mine.

“Thousands of additional security forces sent to Papua in 2018 and 2019 have not made any visible dent in OPM’s activities or provided effective protection for the Freeport mine that has become the OPM’s main target.”

The report says that the Jakarta government may be “underestimating the security threat” from the guerrillas, whom it has traditionally seen as less dangerous than the non-armed political movement for independence and its foreign supporters.

‘OPM appears stronger’
“There is certainly no acknowledgment that the OPM appears to have grown stronger during the Jokowi’s government’s tenure.

“The OPM attacks and the added police and military presence have produced more displacement in poor conditions, creating new vulnerabilities to contagion in a province that already has the country’s highest poverty, worst health care and most poorly educated populace.”

IPAC says the reported Covid-19 cases are now concentrated in Papua’s major cities – “but when the virus hits remote areas of the highlands and spreads like wildfire, few will ever know its true impact.”

The report says that in the short-term the Jakarta government needs to ensure that the handling of the pandemic in Papua does the conflicts.

IPAC’s recommendations include:

• Supporting the provincial government in its lockdown efforts, while ensuring unimpeded delivery of humanitarian supplies;
• Assisting provincial and kabupaten (local) goverments in developing better procedures for documenting the spread of the virus;
• Ensuring that every deployment of security forces on short-term rotations is thoroughly tested before leaving for Papua and before returning to the rest of Indonesia to ensure that security forces do not become a vector of transmission;
• Urgently finding ways to improve the conditions of the displaced, with the goal of trying to return them to their home communities as soon as possible; and
• Ensuring full transparency in covering the response to Covid-19, including equipment and medical personnel made available, funds allocated and security forces deployed or reassigned.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz