When I visited West Papua some years ago, I went to Merauke in the south. I was interested to hear the residents say that from their city on a clear night you can see the lights of Cairns. It reminded me of what the Timorese people used to say, that from the mountains of Timor you can see the lights of Darwin. West Papua and Timor-Leste are so very close to Australia, and yet for years, Timor was closed to the world, and now foreign journalists are not allowed into West Papua.
Our newspapers and media don’t tell us is that there is a program of massive land clearing going on, and it is accelerating under Prabowo Subianto, the president of Indonesia which has controlled West Papua since the laughable Act of Free Choice in 1969. The fraudulent seizure of West Papua by Indonesia has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Papuan people being killed. Prabowo intends to increase migration of Indonesians to the area, while displacing thousands of Papuans and confiscating their land for profit.
It seems that in the next three years an area the size of Belgium will be changed from forests to vast arrays of monoculture, including palm oil. West Papua already has the largest gold mine in the world, and the land has been mercilessly cleared for a variety of lucrative ventures.
One of the dire consequences of the rapidly increasing rape of Papuan land is the environmental impact, with the release of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, so very close to Australia.
The Indonesian military controls the Papuan people, something I saw with my own eyes when I was there. The military is engaged in land clearance as well as continuing the notorious oppression of the Papuans. There is strong resistance to Indonesia in Papua, and mass protests continue despite the repercussions. We do not see that on our TVs. Our reporters aren’t allowed in. So, when we watch the news at night, or listen during the day, we ought to recall that the “news” we receive is very selective and does not report on the terrible situation of people who are very close to our shores.
There’s a new film out called Pig Feast: Colonialism in our time and you can see a three minute preview here.
View a review of a recent book on the deforestation of West Papua called The World’s Largest Deforestation Project here.
Susan Connelly rsj