Indonesia continues to murder children as they escalate their military operations across West Papua.

Two schoolchildren were killed by the occupying military in the build up to Indonesian Independence Day: security forces also killed a 14-year-old girl in Puncak Jaya, while 13-year-old Martinus Tebai was murdered in Dogiyai on August 10th after soldiers opened fire on a group of youngsters.

These killings are the inevitable result of the intensified militarisation that has taken place in West Papua since the election of the war criminal Prabowo. Thousands of additional troops have been deployed to terrorise West Papua, while the new administration has also created an independent military command for all five newly created West Papuan provinces, reinforcing the military infrastucture across our land. Over 100,000 civilians are still displaced, and there has been no justice for the forced disappearance of twelve villagers in Intan Jaya in May.

In West Papua there are two connected crimes: ecocide and genocide. Increased violence and displacement in the cities and villages is inseparable from increased destruction in the forest. Soldiers are being sent to Merauke, Dogiyai, and Intan Jaya in order to protect Indonesia’s investment in these regions. We are crying out to the world, over and over again, screaming that Indonesia is ripping apart our ancestral forest, endangering the entire planet in the process. The Merauke sugarcane and rice plantation is the most destructive deforestation project in history; it will more than double Indonesia’s CO2 emissions. What will it take for the environmental movement to take a stand?

At the same time as it kills our children, Indonesia has shown just how fragile its grip on West Papua really is. After the ULMWP declared that no West Papuan should celebrate Indonesian Independence Day, soldiers went across the country forcing civilians to raise the Indonesian flag.

Indonesia is desperate. Even as they increase their violence, they know their occupation will eventually end. We remember what happened in East Timor, where the worst violence took place in the dying days of the occupation. West Papuans have always spoken with one voice in demanding independence. We never accepted Indonesia, we never raised the Red and White. We had our own flag, our own anthem, our own Independence Day. They came with guns to build a state on top of a state. One day soon they will leave and West Papuans will walk their forests and tend their gardens in peace.

I call on the Indonesian government to withdraw their troops and allow civilians to return home, and to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to report from West Papua, as more than 110 UN Member States have demanded.

Benny Wenda
President
ULMWP