Selasa, 05 Mei 2009
Low population in Papua an indication of genocide according to a church leader
There are claims that the population of Papua province in Indonesia has declined dramatically compared with neighbouring PNG and that the Indonesian military is to blame.
The Reverend Socratez Sofyan Yoman, the president of the Communion of Baptist Churches in West Papua, and other Papuan activists will present seminars in Auckland over the next two days, on West Papua - The Hidden Pacific Conflict.
Rev Yoman says in 1969 when Indonesia took formal control, the indigenous population was substantially larger than in PNG - but the neighbour now has nearly six times as many people.
He puts the low population down to a range of factors, including poor health care, alcoholism and HIV/Aids, but says the principal factor is the activity of the military.
“There are many murdered, many murdered and silent killings happening in West Papua. We need help. Assistance from the international community to stop this terrible situation in West Papua.”
Rev Yoman says they want New Zealand encourage the UN to send human rights investigators to Papua.
News Content © Radio New Zealand International
PO Box 123, Wellington, New Zealand
UN Indigenous Peoples' Day marked by killing of West Papuan
12 August 2009
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| The rally in Wamena, West Papua, where Opinus Tabuni was shot and killed © © Institute for Papuan Advocacy and Human Rights |
A West Papuan man was shot and killed by Indonesian police on August 9, the UN Day for Indigenous Peoples.
The man was shot during a peaceful rally at Wamena, a town in the Papuan highlands, where an estimated 20,000 West Papuans had gathered.
Indonesian police started shooting into the ground in front of the crowd after four flags were raised: the UN flag, the Indonesian flag, an SOS flag, and the West Papuan Independence flag, the Morning Star, which the Indonesian government has banned.
The man killed, 35 year old Opinus Tabuni, was sitting near the fence of a local school when he was hit by a bullet. A spokesperson for the local police denied their involvement in the killing, claiming that Mr Tabuni ‘might have been accidentally killed by protestors’ in the crowd.
‘This incident is a clear indication that the Indonesian police believe that unfurling the Morning Star flag is enough justification to shoot at people in a peaceful rally,’ said Paula Makabory from the Institute for Papua Advocacy and Human Rights. ‘The Indonesian police also have the audacity to deny they have killed this man when he was shot in front of everyone.’
Two other men were reportedly seriously injured by Indonesian security forces – one shot, the other beaten by police using rifle butts.
View image of West Papuan man, Opinus Tabuni, shot dead by Indonesian police (some may find this image disturbing)
THE BRUTAL KILLING OF INDONESIA ARMY IN PAPUA
West Papua: Land of Peace or Killing Field
BY-PLATO-AYAMARU
30 April 2009
Paper presented by Carmel Budiardjo to the fifth international solidarity meeting for West Papua, Manila, the Philippines (29 Apr - 1 May)
The people of West Papua have lived for more than forty years under the Indonesian jackboot. It is widely agreed that about 100,000 Papuans have lost their lives as a result of military operations or occupation-related disorders since the beginning of Indonesian rule in 1963. Throughout the history of Indonesian rule, the main bone of contention has been the denial of the right to self-determination. Few would deny that the Act of Free Choice in 1969 by which West Papua was incorporated into Indonesia was an outrageous fraud. It was neither free nor was there any choice.
The New York Agreement of 1962 which set the scene for West Papua's fraudulent incorporation was concluded while Sukarno was president and the Act of Free Choice provided for in the Agreement was conducted six years later, four years after General Suharto had seized power and installed himself as president.
There could hardly have been a greater contrast between the two leaders. The former had been involved in Indonesia's anti-colonial struggle since the 1920s; he was a rabble-rousing populist with a long tradition of thrusting Indonesia into the forefront of a world alliance of non-alligned nations. The latter was a cunning and brutal top-ranking military officer who seized power after a blood-letting that left at least a million dead (despite Sukarno's efforts to stop it). His regime enforced depolitisation on a country whose people had thrived on political activities and public rallies for decades, with innumerable mass organisations, large and small, catering to the needs of all sections of the population. Non-alignment had no place in Suharto's New Order.
Indonesia has abundant natural resources (especially in West Papua), and after Suharto took over, foreign investors were encouraged to take their pick. One of the first was Freeport which signed a contract in 1967 to exploit West Papua's copper and gold, even before the so-called legitimising Act of Free Choice had been held.
However, when it came to West Papua, the policies of Sukarno and Suharto were indistinguishable . 'It must be ours at all costs whether the Papuans like it or not,' was the widely-held view. Indeed, they were never consulted at any stage of the process.
The common thread in Indonesian policy, whoever was president, has been nationalism, and a dogged adherence to the principle that all territories that had been under Dutch rule should now fall under Indonesian rule, whatever the locals thought.
But this was not all. The second element was the military. It was under Sukarno that the Indonesian Armed Forces gained a powerful position within the national government, at the provincial level and right down to the smallest village. Under Suharto that the role of the military was consolidated, turning Indonesia into one of the twentieth century's longest lasting military regimes. Nationalism and militarism is a poisonous mix, the cause of Papua's decades of suffering.
Already in the mid-1990s, Papuans defiantly started to demonstrate in favour of independence, and in the months before the Suharto regime came tottering down, these demonstrations grew more defiant. Unfurling the Morning Star flag (kejora), which was adopted on 1 December 1961 (under Dutch rule), has been their most frequent act of protest. Over the years, scores of Papuans have been arrested, beaten and tortured, while dozens have been killed simply for peacefully raising the flag. These actions are a far cry from armed rebellion (which the OPM and its armed force, the TPN, have sought to wage for many years) yet they invariably provoke a brutal response from heavily-armed troops or police. Papuan flag-raising is feared as a powerful symbolic action by the Indonesian security forces and the political elite, a defiant challenge to Indonesia's own practice of raising the Red-and-White on every possible occasion.
One, Three or Five Provinces?
It was under Habibie, the first post-Suharto president, that a dialogue was held in February 1999 between one hundred Papuan leaders and the President at which the issue of independence was raised. Taken aback by what he heard, Habibie made no commitments but told the Papuan leaders 'to go home and wait' and to 'consider the issue carefully'. This was little short of an insult and nothing more was heard of the initiative.
Of all the post-Suharto presidents, only Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) has shown any understanding of Papuan aspirations. At the end of 1999, he renamed Irian Jaya as Papua and contributed towards the costs of the Papuan People's Congress held in June 2000, which was attended by thousands. He also lifted the ban on raising the Morning Star, while insisting that it should always be raised alongside the Red-and White. But he too insisted on maintaining Indonesia's territorial integrity. According to Gus Dur, the flag should be seen as a cultural symbol, thus downplaying its political significance.
Since 1999, Indonesian policy towards Papua has been mired in confusion, no doubt reflecting differing interests within the political elite. In 1999 a law to set up two additional provinces, Central Irian Jaya and West Irian Jaya, was adopted, thus splitting Papua into three, and reverting to the old name Irian Jaya. This provoked widespread protest and was seen as a move to carve up the Papuan people and thereby undermine the force of their pro-independence aspirations.
It was under Habibie, in 1999, that a law on regional autonomy for the whole of Indonesia was enacted, which was certainly a move in the right direction, putting an end to the excessive centralisation that has marked the governance of the Republic since 1945. But many Indonesian politicians, notably Megawati Sukarnoputri, who was to become president in 2001 following the impeachment of Gus Dur, showed their distaste for this move towards decentralisation, seeing it as a dangerous slide towards the disintegration of the Republic. To most Indonesian politicians, NKRI - the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia - is seen as something sacred. 'Federalism' is regarded as a dirty word, the use of which almost toppled Gus Dur soon after his inauguration as president.
Faced with such strong opposition, the policy of partition introduced in 1999 remained in limbo. The idea of partition was reversed in 2001, with the adoption of Law 21/2001 to grant Papua special autonomy. The law had largely been drafted by Papuan intellectuals and was seen as something of a victory for the Papuans. While on the one hand, it was generally seen as move to dampen Papuan aspirations for independence, many saw it as opening up new opportunities for Papuans by gaining control of financial assets and overall administration.
The Special Autonomy Law also contained an important provision for a Papuan People's Assembly (MRP), composed of ethnic Papuans, with consultative status on important matters of governance, in particular regarding the highly emotive issue of partition. For several years, Jakarta dragged its feet on setting up the MRP; it did not happen until after Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono took over as President in October 2004. Government Regulation No 54/2004 of November 2004 setting up the MRP was a huge disappointment, both because its tasks and powers were more limited than had been hoped and also because it stipulated that the members should be 'loyal and obedient to the Pancasila' and 'loyal and obedient to the Indonesian Constitution (of) 1945… and to the legitimate Indonesian government'. Moreover, no one who had been 'involved in subversive activities against the Republic' would be eligible for membership. This clearly meant that the members were expected to support the principle of Indonesia's territorial integrity.
But then came the bombshell on the form of a presidential instruction to 'accelerate the division of Papua into three provinces' in 2003, while Megawati was still president. Faced with total confusion over what Jakarta was doing, the provincial governor, Jaap Salossa sought a Judicial Review from the newly-established Constitutional Court but its ruling only added to the confusion: On the one hand it ruled that the 1999 law on partition was unlawful but it also said that it could not reverse the establishment of the West Irian Jaya Province as everything was already in place for the province to exist.
In early 2005, there were even reports that Papua will be divided into five provinces.
The creation of new provinces means the creation of new provincial and lower level administrations, all requiring the recruitment of personnel. There is little doubt that, with the exception of Papuan figurehead leaders, most of these posts will go to Indonesians who have the necessary training and educational standards for running a bureaucracy. The terrible fact is that during four decades of Indonesian rule, few Papuans have had access to the necessary education for such administrative responsibilities, or have even been able to secure primary education for their children. According to a report in 2004, 66 per cent of Papuans are illiterate. It will also result in a large increase in the number of military personnel for the military commands.
The harmful impact of Jakarta-based decisions about administration in Papua is clear from a recent report about Wasur National Park in Merauke district. According to The Jakarta Post (19 April 2005), there has been a major demographic shift as a result of years of transmigration. Out of a population of 100,000, 40 per cent are Javanese, while Menadonese, Madurese and Acehnese account for ten per cent each of the population. Papuans are now the minority, accounting for only 30 per cent of the population in that district. Illegal logging has depleted the forests which are so crucial to the livelihood of local communities. Modern hunting methods have been introduced, undermining the traditional hunting practices of the local people who have for generations sought to protect and preserve wild life. The local people cannot compete with non-indigenous methods and the modern weapons used. Furthermore, Papuans have been largely excluded from the bureaucracy. According to the Archbishop of Merauke, Seputra, this amounts to a gross injustice. He was quoted as saying: 'We need liberating in our own homeland!'
Militarisation
In March this year, it was announced that the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) would set up a number of new district and subdistrict commands. The Indonesian army has a large number of divisions, most of which exist alongside a single province although in some cases they cover more than one province. These are known as Komando Daerah Militer or Kodam. Below the Kodam are what are known as resort military commands or korem, below which are district military commands which are known as kodim, sub-district commands known as koramil, while at the village level there are army officers who are known as babinsa. The army duplicates the civilian government at every level, just as it did during the Suharto era. Although there were expectations that in the post-Suharto reformasi period, the armed forces would also undergo reform including disbanding the territorial commands, this has not happened. In fact, things have moved in the opposite direction.
KODAM-Trikora in Papua has its headquarters in Jayapura. There are battalions (usually six to seven hundred men each) in Jayapura, Sorong, Nabire, Manokwari, Timika, Merauke and Biak, and perhaps in some other towns as well. There is also a Brimob battalion (a police force renown for its brutality) in Jayapura and an air force battalion (Paskasau) in Biak. The recent announcement that several more districts (kebupaten) - currently 29 - are to be formed means that the number of kodim will certainly increase, along with the creation of more korem. The troops in all these units are known as 'organic troops', that is to say, part of the regular territorial forces in the province, what might be called a standing army.
The recent announcement that a new KOSTRAD division is to be set up to be deployed in Papua, will substantially increase the number of non-organic troops there. At present, KOSTRAD has two divisions, both of which are based in Java. The decision to base this new KOSTRAD division in Papua is a sign of the huge importance the TNI now attaches to the need to greatly increase the number of combat troops in a province so richly-endowed with natural resources and a population seething with discontent. KOSTRAD units are highly specialised troops, equipped with the most advanced weaponry available, whose soldiers undergo especially rigorous training for combat. The new KOSTRAD division will be based in Sorong, according to an announcement by the armed forces commander in chief, General Endriartono Sutarto. He said this location had been chosen to facilitate its ability to deploy troops at short notice. And when asked, why in Sorong, he said: 'To be closer to places which we consider to be in need of strengthening.' In addition, there are 8,000 non-organic troops deployed to guard the Freeport copper-and-gold mine in Timika. Although BP has said that does not want army troops to guard its Tangguh project in Bintuni Bay, few doubt that the army will create incidents in the vicinity of the natural gas project so as to force the company to reverse its decision, or face the consequences of continual disruption.
The presence of these special combat troops will certainly have a devastating effect on civil society in Papua. It is not difficult to predict that protests or demonstrations about, say, land issues, or flag-raising ceremonies will be confronted by the full force of the army's strongest units, or Brimob.
The expansion will result in a 50 per cent increase in the number of troops in Papua, up from around 30,000 troops at present to about 50,000. More significant than the increase in numbers, however, is the alarming fact that such combat-ready troops account for all of the increase.
Papua, a Land of Peace
The planned army build-up in Papua is in sharp contrast to the calls by Papuans that have reverberated for years for their homeland to be declared a Land of Peace. Such a powerful slogan signifies the degree to which Papuans have felt the oppressive weight of Indonesian troops whose style is to create incidents (such as in Wamena, Wasior, Puncak Jaya and Timika) so as to provoke local communities to fight back, providing themselves with the justification to remain in place in the interests of security. The Papuans have displayed remarkable restraint in face of such provocation.
No Indonesian government has responded to this demand which should surely be the basis for serious dialogue aimed at lifting the weight of repression and creating the conditions to allow economic activities to flourish and for proper attention to be given to the desperate social, cultural and educational needs of the Papuan people, which have been neglected for so long. This should include in particular the provision of adequate medical facilities to cater for villages scattered over vast areas of land.
The only conclusion to be drawn from the TNI's decision to expand its forces in Papua is, on the one hand, that they intend to exert an even tighter control over the population while on the other hand raking in huge pay-offs from the exploitation of the abundant natural resources with which Papua has been blessed, or as some Papuans would say, cursed. As we know, most of the illegal logging which is now rampant throughout Indonesia is taking place in Papua, by companies which enjoy the protection of local military units.
Recent developments show that Papua has become a special project of the TNI, safeguarding its continued political role in state affairs and ensuring it a lucrative source of money to enrich its officer class.
The withdrawal of non-organic troops from Papua as the first step towards the withdrawal of all troops should be a major campaigning issue in the coming year. Security affairs and the maintenance of law and order should be in the hands of the police (not Brimob), along with the recruitment of more Papuans into the police force. This should be for normal policing duties including the protection of foreign mining operations, without being required to commit themselves to Pancasila or the principles of Indonesia's territorial integrity, or any other aspects of state ideology.
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE
Indonesia's 1969 Takeover of West Papua Not by "Free Choice"
Document Release Marks 35th Anniversary
of Controversial Vote and Annexation
Secret Files Show U.S. Support for Indonesia,
Human Rights Abuses by Indonesian Military
Edited by Brad Simpson
simpbrad@isu.edu / 208-282-3870
Posted July 9, 2004
http://sauf-maybrat-post.blogspot.com
Washington, D.C. - July 8, 2004 - "You should tell [Suharto] that we understand the problems they face in West Irian," national security adviser Henry Kissinger wrote President Nixon on the eve of Nixon's July 1969 visit to Indonesia. On the 35th anniversary of West Papua's so-called "Act of Free Choice" and Indonesia's first direct presidential elections, the National Security Archive posted recently declassified documents on U.S. policy deliberations leading to Indonesia's controversial 1969 annexation of the territory. The documents detail United States support for Indonesia's heavy-handed takeover of West Papua despite overwhelming Papuan opposition and United Nations requirements for genuine self-determination.
Background
When Indonesia gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1949, the Dutch government retained control over the territory of West New Guinea. From 1949 until 1961 the Indonesian government sought to "recover" West New Guinea (later known as West Irian or West Papua), arguing that the territory, a part of the former Netherlands East Indies, rightfully belonged with Indonesia.
In late 1961, after repeated and unsuccessful attempts to secure its goals through the United Nations, Indonesia's President Sukarno declared a military mobilization and threatened to invade West New Guinea and annex it by force. The Kennedy administration, fearing that U.S. opposition to Indonesian demands might push the country toward Communism, sponsored talks between the Netherlands and Indonesia in the spring of 1962. Negotiations took place under the shadow of ongoing Indonesian military incursions into West New Guinea and the threat of an Indonesian invasion.
The U.S.-sponsored talks led to the August 1962 New York Agreement, which awarded Indonesia control of West New Guinea (which it promptly renamed West Irian) after a brief transitional period overseen by the UN. (Note 1) The agreement obligated Jakarta to conduct an election on self-determination with UN assistance no later than 1969. Once in control, however, Indonesia quickly moved to repress political dissent by groups demanding outright independence for the territory.
U.S. officials understood at the outset that Indonesia would never allow West Irian to become independent and that it was unlikely to ever allow a meaningful act of self-determination to take place. The Johnson and Nixon administrations were equally reluctant to challenge Indonesian control over West Irian, especially after the conservative anti-Communist regime of General Suharto took over in 1966 following an abortive coup attempt which led to the slaughter of an estimated 500,000 alleged Communists. Suharto quickly moved to liberalize the Indonesian economy and open it to the West, passing a new foreign investment law in late 1967. The first company to take advantage of the law was the American mining company Freeport Sulphur, which gained concessions to vast tracts of land in West Irian containing gold and copper reserves. (Note 2)
Over six weeks from July to August 1969, U.N. officials conducted the so-called "Act of Free Choice." Under the articles of the New York Agreement (Article 18) all adult Papuans had the right to participate in an act of self-determination to be carried out in accordance with international practice. Instead, Indonesian authorities selected 1022 West Papuans to vote publicly and unanimously in favor of integration with Indonesia.
Despite significant evidence that Indonesia had failed to meet its international obligations, in November 1969 the United Nations "took note" of the "Act of Free Choice" and its results, thereby lending support of the world body to Indonesia's annexation.
Thirty-five years later, as Indonesia holds its first-ever direct Presidential elections, the international community has come to question the validity of Jakarta's takeover of West Papua and the ongoing human rights abuses there. In March, 88 members of the Irish Parliament urged United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to review the United Nations' role in the 1969 Act of Free Choice, joining South African Archibishop Desmond Tutu and scores of non-governmental organizations and European Parliamentarians. On June 28, 2004, nineteen U.S. Senators sent a letter to Annan urging the appointment of a Special Representative to Indonesia to monitor the human rights situation in West Papua and the territory of Aceh.
The Documents
The Archive's postings include a confidential February 1968 cable from U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Marshall Green. Following a conversation with Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik about the situation in West Irian, Green concluded that conditions in the territory are "far from satisfactory and deteriorating." A subsequent cable reported that Indonesia is "belatedly and almost desperately seeking to develop support among the peoples of West Irian" for the "Act of Free Choice."
A consular trip to West Irian in early 1968 observed that "the Indonesian government directs its main efforts" in the territory to "maintaining existing political facilities and suppressing political dissent." Because of neglect, corruption and repression at the hands of Indonesian authorities, Western observers agreed almost unanimously that "Indonesia could not win an open election" and that the vast majority of West Irian's inhabitants favored independence.
In July of 1968 the UN-appointed Ambassador Fernando Ortiz Sanz arrived in Jakarta as the Secretary General's Special Representative for assisting Indonesia with the West Irian plebiscite, as called for by the 1962 New York Agreement.
A confidential cable from the U.S. Embassy to the State Department outlined the stakes in the upcoming "Act of Free Choice." While cautioning that the U.S. government "should not become directly involved in this issue," Ambassador Green worried that Ortiz Sanz or other UN members might "hold out for free and direct elections" in West Irian, frustrating Indonesia's intention to retain the territory at all costs. Consequently, U.S. and other Western officials worried about the need to meet with Ortiz Sanz to "make him aware of political realities." In a confidential October 1968 Airgram the U.S. Embassy reported with relief that Ortiz now "concedes that it would be inconceivable from the point of view of the interest of the U.N., as well as the GOI, that a result other than the continuance of West Irian within Indonesian sovereignty should emerge."
The Indonesian government firmly rejected the possibility of a one-person, one-vote plebiscite in West Irian, insisting instead on a series of local 'consultations' with just over 1,000 hand selected tribal leaders (out of an estimated population of 800,000), conducted in July 1969 with between 6,000-10,000 Indonesian troops spread throughout the territory. As the U.S. Embassy put it in a July 1969 telegram:
The Act of Free Choice (AFC) in West Irian is unfolding like a Greek tragedy, the conclusion preordained. The main protagonist, the GOI, cannot and will not permit any resolution other than the continued inclusion of West Irian in Indonesia. Dissident activity is likely to increase but the Indonesian armed forces will be able to contain and, if necessary, suppress it.
Ambassador Frank Galbraith noted on July 9, 1969 that past abuses had stimulated intense anti-Indonesian and pro-independence sentiment at all levels of Irian society, suggesting that "possibly 85 to 90%" of the population "are in sympathy with the Free Papua cause." Moreover, Galbraith observed, recent Indonesian military operations, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands of civilians, "had stimulated fears and rumours of intended genocide among the Irianese."
President Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger visited Jakarta in July 1969 while the "Act of Free Choice" was underway. Improving relations with Indonesia's authoritarian regime was clearly uppermost in the mind of Kissinger, who characterized Suharto as a "moderate military man … committed to progress and reform." In Nixon's secret briefing papers (Document 9 and Document 10) for the visit Kissinger flatly told the President "you should not raise this issue" of West Irian and argued "we should avoid any U.S. identification with that act." The White House generally held to this position throughout the period preceding and following the "Act of Free Choice."
Although they recognized the deep flaws in the Act and in Indonesia's intentions, U.S. officials were not interested in creating any problems for a Suharto regime they saw as nonaligned but pro-Washington. While the U.S. was unwilling to actively intervene on Indonesia's behalf (an action they thought unnecessary and counterproductive) at the UN to insure quick General Assembly acceptance of Indonesia's formal takeover of West Papua, the U.S. quietly signaled that it was uninterested in a lengthy debate over an issue it viewed as a foregone conclusion and marginal to U.S. interests. In a secret briefing memo for a meeting with Indonesia's Ambassador to the United States Soedjakmoto, a State Department official expressed confidence that international criticism of the "Act of Free Choice" would quickly fade, allowing the Nixon Administration to move forward with its plans for forging closer military and economic ties with the authoritarian regime in Jakarta.
Documents
NOTE: The documents featured below were selected for inclusion in this Electronic Briefing Book. Click here to download the complete set of documents on this issue (PDF - 7.6 MB).
Document 1
February 29, 1968
Subject: West Irian
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Confidential Telegram
The U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, Marshall Green reports on a conversation with Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik on West Irian. Malik suggests the possibility of reducing the more than 10,000 Indonesian troops serving in Irian. He also hints Indonesia will insist on indirect means for ascertaining the wishes of the inhabitants of the territory in 1969, perhaps relying on tribal leaders who can be induced with "favors for them and their tribes." Green expresses concern about the "deteriorating" situation.
Document 2
May 2, 1968
Subject: West Irian
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Confidential Telegram
U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Marshall Green, reports on a conversation with Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik in which Malik outlines some of the measures Jakarta is undertaking in an attempt to build support among the people of West Irian for merger with Indonesia.
Document 3
May 10, 1968
Subject: Consular Trip to West Irian
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Confidential Airgram
In January, 1968 Embassy Political Consul Thomas Reynders visits West Irian for one month. Reynders observes the relatively low level of economic development in the territory since Indonesia assumed control in 1962, noting that "The Indonesian government's presence in West Irian is expressed primarily in the form of the Army." Reynders concludes, as have nearly all Western observers, that "Indonesia will not accept Independence for West Irian and will not permit a plebiscite that would reach such an outcome" and notes the "antipathy or outright hatred believed to be harbored toward Indonesia and Indonesians by West Irians in the relatively developed and sophisticated areas."
Document 4
August 20, 1968
Subject: The Stakes in West Irian's "Act of Free Choice"
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Confidential Telegram
US Ambassador Marshall Green suggests "Act of Free Choice" in West Irian "May well be the most important political issue in Indonesia during the coming year." Notes Indonesian "dilemma" in seeking "to devise some meaningful way to conduct ascertainment which will not involve real risks of loss of West Irian." Green reminds the State Department, in urging a hands-off approach by the U.S., that "we are dealing here essentially with stone age, illiterate tribal groups" and that "free elections among groups such as this would be more of a farce than any rigged mechanism Indonesia could devise."
Document 5
August 4, 1968
Subject: "Act of Free Choice" in West Irian
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Confidential Telegram
Marshall Green writes to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific G. McMurtry Godley expressing concern over the views of U.N. Special Representative for West Irian Ortiz Sanz. Green recommends that "in view of high stakes … we should do anything we can indirectly to make him aware of political realities" regarding Indonesian intentions toward West Irian.
Document 6
October 4, 1968
Subject: West Irian
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Confidential Airgram
Embassy Political Consul Jack Lydman describes the results of Ortiz Sanz's recent orientation visit to West Irian and asserts that Sanz is now "attempting to devise a formula for an "act of free choice" in West Irian which will result in an affirmation of Indonesian sovereignty" yet "stand the test of international opinion."
Document 7
June 9, 1969
Subject: Assessment of Irian situation
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Confidential Telegram
On the eve of the "Act of Free Choice," the U.S. embassy offers a highly critical appraisal of Indonesia's determination to insure West Irian's integration, concluding that from Jakarta's standpoint "separation is unthinkable." After detailing Indonesian efforts to repress "increasingly desperate" supporters of independence for West Irian, Embassy concludes with concern for "future Indonesian relations with Irianese," many of whom display a "festering antagonism and distrust of Indonesians."
Document 8
June 9, 1969
Subject: West Irian: The Nature of the Opposition
U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Confidential Airgram
Galbraith offers a detailed assessment of the views of various Irian groups opposed to integration with Indonesia and advocating independence, including the Free Papua Movement (OPM). He observes that "opposition to the GOI stems from economic deprivation over the years, military repression and capriciousness, and maladministration," and suggests that anti-Indonesian groups will be unable to alter the final outcome of the "Act of Free Choice."
Documents 9 and 10
June 10 and July 18, 1969
Subject: Djakarta Visit: Your Meetings with President Suharto
Henry Kissinger, Memorandum for the President
National security adviser Henry Kissinger briefs President Nixon on his visit to Indonesia and likely conversations with Indonesian President Suharto. Kissinger argues that there is no U.S. interest in getting involved in the issue of West Irian and that it is certain its people will choose integration with Indonesia. In Nixon's talking points, Kissinger urges that the President refrain from raising the issue except to note U.S. sympathy with Indonesia's concerns.
Document 11
August 25, 1969
Subject: Call by Indonesian Ambassador Soedjakmoto
U.S. State Department, Secret Memorandum
Paul Gardner briefs Assistant Secretary of State Marshall Green on his visit with Indonesian Ambassador to the U.S. Soedjakmoto, who is expected to ask for help from the U.S. in "preparing smooth U.N. handling" of the "Act of Free Choice" in the General Assembly.
Notes
1. For an excellent overview of the events leading up to the New York Agreement, see Jones, Matthew. Conflict and Confrontation in Southeast Asia, 1961-1965: Britain, the United States, Indonesia and the Creation of Malaysia (Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 2002): 31-62; C.L.M. Penders. The West New Guinea Debacle: Dutch Colonization and Indonesia, 1945-1962 (Hawaii, 2002); John Saltford. The United Nations and the Indonesian Takeover of West Papua, 1962-1969 (Routledge, 2003).
2. Denise Leith. The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto's Indonesia (Hawaii, 2003).
GENOCIDE EMERGENCE AND CASES OF PAPUA TAKEOVER
Papua, Indonesia (formerly called West Papua, Irian Jaya, West Irian)
-
Yale Law School, 2004 Lowenstein Clinic/Schell Center Report on Genocide in Papua.
Indonesia's 1969 Takeover of West Papua
West Papua: The Obliteration of a People
Carmel Budiardjo & Liem Soei Liong, TAPOL
London, 1988, third edition (revised), 142pp.
Carmel Budiardjo, "West Papua: Land of Peace or Killing Field"
Paradise Betrayed: West Papua's Struggle for Independence, by John Martinkus, Quarterly Essay, no. 7, 2002, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 1-83.
Indonesia's Secret War: The Guerrilla Struggle in Irian Jaya, by Robin Osborne, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1985. -
West Papua and Indonesia since Suharto, by Peter King, Sydney, University of NSW Press, 2004.
-
Survival International: 44 Papuan uncontacted tribes threatened with extinction
Reluctant Indonesians: Australia, Indonesia and the Future of West Papua, by Clinton Fernandes (Melbourne, 2007)
Indonesian Human Rights Abuses in West Papua:
Application of the Law of Genocide to the
History of Indonesian Control
A paper prepared for the Indonesia Human Rights Network
By the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic
Yale Law School
Elizabeth Brundige
Winter King
Priyneha Vahali
Stephen Vladeck
Xiang Yuan
April 2004
Acknowledgments
Application of the Law of Genocide to the
History of Indonesian Control
A paper prepared for the Indonesia Human Rights Network
By the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic
Yale Law School
Elizabeth Brundige
Winter King
Priyneha Vahali
Stephen Vladeck
Xiang Yuan
April 2004
Acknowledgments
This paper was written by Elizabeth Brundige, Winter King, Priyneha Vahali,Stephen Vladeck, and Xiang Yuan of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School. The team was supervised and the paper edited by Professor James Silk, director of the Lowenstein Clinic. Barbara Mianzo, assistant at the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School, produced the paper.
Abigail Abrash Walton provided thoughtful comments on multiple drafts and continued guidance throughout the production of this paper. We thank Octovianus Mote
and John Rumbiak for their insights into contemporary events in West Papua and their
assistance in obtaining hard-to-find sources. We are also grateful to Dr. Leslie Butt for
sharing her research on the public health crisis in Papua.
Finally, we acknowledge with gratitude the valuable contributions of the
participants in a day-long roundtable discussion organized by the Lowenstein Clinic at
the Yale Law School on March 30, 2002. Joining the student authors and James Silk and
Deena Hurwitz of the Lowenstein Clinic were: Abigail Abrash Walton, Carmel
Budiardjo, Frank Chalk, Sukwan Hambali, Ben Kiernan, Edmund McWilliams,
Octovianus Mote, Daniel Rothenberg, John Rumbiak, Joseph Saunders, and David
Webster. Their knowledge of West Papua, Indonesia, international law, and the study of
genocide generated a vibrant discussion that informed and gave shape to the questions
Abigail Abrash Walton provided thoughtful comments on multiple drafts and continued guidance throughout the production of this paper. We thank Octovianus Mote
and John Rumbiak for their insights into contemporary events in West Papua and their
assistance in obtaining hard-to-find sources. We are also grateful to Dr. Leslie Butt for
sharing her research on the public health crisis in Papua.
Finally, we acknowledge with gratitude the valuable contributions of the
participants in a day-long roundtable discussion organized by the Lowenstein Clinic at
the Yale Law School on March 30, 2002. Joining the student authors and James Silk and
Deena Hurwitz of the Lowenstein Clinic were: Abigail Abrash Walton, Carmel
Budiardjo, Frank Chalk, Sukwan Hambali, Ben Kiernan, Edmund McWilliams,
Octovianus Mote, Daniel Rothenberg, John Rumbiak, Joseph Saunders, and David
Webster. Their knowledge of West Papua, Indonesia, international law, and the study of
genocide generated a vibrant discussion that informed and gave shape to the questions
this paper addresses.
Table of Contents
I. SUMMARY ........................................................................... 1
II. INTRODUCTION .............................................................. 6
III. HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN WEST PAPUA ....... 9
A. Pre-Colonial West Papua ................................................. 9
B. West Papua Under Dutch Colonial Rule ...........................10
C. Indonesia’s Seizure of Power and the Act of Free Choice ..........14
D. West Papuan Resistance and Indonesian Repression ................19
E. Exploitation of West Papuans’ Land, Resources, and Labor ..............26
F. Renewed Military Campaigns, Rape, Torture, and Extrajudicial Killings .....29
G. Transmigration, Displacement, Disease, and Death .............32
H. Flight of West Papuan Refugees to Papua New Guinea ..........36
I. West Papuan Protests Against Foreign Resource Exploitation and
Indonesia’s Response ..........................38
J. West Papua Under President Habibie: Continued Military Violence ............44
IV. APPLICATION OF THE LAW OF GENOCIDE TO THE CASE OF
WEST PAPUA .....................49
A. Introduction to the Law of Genocide .....................49
B. The “Group” Element of the Crime of Genocide ....................54
1. National Group ...................55
2. Ethnical Group ............................ 56
3. Racial Group..................................56
4. Religious Group ........................................58
5. Ambit of Protection Established by the Four Enumerated Groups .........58
C. The Act Element of the Crime of Genocide ................59
1. Massacres and Extrajudicial Killings ............59
2. Torture, Disappearance, and Detention ...............60
3. Violence Against Women and Rape ..............62
4. Resource Exploitation, Relocation of Groups, and
Environmental Harm ....................................63
5. Destruction of Property and Crops ......................68
6. Forced Labor .........................................68
7. Transmigration Program .......................69
D. Inferring Intent: West Papua and the Contemporary Standard ...............70
V. CONCLUSION .........................74
1
I. SUMMARY ........................................................................... 1
II. INTRODUCTION .............................................................. 6
III. HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN WEST PAPUA ....... 9
A. Pre-Colonial West Papua ................................................. 9
B. West Papua Under Dutch Colonial Rule ...........................10
C. Indonesia’s Seizure of Power and the Act of Free Choice ..........14
D. West Papuan Resistance and Indonesian Repression ................19
E. Exploitation of West Papuans’ Land, Resources, and Labor ..............26
F. Renewed Military Campaigns, Rape, Torture, and Extrajudicial Killings .....29
G. Transmigration, Displacement, Disease, and Death .............32
H. Flight of West Papuan Refugees to Papua New Guinea ..........36
I. West Papuan Protests Against Foreign Resource Exploitation and
Indonesia’s Response ..........................38
J. West Papua Under President Habibie: Continued Military Violence ............44
IV. APPLICATION OF THE LAW OF GENOCIDE TO THE CASE OF
WEST PAPUA .....................49
A. Introduction to the Law of Genocide .....................49
B. The “Group” Element of the Crime of Genocide ....................54
1. National Group ...................55
2. Ethnical Group ............................ 56
3. Racial Group..................................56
4. Religious Group ........................................58
5. Ambit of Protection Established by the Four Enumerated Groups .........58
C. The Act Element of the Crime of Genocide ................59
1. Massacres and Extrajudicial Killings ............59
2. Torture, Disappearance, and Detention ...............60
3. Violence Against Women and Rape ..............62
4. Resource Exploitation, Relocation of Groups, and
Environmental Harm ....................................63
5. Destruction of Property and Crops ......................68
6. Forced Labor .........................................68
7. Transmigration Program .......................69
D. Inferring Intent: West Papua and the Contemporary Standard ...............70
V. CONCLUSION .........................74
1
I. SUMMARY
This paper considers whether the Indonesian government’s conduct toward the people of
West Papua constitutes genocide, as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The paper begins with a
detailed account of the human rights situation in West Papua from the beginning of Indonesian rule in 1963 until today. It then analyzes the law of genocide as applied to the West Papuan case. Although the paper does not offer a definitive conclusion about whether genocide has occurred, it finds in the available evidence a strong indication that the Indonesian government has committed genocide against the West Papuans. Moreover, even if the acts described in the paper were not carried out with intent to destroy the West Papuans as a group, a necessary element of the crime of genocide, many of these acts clearly constitute crimes against humanity under international law. A summary of the paper’s principle findings follows.
Introduction to the Law of Genocide The Genocide Convention, which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 and entered into force in 1951, declared that genocide is a crime against international law. It established that persons found guilty of genocide or genocidal acts “shall be punished,” and it imposed affirmative obligations on States Parties to undertake to prevent and punish the crime.
The International Court of Justice has recognized the Convention’s proscription of genocide as a part of customary international law and a jus cogens norm, a principle recognized by the international community as one from which no derogation is permitted.
Article II of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
2
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Under this definition, the crime of genocide consists of two important elements: the prohibited
act and the requisite intent. Thus, in analyzing whether the Indonesian government has
committed genocide against the West Papuans, this paper considers: 1) whether the West
Papuans constitute a group under the Convention’s definition of genocide; 2) whether the acts
perpetrated against the West Papuans are among those described by this definition; and 3)
whether these acts were carried out with intent to destroy the West Papuans as a group.
The Group Element of the Crime of Genocide
Genocide is a collective crime that targets a national, racial, ethnical, or religious group.
Although West Papuans are linguistically and culturally diverse, they belong to the Melanesian
race and have been viewed by the Indonesian government as a group that is both racially and
ethnically distinct from Indonesia’s majority Javanese population. The West Papuans also have
a common national identity that has been strengthened in the course of their common struggle for
independence from Indonesian rule. Therefore, this paper concludes that West Papuans clearly
fit within the ambit of protection delimited by the four kinds of groups listed in Article II of the
Genocide Convention.
The Act Element of the Crime of Genocide
Indonesian military and police forces have engaged in widespread violence and killings
in West Papua. This paper documents a history of massacres of the West Papuan people, from
the killing by aerial bombardment of several thousand Papuans in Jayawijaya in 1977 to the use
of napalm and chemical weapons against villagers in 1981 to the massacre of 32 West Papuans
3
in Wamena in October 2000. Indonesian authorities have also been responsible for numerous
extrajudicial killings, including torture killings of detained prisoners, assassinations of West
Papuan political, cultural, and village leaders, and brutal killings of civilian men, women, and
children. This pattern of massacres and killings falls squarely within the first category of act
identified by the Genocide Convention, “killing members of the group.”
Indonesian military and police force have subjected West Papuans to arbitrary and mass
detention, torture, and other cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment. Detained Papuans have
suffered electric shocks, beatings, pistol whipping, water torture, cigarette burns, and
confinement in steel containers for months on end. Many West Papuans have been
“disappeared” and likely tortured or killed, their family members subjected to psychological
trauma and often severe economic deprivation as a result. Indonesian soldiers have also
committed numerous acts of rape and sexual violence against West Papuan women, frequently in
public and sometimes accompanied by mutilation or murder or both. Such acts of rape and
sexual violence, mutilation, torture, cruel and unusual treatment or punishment, and
disappearance constitute unequivocal acts of “serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group,” the second category of act under the Genocide Convention. Many of these acts have
resulted in the deaths of West Papuans, thus falling within the “killing” category as well.
At the same time, the Indonesian government’s systematic program of resource
exploitation, destruction of Papuan resources and crops, compulsory and often uncompensated
labor, transmigration, and forced relocation has caused pervasive environmental harm to the
West Papuan region, undermined traditional subsistence practices and the social fabric and
governance systems of indigenous communities, and led to widespread disease, malnutrition, and
death among West Papuans. Mining and logging operations, undertaken in support of PT
4
Freeport and other multinational corporations, have caused devastating environmental damage
and the sickness or death of thousands of West Papuans. To facilitate mining operations and
resettle transmigrants from elsewhere in Indonesia, the government has intentionally forced West
Papuans from their traditional lands to unfamiliar locations, often leaving them without means of
subsistence. The government has consistently refused to provide adequate medical care to the
West Papuans and has discriminated against them in the provision of basic health care and
reproductive services. Indonesian military forces have directly attacked West Papuans’ property
and crops and have occasionally forced Papuans to work without compensation or below
subsistence wages, under threat of arrest.
Many of these acts, individually and collectively, clearly constitute crimes against
humanity under international law. Moreover, by engaging in such acts with the knowledge that
they would result in the destruction of the indigenous people of West Papua, the Indonesian
government likely has “deliberately inflict[ed] conditions of life calculated to bring about [the
West Papuan group’s] destruction in whole or in part,” implicating the third category of act
under Article II of the Genocide Convention.
The Intent Element of the Crime of Genocide
To be found guilty of the crime of genocide, a perpetrator must have engaged in
proscribed acts “with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part” the victim group. Intent consists
of specific intent to destroy the group, not simply a general intent to commit the proscribed acts.
However, because few perpetrators of genocide leave behind a clear record of intent, this
element usually must be inferred from their acts, considered as a whole, along with any other
available evidence that the victim group was targeted “as such.”
5
In the West Papuan case, the required intent cannot be inferred as easily as it was for the
Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. However, this paper finds that the Indonesian government
has engaged in a systematic pattern of acts that resulted in harm to, and the destruction of, a
substantial part of the West Papuan group. The Indonesian government has disavowed genocidal
intent by citing economic goals and repression of West Papuan “separatist” activity as the
motivation for many of its acts. However, there is little doubt that animus toward the West
Papuans has been a critical part of the motivation for the government’s policies. Moreover,
although the obvious, inevitable effect of these policies and acts would be the destruction of the
West Papuan group, the Indonesian authorities did nothing to counter this effect. This paper
does not resolve conclusively the question of whether the acts perpetrated by the Indonesian
government against West Papuans were committed with intent to destroy the West Papuan
group, as such. However, according to current understandings of the Genocide Convention, the
pattern of acts and omissions documented by this paper supports the conclusion that the
Indonesian government has acted with the necessary intent to find that it has perpetrated
genocide against the people of West Papua.
6
II. INTRODUCTION
This paper considers whether the historical and contemporary situation in West Papua
constitutes genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide. Since Indonesia secured control over West Papua in 1963, and established
formal sovereignty over the territory in 1969 through the so-called Act of Free Choice, West
Papuans have lived as second-class citizens in their own land, deprived of their right to selfdetermination
and subjected to serious human rights abuses at the hands of Indonesian
authorities. Violent military campaigns and extrajudicial killings have claimed the lives of
thousands of West Papuans. Thousands more have been subjected to torture, disappearance,
arbitrary detention, rape, or other forms of serious mental and bodily harm. The government of
Indonesia has forced West Papuans off of their land, exploited their resources, destroyed their
property and crops, denigrated and attacked their culture, and excluded them from the upper
levels of government, business, and education.
The term “genocide” was coined by jurist Raphael Lemkin during the Second World War
as a means of describing the atrocities perpetrated by the Third Reich. It became a crime under
international law when the U.N. General Assembly voted, on December 9, 1948, to approve the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Genocide
Convention defines genocide as any of a proscribed set of acts “committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.”1 The Convention
entered into force on January 12, 1951, and the proscription of the crime of genocide, as defined
1 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Dec. 9, 1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 277, reprinted
in 45 AM. J. INT’L. L. 7 (1951).
7
by the Convention, has long since became a norm of jus cogens2 and an unequivocal part of
customary international law.3
Genocide is not a term to be used lightly, and we do not do so here. Genocide is the
ultimate denial of the right to existence of entire groups of human beings. It is the quintessential
human rights crime, a crime that attacks the very concept of humanity. It is also a crime that
cannot easily hide behind a protective wall of domestic jurisdiction and state sovereignty, as it
imposes affirmative, binding obligations upon all states parties to prevent and punish it. The
Convention’s unusual enforcement component, and the reluctance of some states to employ the
term because of the weighty responsibilities it invokes, caution against enlarging the definition of
genocide in a way that weakens the stigma associated with the crime or dilutes the strength of
states’ commitment to preventing it.
Many atrocities that do not meet the strict definition of genocide fit within the definition
of “crimes against humanity,” a broader concept that includes persecution against any
identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or other
grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law. Since 1948,
the gap between crimes against humanity and genocide has narrowed considerably. Today,
2 The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties defines a jus cogens norm as one that is “accepted and recognized
by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted . . . .” Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties, art. 53.
3 Prosecutor v. Goran Jelisic, Case No. IT-95-10-T, ICTY T. Ch. I, 14 Dec. 1999, para. 60 (“[T]he Convention has
become one of the most widely accepted international instruments relating to human rights. There can be absolutely
no doubt that its provisions fall under customary international law as, moreover, noted by the International Court of
Justice as early as 1951. The Court went even further and placed the crime on the level of jus cogens because of its
extreme gravity.”). Customary international law is commonly defined as the law of the international community
that “results from a general and consistent practice of states followed by them from a sense of legal obligation.”
Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States § 102(2). The governing statute for the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) includes customary international law, or “international custom, as evidence of a
general practice of law,” as one of the types of law that the Court is to apply. Statute for the International Court of
Justice, Oct. 23, 1945, art. 38(1)(b), 59 Stat. 1055, 1060. The ICJ has further explained that for a rule of customary
international law to arise, “[n]ot only must the acts concerned amount to a settled practice, but they must also be
such, or be carried out in such a way, as to be evidence that this practice is rendered obligatory by the existence of a
rule of law requiring it.” North Sea Continental Shelf (F.R.G. v. Den., F.R.G. v. Neth., 1969 I.C.J. 3, 44 (Feb. 20).
8
crimes against humanity may be committed in times of peace as well as in times of war. States
arguably have an obligation to prevent and to punish crimes against humanity as a matter of
customary international law. Thus, even if the human rights violations committed by the
Indonesian government against West Papuans do not meet the criteria for genocide as defined by
the Genocide Convention, they likely constitute crimes against humanity and warrant
international action.
This paper assesses whether the conduct of the Indonesian government toward the West
Papuans constitutes genocide. Part I presents a detailed chronological account of the human
rights situation in West Papua, from the beginning of Indonesian rule until today, based on
available historical and contemporary English-language sources. Part II applies the law of
genocide to the case of West Papua. It begins with a brief introduction to the law of genocide
and then considers three questions that correspond to the three elements of the crime of genocide.
First, do the West Papuans constitute a group under the definition of genocide? Second, do the
acts perpetrated by the Indonesians against the West Papuans qualify as genocidal? Third,
should we infer from these acts an “intent to destroy” the West Papuans as such? This paper
does not claim to definitively answer these questions, but instead aims to provide a strong
foundation for further serious discussion of whether the human rights abuses perpetrated against
the West Papuans constitute genocide. Equally important, it seeks to highlight the urgent need
for additional archival and on-the-ground investigation and for heightened international attention
to the grave human rights situation in West Papua. Whenever the specter of genocide is raised,
such investigation and concern may become literally a matter of life and death.
9
III. HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN WEST PAPUA
A. Pre-Colonial West Papua
West Papua is the western half of New Guinea, the second largest island in the world.
The island is divided into two parts, West Papua, which Indonesia has incorporated as a
province, and Papua New Guinea, an ex-Australian-administered territory that gained its
independence in 1975. The inhabitants of West Papua emigrated from Asia nearly 50,000 years
ago, during the last ice age. They consisted primarily of three groups—Negritos, Papuans, and
Melanesians—who are today categorized as a single race, Melanesians. Historically, the people
living in West Papua have been divided along clan and linguistic lines. In 1963, when the
Netherlands handed West New Guinea over to Indonesia, it included 200 languages among
500,000 Papuans in an estimated population of 700,000.4 Separate communities often came
together in loose political confederations and according to their common ecological conditions,
but relationships were often colored by competition for power over traditional lands.
West Papuans’ first contact with neighboring Malay cultures occurred as traders from the
Malay archipelago (now Indonesia) took herbs, spices, and slaves from the island, beginning at
least as early as the seventh century. Indonesia claims that the Java-based Hindu emperor
Majapahit included West New Guinea5 within his kingdom circa 1293. He did not make any
effort to inhabit the island or befriend the natives, and many historians dispute the view that
Majapahit’s empire extended this far to the east.6 European explorers discovered the island
along the Spice Route, and a Spanish trader claimed it for his king in 1545. The Spanish never
returned, and the island became home to a British settlement in 1793, during a period when the
4 ROBIN OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR: THE GUERILLA STRUGGLE IN IRIAN JAYA 2 (1985).
5 Id. at 6. This was the name given to Papua under Dutch rule. The local residents, however, call themselves
Papuans, and the region West Papua. For the remainder of this paper, West New Guinea will be used to refer to the
region when under Dutch rule.
6 See id.
10
European powers were vying for colonial territories in southeast Asia. When the British were
driven out by disease and the inhospitable landscape two years later, the Dutch quickly took their
place. The Netherlands declared its sovereignty over the western half of New Guinea in 1828.
B. West Papua Under Dutch Colonial Rule
The difficulty of inhabiting the land with European settlers contributed to the new
colonial government’s decision to appoint the Sultan of Tidore to administer the territory for the
Dutch.7 Although this arrangement was made in 1848, the Dutch were slow in setting up
administrative institutions and used the territory mostly for its natural resources. The oil
company Royal Dutch Shell began to tap into the region’s oil reserves in 1907. Over the next
few decades, the wealth of resources available became increasingly apparent and was being
actively exploited by both British and American companies. As a response to the widespread
Indonesian rebellion against colonial rule in 1926, the Dutch instituted a policy of internal exile.
They created a new settlement in West New Guinea, known as Tanah Merah (“red earth”) to
house exiled Indonesians. The settlement served to establish an Indonesian presence in New
Guinea. Because of its frequent malaria outbreaks and its isolated location in the midst of a
jungle peopled by headhunting tribes, Indonesian nationalists dreaded Tanah Merah and grew
increasingly hostile toward the West Papuan people. When the Netherlands surrendered its
colonies to Japan in 1942, the Dutch forced Indonesians from Tanah Merah onto steamers
headed to Australia, where they were imprisoned by the Australian government.8
When the Dutch fled West New Guinea, they did not leave behind much of an
administrative infrastructure. The majority of the island’s inland areas were in contact only with
7 The Sultan was also responsible for the administration of numerous islands later included within independent
Indonesia. This is another historical fact on which the Indonesians base their claim to West Papua. The Sultan’s
administrative powers were taken away in 1901, when he began causing problems for the Dutch government.
8 See OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 9-10.
11
churches and missionary projects, which were scattered throughout the region. Japan saw itself
as the liberator of the region from the control of white imperialists, yet sought to impose its own
sovereignty over the West Papuans. The Japanese were faced with voices of West Papuan
dissent left over from Dutch rule, including the Koreri movement that had developed in Biak.9
The movement was based on a belief that a powerful spiritual figure would come and liberate the
Papuans from oppression.10 In response to the Koreri movement and the small, armed resistance
to Japanese domination, Japanese officials arrested, tortured, and killed suspected members of
the movement and ordered entire villages to be relocated. West Papuan resistance and Japanese
retaliation continued until the liberation of the region by American-led forces in August 1944.
After Japan’s surrender in August 1945, the Dutch administration gradually returned to West
New Guinea.
In the meantime, a separate independence movement had been brewing in neighboring
Indonesia. The Body for Researching Indonesian Independence (BPKI), an organization created
under the Japanese that later included many of independent Indonesia’s most prominent leaders,
held two meetings in July 1945 to discuss the possibility and the implications of Indonesian
independence, including the question of which territories would be part of the new state. The
majority of the delegates supported an independent Indonesia that would include all of the Dutch
Indies and West New Guinea. When Indonesian nationalists proclaimed independence on
August 17, 1945, their version of Indonesia included the territory of West New Guinea. During
the four-year independence struggle that followed, the Papuan question was largely ignored by
9 Biak is a small island off the north coast of West Papua. It is considered a region of West Papua.
10 The movement gained support at the end of the 1930s under the leadership of a woman named Angganita, who
followers believed had magical powers and began to preach resistance, first against the foreign missionaries, then
against the Dutch. OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 11. Angganita was arrested by the Dutch,
who, according to one of its colonial administrators, saw the movement as “far less a religion than a self-conscious
Papuan nationalism.” CARMEL BUDIARDJO & LIEM SOEI LIONG,WEST PAPUA: THE OBLITERATION OF A PEOPLE 5
(3d ed. 1988) (1973).
12
the international community. At the 1949 Hague Round Table Conference, which established
independent Indonesia, the Dutch refused to cede control of West New Guinea to the
Indonesians, preferring to maintain it as the final foothold of Dutch imperialism in southeast
Asia. The Dutch promised Papuan independence at some point in the near future. Thus, when
Indonesia finally gained independence in 1949, it did not include West New Guinea.
The exclusion of West New Guinea from newly independent Indonesia was largely the
result of strong Papuan opposition that made it clear that the inhabitants of West New Guinea
had no interest in being grouped with Indonesia. In July 1946, the head of the Netherlands
administration in New Guinea organized a conference of representatives from the eastern
archipelago. Franz Kaisiepo, the Papuan delegate to the conference, expressed the view that if
Papua were to become part of Indonesia, it would be swallowed up without any attention paid to
the economic situation of the inhabitants.11 Supported by the Australian government, he cited
differences in language and ethnic background as the major factors separating the people of
Papua from the rest of the archipelago.12 He was joined by Johan Ariks, a nationalist Papuan
who advocated armed resistance to any foreign control of the area.13
As fear of the Indonesian communist threat grew among the Western countries, the Dutch
promised to bring West New Guinea into the modern world by educating and training the
indigenous Papuans to govern the country and then pulling out of the area. In the 1950s, the
Dutch began the process of Papuan nation building in earnest. By 1957, the Netherlands had
created numerous positions for Papuans in government services, and the goal of handing over a
majority of government posts to Papuans seemed within reach.14
11 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 14-15.
12 Id.
13 Id. at 17.
14 Id. at 17-19.
13
By the end of the 1950s, the Dutch development plan was well on its way to success, but
it was cut short prematurely by the Sukarno government’s escalating diplomatic and military
pressure on the Dutch to cede control over Papua. President Sukarno used the Dutch plan as an
opportunity to play on Indonesian nationalism and distract his constituency from their declining
economic situation. The Indonesian government began a campaign with pamphlets, slogans,
rallies, and a war cry emphasizing the need to gain control of West Papua. Indonesia amassed
weapons from the Soviet Union in a military buildup intended to intimidate the Dutch. The
United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, seeking to avoid a Cold War confrontation,
chose not to support the Papuans and instead sought to placate the Indonesians.
Nevertheless, the U.N. General Assembly, in three separate debates on the question of “West
Irian,”15 failed to pass a resolution either backing Sukarno’s claim to the territory or affording the
Papuans the right to self-determination. Nonetheless, in February 1961, the Dutch held elections
for the West New Guinea Council, a representative body intended to encourage the establishment
of a Papuan political elite that would eventually govern the region after Dutch withdrawal.16 In
April 1961, the Council met for the first time. With this governing body in place, the Dutch
government formally proposed the “Luns Plan” to the U.N. General Assembly. The plan called
for a termination of Dutch sovereignty followed by a U.N. administration and the establishment
of an international study commission that would supervise the administration and organize a
plebiscite to determine the territory’s status.17 On December 1, 1966, the Council agreed on the
name of West Papua for their new nation, created a national anthem, and adopted the Morning
15 This was the Indonesian title for Dutch New Guinea, or Papua.
16 The Council included three Dutch representatives, two Eurasians, and twenty-three Papuans; sixteen were elected
and twelve appointed by the Dutch. JOHN SALTFORD, THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE INDONESIAN TAKEOVER OF
WEST PAPUA, 1962-1969: THE ANATOMY OF BETRAYAL (2003). [hereinafter SALTFORD, UNITED NATIONS AND
INDONESIAN TAKEOVER].
17 Id. At 11.
14
Star Flag. The flag was raised for the first time later that day, the anniversary of which is now
celebrated by West Papuans as their independence day.
In response, the Indonesian government began to use military tactics against the Papuans.
Indonesians launched a paratroop assault on West Papua and forces of its former colonial ruler,
and the Indonesian and Dutch navies engaged each other off the Papuan shores.
With outright war an imminent threat, U.S. President John F. Kennedy took on the role of
negotiating a peace accord between the Dutch and the Indonesians. On August 15, 1962, the two
parties signed the New York Agreement under the auspices of the United Nations. No West
Papuan representative participated in the agreement. By its terms, the Netherlands was to
transfer its authority to an interim U.N. administration, the United Nations Temporary Executive
Authority (UNTEA), on October 1, and the U.N. administration would hand the territory over to
Indonesia on or after May 1, 1963. The agreement further provided for a U.N.-supervised
election, sometime after Indonesia’s take-over, to allow the Papuans to decide their own fate:
whether or not to remain a part of Indonesia. The plan was implemented immediately, and
UNTEA took control of West Papua in October 1962.
C. Indonesia’s Seizure of Power and the Act of Free Choice
Prior to the arrival of the UNTEA forces, various Indonesian commanders who claimed
that they had liberated West Papua (or West Irian, as they now called it) asserted their rule over
the locals through military force. Even after the arrival of UNTEA’s security force, about 1500
Indonesian commandos remained in West Irian, ostensibly to assist the local police. Instead,
they engaged in harsh tactics to curb Papuan nationalist sentiment, including mass arrests and
sometimes torture. At the same time, the Indonesians exploited the local economy, mandated the
15
use of the Indonesian language as the mode of instruction in schools, and formulated plans for
the emigration and settlement of 400,000 Javanese in West Irian.18
UNTEA pulled out in May 1963, despite repeated requests by West Papuans for them to
stay and protect Papuan rights. After UNTEA’s departure, an armed struggle began between the
Indonesian military and a pro-independence Papuan resistance movement known as the
Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM).19 Papuans from all over the region joined to support the
OPM, and the Indonesian government responded by targeting civilians as well as OPM fighters.
Killings, disappearances, torture, and rape of Papuans by government forces became common. In
addition, the Indonesian government organized mass migrations from Java to West Papua,
resettling hundreds of Indonesian families in the midst of the Papuan population.
In April 1967, a U.S.-based multinational mining corporation, Freeport Indonesia, signed
its first concession agreement with Indonesia’s recently established “New Order” government.
This “Contract of Work” was reportedly the first contract entered into by the military-led
Indonesian administration, and it gave Freeport “broad powers over the local population and
resources, including the right to take land and other property and to resettle indigenous
inhabitants while providing ‘reasonable compensation’ only for dwellings and other permanent
improvements.”20 Today, P.T. Freeport Indonesia, which is 91-percent owned by its U.S.-based
parent company, Freeport-McMoRan (in which the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto
holds a 16.5-perecent direct interest), continues to mine in West Papua.21 Its mining, as well as
security, activities have greatly exacerbated the tensions and violence between the Indonesian
18 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 33-35.
19 This is translated as the Free Papua Movement.
20 Abigail Abrash, Development Aggression: Observations on Human Rights Conditions in the PT Freeport
Indonesia Contract of Work Areas, With Recommendations 9-10 (Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human
Rights, July 2002).
21 Grasberg Indonesia, Rio Tinto Website, available at http://www.riotinto.com/aboutus/worldwide
Operations/default.aspx (last visited Dec. 9, 2003).
16
government and the native Papuans. For example, a major purpose of the Indonesian
transmigration plan has been to provide a non-native workforce for Freeport’s operations.
Freeport arrived in West Papua two years before the Indonesian government conducted
the now infamous referendum, the “Act of Free Choice.” Under Article 18 of the New York
Agreement of 1962, all adults from the West Papuan territory were to be eligible to participate in
the act of self-determination, which was “to be carried out in accordance with international
practice.” Fernando Ortiz-Sanz, the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, arrived in
Indonesia in August 1968 to “advise, assist and participate” in a referendum to determine the
future status of the territory, which was named the “Act of Free Choice” by the Indonesian
government.22 From the outset, Ortiz-Sanz found his mission under-funded, under-staffed, and
constantly struggling with the Indonesian government in Jakarta to ensure adherence to the
guarantees of the New York Agreement, for example, its requirement that the act of selfdetermination
be carried out “in accordance with international practice.” The government, for its
part, had made its intent clear. In an April 1969 speech, President Suharto assured the
Indonesian military of the impending “return of West Irian into the fold of the motherland.”23
Under significant pressure from Jakarta, the West Papuan provincial assembly sanctioned the
creation of eight assemblies to determine the individual representatives who would participate in
the Act of Free Choice and who were to be selected either by election, by choice of social,
cultural or religious organizations, or by the assemblies themselves. All told, each member of
the eight assemblies represented approximately 750 West Papuans, and the assemblies in turn
selected 1,026 delegates, 1,024 of whom eventually voted on the Act later in the year.24
22 Report of the Secretary General Regarding the Act of Self-Determination in West Irian, U.N. Doc. A/7723, 6
November 1969, Annex 1 [hereinafter Report of the Secretary General].
23 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 41.
24 Report of the Secretary General, supra note 22, Annex 1.
17
Ortiz-Sanz, understanding the extent to which the Indonesian government was controlling
the Act from behind the scenes, campaigned for more direct representation, but was rebuffed by
Jakarta. The resistance movement, the activities of which had largely ceased toward the end of
1968, suddenly came back to life in April 1969.25 Various insurgencies sprouted up in Waghete
and in Enarotali, where locals dug holes in runways at a nearby airstrip to prevent Indonesian
planes from landing. The April uprisings were characterized by an undertone of nationalism,
with the Morning Star flag becoming a rallying symbol for protesters at Enarotali. In response to
one of the uprisings in Paniai,26 the Indonesian military conducted machine-gun strafing runs
from the air on protestors, killing dozens and forcing thousands into the wilderness, where
heavily armed Indonesian paratroopers followed.27 Neither of the April uprisings lasted long,
but they sparked a flurry of OPM activity throughout West Papua, a flurry that was met with a
fierce response by the Indonesian military, which overpowered and captured a number of
resistance fighters and imprisoned them in military camps in what have been described as
“barbaric” conditions.28
A number of OPM members attempted to flee to Australian-controlled Papua New
Guinea (PNG), only to be turned back just over the border. In camps back on the West Papua
side of the border, members of the Indonesian military retaliated against the refugees, killing 28
in two separate incidents. As West Papuans staged a number of minor uprisings throughout the
countryside, the Indonesian government sought to convince the foreign press and the U.N. team
that commerce in West Papua’s commercial centers was booming. These efforts were less than
25 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 42.
26 The larger region that included Enarotali.
27 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 42-43.
28 Id. at 43-44.
18
convincing, with inflation perilously high, few employment opportunities—especially for
Papuans—and the local economy in a state of near chaos.29
In response to a surge in anti-government sentiment, Indonesian military leaders began
making public threats against Papuan leaders who voted (or advocated voting) for West Papuan
independence, vowing to shoot them on the spot if they did not vote for Indonesian control.
Consequently, when the voting finally got underway at the beginning of May, there was little
doubt as to the outcome. Ortiz-Sanz and his staff attempted to oversee all of the local
proceedings, but, in the end, the U.N. team actually observed the selection of only 195 of the
1,026 selected to participate in the Act. Of those 195, it was obvious to the U.N. observers that
many—if not all—had been coerced by the Indonesian government.30
With the representatives selected, the eight regional assemblies began meeting in July.
The first vote came in Merauke, where the 175 delegates were kept under close guard by the
government before eventually voting unanimously for Indonesian control. The scene was
repeated throughout West Papua at the next six assembly meetings and the final assembly vote at
Jayapura on August 2. With no dissenting votes, 1,024 Papuan council members chose
Indonesian control. The Indonesian government had its territory.
In November 1969, Ortiz-Sanz filed his official report with the United Nations,
expressing disappointment with the process and dissatisfaction with the Indonesian government
and the overall mission. The report, while generally affirming the legitimacy of the result,
concluded that “‘with the limitations imposed by the geographical character of the territory and
the general political situation in the area, an act of free choice has taken place in accordance with
Indonesian practice,’” pointedly omitting any reference to the referendum’s accordance with
29 Id. At 44-45.
30 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 24-26. See also OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR,
supra note 4, at 46-48.
19
“international practice,” which had been one of the requirements of the New York Agreement.31
Despite strong statements from the delegations from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Zambia,
among others,32 the General Assembly passed a resolution taking note of the results of the Act.
At least for the time being, the General Assembly acknowledged Indonesia’s legal control of
West Papua.
D. West Papuan Resistance and Indonesian Repression
In the aftermath of the Act of Free Choice, the Indonesian government, which had
initiated a transmigration program to West Papua during the mid-1960s, stepped up its efforts to
populate the island with migrants from other parts of the country. The military evicted many
native Papuans from their land by trickery or at gunpoint in order to allow settlers from other
parts of Indonesia, often ex-military men and their families, to move onto the land.33
After a short grace period between the conclusion of the referendum and its
acknowledgement by the United Nations, the Indonesian military increased its operations in
West Papua. These operations were increasingly brutal. In May 1970, a unit of the Indonesian
Armed Forces (“ABRI”) Udayana Division shot dead Maria Bonsapia, a pregnant villager,
before a crowd of 80 women and children. The soldiers cut the fetus out of her body and
dissected the baby. A group of soldiers also raped and killed her sister.34 The soldiers then
informed the gathered crowd that their military colleagues had recently massacred 500 West
Papuans in the Lereh district.35
31 SALTFORD, UNITED NATIONS AND INDONESIAN TAKEOVER, supra note 16, at 166, quoting Report of the Secretary
General, Annex 1, para.253.
32 Ghana proposed an alternate resolution noting the severe problems of the 1969 Act of Free Choice and calling for
another self-determination referendum by 1972. However, this was never voted on.
33 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 58.
34 Id. at 50.
35 Seth Rumkorem, a former Free Papua Movement (the “OPM”) leader, described this massacre to Tahanan Politik
(“TAPOL”) in 1984. TAPOL is the name of a London (UK)-based organization campaigning for human rights in
20
In June 1970, an Indonesian patrol of fifty red-berets36 and green-berets37 assembled on
the west coast of the island of Biak after an alleged OPM attack on Indonesian soldiers. The
Indonesian soldiers encircled two villages on the shore, Wusdori and Kridori. They forced all
villagers out into an open space between the two villages and killed all the men, fifty-five in
total, in front of the women and children.38 The next day, the soldiers captured thirty Papuan
men from neighboring villages. They forced the captives into the boats of those killed the day
before, tied stones around their necks, and threw them overboard. These men all drowned.39
The continued brutality stirred up further protest to Indonesian rule, especially in the
jungles along the West Papua-PNG border, where a new movement known as the Tentara
Pembebasan Nasional40 (TPN) was slowly gaining strength. On July 1, 1971, the TPN, in a
move more symbolic than practical, formally declared the independence of West Papua,
signifying for posterity that the people of West Papua refused to accept the Act of Free Choice
and that they would continue to fight to see that the principle behind it—their right to selfdetermination—
would one day be vindicated.41
In the mid-1970s, the Indonesian government became worried that the ferocity of the
military’s response to OPM and TPN attacks was motivating more and more West Papuans to
join the resistance. The government began moving away from large-scale troop deployments
toward a more active role for the security agencies, most notably the Command for the
Restoration of Security and Order (“KOPKAMTIB”), Indonesia’s top military intelligence
Indonesia. The acronym is the name for “political prisoner” in Indonesia. See TAPOL, The Indonesian Human
Rights Campaign, at http://tapol.gn.apc.org/ (last visited July 5, 2002).
36 Indonesian elite forces.
37 Indonesian infantry.
38 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 79-80 (quoting Henk de Mari, in DE TELEGRAF, Oct. 11, 12,
& 19, 1974). Extracts from these articles were published in TAPOL BULLETIN, No. 8, January 1975).
39 Id.
40 “People’s Liberation Army.”
41 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 56; BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at
64-65.
21
body.42 As Osborne notes, “KOPKAMTIB intimidated elements of the Papuan population:
academics, bureaucrats with suspect loyalties, village heads, the unemployed.”43
According to OPM leaders, many key figures were killed during this time. Poisoning
was a popular method.44 The fate of Marthin Luther Waren was a typical case.45 In August
1972, he disappeared after the Indonesians allegedly released him from prison. After he signed a
release document, his friends, Daan and Kapaopas, saw an Indonesian intelligence officer
offering him a ride in a non-military vehicle. Marthin Luther Waren left with the officer and
never appeared again.46
Also in 1972, a new and deadly disease began taking its toll on the native West Papuans:
cysticercosis. Physicians from the Enarotali hospital first detected the epidemic when they found
tapeworm eggs in nine percent of 122 hospitalized Ekari people.47 These physicians traced the
transmission to the batch of pigs from Bali that the Indonesian government gave as a “peace
offering” to the Ekari people48 after a prolonged military counter-insurgent operation.49 In 1977,
the epidemic ranked as one of the major causes of mortality in the adult Ekari population.50 By
1978, serological tests confirmed that at least twenty-five percent of adults and children among
the Ekari were infected with cysticercosis. By 1973, the disease had spread to West Papuans
living in the Baliem Valley.51 Later, it spread further east to the village of Ok Sibil, near the
42 KOPKAMTIB was Indonesia’s foremost military intelligence agency well into the 1980s.
43 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 59.
44 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 59, 83.
45 Id. at 59.
46 Id.
47 Id.
48 Ekari tribespeople were the first victims of the pigworm epidemic. They inhabit one of the two densely populated
highland basins—Paniai Lake, which was also the most popular destiny for Javanese transmigrants. Thousands of
these Papuans had fought in the armed resistance against the incorporation of West Papua into Indonesia. Id. at 58-
60.
49 Id.
50 Id.
51 The Baliem Valley is located in the central part of West Papua.
22
border with Papua New Guinea.52 The health authorities in Jakarta were slow to provide vital
drugs. When a Catholic priest attempted to obtain a drug believed to be the only cure, he
discovered that it was not included on the list of medicines allowed for import into Indonesia.
The territorial Director-General for Public Health told him that the Department of Health could
do nothing to fight the disease “except advise people to change their habits and way of life . . . .
In terms of national priorities, tapeworm comes much lower than other diseases like malaria,
tuberculosis and so on.”53
During the same period, anti-Indonesian government political activity was growing
among indigenous Papuans. By 1973, the sentiment of many West Papuans had swayed in favor
of the OPM, especially as the “Indonesianisation” of the education system and of Papuan society
as a whole began to take root.54 The Indonesian government, which had publicly attempted to
step back its opposition to the West Papuan independence movement, did not help its cause
when, in the summer of that year, it changed the name of West Papua from “West Irian” to “Irian
Jaya” (“victorious Irian”) to go along with the Indonesian name for the capital, Jayapura
(“victory city”).55
In 1977 and 1978, the Indonesian military executed major operations in the Jayawijaya
highlands. On July 22, 1977, the Indonesian army used two aircraft to strafe a group of villages,
including Akimuga, about 40 kilometers from Timika. Each of these villages had an estimated
population of more than a thousand.56
52 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 59-60.
53 Id. at 60 (quoting TEMPO, Aug. 6, 1983).
54 Id.
55 There is debate about what “Irian” means. The Indonesian government officially maintains that it is an acronym,
Ikut Republik Indonesia Anti Nederland, loosely translating as “follow the Republic of Indonesia against the
Netherlands.” Many West Papuans claim that Irian is actually an old Biak term, though there is disagreement as to
the meaning. See Irian Jaya, available at http://www.irja.org/eypij.htm (last visited April 28, 2002).
56 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 69. This account was given by Terry Doyle, a civilian
Australian pilot who for eight years flew from Darwin to a small airport that served the Freeport copper mine, south
23
Soon after this military operation, a group of West Papuans cut Freeport’s copper slurry
pipeline. The Indonesian army responded with massive and indiscriminate retaliatory actions,
including a sweeping ground operation code-named Operasi Tumpas (“Annihilation”)57 around
the region of Akimuga. The military arrested and detained local Papuans, many for months.
According to Amnesty International, the army used steel containers to incarcerate thirty men in
total darkness for three months in the Freeport mining site, where night temperatures approached
the freezing point.58
Strafing and bombing missions killed numerous West Papuan villagers and caused
thousands to flee their homes into the jungles. In May 1977, OV-10 Broncos dropped antipersonnel
“Daisy Cluster” bombs near the village of Ilaga, located on the other side of the
Puncak Jaya mountain chain from Freeport’s mine.59 At the end of August, two OV-10 Bronco
Bombers shelled the region of Akimuga. Soldiers also destroyed most of the food gardens
belonging to Papuans in the region. As a result, many Papuan children suffered severe
malnutrition.60
According to the “Full Report on the Irian Jaya Situation” prepared by the OPM, in all of
the villages through which the Indonesian army passed, the army burned houses and churches,
shot the villagers’ pigs and chickens, and killed men, women and children.61 In the village of
Kuyuwagi, Indonesian soldiers disemboweled local Papuans whom they had killed, twisting their
of the Baliem Valley. Upon taking a routine flight into Timika airport that day, he learned from an American
employee of Freeport that the attack was to take place. He got airborne right after the attack and saw smoke and
dust rising and huts burning. He also heard the Indonesian pilots discussing the attack over the radio. Similar
events were described by two RAAF air force officers who were on a team engaged in the mapping operation that
formed part of Australia’s military aid program to Indonesia. Id. at 68.
57 Id. at 71.
58 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 34.
59 Id. at 34-35 (quoting Denis Reinhardt, NATION REVIEW, 15-21 Sept. 1977). “Daisy Cluster” or “Cluster bombing”
is a high-altitude delivery of a 15,000-pound conventional bomb designed to kill everyone present within a huge
area. Originally it was designed to create an instant clearing in the jungle.
60 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 70.
61 Id. at 71.
24
entrails around sticks and inserting stones, cabbages and leaves into their bodies. The soldiers
also used bayonets to pierce pregnant women through the vagina and tear them open to the chest.
They cut unborn babies into halves.62 In one incident, an Indonesian soldier killed Nalogolan
Kibak, the tribal leader of Kampong Dila, and filled a bucket with his blood. Then the soldiers
forced the tribal leaders, teachers, and pastors of the area, at gunpoint, to drink the blood.63
The military report of incidents in the District of Jayawijaya in 1977 noted that repeated
strafing from helicopters resulted in “many casualties.”64 Eliezer Bonay, a former governor of
West Papua, placed the death toll around 3,000 when he testified before the Tribunal on Human
Rights in West Papua.65 The Jakarta daily, Kompas, reported that during the time of military
attacks, there were “a very large number of victims . . . . [T]he Baliem River was so full of
corpses that for a month and a half, . . . people could not bring themselves to eat fish.”66 The
high death toll was due to the indiscriminate aerial bombardment and shelling “where there were
villages or [wherever] there were people.”67
In May 1978, the OPM kidnapped seven high-ranking Indonesian army officers and
civilian officials to draw international attention to its demand for negotiations with the
Indonesians.68 The Indonesian military responded with bombing sorties by OV-10 Bronco
aircrafts and the burning of villages on both sides of the West Papua/Papua New Guinea border.
62 Id.
63 Id.
64 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, App. I: Military Report of Incidents in the District of
Jayawijaya in 1977, at 119-24.
65 West Papuan émigrés in Papua New Guinea set up the South Pacific Human Rights Tribunal to investigate the
human rights violations in West Papua. Id. at 169. The OPM estimated that several thousand people had lost their
lives in the highlands uprisings. OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 72. Indonesia claimed that
the death toll was much lower; one officer told visiting Australian journalist Denis Reinhardt that around 900 people
lost their lives in the uprisings. Id.
66 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 68 (quoting KOMPAS, 28 November 1977).
67 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 72.
68 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 69.
25
The operation led to the death of several hundred people and drove at least a thousand to flee to
Papua New Guinea.69
Indonesian military forces also committed extrajudicial killings. In 1976, Indonesian
soldiers, on the order of the chief of intelligence of Korem 172, the military command in
Abepura, beat two prisoners, Pilomen Wenda and Oscar, to death with iron bars.70
Mimi Fatahan was another victim of extrajudicial killing. He had fled to Papua New
Guinea in April 1977. After Papua New Guinea authorities forcibly deported him to West
Papua, the military command detained him in Jayapura. In May 1977, a hunting party of officers
from the regional military command took Fatahan to the jungle. He never returned.71 One
informant reported that villagers discovered Mimi Fatahan’s body, chopped into pieces, in a
drum floating on Lake Sentani, the largest lake in West Papua.72
In 1979, the death of Baldus Mofu, an elected member of the New Guinea Council set up
by the Dutch in 1961, drew wide publicity. Mofu had been under close surveillance by the
Indonesians. Whenever the OPM went into action or unrest broke out in the towns, Indonesian
military officials arrested, beat, and tortured him.73 Mofu was imprisoned again between July
and October 1979. Several weeks after the Indonesians released him, two unknown men took
him away from his house. Early the next morning, he returned home, bruised and swollen all
over. He died within hours.74 Mofu and Mimi Fatahan were particularly prominent victims of
Indonesian repression, but many shared their fate as Indonesia sought to consolidate its control
over the territory.
69 Id, at 69 (quoting PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY, Sept. 1978).
70 Id. at 85 (quoting TAPOL BULLETIN, No 46, July 1981). This report is based on an army document that recorded
the narrative of Soeyoto, a retired low-ranking soldier, who drove the victims to the place where they were beaten to
death. Soeyoto heard them crying out as they were beaten up, but he was not present to witness their deaths directly.
71 Id. at 85.
72 Id.
73 Id. at 85-86.
74Id.
26
E. Exploitation of West Papuans’ Land, Resources, and Labor
Since the beginning of Indonesian rule, government and military officials have been
heavily involved in resource extraction in West Papua. By 1980, the oil industry in West Papua
had gone into decline, prompting the dismissal of local West Papuan employees in favor of
Javanese labor, which was viewed as more skilled and reliable.75 A U.S. professor who visited
West Papua in 1980 noted the planned influx of Indonesian workers, including more than 2,000
families that were scheduled to be “dropped” near two major oilfields in order to implement a
“policy of non-employment of Melanesians in the oil industry.”76
For the Indonesian government and its foreign investors, the success of copper mining in
West Papua more than made up for the decline in oil production. In the 1980s, U.S.-owned
Freeport continued to exploit the rich copper resources of West Papua.77 By the beginning of the
1990s, the mining town of Tembagapura had become an enclave of expatriates and Indonesians,
segregated from the local people in a way described by Budiardjo as “reminiscent of South
Africa’s apartheid system.”78 In 1982, Freeport employed 452 expatriates, 1,859 Indonesians,
and only 200 Papuans. The Papuans were hired as unskilled laborers and forced to live on the
outskirts of the site in illegal squatter settlements.79
Freeport’s mining operations also led to the relocation of the Amungme tribe from the
region around Tembagapura to a hot, malarial area near the coast. In June 1980, the Amungme
were devastated by an epidemic that swept through the settlement, killing 216 children. Freeport
did nothing to provide food or medicine to the Papuans to fight the epidemic, although the
75 Id. at 32.
76 Id. (citing THE TIMES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA, May 22, 1981).
77 Australia West Papua Association, West Papua Information Kit, with Focus on Freeport 9 (1998).
78 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 34.
79 Id.
27
company itself attributed the high death toll to undernourishment.80 The Amungme leaders sent
numerous unsuccessful petitions to the Indonesian government, asking for government services;
access to schools and jobs; land rights, recognized by law, that had been denied to the Papuans;
and the negotiation of a new contract between Freeport, the Indonesian government, and the
Papuans.81 These petitions were uniformly unsuccessful, suggesting an Indonesian policy of
deliberate indifference toward the West Papuan people.
Indonesia’s desire to promote the growth of the plantation economy in West Papua led to
the further alienation of West Papuan land and culture. An investigation in the early 1980s of
two plantations managed by a state-owned company named PTP-2 revealed that land had been
seized with minimal if any compensation. Villagers were relocated and left with insufficient
land to practice their traditional shifting cultivation, as large areas of land were transformed from
self-supporting food production to single-crop production for sale on the global market.82 In
1988, the U.S. company Scott Paper and the Indonesian company Astra entered into a joint
venture and established a eucalyptus plantation and pulp mill in the Merauke region, threatening
to further displace indigenous Papuan sustenance production and to cause desertification in the
region.83
Indonesian authorities also continued to exploit West Papua’s rich timber resources. In
1982, three articles published in a Jakarta daily described the exploitation of the Asmat tribe,
which lived near the south coast of West Papua, by Jakarta-based timber companies. The
companies relocated the Asmat people and subjected them to a regime of compulsory labor, by
which local officials forced villagers to cut down their own forests at below-subsistence wages.
80 Id. at 36.
81 Id. at 37.
82 Id. at 55.
83 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE 77 (Anti-Slavery Society Indigenous Peoples and Development Series ed.,
1990).
28
Officials warned that those who refused to accept the logging jobs and conditions could be
arrested.84 “The compulsory log-felling scheme exploited forests that were the property of the
tribespeople. It threatened their sago supplies, the staple food of the Asmat people. . . . It
disrupted village life, forcing villagers to stay in the forest for as long as six weeks.”85 An
Indonesian environmental group warned that the Asmat people were “on the brink of cultural
starvation after a decade of enforced ironwood logging.”86 In 1988, a Jakarta weekly newspaper
warned that the Asmat area, rapidly succumbing to soil erosion, might soon be submerged by
nearby rivers.87
A similar instance of forced labor occurred in the Paniai region of West Papua from 1982
onward. There, the Indonesian military, having established a post around Tiga Danau, imposed a
system of forced labor on the indigenous population.88 All men, with the exception of teachers,
were required to work around the guard post every Wednesday, performing night patrol, and the
youth were forced to deliver rations to the guard post without compensation.89 If one man from
the village was absent for any of these duties, the whole village was punished.90 These
punishments included monetary fines as well as physical punishment or torture.91
84 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 38-40 (citing KOMPAS, Oct. 4, 6, & 7, 1982).The authorities
also extracted other forms of labor from the Papuans, arresting people on petty charges and keeping them in
detention to work on road and building construction. Id. at 40.
85 Id. at 39.
86 Id. (citing a statement by Kampanye Pelestarian Hutan Indonesia [the Movement of Indonesian NGOs against
Foreign Destruction], dated Oct. 1982 and made public during a National Parks Conference in Bali).
87 Id. at 41 (citing EDITOR, July 2, 1988, as reported in INDONESIA NEWS SERVICE No 120, July 25, 1988). Oil,
copper, and timber were not the only West Papuan resources exploited by outsiders. In 1987, Transpeche, a French
company, began to operate West Papua’s first canning business with an on-stream canning facility. Local West
Papuan fishermen, who still relied on poles and lines, had no hope of surviving against the deep nets and modern
equipment of Transpeche. Id. at 41-42.
88 Office for Justice and Peace, Memoria Passionis: The Historical Sketch of the Paniai’s Resistance and Suffering
at Tiga Danau Besar in Paniai Regency, Papua 17-18 (Nov. 2000).
89 Id. at 17.
90 Id. at 17-18.
91 Id. at 18.
29
F. Renewed Military Campaigns, Rape, Torture, and Extrajudicial Killings
During the same period, the Indonesian military waged a series of brutal campaigns
against the West Papuans, targeting civilians as well as members of the OPM. In 1981, the
military launched Operation Clean Sweep, which sought to undermine support for the Papuan
resistance by persecuting relatives of OPM members. Soldiers raped, assaulted, and killed the
wives of known rebels and sacked villages suspected of lending support to the OPM. Survivors
reported brutal murders in the Jayapura district, claiming that whole families had been bayoneted
to death and their bodies left to rot.92
Operation Clean Sweep apparently aimed both to intimidate those suspected of
supporting the OPM and to cleanse the border regions of Papuans to make room for Javanese
migrants. This objective was suggested by the army’s slogan: “Let the rats run into the jungle
so that the chickens can breed in the coop.”93 Lands emptied by Operation Clean Sweep were
converted into transmigration areas and soon populated by settlers from Java or elsewhere in
Indonesia.94
By the summer of 1981, the campaign had extended into the Central Highlands. In
August, the military responded to apparent OPM activity by bombing the village of Madi, in the
Paniai basin in the Central Highlands, where a Dutch television team had filmed hundreds of
OPM supporters training for the resistance. Troops used napalm and chemical weapons against
the villagers and killed at least 2,500; some estimates put the death toll as high as 13,000.95
92 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 87; BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at
80.
93 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 87.
94 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 81.
95 The Papua New Guinea government estimated that at least 2,500 West Papuans were killed in Madi, while Dutch
TV reporters suggested the much higher figure. OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 87-88.
30
A 1984 report by Amnesty International noted that the Indonesian army and police often
arrested and detained anyone suspected of OPM involvement, especially after nationalist
incidents such as the raising of the West Papuan flag.96 Military personnel arrested and detained
people without warrant and for indefinite periods of time.97
While most detained West Papuans were never formally charged or tried, those who were
brought to court were unlikely to receive a fair trial. TAPOL reported that police, the army,
prosecutors, and judges in West Papua regularly disregarded the procedural safeguards codified
in the Criminal Procedure Code. In 1983, Mulya Lubis, then chairman of the Foundation of
Legal Aid Institutes (“YLBHI”), declared, “The new Criminal Procedural Code might just as
well not exist, for it has no reverberations in Irian Jaya.”98
Indonesian officials commonly subjected political prisoners to torture, including electric
shocks, beating, pistol-whipping, deprivation of toilet facilities, and water torture, in which the
prisoner was placed in a bunker nearly filled with water. Many former prisoners also claimed
that detainees died after being poisoned by prison guards. Amnesty International documented
the experiences of eight West Papuans who were detained in the late 1980s after returning to
West Papua from Papua New Guinea, where they had been living as refugees. The eight men
were subjected to repeated beatings during their detention; during one session, an Indonesian
soldier ordered one of the men, weak from the beating, to climb a tree and recite the five articles
of the State ideology.99
96 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 84 (citing Amnesty International, Irian Jaya: Patterns of
Arrest and Detention, Document No. ASA 21/06/86, March 1986).
97 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 81, 83. The few trials that received attention outside of
West Papua involved individuals accused of raising the West Papuan flag or other peaceful political protests. WEST
PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 46.
98 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 83.
99 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 83 (citing Amnesty International, Indonesia/East Timor:
Allegations of Torture, Doc No. ASDA 21/01/88, Mar. 1988).
31
According to John Etheridge, a Catholic Bishop who worked with West Papuan refugees
in a refugee camp in Papua New Guinea:
I’ve heard stories about people being put in 44-gallon drums of water and
just left there for eight hours, and after that, taken out and put in the sun
for eight hours. I’ve heard lots of stories about people being cut to pieces.
I’ve seen photographs, a photograph of a hole in the ground, full of water,
and you can just see two heads—two or three heads—just above the water.
. . . I saw a photograph of a Melanesian in a room of some sort. It looked
like a morgue slab and he was naked. It was obvious that he was dead and
it looked to me that strips of skin had been taken off his legs and his feet.
100
In the 1980s, several West Papuans were killed while in detention or were disappeared and
presumed killed after being released from custody. In early 1984, Indonesian forces responded
to a pro-independence uprising in Jayapura by launching a major retaliatory campaign called
Operation Clean-up.101 Elite para-commandos flown in to direct the operation arrested and shot
to death several West Papuans suspected of OPM involvement.102
In 1983, the Indonesian authorities arrested and detained anthropologist Arnold Ap and
his colleague Eduard Mofu, who was the son of Baldus Mofu.103 Ap had promoted Papuan
cultural expression, championed the revival of traditional Papuan music, and, closer to the time
of his arrest, criticized Indonesian policies on the radio program that he hosted.104 Ap’s arrest
resulted in immediate protests and calls for his release. Neither Ap nor Mofu were released,
however. In April 1984, para-commandos killed the two men after tricking them into leaving
100 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 84.
101 OSBORNE, supra note 4, at 89.
102 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 86.
103 Baldus Mofu was disappeared and killed in 1971. See notes 73-74 and accompanying text.
104 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 149.
32
their place of detention on the premise that they would be taken to Papua New Guinea. The
Indonesian government claimed that the pair had been killed while trying to escape.105
Despite popular outrage at Ap’s death, extrajudicial killings continued. In May 1985,
Indonesian troops burned down 200 village houses in the Enarotali region of the Central
Highlands in retaliation for the killing of two migrants from Indonesia killed in an OPM
operation. In June and July of that year, the military killed 517 villagers in several highland
villages in reprisal for a confrontation between OPM and Indonesian troops that resulted in the
death of more than thirty Indonesian soldiers.106
In a 1987 report, Amnesty International identified five West Papuans who were believed
to have been killed by security forces in 1986. Amnesty noted, however, that information about
extrajudicial killings “is often scanty and difficult to verify, given the limited access to Irian Jaya
by independent observers and the restrictions on press freedom in Indonesia more generally.”107
Such restrictions by the Indonesian government served to block international scrutiny
G. Transmigration, Displacement, Disease, and Death
At the commencement of its fourth Five Year Plan in 1984, the Indonesian government
announced that West Papua would become a primary target area for transmigration.108 By the
end of 1984, the government had set up 24 major transmigration sites or compounds,
appropriating 700,000 hectares of land from its traditional owners. By the middle of 1986,
105 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 86-87.
106 Id. at 81.
107 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 87 (citing Amnesty International, Indonesia: Update on
Amnesty International’s Concerns in Irian Jaya, ASA 21/01/87, Jan. 1987).
108 Id. See also Indonesian Transmigration: Hit the Road, Java, THE ECONOMIST, Aug. 4, 1984, at 61 (noting that
“in the next five years the [Indonesian] government wants to import 1m people to add to the province’s population
of 1.2 m., a prospect which has alarmed neighboring Papua New Guinea and stirred a small Irianese separatist
movement back to life”).
33
27,726 families had been moved into West Papua, a total of nearly 140,000 people since the end
of the 1970s.109
Until 1988, the World Bank funded about ten percent of Indonesia’s transmigration
program with a total of $650 million in loans. In 1988, it offered another $150 million to help
Indonesia improve its existing sites. Yet a French study in 1989 found that 80 percent of the
transmigration sites failed to improve the living standards of the settlers, let alone those of the
West Papuans.110
Transmigration schemes dispossessed West Papuans of their land and required them to
move into the transmigration sites, along with the “transmigrants,” people from elsewhere in
Indonesia who had been settled on the compounds. According to a team of senior Indonesian
officials, writing in 1986, the taking of land for transmigration did not require compensation, but
only a certificate of recognition, perhaps accompanied by the construction of a church or school
or even a traditional ceremony.111 Within the transmigration compounds, the government
required that Papuans be dispersed, with one Papuan family to every nine Javanese families, thus
ensuring that the Papuans would become a minority in each area. The West Papuans neither
shared in the economic benefits of the new settlements nor held significant posts in the
administrative staff of the transmigration program.112
In the towns, West Papuans had also become marginalized, living as second-class citizens
in a foreign culture. According to the Far Eastern Economic Review, non-Melanesians
accounted for about a quarter of the population of West Papua in the mid-1980s; they included
109 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 51. The Jakarta Post offered a lower figure of 23,000
families (115,000 people) for 1979-89. WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 63 (citing article in
the Jakarta Post).
110 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 71.
111 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 51.
112 West Papua in Revolt: Many Flee from Indonesian Reprisals, TAPOL BULLETIN 5 (March 1984) [hereinafter
West Papua in Revolt].
34
spontaneous migrants as well as settlers brought over as part of the transmigration program.113
The newcomers dominated the government bureaucracy, the business sector, and upper levels of
education.114 Television programs and magazines addressed a Javanese audience, while
propaganda posters sponsored by the “Project for the Guidance of Alien Societies” urged the
Papuans to relinquish their inefficient and primitive ways for the superior lifestyle of the
Indonesians.115
The loss of their land and disruption of their lifestyles placed the West Papuans at severe
risk of malnutrition and disease by the mid-1980s. In 1984, an Indonesian doctor suggested that
Indonesian intrusions into West Papuan lifestyles led to a high incidence of disease among the
West Papuan population. A Dutch doctor interviewed by a Dutch TV company called the health
situation of the West Papuans “alarming.” He described high rates of yaws, measles, whooping
cough, small- and large-scale epidemics, and sexually transmitted diseases that impaired the
fertility of the Dani people who resided in the fertile Baliem Valley, a major transmigration
site.116 A Dutch missionary working in the mountain regions told the Dutch TV journalists that
infant mortality among the West Papuans in that region was above 60 percent, and the average
life expectancy only 30 or 31 years.117
Mortality and morbidity rates among Papuans escalated in the later 1990s as rates of HIV
infection rose dramatically. In 2002, 20.4 people per 100,000 were infected by HIV in Papua,
compared to only 0.42 cases per 100,000 in the rest of Indonesia.118 Approximately 40 percent
of Indonesia’s HIV and AIDS cases were located in Papua, a province that is home to less than
113 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 44 (quoting Chris Manning, FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC
REVIEW, Apr. 30, 1987).
114 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 42-43.
115 Id. at 42; BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 48, 56-57.
116 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 58.
117 Id. at 46, 58.
118 Leslie Butt et al., The Smokescreen of Culture: AIDS and the Indigenous in Papua, Indonesia, at 1, forthcoming
in PACIFIC HEALTH DIALOG, Sept. 2002 (publication of Sept. 2002 issue pending as of Sept. 27, 2003).
35
one percent of Indonesia’s population.119 Papuans also appear to contract HIV at rates
significantly higher than those of the Indonesian migrant community residing in Papua.120
Several recent studies suggest that this stark discrepancy in infection rates is due to
government-sponsored AIDS educational interventions that systematically discriminate against
ethnic Papuans. AIDS prevention efforts by the Papuan Department of Health, which is staffed
almost exclusively by ethnic Indonesians, have targeted the professional brothel and bar worker
industries that employ Indonesian migrants. Papuan sex workers, who generally work for low
pay in unregulated and high-risk environments outside of formal brothels and bars, are rarely
provided with any information about HIV/AIDS prevention or condom use.121 General AIDS
awareness and safe sex campaigns in Papua are sporadic and have focused on urban areas, where
they do not reach the majority of Papuans, who live in rural and semi-urban regions.122
Meanwhile, local health care systems are inadequate and frequently discriminate against
Papuans. For example, in the Baliem Valley, administrators at family planning and maternal and
child health clinics hold separate sessions for Papuan members of the Dani tribe and Indonesian
migrants because “the Dani are dirty and women won’t want to use the same examining table as
a Dani.”123 The same clinics have refused to provide oral contraceptives to Dani women, on the
grounds that they will misuse them or feed the pills to their pigs.124 Indonesian officials often
point to Papuan culture and sexually deviant behavior as reasons for the spread of HIV and other
119 Id.
120 Id. (citing Leslie Butt et al., The Papuan Sexuality Project Research Report (Jakarta: Family Health International,
2002) (unpublished report)).
121 Id. at 5-6; Leslie Butt et al., Preventing AIDS in Papua: Revised Research Report 35-45 (December 2002).
122 Butt et al., Smokescreen of Culture, supra note 118, at 7. In a recent survey of 196 Papuans, only 29 percent of
respondents were able to recognize a condom when shown one and asked to identify it. Butt et al., Preventing AIDS
in Papua, supra note 121, at 47.
123 Leslie Butt, KB Kills: Political Violence, Birth Control, and the Baliem Valley Dani, 2 ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF
ANTHROPOLOGY 63, 70 (2001). The clinics turn away Dani women who come to the clinic on the wrong day. Id.
124 Id. at 70-71. Dani women are instead given a choice between Norplant implantations or injections of Depo-
Provera (which causes temporary sterilization), which are presented to the women without full disclosure of their
risks and side effects. Id.
36
STDs, a view that has exacerbated inequalities in AIDS prevention and education programs in
the region.125 Without a more equitable and comprehensive response by the Indonesian
government to the public health crisis in Papua, HIV/AIDS is likely to become an epidemic that
threatens the very survival of the Papuan people.
H. Flight of West Papuan Refugees to Papua New Guinea
While the Indonesian government was moving Javanese settlers into the region, the
violence in West Papua was forcing many native residents to flee the country. In February 1984,
the army launched a violent campaign in response to a failed OPM uprising in Jayapura. The
military operation led to the flight of 300 West Papuans across the border to Papua New Guinea
(PNG).126 The refugees were primarily from Jayapura and included West Papuan intellectuals
and government officials. By April, more than 6,000 Papuan refugees had escaped to Papua
New Guinea, fleeing from military reprisals and dislocation caused by transmigration and
resource exploitation. By June, approximately 10,000 refugees—one percent of West Papua’s
indigenous population—occupied makeshift camps hastily erected by PNG.127
Under pressure from its large and powerful neighbor, the PNG government maintained
that the thousands of West Papuans fleeing over the border were not “refugees” but illegal
“border crossers.” 128 For several months, the PNG government allowed conditions in the
refugee camps to deteriorate, in the hope that the refugees would return home.129 However, after
the deaths in August 1984 of several dozen refugees in two PNG camps, the PNG government
125 Butt et al., Smokescreen of Culture, supra note 118, at 2.
126 West Papua in Revolt, supra note 112, at 1.
127 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 93; WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at
56.
128 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 56; West Papua in Revolt, supra note 112, at 1.
129 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 98.
37
allowed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) full access to the
camps.130
In November, when a team of Indonesian and PNG officials visited the camps to
convince the refugees to return, they were met with angry demonstrations. At the Blackwater
camp, refugees threw stones at the visitors, prompting local police to use tear gas to curb the
demonstration.131 In December 1984, the Australian section of the International Commission of
Jurists published a report that described the conditions that had forced the West Papuans to flee
and urged the PNG government not to engage in the refoulement, or forced repatriation, of the
refugees.132 Nonetheless, in December, eight refugees, members of the OPM, were deported to
Jayapura, where they were immediately detained.133 Deportations continued through 1985, but
when twelve refugees were beaten and later secretly tried for subversion upon their return in
November 1985,134 the international outcry led the PNG government to shift toward a policy of
relocation, resettlement, and voluntary repatriation.135
By late 1987, UNHCR reported that only 1,500 refugees had returned to West Papua.136
Those returning under the auspices of UNHCR’s repatriation scheme were formally handed over
to Indonesian officials. They were not allowed to return to their villages, but were instead
130 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 57.
131 Robin Osborne, Refugee Protection Ends in Violence: Indonesians in Papua New Guinea Protest and
Repatriation Plans, THE GUARDIAN, Nov. 6, 1984.
132 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 99.
133 Id.; WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 57.
134 The 3 November Incident in Vanimo, TAPOL Bulletin No. 69, 16 (May 1985).
135 In May 1987, Papua New Guinea acceded to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and to
the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, thus strengthening the role of UNHCR. However, in October
of that year, the PNG government signed a Treaty of Mutual Respect, Friendship, and Cooperation with Indonesia,
affirming a mutual policy of border control and noninterference in each other’s internal affairs. WEST PAPUA:
PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 58. See also Indonesia: Cover-up Job, THE ECONOMIST, Nov. 15, 1986;
Papua New Guinea, Indonesia Confer, FACTS ON FILE WORLD NEWS DIGEST, June 13, 1986.
136 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 109. Indonesian officials claimed that 6,904 had been
returned.
38
relocated to sites designated by the authorities, often areas under military control.137 Returnees
complained that they were subjected to security checks and harassment.138 The government also
implemented a campaign of pacification amongst returnees in the border regions, which aimed to
undermine support for the OPM. Local officials sought to organize young West Papuan
returnees to prevent recalcitrant members of their community from joining the resistance or
leaving for PNG.139
I. West Papuan Protests Against Foreign Resource Exploitation and
Indonesia’s Response
In 1991, PT Freeport renegotiated the terms of its concession with the Indonesian
government. This new Contract of Work granted the company an additional 2.5 million hectares
of land for mining operations—land that was occupied at the time by five indigenous peoples.140
This new contract included increased benefits for the employees of the mine as well as their
families, and also for the military to serve as security forces for the mine, but did not extend the
benefits of schools, hospitals, and job training to the local indigenous people.141 This expanded
control and exploitation led to opposition and clashes between PT Freeport (protected by the
Indonesian military, which Freeport pays millions a year for their services) and the local people.
In 2001, Freeport paid $4.7 million for security services provided by more than 2,300 Indonesian
137 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 44; Repatriated Refugees are Being Sent to Government
Relocation Sites, TAPOL BULLETIN no. 74, 10-11 (Mar. 1986).
138 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 58; Australia West Papua Association, West Papua
Information Kit, supra note 77, at 30.
139 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 110.
140 Amnesty International, Indonesia: Irian Jaya: National Commission on Human Rights Confirms Violations 2
(September 1995).
141 Abrash, Development Aggression, supra note 20, at 10.
39
military personnel.142 Some of the killings, detentions, and torture of Papuan people by the
Indonesian military have taken place on Freeport property or in shipping containers provided by
the corporation.143 In 1994, Kelly Kwalik, a leader of the OPM, and others began to protest
Freeport’s, and hence the military’s, expansion near the town of Timika. Protests involved
peaceful as well as armed demonstrations.144 The military’s response was swift and brutal. On
October 6, 1994, Indonesian soldiers arrested four brothers, all civilians—Sebastianus Kwalik,
Romulus Kwalik, Marios Kwalik, and Hosea Kwalik—and detained them in a shipping container
at a military post in Koperapoka, near Timika, accusing them of being involved with Kelly
Kwalik and the OPM.145 Testimony from the first and second wives of Sebastianus Kwalik
indicates that all four were kept in the container and tortured from October 6 until approximately
142 Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc., Security Matters, Internal Draft, Exhibit A of Douglas N. Currault II to
Securities and Exchange Commission, Mar. 3, 2003 (Re. Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc., Response to
Request Pursuant to Rule 14a-8i(10)). Projected 2002 costs for these services totaled $5.6 million. Id.
143 National Human Rights Commission of Indonesia, Results of Monitoring and Investigating of Five Incidents at
Timika and One Incident at Hoea, Irian Jaya During October 1994-June 1995 (Jakarta: September 1995);
Australian Council for Overseas Aid, Trouble at Freeport, (Melbourne: Australian Council for Overseas Aid, April
1995);.Catholic Church of Jayapura, Violations of Human Rights in the Timika Area of Irian Jaya, Indonesia
(August 1995); LEMASA, Amungme People’s Response to National Commission on Human Rights Findings
Announced on 22 September 1995, September 1995; Jacob Pattipi, Conclusion on Investigation on Land Title Issues
in Timika Believed to have Ignited Human Rights Violations (Jayapura: 6 October 1995); The Opinion of LEMASA
Concerning the Human Rights Situation and Prolonged Conflict in the Area of Operation of PT Freeport Indonesia,
Mimika, Irian Jaya (Timika: September 1997); Indonesian Evangelical Church (Mimika, Irian Jaya), the Catholic
Church Three Kings Parish (Timika, Irian Jaya) & the Christian Evangelical Church of Mimika, Human Rights
Violations and Disaster in Bela, Alama, Jila and Mapnduma (1998); Survival International, Rio Tinto Critic Gagged
(London: Survival International, May 1998); RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights and the Institute for Human
Rights Studies and Advocacy, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women in Irian Jaya (West
Papua), Indonesia (Washington/Jayapura: May 1999); Amungme community members, The Victims Residing in the
Area of the PT Freeport Mining Concession in the Villages of Banti, Arwanop, Tsinga, Hoeya, Waa, and Timika,
Statement sent to Komnas HAM, Freeport management, and the RFK Center, 7 February 2000; Chris Ballard, The
Signature of Terror: Violence, Memory and Landscape at Freeport, in INSCRIBED LANDSCAPES:MARKING AND
MAKING PLACE (Bruno David & Meredith Wilson eds. 2001).
144 Msgr. H.F.M. Munninghoff (Catholic Diocese of Jayapura), A Report on the Human Rights Violations Against
the Local People in the Area Around Timika, Region of Fak-Fak, Irian Jaya: Year 1994-1995, 4 (Aug. 1, 1995)
[hereinafter A Report on Human Rights Violations Around Timika]. Compare Report of the Investigation Committee
of Human Rights Violation in Papua or Irian Jaya (May 8, 2001, Jakarta), authorized by the Indonesian Human
Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) (Decree of Commission Chairman, dated 5th February 2001, Ref. No.:
020/KOMNAS HAM/II/2001) [hereinafter Report of Investigation Committee] (stating that the OPM and Kelly
Kwalik had only conducted peaceful demonstrations).
145 See Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 23; Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights
Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 6-9. The “container” where the brothers were held was a shipping
container provided by PT Freeport. Abrash, Development Aggression, supra note 20, App. 3.
40
November 15, 1994.146 On that day, both wives went to visit the men, but were told that their
husband and his brothers had gone on a military operation and were not in the container
anymore.147 The women never saw the men again.148
Three days after the Kwalik brothers were arrested, five other individuals were arrested
and detained by the military. The two women in the group, Yuliana Magal (age 50), the adoptive
mother of Kelly Kwalik, and Yosepha Alomang (age 37), were kept in a flooded water closet,
separate from the men. The closet was filled up to their knees with water and human feces.
Yuliana Magal was interrogated and tortured for many hours, despite the fact that she did not
understand Indonesian and the interrogators did not speak her language.149 The two women were
held in the water closet for one month.150
Christmas day, 1994, brought more demonstrations and more military violence in Waa
village, near PT Freeport’s mining center in Tembagapura.151 That morning, Indonesian troops
fired on members of the Amungme community and other highland Papuans, who had gathered
peacefully to raise the Morning Star flag. When community member Naranebalan Anggaibak
was injured in the attack, Indonesian military placed a noose around his neck and dragged him
from the back of a car to the army checkpoint near Tembagapura. Soldiers then suspended Mr.
Angaibak’s dead body from the ankles on a post across from the checkpoint and harassed Papuan
146 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 23.
147 Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 9.
148 Id.
149 Amnesty International, Indonesia: Irian Jaya: National Commission on Human Rights Confirms Violations,
supra note 140, at 7 (“So to make Yuliana talk they prodded her with the muzzles of their weapons which they
pointed at her forehead and put a heavy iron weight on her head for an hour until she was exhausted. Then they took
the weight and put it on her shoulder for another hour. Then she had to kneel and cradle the weight for another
hour.”).
150 Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 17. See also Robert F.
Kennedy Center (RFK) & Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy in Irian Jaya (IHRSTAD), Incidents of
Military Violence Against Indigenous Women in Irian Jaya (West Papua), Indonesia (May 1999), at 3 [hereinafter
RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women].
151 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 23. See also Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights
Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 18.
41
villagers by asking them whose pig or dog Mr. Angaibak was. The military reportedly disposed
of Mr. Angaibak’s body by throwing it into a ravine along the road between Tembagapura and
Timika, as they previously had disposed of other indigenous Papuans killed by the Indonesian
military.152
Another incident occurred after Easter mass in April 1995. After a scuffle between a
civilian, Piet Tebay, and a soldier who had ordered him to report to the security station in
Timika, the soldier stabbed Tebay with Tebay’s own arrow. Although Tebay eventually
recovered, the stabbing incited the crowd to protest the military presence in the community.
During the protest, another scuffle between a soldier and a civilian occurred. This time, the
soldier shot the civilian two times, killing him.153
Indonesian soldiers conducted another attack upon civilians in May 1995. Fighting had
broken out between the military and the OPM in early 1994, forcing many native residents to
flee their homes and run into the forest for protection.154 On May 31, 1995, an army patrol near
Hoea was out looking for the OPM leader and came across a group of such refugees, who were
gathered together for a prayer meeting. When they saw the soldiers, the people began to run.
The military opened fire, killing eleven people, including the pastor and four children (ages five,
six, fourteen, and fifteen).155
152 Chris Ballard, The Signature of Terror: Violence, Memory, and Landscape at Freeport, in INSCRIBED
LANDSCAPES:MAKING AND MAKING PLACE (Bruno David & Meredith Wilson eds., 2001).
153 Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 11.
154 Amnesty International, Indonesia: Irian Jaya: National Commission on Human Rights Confirms Violations,
supra note 140, at 5.
155See id. (“We came from behind them. They saw us and were obviously afraid and began to run away. Three
soldiers immediately began to shoot towards them.”); Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights Violations around
Timika, supra note 144, at 4-5 (“While they were praying, suddenly one patrol from the 572[nd] under command of
master sergeant Marjaka who was patrolling the area of Kampung Hoea, surrounded the people and without warning
started shooting at the congregation involved in prayer. The Rev. Martinus Kibak raised his hands to surrender, but
commandant Marjaka didn’t care. He ordered the soldier closest to him . . . to shoot the minister. The bullet fatally
wounded the minister in the left part of his abdomen.”). Note that in September 1995, Indonesia’s National
Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) found that the violations committed against Papuans in and around
42
Between late 1995 and early 1996, various groups of researchers—including one known
as the “Lorentz Team” and a group from the World Wildlife Fund—visited the Mapnduma area
of West Papua, within Freeport’s concession area. After a community meeting in which local
residents clashed with the researchers over the way in which their research would be carried out
and the effects such research would have on the residents’ lives, a group of 200 Papuans took the
researchers hostage.156 The OPM later took credit for the action, and the military responded.
During the four months the hostages were held, Indonesian forces set up camp in nearby
communities, taking over many of the residents’ homes for their own use and forcing residents to
flee in fear. Reports of abuses in one village included “killings, torture, rape, intimidation,
destruction of goods and property, and restricted access to foodstuffs and other vital supplies.”157
The military also deemed the Central Highlands Region, previously untouched by the
government, a “Red Zone,” which meant that outsiders could not enter it and residents needed to
obtain permission from government or army officials to travel within it.158 One Kopassus
lieutenant commander told a human rights investigator that the role of the military in the
Freeport mining centers was “directly connected to [the Indonesian army] . . . acting as protection for the mining
business of PT Freeport Indonesia.” Abrash, Development Aggression, supra note 20, at 13.
156 RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women, supra note 150, at 8. Of the
twenty-four original hostages, eleven were released within the first two weeks and two more in the following two
months, leaving four English citizens, two Dutch, and five Indonesians. See Institute for Human Rights Study and
Advocacy in Irian Jaya (IHRSTAD) et al., Military Operation for the Release of Hostages and Human Rights
Violations in the Central Highlands of Irian Jaya: Unveiling the Mystery of the Bloody ICRC Mission, the
Involvement of Foreign Soldiers, and the Indonesian Army (press release, Aug. 25, 1999) [hereinafter IHRSTAD et
al., Military Operation for the Release of Hostages].
157 RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women, supra note 150, at 9 (referring to
the village of Kenyam I). For an extensive account of rape in the region between 1996 and 1999, see id. at 4. See
also Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Integration of the Human Rights of Women and
the Gender Perspective: Violence Against Women, Jan. 21, 1998, U.N. Doc E/CN.4/1999/68/Add.3, at 14
[hereinafter Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women] (“According to reports in February
1996 troops from all over Indonesia came to the Mapnduma area. It was alleged that the soldiers raped women there
indiscriminately: girls as young as 12 were victims, as were mute, mentally retarded and pregnant women.”).
158 RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women, supra note 150.
43
Highlands was to clear the area of indigenous communities “to make sure that investors can
come in.”159
Throughout these months, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
attempted to negotiate with the OPM for the release of the hostages, and by the beginning of
May appeared to have reached an agreement. On May 8, 1996, the ICRC organized a
feast in the village of Nggeselema to celebrate International Cross Day and the planned release
of the hostages. However, at the last minute, OPM leaders cancelled the release of the hostages,
believing that the ICRC had broken its agreement to bring official representatives of the British,
Dutch, German, and Indonesian government to Nggeselema. The Indonesian military responded
by launching a military operation under Kopassus Commander Brigadier General Probawo
Subianto. On May 9, four or five soldiers, reportedly British SAS members and foreign
mercenaries from the South African mercenary company Executive Outcomes, commandeered
an ICRC helicopter and attacked Nggeselema, shooting at the villagers who had come to greet
the aircraft believing that it carried ICRC staff members. As the villagers scattered, helicopters
from the Indonesian air force arrived and began shooting at and dropping bombs on the villagers,
destroying many homes and a local medical clinic. At least eight Papuan civilians died in the
attacks, and many more were injured.160 On May 15, after two Indonesian hostages had been
killed, the remaining hostages ran for safety.161
The end of the hostage crisis did not mark the end of the military activity in that area.
Between December 1996 and October 1997, the Indonesian military shot and killed eleven
civilians as they attempted to return from the forest to their villages to gather food; two others
159 Id.
160 Blood on the Cross, television program transcript, broadcast Dec. 7, 1999, Four Corners, Australia Broadcasting
Company, available at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/s39706.htm; IHRSTAD et al., Military Operation for
the Release of Hostages, supra note 156.
161 RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women, supra note 150.
44
were “disappeared”; and three were injured. Military forces also burned 13 church buildings,
166 homes, and 29 traditional “men’s houses.”162
J. West Papua Under President Habibie: Continued Military Violence
Suharto was forced to resign in May 1998 and was replaced by his Vice President, B.J.
Habibie, creating what many saw as a potential opening for discussion about the situation in
West Papua.163 The area around Timika was officially no longer a “Red Zone,” and
demonstrations where Papuans raised the Morning Star flag started to take place all over the
country. Between July 1 and 7, 1998, such flag-raisings occurred in Jayapura, Biak, Wamena,
Manokwari and Sorong.164 Despite the hope that the military violence in West Papua would end
with Suharto’s rule, the Indonesian forces cracked down on these demonstrations.
On July 6, 1998, at 5:00 a.m., local police and Indonesian military opened fire on a group
of Papuans at a flag-raising in Biak. The soldiers then forced dozens of men and women to lie
on their backs and marched on their stomachs.165 Eight people were killed immediately, three
were disappeared, and thirty-seven injured. 166 Later, women’s mutilated bodies washed up on
162 Indonesian Evangelical Church et al., Human Rights Violations & Disaster in Bela, Alama, Jila and Mapnduma,
Irian Jaya, 1, 4-33 (May 1998) (including an in-depth description and witness testimony about the violations).
163 President Habibie expressed this openness in a number of ways. First, he proposed to the Parliament that the
name of Irian Jaya be changed to Papua. Second, on February 26, 1999, the “Team of 100” – a group of 100
representatives of indigenous Papuans – was invited to Jakarta for a meeting with President Habibie, marking the
beginning of a “National Dialog on Irian Jaya.” The Team of 100 presented the President with the results of a
survey of 16,486 Papuans, of whom more than 90 percent expressed their desire for independence. After this
presentation, the President told the Papuans, “The aspirations you have expressed are important, but founding a
country isn’t easy; let’s contemplate those aspirations again.” Human Rights Watch, Human Rights and Pro-
Independence Actions in Papua, 1999-2000, at 14.
164 Report of the Visit of the Working Group to Indonesia (31 January to 12 February 1999), UN Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention, UN Economic and Social Council, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2000/4/Add.2. 5 July 1999.
165 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 13.
166 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, supra note 157, at 14. Another report stated that
five civilians had died. See Human Rights Watch, Human Rights and Pro-Independence Actions in Papua, supra
note 163, at 10.
45
the coast of Biak. Allegedly, “women were taken out to sea on Indonesian navy ships, where
they were raped, sexually mutilated and thrown overboard.”167
Over the next two years, the military responded to flag-raising demonstrations (whether
peaceful or not) with armed violence.168 One of the bloodiest of these responses occurred in
Wamena on October 6, 2000.169 Early in the morning, a joint security force composed of special
crowd-control police and Brimob (an acronym for Mobile Brigade) and Strategic Reserve troops
raided at least seven community centers in Wamena.170 These forces fired warning shots,
chainsawed flagpoles, and tore up or confiscated the Morning Star flag. By 8:00 a.m., more than
fifty people had been rounded up, beaten, and taken to police headquarters. At least one man had
been killed by gunfire, and ten had been wounded. 171
Within hours, a large crowd had gathered across the river in Wouma. The crowd began
to protest, burning and looting shops as they went. Troops arrived and began to open fire from a
nearby migrant residential community. The crowd then attacked the migrants’ homes, killing
twenty-four non-Papuans. At least seven Papuans were also killed by gunfire.172
In the aftermath, twenty-two Papuans were arrested for the killings, although almost all
were political leaders who were not connected with the violence in Wouma.173
167 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, supra note 157, at 14.
168 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 13-16 (describing the arrest of twenty-two and torture
of two at Sorong on July 5, 1999; the shooting and injury of thirty-eight at Timika on December 2, 1999; the
shooting death of one and injury of two in Merauke on February 16, 2000; the shooting death of three and the arrest
and torture of one in Nabire between February 28 and March 4, 2000; the shooting and injury of thirteen and arrest
and beating of one in Sorong on July 27, 2000); and the shooting deaths of three, the disappearance of fifteen, the
shooting and injury of twelve, the arrest of thirty-six, and the detention of twenty-eight in Sorong on August 22,
2000).
169 On October 3, Papuan community leaders reported that they had secured a delay in a ban of the Morning Star
flag, which had been threatened by the police and provincial authorities. This delay was to last until October 19,
when these leaders were to meet with President Wahid. Human Rights Watch, Violence and Political Impasse in
Papua 12 (July 2001).
170 Id.
171 Id.
172 Id.
173 Id.
46
Some were threatened with torture if they did not confess. In the end, arrested youth group
(Satgas Papua) members were sentenced to between six and ten months of imprisonment; the
remaining political leaders were sentenced to between four and four and a half years of
imprisonment.174
Two months after the violence in Wamena, the police station in Abepura was attacked
and two police officers were killed.175 The police immediately sent out teams to round up
suspects. What followed, however, was “a methodical revenge attack in which all highlanders
were targets.”176 The police and the Brimob first swept through the Ninmin Dormitory in
Abepura, near the capital of Jayapura, which housed students from the highlands of West Papua,
forcing the occupants outside and beating them. Twenty-three people from that dormitory—
fourteen boys and nine girls, including one girl who was only seven years old—were taken into
police custody and severely beaten. Next, a group of police swept through four residential
neighborhoods where Papuans, mostly from the Wamena area of the highlands, lived.177 Within
24 hours, three highland students were killed and one hundred individuals had been detained in
police headquarters.178
The violence did not end there, however. En route to the police headquarters and once
there, all of those detained were beaten with rifle butts, wooden blocks, or iron bars.179 Some
were burned with cigarettes, forced to lick the blood off the floor, and whipped with electric
cables; one man was ordered to cut and eat his own hair.180 The detainees were constantly
174 Id. at 14.
175 The number and identity of the attackers has not been verified.
176 Human Rights Watch, Violence and Political Impasse in Papua, supra note 169, at 15.
177 Id.
178 Id.
179 A Swiss journalist detained in the same prison described the beatings meted out there that night, including one
that resulted in the death of a detainee. Id. at 19.
180 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 32-37.
47
insulted with racist, derogatory language.181 Approximately 24 hours later, the prisoners were
released.
After the events at Abepura, Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission
recommended prosecution of the perpetrators in the newly created National Human Rights
Courts.182 The local police and administration, however, encouraged all members of the police
forces involved not to talk to the human rights investigators.183
All in all, one report estimated that between 1998 and 2000, there were 80 cases of
summary execution and 500 cases of arbitrary detention and torture of West Papuans by the
Indonesian government or military in West Papua.184 In its 2001 report on Indonesia, the U.S.
Department of State noted:
Security forces were responsible for numerous instances of, at times
indiscriminate, shooting of civilians, torture, rape, beatings and other abuse, and
arbitrary detention in . . . Papua . . . . Security forces in Papua assaulted, tortured,
and killed persons during search operations for members of militant groups. The
security forces inconsistently enforced a no-tolerance policy against flying the
Papuan flag, tearing down and destroying flags and flag poles, and killing eight
persons, and beating others who tried to raise or protect the flag . . . .185
The State Department’s 2002 report affirmed that Indonesian security forces have
continued this pattern of repression and violence. Indonesian soldiers and police “committed
assaults, rapes, and supported militias,” “frequently and arbitrarily detained persons without
181 For a list of phrases spoken to the detainees, see Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 42-43
(quoting statements such as: “Women with curly hair and ugly dare to attack the Police?”; “The curly hair is just
animal and must be extinguished!”; and “Your God is shit. Call your God Lord Jesus to help you!”).
182 Human Rights Watch, Violence and Political Impasse in Papua, supra note 169, at 20.
183 Id. at 21.
184 John Rumbiak, The On-Going Human Rights Violations in West Papua: Impunity or Accountability?, 3 (Apr.
2001).
185 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR, COUNTRY
REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES: INDONESIA (2001).
48
warrants, charges or court proceedings,” and regularly “tortured detainees.”186 In November
2001, Theys Eluay, a prominent pro-independence leader in West Papua, was assassinated. He
was kidnapped and then apparently tortured to death. This death came two weeks after Indonesia
promulgated Law No. 21/2001 on Special Autonomy for the Province of Papua, which both the
pro-independence advocates and the police force in Papua rejected.187
Finally, on August 31, 2002, gunmen ambushed a group of foreign schoolteachers
employed by Freeport-McMoRan who were returning from an afternoon picnic near the Freeport
mine in Tembagapura. The attackers fired more than 130 bullets, killing two Americans and an
Indonesian and injuring twelve others. According to U.S. officials, evidence indicates that
members of the Indonesian army were responsible for the murders and may have sought to frame
members of the Free Papua Movement in order to convince the State Department to add the
group to the department’s terrorist list or, alternatively, to induce Freeport to increase its
payments to the military.188 This tragic incident reaffirms the close and complex relationship
between Indonesian security forces and Freeport McMoRan. It also suggests the lengths to
which the military may be willing to go to bolster its own power at the expense of the West
Papuan people.
Violence, civil unrest, and grievous abuses of human rights continue to affect the lives of
West Papuan civilians. Recent developments suggest that without significant international
pressure, the pattern of violent repression in West Papua is likely to continue. Whether this
186 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR, COUNTRY
REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES: INDONESIA (2002).
187 See Siegfried Zollner, Conference: “Autonomy for Papua. Opportunity or Illusion?” 11 EUROPE PACIFIC
SOLIDARITY BULLETIN 3 (June-July 2003); Abigail Abrash, Indonesia Assassinates Indigenous Leader in Quest to
Keep Papua, 26 CULTURAL SURVIVAL QUARTERLY (March 2002). Apparently, the pro-independence group rejected
the legislation because Indonesia did not consult the people of Papua beforehand. The police rejected it because it
made some concessions to the Papuan people, including allowing them to fly the Morning Star flag. Id.
188 See Dana Priest, A Nightmare, and a Mystery, in the Jungle: Ambush of School Outing Left 3 Dead, 8 Wounded,
And Suspicion of Involvement by Indonesian Army, WASHINGTON POST, June 22, 2003, at A1.
49
history of repression and violence constitutes genocide, as defined in the Genocide Convention,
is the question that Part II of this paper addresses.
IV. APPLICATION OF THE LAW OF GENOCIDE TO THE CASE OF WEST
PAPUA
A. Introduction to the Law of Genocide
On December 9, 1948, the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.189 The Convention proscribes the
intentional physical destruction of national, ethnical, racial and religious groups. It declares that
genocide, whether committed in times of peace or in times of war, is a crime under international
law. It further provides that persons committing genocide or genocidal acts “shall be punished,
whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials, or private individuals,” and
obligates States Parties to undertake to prevent and punish the crime. As the International Court
of Justice noted in its 1951 advisory opinion, “the principles underlying the Convention are
principles which are recognized by civilized nations as binding on States, even without any
conventional obligation.”190 The ICJ has since recognized the Convention’s proscription against
the crime of genocide as a part of customary international law and a jus cogens norm.191
The Genocide Convention affirms that States may not fail to act in the face of mass
atrocities directed at the destruction of a particular group. Polish scholar and jurist Raphael
Lemkin coined the word “genocide” during the Second World War as a means of describing the
mass extermination by the Third Reich of millions of Jews and other national, ethnic, and
189 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Dec. 9, 1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 277,
reprinted in 45 AM. J. INT’L. L. 7 (1951) [hereinafter Genocide Convention].
190 Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Advisory Opinion),
[1951] I.C.J. REPORTS 16, at 21, quoted in Legality of the Treat or Use of Nuclear Weapons (Advisory Opinion,
[1996] I.C.J. REPORTS 226, 31. See also Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to 2 of the Security Council
Resolution 808 (1993), U.N. Doc. S/25704, 45.
191 Prosecutor v. Goran Jelsic, Case No. IT-95-10-T, ICTY T. Ch. I, 14 Dec. 1999, para. 60.
50
religious groups. The term, which merged the Greek word “genos” (race or tribe) with the Latin
“cide” (killing), took hold almost immediately and was prosecuted, within the scope of “crimes
against humanity,” by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal in 1945-46. On December 11, 1946,
the United Nations General Assembly adopted by unanimous vote a resolution that explicitly
condemned the crime of genocide. The Convention was adopted by General Assembly
resolution in 1948 and entered into force on January 12, 1951.
Article II of the 1948 Convention defines genocide as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.192
This definition of genocide has been repeated without significant change in subsequent
instruments, including Article 4(2) of the statute creating the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Article 2(2) of the statute creating the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and Article 6 of the Rome Statute for the Creation of the
International Criminal Court.193
Genocide is a collective crime that targets a national, racial, ethnical, or religious
group.194 A national group is “a collection of people who are perceived to share a legal bond
192 Genocide Convention, art. 2.
193 Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, U.N. Doc. S/RES/827 (1993), annex,
art. 4(2); Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, U.N. Doc. S/RES/955 (1994), annex, art. 2(2);
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9, art. 7(1).
194 In Prosecutor v. Akayesu, the first case in which an individual defendant was charged with genocide before an
international court, Trial Chamber I of the ICTR suggested a broader understanding of the group requirement,
holding that the drafters of the Convention did not mean to exclude from its protection “any stable and permanent
group.” Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, ICTR T. Ch. I, 2 Sept. 1998, paras. 516, 701.
51
based on common citizenship, coupled with reciprocity of rights and duties.”195 An ethnical
group is a group defined by its common language and culture.196 A racial group is
distinguishable by physical traits consistent with specific geographical areas.197 A religious
group is one whose members share common beliefs or denominations.198 A common attribute of
the four groups protected by the Genocide Convention is that “membership in such groups would
seem to be normally not challengeable by its members, who belong to it automatically, by birth,
in a continuous and often irremediable manner.”199 The definition of genocide does not apply to
more mobile groups, which one may join through individual voluntary commitment, such as
political, social, or economic groups. As a leading scholar of the law of genocide has suggested,
the four categories of groups “operat[e] much as four corner posts that delimit an area within
which a myriad of groups covered by the Convention find protection.”200 Thus, it is not
necessary to show that a group specifically meets one of the four criteria set forth in the
Convention in order to make a claim of genocide, but only to demonstrate that it fits within the
four corners defined by these criteria. In recent years, adjudicators have showed a willingness to
use this approach to hold that a number of kinds of groups fall under the Convention’s
protection, including, most prominently, tribal groups.201
The crime of genocide itself consists of two important elements: the prohibited act (the
material element, or actus reus) and the requisite intent (the moral/mental element, or mens rea).
However, subsequent decisions retreated from this broad and inherently subjective standard. Prosecutor v.
Kayishema and Ruzinda, Case No. ICTR-95-1-T, Judgment, 21 May 1999; Prosecutor v. Rutaganda, Case No.
ICTR-96-3-T, Judgment, 6 December 1999.
195 Akayesu, para. 512 (Sept. 2, 1998).
196 An ethnical group may identify itself as such or be identified as such by others, including the perpetrators of
genocide. Id., para. 513; see Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 98.
197 Akayesu, para. 514.
198 Id., para. 515; Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 98.
199 Akayesu, para. 511.
200 WILLIAM A. SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: THE CRIME OF CRIMES 111 (2000).
201 See Report of the International Law Commission on the World of Its Forty-Eighth Session, 6 May-26 July 1996,
U.N. Doc. A/51/10, at 89.
52
The act element of genocide is explicitly set forth in the five subparagraphs of Article II of the
Convention, where the drafters list the five types of “acts” that, if committed with the requisite
intent and directed against a group protected by the Convention, constitute genocide. Of the five
genocidal acts, three require proof of a result—killing members of the group, causing serious
bodily or mental harm to members of the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group. The other two acts—deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part and imposing measures
intended to prevent births within the group—do not require proof of the result, but instead
require a further specific intent to destroy the group. For the three acts that require proof of a
result, a finding of genocide does not require establishment of a cause and effect relationship
between the acts and the destruction of the group, but may instead be based on a showing that
one or more victims suffered physical or mental harm and that the act was committed with the
requisite intent.202 Genocide can be committed by acts or by omissions. For example, military
officers’ failure to intervene when their subordinates are violating the Convention has been held
to constitute genocide.203
The act element of genocide is inextricably connected to the element of intent. Genocide
is distinguishable from crimes against humanity in international law largely on the basis of the
intent behind the crime.204 This intent must be specific—it cannot be a general intent to murder,
in the case of Article II(a); it must be a specific intent to kill someone because of his or her
membership in a group. Genocidal intent may involve the desire to exterminate a large number
of members of a protected group or, alternatively, the desire to destroy a more limited number of
202 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 164-65.
203 See Prosecutor v. Kambanda, Case No. ICTR-97-23-S, ICTR T. ch. 4, Sept. 1998 (holding that failure by
governmental leaders to take action to stop ongoing, known massacres, constituted genocide). The jurisdiction of
the Convention also extends, in Article III, to include attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide,
and complicity in genocide as crimes under international law.
204 See Jelisic, para. 66.
53
members of the group who are selected because of the potential impact of their destruction on the
survival of the group as such.205 Although specific intent is required, it may be inferred in most
cases from the acts themselves, as well as from the context in which those acts took place. As
the ICTR held in Prosecutor v. Akayesu, “it is possible to deduce the genocidal intent inherent in
a particular act charged from the general context of the perpetration of other culpable acts
systematically directed against that same group, whether these acts were committed by the same
offender or by others.”206 It is also possible to infer intent when genocidal acts are committed in
connection with a separate objective with a non-genocidal motive; for example, when otherwise
genocidal acts are carried out with the ultimate motive of giving the government greater access
to natural resources.207
Absent a showing of genocidal intent, severe offenses committed on a mass scale and
directed against a civilian population are likely to constitute “crimes against humanity” under
customary international law. There are several definitions of crimes against humanity, but all
involve the persecution of individuals or groups in a widespread and systematic fashion.208 The
concept of crimes against humanity was first discussed in Article 6(c) of the Charter of the
International Military Tribunal (the “Nuremberg Tribunal”), which provides:
[Crimes against humanity include] murder, extermination,
enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed
against any civilian population, before or during the war, or
persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution
of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the
205 Id., paras. 81-82.
206 Akayesu, paras. 523.
207 The ICTY and the ICTR have been largely silent on the question of dual motives. However, the Australian
Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission has ruled that “even if motives were mixed, a fundamental
element in the programme [of transferring indigenous children to families of European descent] was the elimination
of indigenous cultures, and that as a result the co-existence of other motives was no defense.” Australian Human
Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, Bringing Them Home, Report of the National Inquiry into the
Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, 270-75, available at
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen (last visited Apr. 26, 2002).
208 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200.
54
Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the
country where perpetrated.
Crimes against humanity do not necessarily require a connection to war or armed
conflict. While the jurisdiction of the ICTY extends only to crimes against humanity committed
in the context of armed conflict,209 the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, like
the Statute of the ICTR, affirms that such crimes may occur in times of peace as well as in times
of war, so long as they are committed as “part of a widespread or systematic attack directed
against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.”210 Building upon the statutes and
case law of the ICTY and ICTR, the Rome Statute expands the definition of crimes against
humanity to expressly include such acts as torture; the forcible transfer of population;
imprisonment or severe deprivation of physical liberty; acts of sexual violence, including rape,
sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilization; persecution on
national, ethnic, cultural, gender, or other impermissible grounds; disappearance; and
apartheid.211 With the entry into force of the International Criminal Court on July 1, 2002,
perpetrators of crimes against humanity, like perpetrators of genocide, may be held criminally
responsible for their crimes under international law.212
B. The “Group” Element of the Crime of Genocide
As a distinct racial and/or ethnic group with a common national identity strengthened in
the course of the common struggle for independence from Indonesian neo-colonial rule, West
Papuans fit within the ambit of protection delimited by the four enumerated groups in Article II
of the Genocide Convention.
209 Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, U.N. Doc. S/RES/827 (1993), annex,
art. 5; Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, U.N. Doc. S/RES/955 (1994), annex, art. 4.
210 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9, art. 7(1).
211 Id. art. 7(1).
212 However, the ICC may exercise jurisdiction only if the person accused of crimes against humanity is a national of
a State Party to the Statute, or if the crime was committed on the territory of a State Party. Id., art. 12(2).
55
1. National Group
Within the context of the 1948 Genocide Convention and the writings of Raphael
Lemkin, the term “national group” refers not only to groups identified with an established nation
state,213 but also to national minorities with shared, distinct historical and cultural links, which
may encompass racial, ethnical, and religious groups.214 The International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda has defined a national group as “a collection of people who are perceived to share a
legal bond based on common citizenship, coupled with reciprocity of rights and duties.”215
Alternatively, scholars have argued that “national” may refer to one’s origin when viewed
through a sociological or ethnological lens.216
Any of these definitions support the conclusion that West Papuans are a national group
protected by the 1948 Convention. They constitute a tiny minority in Indonesia. Their
population was estimated to be about 2.11 million of the whole population of Indonesia, which
stood at 193.92 million as of July 1, 2000. 217 West Papuans’ struggle for independence dates
back to the days of Dutch colonial rule, and West Papuans chose their own national anthem and
national flag. The common struggle against Indonesian rule has forged a strong sense of national
unity, expressed through such actions as raising and defending the West Papuan flag despite
violent Indonesian military crackdowns.
213 See Matthew Lippman, The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: Fifty Years
Later, 15 ARIZ. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 415, 456, quoting 3 U.N. GAOR C.6, 74th mtg. at 98, U.N. Doc. A/C.6/SR. 74
(1948) (Mr. Petren, Swed.).
214 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 118.
215 Akayesu, para. 512.
216 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 116-17& n.95.
217 See Indonesian Census 2000 Discussion Paper, available at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/demonetasia/message/34.
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2. Ethnical Group
The pure objective test of an ethnical group requires a common language and a common
culture.218 West Papuans speak a myriad of languages219 and manifest diverse cultures.
Historical accounts suggest that West Papuans have grouped largely along tribal lines governed
by ecological conditions and separated by cultural-linguistic barriers even between close clan
neighbors.
However, an interpretation that includes a subjective element suggests that West Papuans
may constitute an ethnical group. A trial chamber of the ICTR opined that an ethnic group could
be a group “which distinguishe[d] itself, as such; or, a group identified as such by others,
including perpetrators of the crimes.”220 The Indonesian government, by its actions, appears to
identify the West Papuans as a common ethnic group. In the 1970s and 1980s, the government
sought to “Indonesianize” West Papuan education and culture, compelling West Papuans to
abandon their “primitive” customs and to speak and dress like Indonesians. The Indonesian
police shot and killed Papuans who resisted these “civilization” efforts. While West Papuans
may distinguish between people of different cultural-linguistic units, the Indonesian government
appears to have treated West Papuans as an inherently unified ethnic group; thus, West Papuans
may meet the criteria of “ethnical group” for the purpose of determining whether genocide has
occurred.
3. Racial Group
West Papuans constitute a racial group from both an objective and a subjective
perspective. The objective test for “racial group” requires a determination that the relevant
218 Akayesu, para. 513.
219 See OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 2 (“[W]hen Holland handed over West Papua to
Indonesia, it had listed more than 200 languages among 500,000 people in an estimated population of 700,000.”).
220 Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 98.
57
group is distinguished from others by hereditary physical traits frequently identified with
geographic areas, irrespective of linguistic, cultural, national or religious factors.221 Indigenous
West Papuans belong to the Melanesian race, the descendants of three broad races of migrant
people who settled in parts of the South Pacific. Melanesians are of different origin than the
Javanese, who constitute the majority of the Indonesian population. Despite regional differences
among the West Papuans, as among other Melanesian groups, anthropologists believe that
classifying Melanesians as a race is valid because of the many shared characteristics of the
people.222
The subjective test for “racial group” considers the perceptions of the perpetrators toward
the victimized group.223 Indonesians historically have regarded West Papuans as a “primitive,
barbaric and unproductive” race. 224 The government’s transmigration program and its exclusion
of West Papuans from the government bureaucracy, the business sector, and upper levels of
education was grounded, at least in part, on the assumption that West Papuans were an inferior
race to the Javanese people. The racist “Project for the Guidance of Alien Societies” sought to
“civilize” the West Papuans without suggesting that they might ever attain the sophistication of
the racially superior Indonesians. The army’s slogan, “Let the rats run into the jungle so that the
chickens can breed in the coop,” suggests that Indonesian military campaigns targeted West
Papuans—civilians as well as members of the OPM—as an inferior race. Clearly, the Indonesian
government has consistently viewed the people of West Papua as a group that is racially distinct
from the majority Javanese population.
221 Akayesu, para. 514.
222 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 2. See Final Report of the Commission of Experts
Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 935 (1994), UN Doc. S/1995/1405, annex, para. 159.
According to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda, “to recognize that there exists discrimination on racial or
ethnic grounds, it is not necessary to presume or posit the existence of race or ethnicity itself as a scientifically
objective fact.”
223 See Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 98.
224 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 48, 56.
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4. Religious Group
Christianity is the dominant faith among West Papuans. Although West Papuans
detained by Indonesian authorities routinely suffer humiliation on the basis of their religious
faith, it is not clear that Indonesian policy toward West Papuans has been based
on their religious faith. Moreover, not all West Papuans are Christians, and many follow
traditional religions. This suggests that West Papuans have not been targeted for destruction as a
religious group.
5. Ambit of Protection Established by the Four Enumerated Groups
The language and the legislative history of the Genocide Convention strongly suggest a
holistic interpretation of the four enumerated groups. The four categories overlap and help
define each other, including within their scope a wide range of different groups, all of which are
covered by the Convention.225 A claim of genocide does not require that a group specifically
meet one of the four criteria set forth in the Convention. Rather, it is sufficient to prove that the
group fits within the corners delineated by these criteria.226 This approach has extended the
application of genocide to cover groups, including tribal groups, without determining whether
they are subsumed within one particular category—national, racial, ethnical or religious.227
From this holistic perspective, consistent with the intent of the Genocide Convention’s drafters,
the case of West Papuans fits squarely into the ambit of protection established by the “corner
posts” of the four enumerated groups.
225 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 111.
226 Id. at 112.
227 E.g., the International Law Commission on the Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind
determined that tribal groups should be protected by the Convention; see Report of the International Law
Commission on the Work of Its Forty-Eighth Session, 6 May- 26 June 1996, UN Doc. A/51/10, p.89. The Canadian
Criminal Code, in its provisions relating to genocide, protects groups that are distinguished by color as well as those
identified by race, religion, or ethnic origin. See Criminal Code (Canada), RSC 1985, c. C-46, s. 318(4).
59
C. The Act Element of the Crime of Genocide
Since Indonesia gained control of West Papua, the Indonesian government has engaged
in conduct toward West Papuans that falls within several of the categories of act that constitute
genocide under the Genocide Convention. The Indonesian authorities have killed thousands of
members of the West Papuan group, and they have “caus[ed] serious bodily and mental harm to
members of the group.”228 Evidence strongly indicates that the Indonesians have also
deliberately inflicted on the group “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction.”229
1. Massacres and Extrajudicial Killings
The Indonesian military and its related security forces have engaged in widespread
violence and killings in West Papua. Such a pattern of massacres and killings falls squarely
within the first category of act identified by the Genocide Convention. The act of killing has
been interpreted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as having two elements: (1)
that the victim is dead, and (2) that the death resulted from an unlawful act or omission by the
accused.230
The incidents described above clearly fulfill both of these elements. Indonesian police
and military officials have killed numerous West Papuans as a result of unlawful acts and
omissions, including the 1970 massacre of more than 85 West Papuans in western Biak, the
killing by aerial bombardment of several thousand villagers in Jayawijaya in 1977, and the use of
napalm and chemical weapons against villagers during Operation Clean Sweep in 1981. More
recent examples, including the Indonesian military operations in the Central Highlands
(Mapnduma, Bela, Alama and Jila) and the October 2000 Wamena massacre that resulted in 32
228 Genocide Convention, art. 2(2).
229 Genocide Convention, art. 2(3).
230 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 157.
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deaths, demonstrate the continuity and widespread nature of such acts even in the current stage
of Indonesian control of West Papua.
Individual extrajudicial killings by the military and security forces also come under the
heading of “killing members of the group.” They have occurred most often when detained
prisoners have been tortured to death. Examples include the 1976 deaths of two men beaten with
iron bars; the killing of Mimi Fatahan, whose body was chopped into pieces by members of the
regional military command in Jayapura; the torture and killing of Naranebalan Anggaibak in
1994; and the three students detained and killed in the 2000 raid on the Abepura student
dormitory. In all of these circumstances, both legal elements of killing have been met, and the
murders of these victims are prohibited by international law.
The Indonesian military and KOPKAMTIB have been responsible for the assassinations
of numerous political and village leaders in an effort to wear down the West Papua resistance
movement. These extrajudicial killings fall within the “killing” category of acts that can
constitute genocide. The beating to death of Baldus Mofu, the shooting of Arnold Ap and
Eduard Mofu, and the 2001 kidnapping and killing of Theys Eluay, demonstrate that these
political killings are deliberate and planned. The Indonesian military’s attacks on West Papua’s
political, intellectual, and community leaders clearly fall within the category of “killing members
of the group” and, because they specifically target an influential segment of the population,
reflect the requisite intent to destroy the group in part.
2. Torture, Disappearance, and Detention
The Indonesian security forces’ torture, disappearance, and arbitrary arrest of West
Papuans constitute unequivocal acts of serious bodily and/or mental harm. The ICTR defined
“serious bodily or mental harm” as “acts of torture, be they bodily or mental, inhumane or
61
degrading treatment, persecution.”231 Another Trial Chamber of the ICTR defined this category
of act as “harm that seriously injures the health, causes disfigurement, or causes any serious
injury to the external, internal organs [sic] or senses.”232 The Trial Chamber of the ICTY has
similarly held that torture and inhuman or degrading treatment constitute “serious bodily or
mental harm” under the Genocide Convention.233 Indonesian authorities have repeatedly caused
West Papuans serious bodily or mental harm by subjecting them to torture, disappearance, and
cruel and inhuman treatment and punishment.
Throughout the inland areas of West Papua, security forces have engaged in arbitrary and
mass detention of indigenous Papuans, frequently supplemented by cruel and inhuman
punishments, including electric shocks, beating, pistol whipping, water torture, and skinning
alive. Documented cases include men being detained in steel containers in total darkness for
three months and women being kept for long periods of time in closets filled with filthy water.
During the Abepura violence, one hundred individuals from four residential neighborhoods were
rounded up and severely tortured with wooden blocks, iron bars, cigarettes, and electric cables.
Similarly, numerous West Papuans have been reported missing over the last three
decades, especially in the Highland areas. The kidnapping of these individuals, although they
cannot be confirmed as killings, are, nevertheless, a form of “serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group.” Although the effects of kidnapping may not be permanent (some people
have managed to return to their homes), they still have serious long-term effects. The
disappearance of Martin Luther Waren after his release from jail, and the detention and then
disappearance of the Kwalik brothers in 1994, are examples of such violations. People who have
231 Akayesu, para. 504.
232 Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 109.
233 Prosecutor v. Karadzic and Mladic (Case Nos. IT-95-5-R61, IT-95-18-R61), Consideration of the Indictment
within the Framework of Rule 61 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, July 11, 1996, para. 93.
62
“disappeared” have been deprived of their right to bodily integrity and likely have been killed or
subjected to torture or cruel and unusual punishment. Moreover, the spouses and children of
individuals who have been “disappeared” suffer serious physical or mental harm. They are
subjected to the psychological trauma of not knowing the fate of their family members. Often,
they suffer serious financial deprivation as a result of the disappearance.
Indonesian government and military authorities have subjected West Papuans to torture,
cruel and inhuman treatment and punishment, kidnapping, and disappearance. Such acts deprive
victims of their basic human rights and clearly constitute the kind of bodily and mental harm that
is proscribed by the Genocide Convention.
3. Violence Against Women and Rape
During Indonesia’s rule, soldiers have raped, killed and mutilated indigenous West
Papuan women, causing serious bodily and mental harm. In Akayesu, the ICTR held that:
Rape and sexual violence certainly constitute infliction of serious bodily
and mental harm on the victims and are even, according to the Chamber,
one of the worst ways of inflicting harm on the victim as he or she suffers
both bodily and mental harm.234
The ICTR found that the genocidal intent required under the Convention was clear in the sexual
violence carried out in Rwanda:
[T]he acts of rape and sexual violence . . . were committed solely against
Tutsi women, many of whom were subjected to the worst public
humiliation, mutilated, and raped several times, often in public . . . and
often by more than one assailant. . . . Sexual violence was an integral part
of the process of destruction, specifically targeting Tutsi women and
specifically contributing to their destruction and to the destruction of the
Tutsi group as a whole.235
234 Akayesu, para. 731 (Sept. 2, 1998).
235 Id.
63
In West Papua, similarly, the military’s use of rape was targeted specifically and exclusively
against indigenous Papuan women, was committed in public (sometimes by more than one
soldier), against girls as well as women, and was sometimes accompanied by murder or
mutilation or both.
While the reports of rape and violence against indigenous Papuan women by the
Indonesian military are legion, two examples demonstrate especially clearly the use of rape to
inflict serious bodily and mental harm upon West Papuans. First, in 1970, soldiers patrolling the
jungle border area shot and killed a pregnant woman, cut the baby from the mother’s womb, and
dissected it in front of 80 women and children of the village. At the same time, a group of
soldiers raped and killed the pregnant woman’s sister. In 1998, in order to disrupt a proindependence
demonstration, the Indonesian navy used force on the participants.
It is alleged that women were taken out to sea on Indonesian navy ships,
where they were raped, sexually mutilated and thrown overboard.
Women’s corpses reportedly washed up on the Biak coast. Some of them
showed signs of sexual mutilation; breasts had been removed.236
These reports of rape, mutilation, and murder committed by the Indonesian military solely
against indigenous Papuan women fulfill the requirements of the Genocide Convention’s second
type of act, “causing serious bodily or mental harm.”237 Many of these acts have also resulted in
the death of Papuan women, thus meeting the requirements of the “killing” category of act that is
set out in Article 2 of the Convention.
4. Resource Exploitation, Relocation of Groups, and Environmental Harm
Systematic resource exploitation, one of the explicit goals of the Indonesian
government’s involvement with West Papua, has led to the forced relocation of indigenous
236 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, supra note 157, at 14.
237 Rape has sometimes been interpreted as a “condition of life calculated to destroy the group.” See SCHABAS,
GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 170.
64
peoples within West Papua and has caused serious and pervasive environmental harm to the area.
While the following acts may not constitute “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated
to destroy the group in whole or in part” under a narrow conventional analysis of the Genocide
Convention, a more expansive reading of this category of act is appropriate in this case.
In recent years, considerable case law has developed around what kinds of acts or
omissions constitute the requisite “conditions of life” inflicted upon a specific group, calculated
to destroy that group in whole or in part. In Akayesu, the ICTR Trial Chamber held that
deliberately inflicting conditions of life “should be construed as the methods of destruction by
which the perpetrator does not immediately kill the members of the group, but which, ultimately,
seek their physical destruction.”238 Examples of acts that would fit this definition, when
committed with the requisite specific intent, were “systematic expulsion from homes and the
reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirements.”239
The Indonesian government, in conjunction with various mining and timber corporations,
has done both of these things to Papuans. To enable PT Freeport mining operations, the
Amungme people were compelled to move from their homes in the Tembagapura area (in the
cool, highlands region) to the hot, coastal Timika region. This move, in fact, caused the death of
a large number of the group, due to their introduction to new diseases for which they had no
immunity. In another case, a government-owned plantation seized the property of indigenous
people, forcing them to relocate on land that was insufficient to support their needs, and refused
to compensate them fairly.
The government has consistently refused to provide adequate medical services to the
people of West Papua—even for diseases that were introduced as a result of the Indonesian
238 Akayesu, para. 505.
239 Id., para. 506. For additional examples, see SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at
166-171.
65
government’s transmigration policies. When the government renegotiated PT Freeport’s
Contract of Work in 1991, it required the company to provide increased benefits—including
medical care and hospitals—for the company’s workers and the Indonesian military, but did not
require the company to extend these benefits and services to the local, indigenous population.
While indigenous West Papuans have suffered from cysticercosis over the last thirty years due to
infected pigs, government officials in Jakarta have prohibited exportation of the drugs necessary
to fight the disease. Finally, Indonesian health authorities in Papua have excluded or
discriminated against Papuans in the provision of basic reproductive health care and in essential
HIV/AIDS prevention and education programs. Under recent international case law, these acts
by the Indonesian government on behalf of or in collaboration with corporations operating in
West Papua may, if committed with the requisite intent, be considered genocidal acts.
The environmental damage caused by the mining and logging of West Papua may
constitute a third way in which the Indonesian government has imposed conditions of life
calculated to destroy indigenous West Papuans as a group. While the intent element may be
harder to prove for these acts, the results of the mining and logging have been devastating to the
health and existence of the indigenous people. According to one report, scores of Papuans have
suffered illnesses related to Freeport’s discharge of mining waste into the rivers, and in 1999,
five Papuans died from copper poisoning when they ate mollusks and other organisms from a
polluted river.
Unlike the acts of “killing” or “causing serious bodily or mental harm,” the act of
inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group contains within it an additional,
specific intent element. The scope of what constitutes such intent has been examined in a
66
number of cases and scholarly articles, with mixed results.240 According to one interpretation,
the intent of the actor must be the eventual destruction of the group alone, unalloyed with
economic intentions.241 Another interpretation, however, adopted by the Rome Statute creating
the International Criminal Court, holds that intent exists if the actor “meant to cause that
consequence or is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events.”242 While no tribunal
or other judicial body has yet followed the latter interpretation of intent with respect to the
Genocide Convention, the West Papuan case demonstrates that such an interpretation is
appropriate and necessary.
Acts motivated by economic goals, coupled with indifference toward the existence of a
group, that result in the destruction of that group in whole or in part, should not escape a finding
that they are genocidal acts, simply because the actors did not explicitly express their intentions
in terms of the group’s extermination. In the case of the Aché Indians of Paraguay (the facts of
which were never brought before any court), most scholars have recognized that genocide
occurred, despite the State’s claim that its motives (development of the land on which the Aché
lived) were entirely economic and that the resultant death of half of the Aché population over ten
years was entirely incidental.243 The Indonesian government’s use of economic development
language suggests a similar excuse-making for the deaths of thousands of indigenous Papuans.
The obvious connection between development goals and genocidal intent reveals itself in the
240 For a description of the various interpretations, see SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note
200, at 169-70, 201, & 243-44.
241 See id.
242 Rome Statute, Art. 30 § 2(b). Professor Alexander Greenawalt has argued that the Genocide Convention should
be interpreted to define intent in this same manner. Alexander K. A. Greenawalt, Rethinking Genocidal Intent: The
Case for a Knowledge-Based Interpretation, 99 COLUM. L. REV. 2259 (1999). Many domestic jurisdictions use a
similar definition of intent for criminal causes of action. See Model Penal Code § 2.02 (1985) (“A person acts
purposely with respect to a material element of an offense when . . . it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of
that nature or to cause such a result; and . . . if the element involves the attendant circumstances, he is aware of the
existence of such circumstances or he believes or hopes that they exist.).
243 See GENOCIDE IN PARAGUAY (Richard Arens ed., 1976); Greenawalt, Rethinking Genocidal Intent, supra note
242, at 2285-87; Joy Gordon, When Intent Makes All the Difference in the World: Economic Sanctions on Iraq and
the Accusation of Genocide, YALE HUM. RTS. AND DEVEL. L. J. 57, 63 (2002)
67
attitude of the Kopassus lieutenant commander described above who flatly admitted that the
military’s job was to clear the highlands of West Papuans in order to make room for investors.
Deaths that result, even indirectly, from Indonesia’s policies and conduct during the 40 years of
its rule reflect, at least, an indifference toward the lives of Papuans that is consistent with this
broader and more appropriate notion of intent.
The result of Indonesia’s actions—the deaths of thousands of indigenous Papuans over
the course of Indonesia’s forty-year rule—is the same whether those actions were based on
development goals or the government’s intent was to exterminate Papuans outright. If, as one
scholar has argued, the “core concern” of the Genocide Convention is the “permanent losses to
humanity that result from the annihilation of enumerated groups,” then “the requirement of
genocidal intent should be satisfied if the perpetrator acted in furtherance of a campaign targeting
members of a protected group and knew that the goal or manifest effect of the campaign was the
destruction of the group in whole or in part.”244 Thus, while this is a more expansive
interpretation of the specific intent requirement than has been endorsed judicially, its application
to the acts surrounding resource exploitation, relocation, and environmental harm in West Papua
is consistent with the requirement’s purpose. Application of such an analysis to the history of
Indonesian control of West Papua leads to the conclusion that the required specific intent was
present: the State knew that the effect of its acts — in support of and in collaboration with the
relevant corporations — would be the destruction of the indigenous people of West Papua.245 By
engaging in such acts, the Indonesian government “deliberately inflict[ed] conditions of life
calculated to destroy the [West Papuan] group in whole or in part,” thus violating Article 2 of the
Genocide Convention.
244 Greenawalt, Rethinking Genocidal Intent, supra note 242, at 2288.
245 See note 240-41 & 244 and accompanying text.
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5. Destruction of Property and Crops
The Indonesian military has regularly engaged in the destruction of property and crops
belonging to and cultivated by the indigenous people of West Papua. This type of destruction,
when engaged in with the requisite intent, constitutes “deliberately inflicting conditions of life
calculated to destroy a group in whole or in part.” The Guatemalan Commission for Historical
Clarification found that acts of genocide had been committed against the Mayan people of
Guatemala when the army razed villages, destroyed property and collectively-worked fields, and
burned crops.246 Indonesian military forces burned church buildings, homes, and crops in West
Papua. The result of these attacks on the property of the West Papuans was to force them to flee
their homes and into the forests. Many subsequently starved to death or suffered from diseases
due to exposure to the elements. These consequences were the foreseeable result of the
“ordinary course of events,” and thus were committed by the military with the intent required for
such conduct to fit within the definition of genocidal acts.
6. Forced Labor
Throughout Indonesia’s rule of West Papua, Indonesian authorities have occasionally
forced indigenous Papuans to work without fair, or sometimes any, compensation. While these
forced labor programs have been relatively infrequent, they may constitute “deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in
whole or in part.”247
Forced labor, used in Nazi Germany as part of the Final Solution, was among the
examples given during the drafting of the Geneva Convention as one of those “conditions of life
246 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 168.
247 Genocide Convention, art. 2(c) (1948).
69
calculated to destroy a group in whole or in part.”248 Two incidents of forced labor in West
Papua have been documented: the obligatory labor in the Paniai Timur region, beginning in the
early 1980s and lasting throughout the 1990s, and the forced logging of the south coast of West
Papua. The Indonesian government forced the West Papuans of the Paniai region to supply free
labor to a nearby military post; any failure to do so was punished with fines, corporal
punishment, and torture. In another incident described above, Indonesian authorities relocated
the Asmat tribe and forced them to engage in logging at below-subsistence wages. The
Indonesian authorities enforced the system of forced labor with threats of arrest. The specific
intent of the Indonesian authorities to destroy the Asmat tribe in whole or in part is evidenced by
the length of time they had to remain away from their homes and by the below-subsistence
wages the Asmat workers received. Being away from their villages and families for long periods
of time disrupted not only village life, but also the creation of families and the procreation of the
Asmat people.
7. Transmigration Program
Indonesia’s transmigration program seems clearly to constitute the deliberate infliction of
“conditions of life calculated to destroy” West Papuans. The evidence strongly suggests that the
Indonesian government must have been aware that such a policy would eventually bring about
the physical (as well as cultural) destruction of the indigenous West Papuan population. Such
knowledge fulfills the “intent” requirement, as described above.
In furthering its transmigration policy, the Indonesian government moved transmigrants
from elsewhere in Indonesia to West Papua. Indonesian authorities intentionally forced West
248 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 165 (“Under its heading physical genocide, the
Secretariat draft presented two provisions addressing this issue [including] the subjection to conditions of life which,
by lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care, or excessive work or physical exertion, are
likely to result in the debilitation or death of the individuals . . . .”).
70
Papuans from their traditional land to land with conditions to which they were not accustomed.
This forcible removal left West Papuans with no means of subsistence. In many cases, they were
also denied opportunities for employment. They were exposed to diseases for which they had no
immunity. The Indonesian government intended its actions and was aware of the consequences
likely to follow. These consequences, which were devastating for the West Papuans, occurred in
the ordinary course of events as a result of the transmigration policy. The transmigration policy
and its attendant acts “deliberately inflict[ed]” on the West Papuan group conditions aimed to
“bring about the its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Implementation of the
transmigration policy itself may therefore be considered a genocidal act.
D. Inferring Intent: West Papua and the Contemporary Standard
As the ICTY concluded in the Jelisic case, “It is in fact the mens rea [the mental-state
element of the crime] which gives genocide its speciality and distinguishes it from an ordinary
crime and other crimes against international humanitarian law.”249 In other words, whereas the
act element is what makes the genocide a crime in the first place, the intent element is what
makes the crime genocide. Under the 1948 Convention, the intent must be specific—it cannot be
just a general intent to murder.250 Although specific intent is required, however, the ad hoc
tribunals have interpreted the standard to allow specific intent to be inferred, in most cases, from
the acts themselves. According to the ICTR, “[I]t is possible to deduce the genocidal intent
inherent in a particular act charged from the general context of the perpetration of other culpable
acts systematically directed against that same group, whether these acts were committed by the
same offender or by others.”251
249 Jelisic, para. 66.
250 For example, under Article II(a) of the Convention, the mens rea must be a specific intent to kill someone
because of their membership in a group.
251 Akayesu, para. 523.
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As one scholar summarizes, “[I]ntent may be inferred from a number of facts such as
words or deeds or a pattern of purposeful action that deliberately, consistently, and
systematically targets victims on account of their membership in a particular group while
excluding the members of other groups.”252 In the case of West Papua, inferring intent from the
acts seems to be a difficult proposition, because the relevant acts, on their own, do not clearly
suggest the kind of systematic campaign that the text of the Genocide Convention explicitly
requires. Yet, the pattern of activity undertaken by the Indonesian government, when considered
in aggregation, begins to emerge as the sort of conduct that the Convention was designed to
proscribe.
The Indonesian government, particularly the military, Brimob, and the KOPKAMTIB,
has regularly brutalized the people of West Papua since the end of the colonial period, killing
uncounted thousands in a series of incidents. Through its transmigration programs, the
Indonesian government has undermined the social and cultural heritage of the people of West
Papua by altering, at a fundamental level, the demographics and the underlying social structures
of the region. Through the economic development efforts that it has sponsored, the Indonesian
government has caused widespread and devastating pollution and other environmental damage,
which, in turn, have led to the further obliteration or forced relocation of numerous West Papuan
groups. Through its refusal to introduce necessary measures of medical and economic relief for
a plague that, evidence suggests, the government itself introduced, the Indonesian government
has turned a willfully blind eye to the decimation of the people of West Papua. Indeed,
throughout the past forty years, the Indonesian government has shown a callous disregard for—
and, at times, an intentional and specific malevolence toward—the basic human rights and
dignity of the people of West Papua.
252 KRIANGSAK KITTICHAISAREE, INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW 74 (2002).
72
Although no single act or set of acts can be said to have constituted genocide, per se, and
although the required intent cannot be as readily inferred as it was in the cases of the Holocaust
or the Rwandan genocide, there can be little doubt that the Indonesian government has engaged
in a systematic pattern of acts that has resulted in harm to—and indeed the destruction of—a
substantial part of the indigenous population of West Papua. The inevitability of this result was
readily obvious, and the government has taken no active measures to contravene. According to
current understanding of the Genocide Convention, including its interpretation in the
jurisprudence of the ad hoc international criminal tribunals, such a pattern of actions and
inactions—of acts and omissions—supports the conclusion that the Indonesian government has
acted with the necessary intent to find that it has perpetrated genocide against the people of West
Papua.
In the case of West Papua, however, it is necessary to consider whether the requisite
intent can be inferred when genocidal acts have been committed in furtherance of an objective
with a non-genocidal motive. The Genocide Convention’s intent requirement speaks to the
intended consequences of certain categories of acts—the objective to destroy a group in whole or
in part. Motive, on the other hand, addresses the question of why the perpetrator desires these
consequences to occur. In this case, the Indonesian government might maintain that its actions
have all been designed to achieve economic gain and that the destruction of—or attempt to
destroy—the people of West Papua was not intended “as such.” Can the required intent be
established when the government makes a credible claim that the motive behind the acts was not
directly related to the extermination of the group against whom the acts were directed?
Commentators generally agree that the inclusion of the words “as such” in Article II of
the Genocide Convention is the Convention’s lone attempt to address motive as an element
73
additional to and distinct from intent, but there is no commonly accepted interpretation of what
the term actually means.253 One argument is that the “as such” requirement mandates that the
crime of genocide can only cover acts committed against groups where the destruction of that
group is not only intended but is the motive behind the acts. Such a reading, however, is too
narrow to be reconciled with the history of the Convention’s drafting, which shows that an
explicit reference to motive was left out of the text largely because of a fear that such a reference
would limit the Convention’s application.254 Nevertheless, despite the drafters’ intent not to
limit the Convention’s application to cases where there was also an explicitly genocidal motive,
the Convention has never been extended to cover cases where such motive was not present.
Neither the ICTY nor the ICTR have helped to resolve this question of interpretation.255
The problem is particularly troubling in cases where the commission of genocide is
arguably a means, rather than an end. Is the intent requirement satisfied when otherwise
genocidal acts are carried out with the ultimate motive of increasing government or governmentsanctioned
access to natural resources? In one pertinent case, the Australian Human Rights and
Equal Opportunities Commission ruled that “even if motives were mixed, a fundamental element
in the programme [sic] [of transferring indigenous children to families of European descent] was
the elimination of indigenous cultures, and that as a result the co-existence of other motives was
no defence [sic].”256 While it has no analogue in the case law of the ICTY or ICTR, the
conclusion of the Australian commission is implicit in the purpose and logic of the Genocide
253 Indeed, the record indicates that there was significant debate in the drafting of the Convention about whether or
not to include a requirement for there to be an explicitly genocidal motive as part of the mens rea. See SCHABAS,
GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 245-56.
254 Id.
255 Id. at 252 (“The case law of the ad hoc tribunals is hardly enlightening as to this vexing problem of
interpretation.”).
256 Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, Bringing Them Home, Report of the National
Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, at 270-75,
available at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen (last visited on March 11, 2002).
74
Convention and consistent with its legislative history. This conclusion suggests that motivation
need not be exclusive in order for the crime to constitute genocide. Instead, animus or racism
toward the victim group may be coupled with the desire to achieve political, territorial, or other
goals.257
Without further research, it may not be possible to determine conclusively whether the
acts perpetrated by the Indonesian government against the West Papuans were committed with
the intent to destroy the West Papuan group, as such. However, the presence of other motives
should not negate a claim of genocide so long as the motive for the acts of the Indonesian
government, taken as a whole, includes or reflects opposition to or animus toward the West
Papuans qua West Papuans. Relying on contemporary and appropriate interpretations of the
Convention’s intent requirement, a strong argument can be made that the conduct of the
Indonesian government toward the people of West Papua over the last forty years has involved
the requisite intent or mens rea to constitute genocide.
V. CONCLUSION
Since Indonesia gained control of West Papua, the West Papuan people have suffered
persistent and horrible abuses at the hands of the government. The Indonesian military and
security forces have engaged in widespread violence and extrajudicial killings in West Papua.
They have subjected Papuan men and women to acts of torture, disappearance, rape, and sexual
violence, thus causing serious bodily and mental harm. Systematic resource exploitation, the
destruction of Papuan resources and crops, compulsory (and often uncompensated) labor,
transmigration schemes, and forced relocation have caused pervasive environmental harm to the
region, undermined traditional subsistence practices, and led to widespread disease, malnutrition,
257 See Lippman, The 1948 Convention Forty-Five Years Later, supra note 213, at 23-24 (1994) (discussing the
legislative history of the Genocide Convention).
75
and death among West Papuans. Such acts, taken as a whole, appear to constitute the imposition
of conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the West Papuans. Many of
these acts, individually and collectively, clearly constitute crimes against humanity under
international law. Further, the West Papuans, objectively, and in the eyes of their Indonesian
persecutors, appear to constitute a group as defined by Article II of the Genocide Convention.
In the final analysis, whether the sum of acts committed by the Indonesians against the
West Papuans rises to the level of genocide turns largely on the question of whether these acts
were committed with the requisite mens rea or intent to destroy the West Papuan group.
Obviously, few perpetrators of genocide leave behind a clear record of intent akin to Hitler’s
explicit statements of intent to destroy the Jews or the Rwandan Hutu government’s carefully
laid plan to rid Rwanda of all ethnic Tutsis. Usually, intent must be inferred from the
perpetrators’ acts, considered as a whole, along with any other available evidence that the victim
group was targeted as such. In the West Papuan case, any such inference necessarily remains
tentative given the difficulties in procuring comprehensive qualitative or quantitative data about
Indonesian human rights abuses in West Papua, past and present. However, the historical and
contemporary evidence set out above strongly suggests that the Indonesian government has
committed proscribed acts with the intent to destroy the West Papuans as such, in violation of the
1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the customary
international law prohibition this Convention embodies.
This paper considers whether the Indonesian government’s conduct toward the people of
West Papua constitutes genocide, as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The paper begins with a
detailed account of the human rights situation in West Papua from the beginning of Indonesian rule in 1963 until today. It then analyzes the law of genocide as applied to the West Papuan case. Although the paper does not offer a definitive conclusion about whether genocide has occurred, it finds in the available evidence a strong indication that the Indonesian government has committed genocide against the West Papuans. Moreover, even if the acts described in the paper were not carried out with intent to destroy the West Papuans as a group, a necessary element of the crime of genocide, many of these acts clearly constitute crimes against humanity under international law. A summary of the paper’s principle findings follows.
Introduction to the Law of Genocide The Genocide Convention, which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 and entered into force in 1951, declared that genocide is a crime against international law. It established that persons found guilty of genocide or genocidal acts “shall be punished,” and it imposed affirmative obligations on States Parties to undertake to prevent and punish the crime.
The International Court of Justice has recognized the Convention’s proscription of genocide as a part of customary international law and a jus cogens norm, a principle recognized by the international community as one from which no derogation is permitted.
Article II of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
2
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Under this definition, the crime of genocide consists of two important elements: the prohibited
act and the requisite intent. Thus, in analyzing whether the Indonesian government has
committed genocide against the West Papuans, this paper considers: 1) whether the West
Papuans constitute a group under the Convention’s definition of genocide; 2) whether the acts
perpetrated against the West Papuans are among those described by this definition; and 3)
whether these acts were carried out with intent to destroy the West Papuans as a group.
The Group Element of the Crime of Genocide
Genocide is a collective crime that targets a national, racial, ethnical, or religious group.
Although West Papuans are linguistically and culturally diverse, they belong to the Melanesian
race and have been viewed by the Indonesian government as a group that is both racially and
ethnically distinct from Indonesia’s majority Javanese population. The West Papuans also have
a common national identity that has been strengthened in the course of their common struggle for
independence from Indonesian rule. Therefore, this paper concludes that West Papuans clearly
fit within the ambit of protection delimited by the four kinds of groups listed in Article II of the
Genocide Convention.
The Act Element of the Crime of Genocide
Indonesian military and police forces have engaged in widespread violence and killings
in West Papua. This paper documents a history of massacres of the West Papuan people, from
the killing by aerial bombardment of several thousand Papuans in Jayawijaya in 1977 to the use
of napalm and chemical weapons against villagers in 1981 to the massacre of 32 West Papuans
3
in Wamena in October 2000. Indonesian authorities have also been responsible for numerous
extrajudicial killings, including torture killings of detained prisoners, assassinations of West
Papuan political, cultural, and village leaders, and brutal killings of civilian men, women, and
children. This pattern of massacres and killings falls squarely within the first category of act
identified by the Genocide Convention, “killing members of the group.”
Indonesian military and police force have subjected West Papuans to arbitrary and mass
detention, torture, and other cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment. Detained Papuans have
suffered electric shocks, beatings, pistol whipping, water torture, cigarette burns, and
confinement in steel containers for months on end. Many West Papuans have been
“disappeared” and likely tortured or killed, their family members subjected to psychological
trauma and often severe economic deprivation as a result. Indonesian soldiers have also
committed numerous acts of rape and sexual violence against West Papuan women, frequently in
public and sometimes accompanied by mutilation or murder or both. Such acts of rape and
sexual violence, mutilation, torture, cruel and unusual treatment or punishment, and
disappearance constitute unequivocal acts of “serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group,” the second category of act under the Genocide Convention. Many of these acts have
resulted in the deaths of West Papuans, thus falling within the “killing” category as well.
At the same time, the Indonesian government’s systematic program of resource
exploitation, destruction of Papuan resources and crops, compulsory and often uncompensated
labor, transmigration, and forced relocation has caused pervasive environmental harm to the
West Papuan region, undermined traditional subsistence practices and the social fabric and
governance systems of indigenous communities, and led to widespread disease, malnutrition, and
death among West Papuans. Mining and logging operations, undertaken in support of PT
4
Freeport and other multinational corporations, have caused devastating environmental damage
and the sickness or death of thousands of West Papuans. To facilitate mining operations and
resettle transmigrants from elsewhere in Indonesia, the government has intentionally forced West
Papuans from their traditional lands to unfamiliar locations, often leaving them without means of
subsistence. The government has consistently refused to provide adequate medical care to the
West Papuans and has discriminated against them in the provision of basic health care and
reproductive services. Indonesian military forces have directly attacked West Papuans’ property
and crops and have occasionally forced Papuans to work without compensation or below
subsistence wages, under threat of arrest.
Many of these acts, individually and collectively, clearly constitute crimes against
humanity under international law. Moreover, by engaging in such acts with the knowledge that
they would result in the destruction of the indigenous people of West Papua, the Indonesian
government likely has “deliberately inflict[ed] conditions of life calculated to bring about [the
West Papuan group’s] destruction in whole or in part,” implicating the third category of act
under Article II of the Genocide Convention.
The Intent Element of the Crime of Genocide
To be found guilty of the crime of genocide, a perpetrator must have engaged in
proscribed acts “with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part” the victim group. Intent consists
of specific intent to destroy the group, not simply a general intent to commit the proscribed acts.
However, because few perpetrators of genocide leave behind a clear record of intent, this
element usually must be inferred from their acts, considered as a whole, along with any other
available evidence that the victim group was targeted “as such.”
5
In the West Papuan case, the required intent cannot be inferred as easily as it was for the
Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. However, this paper finds that the Indonesian government
has engaged in a systematic pattern of acts that resulted in harm to, and the destruction of, a
substantial part of the West Papuan group. The Indonesian government has disavowed genocidal
intent by citing economic goals and repression of West Papuan “separatist” activity as the
motivation for many of its acts. However, there is little doubt that animus toward the West
Papuans has been a critical part of the motivation for the government’s policies. Moreover,
although the obvious, inevitable effect of these policies and acts would be the destruction of the
West Papuan group, the Indonesian authorities did nothing to counter this effect. This paper
does not resolve conclusively the question of whether the acts perpetrated by the Indonesian
government against West Papuans were committed with intent to destroy the West Papuan
group, as such. However, according to current understandings of the Genocide Convention, the
pattern of acts and omissions documented by this paper supports the conclusion that the
Indonesian government has acted with the necessary intent to find that it has perpetrated
genocide against the people of West Papua.
6
II. INTRODUCTION
This paper considers whether the historical and contemporary situation in West Papua
constitutes genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide. Since Indonesia secured control over West Papua in 1963, and established
formal sovereignty over the territory in 1969 through the so-called Act of Free Choice, West
Papuans have lived as second-class citizens in their own land, deprived of their right to selfdetermination
and subjected to serious human rights abuses at the hands of Indonesian
authorities. Violent military campaigns and extrajudicial killings have claimed the lives of
thousands of West Papuans. Thousands more have been subjected to torture, disappearance,
arbitrary detention, rape, or other forms of serious mental and bodily harm. The government of
Indonesia has forced West Papuans off of their land, exploited their resources, destroyed their
property and crops, denigrated and attacked their culture, and excluded them from the upper
levels of government, business, and education.
The term “genocide” was coined by jurist Raphael Lemkin during the Second World War
as a means of describing the atrocities perpetrated by the Third Reich. It became a crime under
international law when the U.N. General Assembly voted, on December 9, 1948, to approve the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Genocide
Convention defines genocide as any of a proscribed set of acts “committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.”1 The Convention
entered into force on January 12, 1951, and the proscription of the crime of genocide, as defined
1 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Dec. 9, 1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 277, reprinted
in 45 AM. J. INT’L. L. 7 (1951).
7
by the Convention, has long since became a norm of jus cogens2 and an unequivocal part of
customary international law.3
Genocide is not a term to be used lightly, and we do not do so here. Genocide is the
ultimate denial of the right to existence of entire groups of human beings. It is the quintessential
human rights crime, a crime that attacks the very concept of humanity. It is also a crime that
cannot easily hide behind a protective wall of domestic jurisdiction and state sovereignty, as it
imposes affirmative, binding obligations upon all states parties to prevent and punish it. The
Convention’s unusual enforcement component, and the reluctance of some states to employ the
term because of the weighty responsibilities it invokes, caution against enlarging the definition of
genocide in a way that weakens the stigma associated with the crime or dilutes the strength of
states’ commitment to preventing it.
Many atrocities that do not meet the strict definition of genocide fit within the definition
of “crimes against humanity,” a broader concept that includes persecution against any
identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or other
grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law. Since 1948,
the gap between crimes against humanity and genocide has narrowed considerably. Today,
2 The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties defines a jus cogens norm as one that is “accepted and recognized
by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted . . . .” Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties, art. 53.
3 Prosecutor v. Goran Jelisic, Case No. IT-95-10-T, ICTY T. Ch. I, 14 Dec. 1999, para. 60 (“[T]he Convention has
become one of the most widely accepted international instruments relating to human rights. There can be absolutely
no doubt that its provisions fall under customary international law as, moreover, noted by the International Court of
Justice as early as 1951. The Court went even further and placed the crime on the level of jus cogens because of its
extreme gravity.”). Customary international law is commonly defined as the law of the international community
that “results from a general and consistent practice of states followed by them from a sense of legal obligation.”
Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States § 102(2). The governing statute for the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) includes customary international law, or “international custom, as evidence of a
general practice of law,” as one of the types of law that the Court is to apply. Statute for the International Court of
Justice, Oct. 23, 1945, art. 38(1)(b), 59 Stat. 1055, 1060. The ICJ has further explained that for a rule of customary
international law to arise, “[n]ot only must the acts concerned amount to a settled practice, but they must also be
such, or be carried out in such a way, as to be evidence that this practice is rendered obligatory by the existence of a
rule of law requiring it.” North Sea Continental Shelf (F.R.G. v. Den., F.R.G. v. Neth., 1969 I.C.J. 3, 44 (Feb. 20).
8
crimes against humanity may be committed in times of peace as well as in times of war. States
arguably have an obligation to prevent and to punish crimes against humanity as a matter of
customary international law. Thus, even if the human rights violations committed by the
Indonesian government against West Papuans do not meet the criteria for genocide as defined by
the Genocide Convention, they likely constitute crimes against humanity and warrant
international action.
This paper assesses whether the conduct of the Indonesian government toward the West
Papuans constitutes genocide. Part I presents a detailed chronological account of the human
rights situation in West Papua, from the beginning of Indonesian rule until today, based on
available historical and contemporary English-language sources. Part II applies the law of
genocide to the case of West Papua. It begins with a brief introduction to the law of genocide
and then considers three questions that correspond to the three elements of the crime of genocide.
First, do the West Papuans constitute a group under the definition of genocide? Second, do the
acts perpetrated by the Indonesians against the West Papuans qualify as genocidal? Third,
should we infer from these acts an “intent to destroy” the West Papuans as such? This paper
does not claim to definitively answer these questions, but instead aims to provide a strong
foundation for further serious discussion of whether the human rights abuses perpetrated against
the West Papuans constitute genocide. Equally important, it seeks to highlight the urgent need
for additional archival and on-the-ground investigation and for heightened international attention
to the grave human rights situation in West Papua. Whenever the specter of genocide is raised,
such investigation and concern may become literally a matter of life and death.
9
III. HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN WEST PAPUA
A. Pre-Colonial West Papua
West Papua is the western half of New Guinea, the second largest island in the world.
The island is divided into two parts, West Papua, which Indonesia has incorporated as a
province, and Papua New Guinea, an ex-Australian-administered territory that gained its
independence in 1975. The inhabitants of West Papua emigrated from Asia nearly 50,000 years
ago, during the last ice age. They consisted primarily of three groups—Negritos, Papuans, and
Melanesians—who are today categorized as a single race, Melanesians. Historically, the people
living in West Papua have been divided along clan and linguistic lines. In 1963, when the
Netherlands handed West New Guinea over to Indonesia, it included 200 languages among
500,000 Papuans in an estimated population of 700,000.4 Separate communities often came
together in loose political confederations and according to their common ecological conditions,
but relationships were often colored by competition for power over traditional lands.
West Papuans’ first contact with neighboring Malay cultures occurred as traders from the
Malay archipelago (now Indonesia) took herbs, spices, and slaves from the island, beginning at
least as early as the seventh century. Indonesia claims that the Java-based Hindu emperor
Majapahit included West New Guinea5 within his kingdom circa 1293. He did not make any
effort to inhabit the island or befriend the natives, and many historians dispute the view that
Majapahit’s empire extended this far to the east.6 European explorers discovered the island
along the Spice Route, and a Spanish trader claimed it for his king in 1545. The Spanish never
returned, and the island became home to a British settlement in 1793, during a period when the
4 ROBIN OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR: THE GUERILLA STRUGGLE IN IRIAN JAYA 2 (1985).
5 Id. at 6. This was the name given to Papua under Dutch rule. The local residents, however, call themselves
Papuans, and the region West Papua. For the remainder of this paper, West New Guinea will be used to refer to the
region when under Dutch rule.
6 See id.
10
European powers were vying for colonial territories in southeast Asia. When the British were
driven out by disease and the inhospitable landscape two years later, the Dutch quickly took their
place. The Netherlands declared its sovereignty over the western half of New Guinea in 1828.
B. West Papua Under Dutch Colonial Rule
The difficulty of inhabiting the land with European settlers contributed to the new
colonial government’s decision to appoint the Sultan of Tidore to administer the territory for the
Dutch.7 Although this arrangement was made in 1848, the Dutch were slow in setting up
administrative institutions and used the territory mostly for its natural resources. The oil
company Royal Dutch Shell began to tap into the region’s oil reserves in 1907. Over the next
few decades, the wealth of resources available became increasingly apparent and was being
actively exploited by both British and American companies. As a response to the widespread
Indonesian rebellion against colonial rule in 1926, the Dutch instituted a policy of internal exile.
They created a new settlement in West New Guinea, known as Tanah Merah (“red earth”) to
house exiled Indonesians. The settlement served to establish an Indonesian presence in New
Guinea. Because of its frequent malaria outbreaks and its isolated location in the midst of a
jungle peopled by headhunting tribes, Indonesian nationalists dreaded Tanah Merah and grew
increasingly hostile toward the West Papuan people. When the Netherlands surrendered its
colonies to Japan in 1942, the Dutch forced Indonesians from Tanah Merah onto steamers
headed to Australia, where they were imprisoned by the Australian government.8
When the Dutch fled West New Guinea, they did not leave behind much of an
administrative infrastructure. The majority of the island’s inland areas were in contact only with
7 The Sultan was also responsible for the administration of numerous islands later included within independent
Indonesia. This is another historical fact on which the Indonesians base their claim to West Papua. The Sultan’s
administrative powers were taken away in 1901, when he began causing problems for the Dutch government.
8 See OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 9-10.
11
churches and missionary projects, which were scattered throughout the region. Japan saw itself
as the liberator of the region from the control of white imperialists, yet sought to impose its own
sovereignty over the West Papuans. The Japanese were faced with voices of West Papuan
dissent left over from Dutch rule, including the Koreri movement that had developed in Biak.9
The movement was based on a belief that a powerful spiritual figure would come and liberate the
Papuans from oppression.10 In response to the Koreri movement and the small, armed resistance
to Japanese domination, Japanese officials arrested, tortured, and killed suspected members of
the movement and ordered entire villages to be relocated. West Papuan resistance and Japanese
retaliation continued until the liberation of the region by American-led forces in August 1944.
After Japan’s surrender in August 1945, the Dutch administration gradually returned to West
New Guinea.
In the meantime, a separate independence movement had been brewing in neighboring
Indonesia. The Body for Researching Indonesian Independence (BPKI), an organization created
under the Japanese that later included many of independent Indonesia’s most prominent leaders,
held two meetings in July 1945 to discuss the possibility and the implications of Indonesian
independence, including the question of which territories would be part of the new state. The
majority of the delegates supported an independent Indonesia that would include all of the Dutch
Indies and West New Guinea. When Indonesian nationalists proclaimed independence on
August 17, 1945, their version of Indonesia included the territory of West New Guinea. During
the four-year independence struggle that followed, the Papuan question was largely ignored by
9 Biak is a small island off the north coast of West Papua. It is considered a region of West Papua.
10 The movement gained support at the end of the 1930s under the leadership of a woman named Angganita, who
followers believed had magical powers and began to preach resistance, first against the foreign missionaries, then
against the Dutch. OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 11. Angganita was arrested by the Dutch,
who, according to one of its colonial administrators, saw the movement as “far less a religion than a self-conscious
Papuan nationalism.” CARMEL BUDIARDJO & LIEM SOEI LIONG,WEST PAPUA: THE OBLITERATION OF A PEOPLE 5
(3d ed. 1988) (1973).
12
the international community. At the 1949 Hague Round Table Conference, which established
independent Indonesia, the Dutch refused to cede control of West New Guinea to the
Indonesians, preferring to maintain it as the final foothold of Dutch imperialism in southeast
Asia. The Dutch promised Papuan independence at some point in the near future. Thus, when
Indonesia finally gained independence in 1949, it did not include West New Guinea.
The exclusion of West New Guinea from newly independent Indonesia was largely the
result of strong Papuan opposition that made it clear that the inhabitants of West New Guinea
had no interest in being grouped with Indonesia. In July 1946, the head of the Netherlands
administration in New Guinea organized a conference of representatives from the eastern
archipelago. Franz Kaisiepo, the Papuan delegate to the conference, expressed the view that if
Papua were to become part of Indonesia, it would be swallowed up without any attention paid to
the economic situation of the inhabitants.11 Supported by the Australian government, he cited
differences in language and ethnic background as the major factors separating the people of
Papua from the rest of the archipelago.12 He was joined by Johan Ariks, a nationalist Papuan
who advocated armed resistance to any foreign control of the area.13
As fear of the Indonesian communist threat grew among the Western countries, the Dutch
promised to bring West New Guinea into the modern world by educating and training the
indigenous Papuans to govern the country and then pulling out of the area. In the 1950s, the
Dutch began the process of Papuan nation building in earnest. By 1957, the Netherlands had
created numerous positions for Papuans in government services, and the goal of handing over a
majority of government posts to Papuans seemed within reach.14
11 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 14-15.
12 Id.
13 Id. at 17.
14 Id. at 17-19.
13
By the end of the 1950s, the Dutch development plan was well on its way to success, but
it was cut short prematurely by the Sukarno government’s escalating diplomatic and military
pressure on the Dutch to cede control over Papua. President Sukarno used the Dutch plan as an
opportunity to play on Indonesian nationalism and distract his constituency from their declining
economic situation. The Indonesian government began a campaign with pamphlets, slogans,
rallies, and a war cry emphasizing the need to gain control of West Papua. Indonesia amassed
weapons from the Soviet Union in a military buildup intended to intimidate the Dutch. The
United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, seeking to avoid a Cold War confrontation,
chose not to support the Papuans and instead sought to placate the Indonesians.
Nevertheless, the U.N. General Assembly, in three separate debates on the question of “West
Irian,”15 failed to pass a resolution either backing Sukarno’s claim to the territory or affording the
Papuans the right to self-determination. Nonetheless, in February 1961, the Dutch held elections
for the West New Guinea Council, a representative body intended to encourage the establishment
of a Papuan political elite that would eventually govern the region after Dutch withdrawal.16 In
April 1961, the Council met for the first time. With this governing body in place, the Dutch
government formally proposed the “Luns Plan” to the U.N. General Assembly. The plan called
for a termination of Dutch sovereignty followed by a U.N. administration and the establishment
of an international study commission that would supervise the administration and organize a
plebiscite to determine the territory’s status.17 On December 1, 1966, the Council agreed on the
name of West Papua for their new nation, created a national anthem, and adopted the Morning
15 This was the Indonesian title for Dutch New Guinea, or Papua.
16 The Council included three Dutch representatives, two Eurasians, and twenty-three Papuans; sixteen were elected
and twelve appointed by the Dutch. JOHN SALTFORD, THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE INDONESIAN TAKEOVER OF
WEST PAPUA, 1962-1969: THE ANATOMY OF BETRAYAL (2003). [hereinafter SALTFORD, UNITED NATIONS AND
INDONESIAN TAKEOVER].
17 Id. At 11.
14
Star Flag. The flag was raised for the first time later that day, the anniversary of which is now
celebrated by West Papuans as their independence day.
In response, the Indonesian government began to use military tactics against the Papuans.
Indonesians launched a paratroop assault on West Papua and forces of its former colonial ruler,
and the Indonesian and Dutch navies engaged each other off the Papuan shores.
With outright war an imminent threat, U.S. President John F. Kennedy took on the role of
negotiating a peace accord between the Dutch and the Indonesians. On August 15, 1962, the two
parties signed the New York Agreement under the auspices of the United Nations. No West
Papuan representative participated in the agreement. By its terms, the Netherlands was to
transfer its authority to an interim U.N. administration, the United Nations Temporary Executive
Authority (UNTEA), on October 1, and the U.N. administration would hand the territory over to
Indonesia on or after May 1, 1963. The agreement further provided for a U.N.-supervised
election, sometime after Indonesia’s take-over, to allow the Papuans to decide their own fate:
whether or not to remain a part of Indonesia. The plan was implemented immediately, and
UNTEA took control of West Papua in October 1962.
C. Indonesia’s Seizure of Power and the Act of Free Choice
Prior to the arrival of the UNTEA forces, various Indonesian commanders who claimed
that they had liberated West Papua (or West Irian, as they now called it) asserted their rule over
the locals through military force. Even after the arrival of UNTEA’s security force, about 1500
Indonesian commandos remained in West Irian, ostensibly to assist the local police. Instead,
they engaged in harsh tactics to curb Papuan nationalist sentiment, including mass arrests and
sometimes torture. At the same time, the Indonesians exploited the local economy, mandated the
15
use of the Indonesian language as the mode of instruction in schools, and formulated plans for
the emigration and settlement of 400,000 Javanese in West Irian.18
UNTEA pulled out in May 1963, despite repeated requests by West Papuans for them to
stay and protect Papuan rights. After UNTEA’s departure, an armed struggle began between the
Indonesian military and a pro-independence Papuan resistance movement known as the
Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM).19 Papuans from all over the region joined to support the
OPM, and the Indonesian government responded by targeting civilians as well as OPM fighters.
Killings, disappearances, torture, and rape of Papuans by government forces became common. In
addition, the Indonesian government organized mass migrations from Java to West Papua,
resettling hundreds of Indonesian families in the midst of the Papuan population.
In April 1967, a U.S.-based multinational mining corporation, Freeport Indonesia, signed
its first concession agreement with Indonesia’s recently established “New Order” government.
This “Contract of Work” was reportedly the first contract entered into by the military-led
Indonesian administration, and it gave Freeport “broad powers over the local population and
resources, including the right to take land and other property and to resettle indigenous
inhabitants while providing ‘reasonable compensation’ only for dwellings and other permanent
improvements.”20 Today, P.T. Freeport Indonesia, which is 91-percent owned by its U.S.-based
parent company, Freeport-McMoRan (in which the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto
holds a 16.5-perecent direct interest), continues to mine in West Papua.21 Its mining, as well as
security, activities have greatly exacerbated the tensions and violence between the Indonesian
18 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 33-35.
19 This is translated as the Free Papua Movement.
20 Abigail Abrash, Development Aggression: Observations on Human Rights Conditions in the PT Freeport
Indonesia Contract of Work Areas, With Recommendations 9-10 (Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human
Rights, July 2002).
21 Grasberg Indonesia, Rio Tinto Website, available at http://www.riotinto.com/aboutus/worldwide
Operations/default.aspx (last visited Dec. 9, 2003).
16
government and the native Papuans. For example, a major purpose of the Indonesian
transmigration plan has been to provide a non-native workforce for Freeport’s operations.
Freeport arrived in West Papua two years before the Indonesian government conducted
the now infamous referendum, the “Act of Free Choice.” Under Article 18 of the New York
Agreement of 1962, all adults from the West Papuan territory were to be eligible to participate in
the act of self-determination, which was “to be carried out in accordance with international
practice.” Fernando Ortiz-Sanz, the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, arrived in
Indonesia in August 1968 to “advise, assist and participate” in a referendum to determine the
future status of the territory, which was named the “Act of Free Choice” by the Indonesian
government.22 From the outset, Ortiz-Sanz found his mission under-funded, under-staffed, and
constantly struggling with the Indonesian government in Jakarta to ensure adherence to the
guarantees of the New York Agreement, for example, its requirement that the act of selfdetermination
be carried out “in accordance with international practice.” The government, for its
part, had made its intent clear. In an April 1969 speech, President Suharto assured the
Indonesian military of the impending “return of West Irian into the fold of the motherland.”23
Under significant pressure from Jakarta, the West Papuan provincial assembly sanctioned the
creation of eight assemblies to determine the individual representatives who would participate in
the Act of Free Choice and who were to be selected either by election, by choice of social,
cultural or religious organizations, or by the assemblies themselves. All told, each member of
the eight assemblies represented approximately 750 West Papuans, and the assemblies in turn
selected 1,026 delegates, 1,024 of whom eventually voted on the Act later in the year.24
22 Report of the Secretary General Regarding the Act of Self-Determination in West Irian, U.N. Doc. A/7723, 6
November 1969, Annex 1 [hereinafter Report of the Secretary General].
23 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 41.
24 Report of the Secretary General, supra note 22, Annex 1.
17
Ortiz-Sanz, understanding the extent to which the Indonesian government was controlling
the Act from behind the scenes, campaigned for more direct representation, but was rebuffed by
Jakarta. The resistance movement, the activities of which had largely ceased toward the end of
1968, suddenly came back to life in April 1969.25 Various insurgencies sprouted up in Waghete
and in Enarotali, where locals dug holes in runways at a nearby airstrip to prevent Indonesian
planes from landing. The April uprisings were characterized by an undertone of nationalism,
with the Morning Star flag becoming a rallying symbol for protesters at Enarotali. In response to
one of the uprisings in Paniai,26 the Indonesian military conducted machine-gun strafing runs
from the air on protestors, killing dozens and forcing thousands into the wilderness, where
heavily armed Indonesian paratroopers followed.27 Neither of the April uprisings lasted long,
but they sparked a flurry of OPM activity throughout West Papua, a flurry that was met with a
fierce response by the Indonesian military, which overpowered and captured a number of
resistance fighters and imprisoned them in military camps in what have been described as
“barbaric” conditions.28
A number of OPM members attempted to flee to Australian-controlled Papua New
Guinea (PNG), only to be turned back just over the border. In camps back on the West Papua
side of the border, members of the Indonesian military retaliated against the refugees, killing 28
in two separate incidents. As West Papuans staged a number of minor uprisings throughout the
countryside, the Indonesian government sought to convince the foreign press and the U.N. team
that commerce in West Papua’s commercial centers was booming. These efforts were less than
25 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 42.
26 The larger region that included Enarotali.
27 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 42-43.
28 Id. at 43-44.
18
convincing, with inflation perilously high, few employment opportunities—especially for
Papuans—and the local economy in a state of near chaos.29
In response to a surge in anti-government sentiment, Indonesian military leaders began
making public threats against Papuan leaders who voted (or advocated voting) for West Papuan
independence, vowing to shoot them on the spot if they did not vote for Indonesian control.
Consequently, when the voting finally got underway at the beginning of May, there was little
doubt as to the outcome. Ortiz-Sanz and his staff attempted to oversee all of the local
proceedings, but, in the end, the U.N. team actually observed the selection of only 195 of the
1,026 selected to participate in the Act. Of those 195, it was obvious to the U.N. observers that
many—if not all—had been coerced by the Indonesian government.30
With the representatives selected, the eight regional assemblies began meeting in July.
The first vote came in Merauke, where the 175 delegates were kept under close guard by the
government before eventually voting unanimously for Indonesian control. The scene was
repeated throughout West Papua at the next six assembly meetings and the final assembly vote at
Jayapura on August 2. With no dissenting votes, 1,024 Papuan council members chose
Indonesian control. The Indonesian government had its territory.
In November 1969, Ortiz-Sanz filed his official report with the United Nations,
expressing disappointment with the process and dissatisfaction with the Indonesian government
and the overall mission. The report, while generally affirming the legitimacy of the result,
concluded that “‘with the limitations imposed by the geographical character of the territory and
the general political situation in the area, an act of free choice has taken place in accordance with
Indonesian practice,’” pointedly omitting any reference to the referendum’s accordance with
29 Id. At 44-45.
30 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 24-26. See also OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR,
supra note 4, at 46-48.
19
“international practice,” which had been one of the requirements of the New York Agreement.31
Despite strong statements from the delegations from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Zambia,
among others,32 the General Assembly passed a resolution taking note of the results of the Act.
At least for the time being, the General Assembly acknowledged Indonesia’s legal control of
West Papua.
D. West Papuan Resistance and Indonesian Repression
In the aftermath of the Act of Free Choice, the Indonesian government, which had
initiated a transmigration program to West Papua during the mid-1960s, stepped up its efforts to
populate the island with migrants from other parts of the country. The military evicted many
native Papuans from their land by trickery or at gunpoint in order to allow settlers from other
parts of Indonesia, often ex-military men and their families, to move onto the land.33
After a short grace period between the conclusion of the referendum and its
acknowledgement by the United Nations, the Indonesian military increased its operations in
West Papua. These operations were increasingly brutal. In May 1970, a unit of the Indonesian
Armed Forces (“ABRI”) Udayana Division shot dead Maria Bonsapia, a pregnant villager,
before a crowd of 80 women and children. The soldiers cut the fetus out of her body and
dissected the baby. A group of soldiers also raped and killed her sister.34 The soldiers then
informed the gathered crowd that their military colleagues had recently massacred 500 West
Papuans in the Lereh district.35
31 SALTFORD, UNITED NATIONS AND INDONESIAN TAKEOVER, supra note 16, at 166, quoting Report of the Secretary
General, Annex 1, para.253.
32 Ghana proposed an alternate resolution noting the severe problems of the 1969 Act of Free Choice and calling for
another self-determination referendum by 1972. However, this was never voted on.
33 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 58.
34 Id. at 50.
35 Seth Rumkorem, a former Free Papua Movement (the “OPM”) leader, described this massacre to Tahanan Politik
(“TAPOL”) in 1984. TAPOL is the name of a London (UK)-based organization campaigning for human rights in
20
In June 1970, an Indonesian patrol of fifty red-berets36 and green-berets37 assembled on
the west coast of the island of Biak after an alleged OPM attack on Indonesian soldiers. The
Indonesian soldiers encircled two villages on the shore, Wusdori and Kridori. They forced all
villagers out into an open space between the two villages and killed all the men, fifty-five in
total, in front of the women and children.38 The next day, the soldiers captured thirty Papuan
men from neighboring villages. They forced the captives into the boats of those killed the day
before, tied stones around their necks, and threw them overboard. These men all drowned.39
The continued brutality stirred up further protest to Indonesian rule, especially in the
jungles along the West Papua-PNG border, where a new movement known as the Tentara
Pembebasan Nasional40 (TPN) was slowly gaining strength. On July 1, 1971, the TPN, in a
move more symbolic than practical, formally declared the independence of West Papua,
signifying for posterity that the people of West Papua refused to accept the Act of Free Choice
and that they would continue to fight to see that the principle behind it—their right to selfdetermination—
would one day be vindicated.41
In the mid-1970s, the Indonesian government became worried that the ferocity of the
military’s response to OPM and TPN attacks was motivating more and more West Papuans to
join the resistance. The government began moving away from large-scale troop deployments
toward a more active role for the security agencies, most notably the Command for the
Restoration of Security and Order (“KOPKAMTIB”), Indonesia’s top military intelligence
Indonesia. The acronym is the name for “political prisoner” in Indonesia. See TAPOL, The Indonesian Human
Rights Campaign, at http://tapol.gn.apc.org/ (last visited July 5, 2002).
36 Indonesian elite forces.
37 Indonesian infantry.
38 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 79-80 (quoting Henk de Mari, in DE TELEGRAF, Oct. 11, 12,
& 19, 1974). Extracts from these articles were published in TAPOL BULLETIN, No. 8, January 1975).
39 Id.
40 “People’s Liberation Army.”
41 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 56; BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at
64-65.
21
body.42 As Osborne notes, “KOPKAMTIB intimidated elements of the Papuan population:
academics, bureaucrats with suspect loyalties, village heads, the unemployed.”43
According to OPM leaders, many key figures were killed during this time. Poisoning
was a popular method.44 The fate of Marthin Luther Waren was a typical case.45 In August
1972, he disappeared after the Indonesians allegedly released him from prison. After he signed a
release document, his friends, Daan and Kapaopas, saw an Indonesian intelligence officer
offering him a ride in a non-military vehicle. Marthin Luther Waren left with the officer and
never appeared again.46
Also in 1972, a new and deadly disease began taking its toll on the native West Papuans:
cysticercosis. Physicians from the Enarotali hospital first detected the epidemic when they found
tapeworm eggs in nine percent of 122 hospitalized Ekari people.47 These physicians traced the
transmission to the batch of pigs from Bali that the Indonesian government gave as a “peace
offering” to the Ekari people48 after a prolonged military counter-insurgent operation.49 In 1977,
the epidemic ranked as one of the major causes of mortality in the adult Ekari population.50 By
1978, serological tests confirmed that at least twenty-five percent of adults and children among
the Ekari were infected with cysticercosis. By 1973, the disease had spread to West Papuans
living in the Baliem Valley.51 Later, it spread further east to the village of Ok Sibil, near the
42 KOPKAMTIB was Indonesia’s foremost military intelligence agency well into the 1980s.
43 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 59.
44 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 59, 83.
45 Id. at 59.
46 Id.
47 Id.
48 Ekari tribespeople were the first victims of the pigworm epidemic. They inhabit one of the two densely populated
highland basins—Paniai Lake, which was also the most popular destiny for Javanese transmigrants. Thousands of
these Papuans had fought in the armed resistance against the incorporation of West Papua into Indonesia. Id. at 58-
60.
49 Id.
50 Id.
51 The Baliem Valley is located in the central part of West Papua.
22
border with Papua New Guinea.52 The health authorities in Jakarta were slow to provide vital
drugs. When a Catholic priest attempted to obtain a drug believed to be the only cure, he
discovered that it was not included on the list of medicines allowed for import into Indonesia.
The territorial Director-General for Public Health told him that the Department of Health could
do nothing to fight the disease “except advise people to change their habits and way of life . . . .
In terms of national priorities, tapeworm comes much lower than other diseases like malaria,
tuberculosis and so on.”53
During the same period, anti-Indonesian government political activity was growing
among indigenous Papuans. By 1973, the sentiment of many West Papuans had swayed in favor
of the OPM, especially as the “Indonesianisation” of the education system and of Papuan society
as a whole began to take root.54 The Indonesian government, which had publicly attempted to
step back its opposition to the West Papuan independence movement, did not help its cause
when, in the summer of that year, it changed the name of West Papua from “West Irian” to “Irian
Jaya” (“victorious Irian”) to go along with the Indonesian name for the capital, Jayapura
(“victory city”).55
In 1977 and 1978, the Indonesian military executed major operations in the Jayawijaya
highlands. On July 22, 1977, the Indonesian army used two aircraft to strafe a group of villages,
including Akimuga, about 40 kilometers from Timika. Each of these villages had an estimated
population of more than a thousand.56
52 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 59-60.
53 Id. at 60 (quoting TEMPO, Aug. 6, 1983).
54 Id.
55 There is debate about what “Irian” means. The Indonesian government officially maintains that it is an acronym,
Ikut Republik Indonesia Anti Nederland, loosely translating as “follow the Republic of Indonesia against the
Netherlands.” Many West Papuans claim that Irian is actually an old Biak term, though there is disagreement as to
the meaning. See Irian Jaya, available at http://www.irja.org/eypij.htm (last visited April 28, 2002).
56 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 69. This account was given by Terry Doyle, a civilian
Australian pilot who for eight years flew from Darwin to a small airport that served the Freeport copper mine, south
23
Soon after this military operation, a group of West Papuans cut Freeport’s copper slurry
pipeline. The Indonesian army responded with massive and indiscriminate retaliatory actions,
including a sweeping ground operation code-named Operasi Tumpas (“Annihilation”)57 around
the region of Akimuga. The military arrested and detained local Papuans, many for months.
According to Amnesty International, the army used steel containers to incarcerate thirty men in
total darkness for three months in the Freeport mining site, where night temperatures approached
the freezing point.58
Strafing and bombing missions killed numerous West Papuan villagers and caused
thousands to flee their homes into the jungles. In May 1977, OV-10 Broncos dropped antipersonnel
“Daisy Cluster” bombs near the village of Ilaga, located on the other side of the
Puncak Jaya mountain chain from Freeport’s mine.59 At the end of August, two OV-10 Bronco
Bombers shelled the region of Akimuga. Soldiers also destroyed most of the food gardens
belonging to Papuans in the region. As a result, many Papuan children suffered severe
malnutrition.60
According to the “Full Report on the Irian Jaya Situation” prepared by the OPM, in all of
the villages through which the Indonesian army passed, the army burned houses and churches,
shot the villagers’ pigs and chickens, and killed men, women and children.61 In the village of
Kuyuwagi, Indonesian soldiers disemboweled local Papuans whom they had killed, twisting their
of the Baliem Valley. Upon taking a routine flight into Timika airport that day, he learned from an American
employee of Freeport that the attack was to take place. He got airborne right after the attack and saw smoke and
dust rising and huts burning. He also heard the Indonesian pilots discussing the attack over the radio. Similar
events were described by two RAAF air force officers who were on a team engaged in the mapping operation that
formed part of Australia’s military aid program to Indonesia. Id. at 68.
57 Id. at 71.
58 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 34.
59 Id. at 34-35 (quoting Denis Reinhardt, NATION REVIEW, 15-21 Sept. 1977). “Daisy Cluster” or “Cluster bombing”
is a high-altitude delivery of a 15,000-pound conventional bomb designed to kill everyone present within a huge
area. Originally it was designed to create an instant clearing in the jungle.
60 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 70.
61 Id. at 71.
24
entrails around sticks and inserting stones, cabbages and leaves into their bodies. The soldiers
also used bayonets to pierce pregnant women through the vagina and tear them open to the chest.
They cut unborn babies into halves.62 In one incident, an Indonesian soldier killed Nalogolan
Kibak, the tribal leader of Kampong Dila, and filled a bucket with his blood. Then the soldiers
forced the tribal leaders, teachers, and pastors of the area, at gunpoint, to drink the blood.63
The military report of incidents in the District of Jayawijaya in 1977 noted that repeated
strafing from helicopters resulted in “many casualties.”64 Eliezer Bonay, a former governor of
West Papua, placed the death toll around 3,000 when he testified before the Tribunal on Human
Rights in West Papua.65 The Jakarta daily, Kompas, reported that during the time of military
attacks, there were “a very large number of victims . . . . [T]he Baliem River was so full of
corpses that for a month and a half, . . . people could not bring themselves to eat fish.”66 The
high death toll was due to the indiscriminate aerial bombardment and shelling “where there were
villages or [wherever] there were people.”67
In May 1978, the OPM kidnapped seven high-ranking Indonesian army officers and
civilian officials to draw international attention to its demand for negotiations with the
Indonesians.68 The Indonesian military responded with bombing sorties by OV-10 Bronco
aircrafts and the burning of villages on both sides of the West Papua/Papua New Guinea border.
62 Id.
63 Id.
64 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, App. I: Military Report of Incidents in the District of
Jayawijaya in 1977, at 119-24.
65 West Papuan émigrés in Papua New Guinea set up the South Pacific Human Rights Tribunal to investigate the
human rights violations in West Papua. Id. at 169. The OPM estimated that several thousand people had lost their
lives in the highlands uprisings. OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 72. Indonesia claimed that
the death toll was much lower; one officer told visiting Australian journalist Denis Reinhardt that around 900 people
lost their lives in the uprisings. Id.
66 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 68 (quoting KOMPAS, 28 November 1977).
67 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 72.
68 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 69.
25
The operation led to the death of several hundred people and drove at least a thousand to flee to
Papua New Guinea.69
Indonesian military forces also committed extrajudicial killings. In 1976, Indonesian
soldiers, on the order of the chief of intelligence of Korem 172, the military command in
Abepura, beat two prisoners, Pilomen Wenda and Oscar, to death with iron bars.70
Mimi Fatahan was another victim of extrajudicial killing. He had fled to Papua New
Guinea in April 1977. After Papua New Guinea authorities forcibly deported him to West
Papua, the military command detained him in Jayapura. In May 1977, a hunting party of officers
from the regional military command took Fatahan to the jungle. He never returned.71 One
informant reported that villagers discovered Mimi Fatahan’s body, chopped into pieces, in a
drum floating on Lake Sentani, the largest lake in West Papua.72
In 1979, the death of Baldus Mofu, an elected member of the New Guinea Council set up
by the Dutch in 1961, drew wide publicity. Mofu had been under close surveillance by the
Indonesians. Whenever the OPM went into action or unrest broke out in the towns, Indonesian
military officials arrested, beat, and tortured him.73 Mofu was imprisoned again between July
and October 1979. Several weeks after the Indonesians released him, two unknown men took
him away from his house. Early the next morning, he returned home, bruised and swollen all
over. He died within hours.74 Mofu and Mimi Fatahan were particularly prominent victims of
Indonesian repression, but many shared their fate as Indonesia sought to consolidate its control
over the territory.
69 Id, at 69 (quoting PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY, Sept. 1978).
70 Id. at 85 (quoting TAPOL BULLETIN, No 46, July 1981). This report is based on an army document that recorded
the narrative of Soeyoto, a retired low-ranking soldier, who drove the victims to the place where they were beaten to
death. Soeyoto heard them crying out as they were beaten up, but he was not present to witness their deaths directly.
71 Id. at 85.
72 Id.
73 Id. at 85-86.
74Id.
26
E. Exploitation of West Papuans’ Land, Resources, and Labor
Since the beginning of Indonesian rule, government and military officials have been
heavily involved in resource extraction in West Papua. By 1980, the oil industry in West Papua
had gone into decline, prompting the dismissal of local West Papuan employees in favor of
Javanese labor, which was viewed as more skilled and reliable.75 A U.S. professor who visited
West Papua in 1980 noted the planned influx of Indonesian workers, including more than 2,000
families that were scheduled to be “dropped” near two major oilfields in order to implement a
“policy of non-employment of Melanesians in the oil industry.”76
For the Indonesian government and its foreign investors, the success of copper mining in
West Papua more than made up for the decline in oil production. In the 1980s, U.S.-owned
Freeport continued to exploit the rich copper resources of West Papua.77 By the beginning of the
1990s, the mining town of Tembagapura had become an enclave of expatriates and Indonesians,
segregated from the local people in a way described by Budiardjo as “reminiscent of South
Africa’s apartheid system.”78 In 1982, Freeport employed 452 expatriates, 1,859 Indonesians,
and only 200 Papuans. The Papuans were hired as unskilled laborers and forced to live on the
outskirts of the site in illegal squatter settlements.79
Freeport’s mining operations also led to the relocation of the Amungme tribe from the
region around Tembagapura to a hot, malarial area near the coast. In June 1980, the Amungme
were devastated by an epidemic that swept through the settlement, killing 216 children. Freeport
did nothing to provide food or medicine to the Papuans to fight the epidemic, although the
75 Id. at 32.
76 Id. (citing THE TIMES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA, May 22, 1981).
77 Australia West Papua Association, West Papua Information Kit, with Focus on Freeport 9 (1998).
78 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 34.
79 Id.
27
company itself attributed the high death toll to undernourishment.80 The Amungme leaders sent
numerous unsuccessful petitions to the Indonesian government, asking for government services;
access to schools and jobs; land rights, recognized by law, that had been denied to the Papuans;
and the negotiation of a new contract between Freeport, the Indonesian government, and the
Papuans.81 These petitions were uniformly unsuccessful, suggesting an Indonesian policy of
deliberate indifference toward the West Papuan people.
Indonesia’s desire to promote the growth of the plantation economy in West Papua led to
the further alienation of West Papuan land and culture. An investigation in the early 1980s of
two plantations managed by a state-owned company named PTP-2 revealed that land had been
seized with minimal if any compensation. Villagers were relocated and left with insufficient
land to practice their traditional shifting cultivation, as large areas of land were transformed from
self-supporting food production to single-crop production for sale on the global market.82 In
1988, the U.S. company Scott Paper and the Indonesian company Astra entered into a joint
venture and established a eucalyptus plantation and pulp mill in the Merauke region, threatening
to further displace indigenous Papuan sustenance production and to cause desertification in the
region.83
Indonesian authorities also continued to exploit West Papua’s rich timber resources. In
1982, three articles published in a Jakarta daily described the exploitation of the Asmat tribe,
which lived near the south coast of West Papua, by Jakarta-based timber companies. The
companies relocated the Asmat people and subjected them to a regime of compulsory labor, by
which local officials forced villagers to cut down their own forests at below-subsistence wages.
80 Id. at 36.
81 Id. at 37.
82 Id. at 55.
83 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE 77 (Anti-Slavery Society Indigenous Peoples and Development Series ed.,
1990).
28
Officials warned that those who refused to accept the logging jobs and conditions could be
arrested.84 “The compulsory log-felling scheme exploited forests that were the property of the
tribespeople. It threatened their sago supplies, the staple food of the Asmat people. . . . It
disrupted village life, forcing villagers to stay in the forest for as long as six weeks.”85 An
Indonesian environmental group warned that the Asmat people were “on the brink of cultural
starvation after a decade of enforced ironwood logging.”86 In 1988, a Jakarta weekly newspaper
warned that the Asmat area, rapidly succumbing to soil erosion, might soon be submerged by
nearby rivers.87
A similar instance of forced labor occurred in the Paniai region of West Papua from 1982
onward. There, the Indonesian military, having established a post around Tiga Danau, imposed a
system of forced labor on the indigenous population.88 All men, with the exception of teachers,
were required to work around the guard post every Wednesday, performing night patrol, and the
youth were forced to deliver rations to the guard post without compensation.89 If one man from
the village was absent for any of these duties, the whole village was punished.90 These
punishments included monetary fines as well as physical punishment or torture.91
84 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 38-40 (citing KOMPAS, Oct. 4, 6, & 7, 1982).The authorities
also extracted other forms of labor from the Papuans, arresting people on petty charges and keeping them in
detention to work on road and building construction. Id. at 40.
85 Id. at 39.
86 Id. (citing a statement by Kampanye Pelestarian Hutan Indonesia [the Movement of Indonesian NGOs against
Foreign Destruction], dated Oct. 1982 and made public during a National Parks Conference in Bali).
87 Id. at 41 (citing EDITOR, July 2, 1988, as reported in INDONESIA NEWS SERVICE No 120, July 25, 1988). Oil,
copper, and timber were not the only West Papuan resources exploited by outsiders. In 1987, Transpeche, a French
company, began to operate West Papua’s first canning business with an on-stream canning facility. Local West
Papuan fishermen, who still relied on poles and lines, had no hope of surviving against the deep nets and modern
equipment of Transpeche. Id. at 41-42.
88 Office for Justice and Peace, Memoria Passionis: The Historical Sketch of the Paniai’s Resistance and Suffering
at Tiga Danau Besar in Paniai Regency, Papua 17-18 (Nov. 2000).
89 Id. at 17.
90 Id. at 17-18.
91 Id. at 18.
29
F. Renewed Military Campaigns, Rape, Torture, and Extrajudicial Killings
During the same period, the Indonesian military waged a series of brutal campaigns
against the West Papuans, targeting civilians as well as members of the OPM. In 1981, the
military launched Operation Clean Sweep, which sought to undermine support for the Papuan
resistance by persecuting relatives of OPM members. Soldiers raped, assaulted, and killed the
wives of known rebels and sacked villages suspected of lending support to the OPM. Survivors
reported brutal murders in the Jayapura district, claiming that whole families had been bayoneted
to death and their bodies left to rot.92
Operation Clean Sweep apparently aimed both to intimidate those suspected of
supporting the OPM and to cleanse the border regions of Papuans to make room for Javanese
migrants. This objective was suggested by the army’s slogan: “Let the rats run into the jungle
so that the chickens can breed in the coop.”93 Lands emptied by Operation Clean Sweep were
converted into transmigration areas and soon populated by settlers from Java or elsewhere in
Indonesia.94
By the summer of 1981, the campaign had extended into the Central Highlands. In
August, the military responded to apparent OPM activity by bombing the village of Madi, in the
Paniai basin in the Central Highlands, where a Dutch television team had filmed hundreds of
OPM supporters training for the resistance. Troops used napalm and chemical weapons against
the villagers and killed at least 2,500; some estimates put the death toll as high as 13,000.95
92 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 87; BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at
80.
93 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 87.
94 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 81.
95 The Papua New Guinea government estimated that at least 2,500 West Papuans were killed in Madi, while Dutch
TV reporters suggested the much higher figure. OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 87-88.
30
A 1984 report by Amnesty International noted that the Indonesian army and police often
arrested and detained anyone suspected of OPM involvement, especially after nationalist
incidents such as the raising of the West Papuan flag.96 Military personnel arrested and detained
people without warrant and for indefinite periods of time.97
While most detained West Papuans were never formally charged or tried, those who were
brought to court were unlikely to receive a fair trial. TAPOL reported that police, the army,
prosecutors, and judges in West Papua regularly disregarded the procedural safeguards codified
in the Criminal Procedure Code. In 1983, Mulya Lubis, then chairman of the Foundation of
Legal Aid Institutes (“YLBHI”), declared, “The new Criminal Procedural Code might just as
well not exist, for it has no reverberations in Irian Jaya.”98
Indonesian officials commonly subjected political prisoners to torture, including electric
shocks, beating, pistol-whipping, deprivation of toilet facilities, and water torture, in which the
prisoner was placed in a bunker nearly filled with water. Many former prisoners also claimed
that detainees died after being poisoned by prison guards. Amnesty International documented
the experiences of eight West Papuans who were detained in the late 1980s after returning to
West Papua from Papua New Guinea, where they had been living as refugees. The eight men
were subjected to repeated beatings during their detention; during one session, an Indonesian
soldier ordered one of the men, weak from the beating, to climb a tree and recite the five articles
of the State ideology.99
96 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 84 (citing Amnesty International, Irian Jaya: Patterns of
Arrest and Detention, Document No. ASA 21/06/86, March 1986).
97 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 81, 83. The few trials that received attention outside of
West Papua involved individuals accused of raising the West Papuan flag or other peaceful political protests. WEST
PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 46.
98 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 83.
99 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 83 (citing Amnesty International, Indonesia/East Timor:
Allegations of Torture, Doc No. ASDA 21/01/88, Mar. 1988).
31
According to John Etheridge, a Catholic Bishop who worked with West Papuan refugees
in a refugee camp in Papua New Guinea:
I’ve heard stories about people being put in 44-gallon drums of water and
just left there for eight hours, and after that, taken out and put in the sun
for eight hours. I’ve heard lots of stories about people being cut to pieces.
I’ve seen photographs, a photograph of a hole in the ground, full of water,
and you can just see two heads—two or three heads—just above the water.
. . . I saw a photograph of a Melanesian in a room of some sort. It looked
like a morgue slab and he was naked. It was obvious that he was dead and
it looked to me that strips of skin had been taken off his legs and his feet.
100
In the 1980s, several West Papuans were killed while in detention or were disappeared and
presumed killed after being released from custody. In early 1984, Indonesian forces responded
to a pro-independence uprising in Jayapura by launching a major retaliatory campaign called
Operation Clean-up.101 Elite para-commandos flown in to direct the operation arrested and shot
to death several West Papuans suspected of OPM involvement.102
In 1983, the Indonesian authorities arrested and detained anthropologist Arnold Ap and
his colleague Eduard Mofu, who was the son of Baldus Mofu.103 Ap had promoted Papuan
cultural expression, championed the revival of traditional Papuan music, and, closer to the time
of his arrest, criticized Indonesian policies on the radio program that he hosted.104 Ap’s arrest
resulted in immediate protests and calls for his release. Neither Ap nor Mofu were released,
however. In April 1984, para-commandos killed the two men after tricking them into leaving
100 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 84.
101 OSBORNE, supra note 4, at 89.
102 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 86.
103 Baldus Mofu was disappeared and killed in 1971. See notes 73-74 and accompanying text.
104 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 149.
32
their place of detention on the premise that they would be taken to Papua New Guinea. The
Indonesian government claimed that the pair had been killed while trying to escape.105
Despite popular outrage at Ap’s death, extrajudicial killings continued. In May 1985,
Indonesian troops burned down 200 village houses in the Enarotali region of the Central
Highlands in retaliation for the killing of two migrants from Indonesia killed in an OPM
operation. In June and July of that year, the military killed 517 villagers in several highland
villages in reprisal for a confrontation between OPM and Indonesian troops that resulted in the
death of more than thirty Indonesian soldiers.106
In a 1987 report, Amnesty International identified five West Papuans who were believed
to have been killed by security forces in 1986. Amnesty noted, however, that information about
extrajudicial killings “is often scanty and difficult to verify, given the limited access to Irian Jaya
by independent observers and the restrictions on press freedom in Indonesia more generally.”107
Such restrictions by the Indonesian government served to block international scrutiny
G. Transmigration, Displacement, Disease, and Death
At the commencement of its fourth Five Year Plan in 1984, the Indonesian government
announced that West Papua would become a primary target area for transmigration.108 By the
end of 1984, the government had set up 24 major transmigration sites or compounds,
appropriating 700,000 hectares of land from its traditional owners. By the middle of 1986,
105 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 86-87.
106 Id. at 81.
107 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 87 (citing Amnesty International, Indonesia: Update on
Amnesty International’s Concerns in Irian Jaya, ASA 21/01/87, Jan. 1987).
108 Id. See also Indonesian Transmigration: Hit the Road, Java, THE ECONOMIST, Aug. 4, 1984, at 61 (noting that
“in the next five years the [Indonesian] government wants to import 1m people to add to the province’s population
of 1.2 m., a prospect which has alarmed neighboring Papua New Guinea and stirred a small Irianese separatist
movement back to life”).
33
27,726 families had been moved into West Papua, a total of nearly 140,000 people since the end
of the 1970s.109
Until 1988, the World Bank funded about ten percent of Indonesia’s transmigration
program with a total of $650 million in loans. In 1988, it offered another $150 million to help
Indonesia improve its existing sites. Yet a French study in 1989 found that 80 percent of the
transmigration sites failed to improve the living standards of the settlers, let alone those of the
West Papuans.110
Transmigration schemes dispossessed West Papuans of their land and required them to
move into the transmigration sites, along with the “transmigrants,” people from elsewhere in
Indonesia who had been settled on the compounds. According to a team of senior Indonesian
officials, writing in 1986, the taking of land for transmigration did not require compensation, but
only a certificate of recognition, perhaps accompanied by the construction of a church or school
or even a traditional ceremony.111 Within the transmigration compounds, the government
required that Papuans be dispersed, with one Papuan family to every nine Javanese families, thus
ensuring that the Papuans would become a minority in each area. The West Papuans neither
shared in the economic benefits of the new settlements nor held significant posts in the
administrative staff of the transmigration program.112
In the towns, West Papuans had also become marginalized, living as second-class citizens
in a foreign culture. According to the Far Eastern Economic Review, non-Melanesians
accounted for about a quarter of the population of West Papua in the mid-1980s; they included
109 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 51. The Jakarta Post offered a lower figure of 23,000
families (115,000 people) for 1979-89. WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 63 (citing article in
the Jakarta Post).
110 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 71.
111 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 51.
112 West Papua in Revolt: Many Flee from Indonesian Reprisals, TAPOL BULLETIN 5 (March 1984) [hereinafter
West Papua in Revolt].
34
spontaneous migrants as well as settlers brought over as part of the transmigration program.113
The newcomers dominated the government bureaucracy, the business sector, and upper levels of
education.114 Television programs and magazines addressed a Javanese audience, while
propaganda posters sponsored by the “Project for the Guidance of Alien Societies” urged the
Papuans to relinquish their inefficient and primitive ways for the superior lifestyle of the
Indonesians.115
The loss of their land and disruption of their lifestyles placed the West Papuans at severe
risk of malnutrition and disease by the mid-1980s. In 1984, an Indonesian doctor suggested that
Indonesian intrusions into West Papuan lifestyles led to a high incidence of disease among the
West Papuan population. A Dutch doctor interviewed by a Dutch TV company called the health
situation of the West Papuans “alarming.” He described high rates of yaws, measles, whooping
cough, small- and large-scale epidemics, and sexually transmitted diseases that impaired the
fertility of the Dani people who resided in the fertile Baliem Valley, a major transmigration
site.116 A Dutch missionary working in the mountain regions told the Dutch TV journalists that
infant mortality among the West Papuans in that region was above 60 percent, and the average
life expectancy only 30 or 31 years.117
Mortality and morbidity rates among Papuans escalated in the later 1990s as rates of HIV
infection rose dramatically. In 2002, 20.4 people per 100,000 were infected by HIV in Papua,
compared to only 0.42 cases per 100,000 in the rest of Indonesia.118 Approximately 40 percent
of Indonesia’s HIV and AIDS cases were located in Papua, a province that is home to less than
113 BUDIARDJO & LIONG,WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 44 (quoting Chris Manning, FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC
REVIEW, Apr. 30, 1987).
114 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 42-43.
115 Id. at 42; BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 48, 56-57.
116 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 58.
117 Id. at 46, 58.
118 Leslie Butt et al., The Smokescreen of Culture: AIDS and the Indigenous in Papua, Indonesia, at 1, forthcoming
in PACIFIC HEALTH DIALOG, Sept. 2002 (publication of Sept. 2002 issue pending as of Sept. 27, 2003).
35
one percent of Indonesia’s population.119 Papuans also appear to contract HIV at rates
significantly higher than those of the Indonesian migrant community residing in Papua.120
Several recent studies suggest that this stark discrepancy in infection rates is due to
government-sponsored AIDS educational interventions that systematically discriminate against
ethnic Papuans. AIDS prevention efforts by the Papuan Department of Health, which is staffed
almost exclusively by ethnic Indonesians, have targeted the professional brothel and bar worker
industries that employ Indonesian migrants. Papuan sex workers, who generally work for low
pay in unregulated and high-risk environments outside of formal brothels and bars, are rarely
provided with any information about HIV/AIDS prevention or condom use.121 General AIDS
awareness and safe sex campaigns in Papua are sporadic and have focused on urban areas, where
they do not reach the majority of Papuans, who live in rural and semi-urban regions.122
Meanwhile, local health care systems are inadequate and frequently discriminate against
Papuans. For example, in the Baliem Valley, administrators at family planning and maternal and
child health clinics hold separate sessions for Papuan members of the Dani tribe and Indonesian
migrants because “the Dani are dirty and women won’t want to use the same examining table as
a Dani.”123 The same clinics have refused to provide oral contraceptives to Dani women, on the
grounds that they will misuse them or feed the pills to their pigs.124 Indonesian officials often
point to Papuan culture and sexually deviant behavior as reasons for the spread of HIV and other
119 Id.
120 Id. (citing Leslie Butt et al., The Papuan Sexuality Project Research Report (Jakarta: Family Health International,
2002) (unpublished report)).
121 Id. at 5-6; Leslie Butt et al., Preventing AIDS in Papua: Revised Research Report 35-45 (December 2002).
122 Butt et al., Smokescreen of Culture, supra note 118, at 7. In a recent survey of 196 Papuans, only 29 percent of
respondents were able to recognize a condom when shown one and asked to identify it. Butt et al., Preventing AIDS
in Papua, supra note 121, at 47.
123 Leslie Butt, KB Kills: Political Violence, Birth Control, and the Baliem Valley Dani, 2 ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF
ANTHROPOLOGY 63, 70 (2001). The clinics turn away Dani women who come to the clinic on the wrong day. Id.
124 Id. at 70-71. Dani women are instead given a choice between Norplant implantations or injections of Depo-
Provera (which causes temporary sterilization), which are presented to the women without full disclosure of their
risks and side effects. Id.
36
STDs, a view that has exacerbated inequalities in AIDS prevention and education programs in
the region.125 Without a more equitable and comprehensive response by the Indonesian
government to the public health crisis in Papua, HIV/AIDS is likely to become an epidemic that
threatens the very survival of the Papuan people.
H. Flight of West Papuan Refugees to Papua New Guinea
While the Indonesian government was moving Javanese settlers into the region, the
violence in West Papua was forcing many native residents to flee the country. In February 1984,
the army launched a violent campaign in response to a failed OPM uprising in Jayapura. The
military operation led to the flight of 300 West Papuans across the border to Papua New Guinea
(PNG).126 The refugees were primarily from Jayapura and included West Papuan intellectuals
and government officials. By April, more than 6,000 Papuan refugees had escaped to Papua
New Guinea, fleeing from military reprisals and dislocation caused by transmigration and
resource exploitation. By June, approximately 10,000 refugees—one percent of West Papua’s
indigenous population—occupied makeshift camps hastily erected by PNG.127
Under pressure from its large and powerful neighbor, the PNG government maintained
that the thousands of West Papuans fleeing over the border were not “refugees” but illegal
“border crossers.” 128 For several months, the PNG government allowed conditions in the
refugee camps to deteriorate, in the hope that the refugees would return home.129 However, after
the deaths in August 1984 of several dozen refugees in two PNG camps, the PNG government
125 Butt et al., Smokescreen of Culture, supra note 118, at 2.
126 West Papua in Revolt, supra note 112, at 1.
127 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 93; WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at
56.
128 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 56; West Papua in Revolt, supra note 112, at 1.
129 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 98.
37
allowed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) full access to the
camps.130
In November, when a team of Indonesian and PNG officials visited the camps to
convince the refugees to return, they were met with angry demonstrations. At the Blackwater
camp, refugees threw stones at the visitors, prompting local police to use tear gas to curb the
demonstration.131 In December 1984, the Australian section of the International Commission of
Jurists published a report that described the conditions that had forced the West Papuans to flee
and urged the PNG government not to engage in the refoulement, or forced repatriation, of the
refugees.132 Nonetheless, in December, eight refugees, members of the OPM, were deported to
Jayapura, where they were immediately detained.133 Deportations continued through 1985, but
when twelve refugees were beaten and later secretly tried for subversion upon their return in
November 1985,134 the international outcry led the PNG government to shift toward a policy of
relocation, resettlement, and voluntary repatriation.135
By late 1987, UNHCR reported that only 1,500 refugees had returned to West Papua.136
Those returning under the auspices of UNHCR’s repatriation scheme were formally handed over
to Indonesian officials. They were not allowed to return to their villages, but were instead
130 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 57.
131 Robin Osborne, Refugee Protection Ends in Violence: Indonesians in Papua New Guinea Protest and
Repatriation Plans, THE GUARDIAN, Nov. 6, 1984.
132 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 99.
133 Id.; WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 57.
134 The 3 November Incident in Vanimo, TAPOL Bulletin No. 69, 16 (May 1985).
135 In May 1987, Papua New Guinea acceded to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and to
the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, thus strengthening the role of UNHCR. However, in October
of that year, the PNG government signed a Treaty of Mutual Respect, Friendship, and Cooperation with Indonesia,
affirming a mutual policy of border control and noninterference in each other’s internal affairs. WEST PAPUA:
PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 58. See also Indonesia: Cover-up Job, THE ECONOMIST, Nov. 15, 1986;
Papua New Guinea, Indonesia Confer, FACTS ON FILE WORLD NEWS DIGEST, June 13, 1986.
136 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 109. Indonesian officials claimed that 6,904 had been
returned.
38
relocated to sites designated by the authorities, often areas under military control.137 Returnees
complained that they were subjected to security checks and harassment.138 The government also
implemented a campaign of pacification amongst returnees in the border regions, which aimed to
undermine support for the OPM. Local officials sought to organize young West Papuan
returnees to prevent recalcitrant members of their community from joining the resistance or
leaving for PNG.139
I. West Papuan Protests Against Foreign Resource Exploitation and
Indonesia’s Response
In 1991, PT Freeport renegotiated the terms of its concession with the Indonesian
government. This new Contract of Work granted the company an additional 2.5 million hectares
of land for mining operations—land that was occupied at the time by five indigenous peoples.140
This new contract included increased benefits for the employees of the mine as well as their
families, and also for the military to serve as security forces for the mine, but did not extend the
benefits of schools, hospitals, and job training to the local indigenous people.141 This expanded
control and exploitation led to opposition and clashes between PT Freeport (protected by the
Indonesian military, which Freeport pays millions a year for their services) and the local people.
In 2001, Freeport paid $4.7 million for security services provided by more than 2,300 Indonesian
137 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 44; Repatriated Refugees are Being Sent to Government
Relocation Sites, TAPOL BULLETIN no. 74, 10-11 (Mar. 1986).
138 WEST PAPUA: PLUNDER IN PARADISE, supra note 83, at 58; Australia West Papua Association, West Papua
Information Kit, supra note 77, at 30.
139 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 110.
140 Amnesty International, Indonesia: Irian Jaya: National Commission on Human Rights Confirms Violations 2
(September 1995).
141 Abrash, Development Aggression, supra note 20, at 10.
39
military personnel.142 Some of the killings, detentions, and torture of Papuan people by the
Indonesian military have taken place on Freeport property or in shipping containers provided by
the corporation.143 In 1994, Kelly Kwalik, a leader of the OPM, and others began to protest
Freeport’s, and hence the military’s, expansion near the town of Timika. Protests involved
peaceful as well as armed demonstrations.144 The military’s response was swift and brutal. On
October 6, 1994, Indonesian soldiers arrested four brothers, all civilians—Sebastianus Kwalik,
Romulus Kwalik, Marios Kwalik, and Hosea Kwalik—and detained them in a shipping container
at a military post in Koperapoka, near Timika, accusing them of being involved with Kelly
Kwalik and the OPM.145 Testimony from the first and second wives of Sebastianus Kwalik
indicates that all four were kept in the container and tortured from October 6 until approximately
142 Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc., Security Matters, Internal Draft, Exhibit A of Douglas N. Currault II to
Securities and Exchange Commission, Mar. 3, 2003 (Re. Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc., Response to
Request Pursuant to Rule 14a-8i(10)). Projected 2002 costs for these services totaled $5.6 million. Id.
143 National Human Rights Commission of Indonesia, Results of Monitoring and Investigating of Five Incidents at
Timika and One Incident at Hoea, Irian Jaya During October 1994-June 1995 (Jakarta: September 1995);
Australian Council for Overseas Aid, Trouble at Freeport, (Melbourne: Australian Council for Overseas Aid, April
1995);.Catholic Church of Jayapura, Violations of Human Rights in the Timika Area of Irian Jaya, Indonesia
(August 1995); LEMASA, Amungme People’s Response to National Commission on Human Rights Findings
Announced on 22 September 1995, September 1995; Jacob Pattipi, Conclusion on Investigation on Land Title Issues
in Timika Believed to have Ignited Human Rights Violations (Jayapura: 6 October 1995); The Opinion of LEMASA
Concerning the Human Rights Situation and Prolonged Conflict in the Area of Operation of PT Freeport Indonesia,
Mimika, Irian Jaya (Timika: September 1997); Indonesian Evangelical Church (Mimika, Irian Jaya), the Catholic
Church Three Kings Parish (Timika, Irian Jaya) & the Christian Evangelical Church of Mimika, Human Rights
Violations and Disaster in Bela, Alama, Jila and Mapnduma (1998); Survival International, Rio Tinto Critic Gagged
(London: Survival International, May 1998); RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights and the Institute for Human
Rights Studies and Advocacy, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women in Irian Jaya (West
Papua), Indonesia (Washington/Jayapura: May 1999); Amungme community members, The Victims Residing in the
Area of the PT Freeport Mining Concession in the Villages of Banti, Arwanop, Tsinga, Hoeya, Waa, and Timika,
Statement sent to Komnas HAM, Freeport management, and the RFK Center, 7 February 2000; Chris Ballard, The
Signature of Terror: Violence, Memory and Landscape at Freeport, in INSCRIBED LANDSCAPES:MARKING AND
MAKING PLACE (Bruno David & Meredith Wilson eds. 2001).
144 Msgr. H.F.M. Munninghoff (Catholic Diocese of Jayapura), A Report on the Human Rights Violations Against
the Local People in the Area Around Timika, Region of Fak-Fak, Irian Jaya: Year 1994-1995, 4 (Aug. 1, 1995)
[hereinafter A Report on Human Rights Violations Around Timika]. Compare Report of the Investigation Committee
of Human Rights Violation in Papua or Irian Jaya (May 8, 2001, Jakarta), authorized by the Indonesian Human
Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) (Decree of Commission Chairman, dated 5th February 2001, Ref. No.:
020/KOMNAS HAM/II/2001) [hereinafter Report of Investigation Committee] (stating that the OPM and Kelly
Kwalik had only conducted peaceful demonstrations).
145 See Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 23; Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights
Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 6-9. The “container” where the brothers were held was a shipping
container provided by PT Freeport. Abrash, Development Aggression, supra note 20, App. 3.
40
November 15, 1994.146 On that day, both wives went to visit the men, but were told that their
husband and his brothers had gone on a military operation and were not in the container
anymore.147 The women never saw the men again.148
Three days after the Kwalik brothers were arrested, five other individuals were arrested
and detained by the military. The two women in the group, Yuliana Magal (age 50), the adoptive
mother of Kelly Kwalik, and Yosepha Alomang (age 37), were kept in a flooded water closet,
separate from the men. The closet was filled up to their knees with water and human feces.
Yuliana Magal was interrogated and tortured for many hours, despite the fact that she did not
understand Indonesian and the interrogators did not speak her language.149 The two women were
held in the water closet for one month.150
Christmas day, 1994, brought more demonstrations and more military violence in Waa
village, near PT Freeport’s mining center in Tembagapura.151 That morning, Indonesian troops
fired on members of the Amungme community and other highland Papuans, who had gathered
peacefully to raise the Morning Star flag. When community member Naranebalan Anggaibak
was injured in the attack, Indonesian military placed a noose around his neck and dragged him
from the back of a car to the army checkpoint near Tembagapura. Soldiers then suspended Mr.
Angaibak’s dead body from the ankles on a post across from the checkpoint and harassed Papuan
146 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 23.
147 Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 9.
148 Id.
149 Amnesty International, Indonesia: Irian Jaya: National Commission on Human Rights Confirms Violations,
supra note 140, at 7 (“So to make Yuliana talk they prodded her with the muzzles of their weapons which they
pointed at her forehead and put a heavy iron weight on her head for an hour until she was exhausted. Then they took
the weight and put it on her shoulder for another hour. Then she had to kneel and cradle the weight for another
hour.”).
150 Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 17. See also Robert F.
Kennedy Center (RFK) & Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy in Irian Jaya (IHRSTAD), Incidents of
Military Violence Against Indigenous Women in Irian Jaya (West Papua), Indonesia (May 1999), at 3 [hereinafter
RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women].
151 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 23. See also Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights
Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 18.
41
villagers by asking them whose pig or dog Mr. Angaibak was. The military reportedly disposed
of Mr. Angaibak’s body by throwing it into a ravine along the road between Tembagapura and
Timika, as they previously had disposed of other indigenous Papuans killed by the Indonesian
military.152
Another incident occurred after Easter mass in April 1995. After a scuffle between a
civilian, Piet Tebay, and a soldier who had ordered him to report to the security station in
Timika, the soldier stabbed Tebay with Tebay’s own arrow. Although Tebay eventually
recovered, the stabbing incited the crowd to protest the military presence in the community.
During the protest, another scuffle between a soldier and a civilian occurred. This time, the
soldier shot the civilian two times, killing him.153
Indonesian soldiers conducted another attack upon civilians in May 1995. Fighting had
broken out between the military and the OPM in early 1994, forcing many native residents to
flee their homes and run into the forest for protection.154 On May 31, 1995, an army patrol near
Hoea was out looking for the OPM leader and came across a group of such refugees, who were
gathered together for a prayer meeting. When they saw the soldiers, the people began to run.
The military opened fire, killing eleven people, including the pastor and four children (ages five,
six, fourteen, and fifteen).155
152 Chris Ballard, The Signature of Terror: Violence, Memory, and Landscape at Freeport, in INSCRIBED
LANDSCAPES:MAKING AND MAKING PLACE (Bruno David & Meredith Wilson eds., 2001).
153 Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights Violations around Timika, supra note 144, at 11.
154 Amnesty International, Indonesia: Irian Jaya: National Commission on Human Rights Confirms Violations,
supra note 140, at 5.
155See id. (“We came from behind them. They saw us and were obviously afraid and began to run away. Three
soldiers immediately began to shoot towards them.”); Munninghoff, A Report on Human Rights Violations around
Timika, supra note 144, at 4-5 (“While they were praying, suddenly one patrol from the 572[nd] under command of
master sergeant Marjaka who was patrolling the area of Kampung Hoea, surrounded the people and without warning
started shooting at the congregation involved in prayer. The Rev. Martinus Kibak raised his hands to surrender, but
commandant Marjaka didn’t care. He ordered the soldier closest to him . . . to shoot the minister. The bullet fatally
wounded the minister in the left part of his abdomen.”). Note that in September 1995, Indonesia’s National
Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) found that the violations committed against Papuans in and around
42
Between late 1995 and early 1996, various groups of researchers—including one known
as the “Lorentz Team” and a group from the World Wildlife Fund—visited the Mapnduma area
of West Papua, within Freeport’s concession area. After a community meeting in which local
residents clashed with the researchers over the way in which their research would be carried out
and the effects such research would have on the residents’ lives, a group of 200 Papuans took the
researchers hostage.156 The OPM later took credit for the action, and the military responded.
During the four months the hostages were held, Indonesian forces set up camp in nearby
communities, taking over many of the residents’ homes for their own use and forcing residents to
flee in fear. Reports of abuses in one village included “killings, torture, rape, intimidation,
destruction of goods and property, and restricted access to foodstuffs and other vital supplies.”157
The military also deemed the Central Highlands Region, previously untouched by the
government, a “Red Zone,” which meant that outsiders could not enter it and residents needed to
obtain permission from government or army officials to travel within it.158 One Kopassus
lieutenant commander told a human rights investigator that the role of the military in the
Freeport mining centers was “directly connected to [the Indonesian army] . . . acting as protection for the mining
business of PT Freeport Indonesia.” Abrash, Development Aggression, supra note 20, at 13.
156 RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women, supra note 150, at 8. Of the
twenty-four original hostages, eleven were released within the first two weeks and two more in the following two
months, leaving four English citizens, two Dutch, and five Indonesians. See Institute for Human Rights Study and
Advocacy in Irian Jaya (IHRSTAD) et al., Military Operation for the Release of Hostages and Human Rights
Violations in the Central Highlands of Irian Jaya: Unveiling the Mystery of the Bloody ICRC Mission, the
Involvement of Foreign Soldiers, and the Indonesian Army (press release, Aug. 25, 1999) [hereinafter IHRSTAD et
al., Military Operation for the Release of Hostages].
157 RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women, supra note 150, at 9 (referring to
the village of Kenyam I). For an extensive account of rape in the region between 1996 and 1999, see id. at 4. See
also Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Integration of the Human Rights of Women and
the Gender Perspective: Violence Against Women, Jan. 21, 1998, U.N. Doc E/CN.4/1999/68/Add.3, at 14
[hereinafter Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women] (“According to reports in February
1996 troops from all over Indonesia came to the Mapnduma area. It was alleged that the soldiers raped women there
indiscriminately: girls as young as 12 were victims, as were mute, mentally retarded and pregnant women.”).
158 RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women, supra note 150.
43
Highlands was to clear the area of indigenous communities “to make sure that investors can
come in.”159
Throughout these months, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
attempted to negotiate with the OPM for the release of the hostages, and by the beginning of
May appeared to have reached an agreement. On May 8, 1996, the ICRC organized a
feast in the village of Nggeselema to celebrate International Cross Day and the planned release
of the hostages. However, at the last minute, OPM leaders cancelled the release of the hostages,
believing that the ICRC had broken its agreement to bring official representatives of the British,
Dutch, German, and Indonesian government to Nggeselema. The Indonesian military responded
by launching a military operation under Kopassus Commander Brigadier General Probawo
Subianto. On May 9, four or five soldiers, reportedly British SAS members and foreign
mercenaries from the South African mercenary company Executive Outcomes, commandeered
an ICRC helicopter and attacked Nggeselema, shooting at the villagers who had come to greet
the aircraft believing that it carried ICRC staff members. As the villagers scattered, helicopters
from the Indonesian air force arrived and began shooting at and dropping bombs on the villagers,
destroying many homes and a local medical clinic. At least eight Papuan civilians died in the
attacks, and many more were injured.160 On May 15, after two Indonesian hostages had been
killed, the remaining hostages ran for safety.161
The end of the hostage crisis did not mark the end of the military activity in that area.
Between December 1996 and October 1997, the Indonesian military shot and killed eleven
civilians as they attempted to return from the forest to their villages to gather food; two others
159 Id.
160 Blood on the Cross, television program transcript, broadcast Dec. 7, 1999, Four Corners, Australia Broadcasting
Company, available at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/s39706.htm; IHRSTAD et al., Military Operation for
the Release of Hostages, supra note 156.
161 RFK & IHRSTAD, Incidents of Military Violence Against Indigenous Women, supra note 150.
44
were “disappeared”; and three were injured. Military forces also burned 13 church buildings,
166 homes, and 29 traditional “men’s houses.”162
J. West Papua Under President Habibie: Continued Military Violence
Suharto was forced to resign in May 1998 and was replaced by his Vice President, B.J.
Habibie, creating what many saw as a potential opening for discussion about the situation in
West Papua.163 The area around Timika was officially no longer a “Red Zone,” and
demonstrations where Papuans raised the Morning Star flag started to take place all over the
country. Between July 1 and 7, 1998, such flag-raisings occurred in Jayapura, Biak, Wamena,
Manokwari and Sorong.164 Despite the hope that the military violence in West Papua would end
with Suharto’s rule, the Indonesian forces cracked down on these demonstrations.
On July 6, 1998, at 5:00 a.m., local police and Indonesian military opened fire on a group
of Papuans at a flag-raising in Biak. The soldiers then forced dozens of men and women to lie
on their backs and marched on their stomachs.165 Eight people were killed immediately, three
were disappeared, and thirty-seven injured. 166 Later, women’s mutilated bodies washed up on
162 Indonesian Evangelical Church et al., Human Rights Violations & Disaster in Bela, Alama, Jila and Mapnduma,
Irian Jaya, 1, 4-33 (May 1998) (including an in-depth description and witness testimony about the violations).
163 President Habibie expressed this openness in a number of ways. First, he proposed to the Parliament that the
name of Irian Jaya be changed to Papua. Second, on February 26, 1999, the “Team of 100” – a group of 100
representatives of indigenous Papuans – was invited to Jakarta for a meeting with President Habibie, marking the
beginning of a “National Dialog on Irian Jaya.” The Team of 100 presented the President with the results of a
survey of 16,486 Papuans, of whom more than 90 percent expressed their desire for independence. After this
presentation, the President told the Papuans, “The aspirations you have expressed are important, but founding a
country isn’t easy; let’s contemplate those aspirations again.” Human Rights Watch, Human Rights and Pro-
Independence Actions in Papua, 1999-2000, at 14.
164 Report of the Visit of the Working Group to Indonesia (31 January to 12 February 1999), UN Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention, UN Economic and Social Council, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2000/4/Add.2. 5 July 1999.
165 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 13.
166 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, supra note 157, at 14. Another report stated that
five civilians had died. See Human Rights Watch, Human Rights and Pro-Independence Actions in Papua, supra
note 163, at 10.
45
the coast of Biak. Allegedly, “women were taken out to sea on Indonesian navy ships, where
they were raped, sexually mutilated and thrown overboard.”167
Over the next two years, the military responded to flag-raising demonstrations (whether
peaceful or not) with armed violence.168 One of the bloodiest of these responses occurred in
Wamena on October 6, 2000.169 Early in the morning, a joint security force composed of special
crowd-control police and Brimob (an acronym for Mobile Brigade) and Strategic Reserve troops
raided at least seven community centers in Wamena.170 These forces fired warning shots,
chainsawed flagpoles, and tore up or confiscated the Morning Star flag. By 8:00 a.m., more than
fifty people had been rounded up, beaten, and taken to police headquarters. At least one man had
been killed by gunfire, and ten had been wounded. 171
Within hours, a large crowd had gathered across the river in Wouma. The crowd began
to protest, burning and looting shops as they went. Troops arrived and began to open fire from a
nearby migrant residential community. The crowd then attacked the migrants’ homes, killing
twenty-four non-Papuans. At least seven Papuans were also killed by gunfire.172
In the aftermath, twenty-two Papuans were arrested for the killings, although almost all
were political leaders who were not connected with the violence in Wouma.173
167 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, supra note 157, at 14.
168 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 13-16 (describing the arrest of twenty-two and torture
of two at Sorong on July 5, 1999; the shooting and injury of thirty-eight at Timika on December 2, 1999; the
shooting death of one and injury of two in Merauke on February 16, 2000; the shooting death of three and the arrest
and torture of one in Nabire between February 28 and March 4, 2000; the shooting and injury of thirteen and arrest
and beating of one in Sorong on July 27, 2000); and the shooting deaths of three, the disappearance of fifteen, the
shooting and injury of twelve, the arrest of thirty-six, and the detention of twenty-eight in Sorong on August 22,
2000).
169 On October 3, Papuan community leaders reported that they had secured a delay in a ban of the Morning Star
flag, which had been threatened by the police and provincial authorities. This delay was to last until October 19,
when these leaders were to meet with President Wahid. Human Rights Watch, Violence and Political Impasse in
Papua 12 (July 2001).
170 Id.
171 Id.
172 Id.
173 Id.
46
Some were threatened with torture if they did not confess. In the end, arrested youth group
(Satgas Papua) members were sentenced to between six and ten months of imprisonment; the
remaining political leaders were sentenced to between four and four and a half years of
imprisonment.174
Two months after the violence in Wamena, the police station in Abepura was attacked
and two police officers were killed.175 The police immediately sent out teams to round up
suspects. What followed, however, was “a methodical revenge attack in which all highlanders
were targets.”176 The police and the Brimob first swept through the Ninmin Dormitory in
Abepura, near the capital of Jayapura, which housed students from the highlands of West Papua,
forcing the occupants outside and beating them. Twenty-three people from that dormitory—
fourteen boys and nine girls, including one girl who was only seven years old—were taken into
police custody and severely beaten. Next, a group of police swept through four residential
neighborhoods where Papuans, mostly from the Wamena area of the highlands, lived.177 Within
24 hours, three highland students were killed and one hundred individuals had been detained in
police headquarters.178
The violence did not end there, however. En route to the police headquarters and once
there, all of those detained were beaten with rifle butts, wooden blocks, or iron bars.179 Some
were burned with cigarettes, forced to lick the blood off the floor, and whipped with electric
cables; one man was ordered to cut and eat his own hair.180 The detainees were constantly
174 Id. at 14.
175 The number and identity of the attackers has not been verified.
176 Human Rights Watch, Violence and Political Impasse in Papua, supra note 169, at 15.
177 Id.
178 Id.
179 A Swiss journalist detained in the same prison described the beatings meted out there that night, including one
that resulted in the death of a detainee. Id. at 19.
180 Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 32-37.
47
insulted with racist, derogatory language.181 Approximately 24 hours later, the prisoners were
released.
After the events at Abepura, Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission
recommended prosecution of the perpetrators in the newly created National Human Rights
Courts.182 The local police and administration, however, encouraged all members of the police
forces involved not to talk to the human rights investigators.183
All in all, one report estimated that between 1998 and 2000, there were 80 cases of
summary execution and 500 cases of arbitrary detention and torture of West Papuans by the
Indonesian government or military in West Papua.184 In its 2001 report on Indonesia, the U.S.
Department of State noted:
Security forces were responsible for numerous instances of, at times
indiscriminate, shooting of civilians, torture, rape, beatings and other abuse, and
arbitrary detention in . . . Papua . . . . Security forces in Papua assaulted, tortured,
and killed persons during search operations for members of militant groups. The
security forces inconsistently enforced a no-tolerance policy against flying the
Papuan flag, tearing down and destroying flags and flag poles, and killing eight
persons, and beating others who tried to raise or protect the flag . . . .185
The State Department’s 2002 report affirmed that Indonesian security forces have
continued this pattern of repression and violence. Indonesian soldiers and police “committed
assaults, rapes, and supported militias,” “frequently and arbitrarily detained persons without
181 For a list of phrases spoken to the detainees, see Report of the Investigation Committee, supra note 144, at 42-43
(quoting statements such as: “Women with curly hair and ugly dare to attack the Police?”; “The curly hair is just
animal and must be extinguished!”; and “Your God is shit. Call your God Lord Jesus to help you!”).
182 Human Rights Watch, Violence and Political Impasse in Papua, supra note 169, at 20.
183 Id. at 21.
184 John Rumbiak, The On-Going Human Rights Violations in West Papua: Impunity or Accountability?, 3 (Apr.
2001).
185 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR, COUNTRY
REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES: INDONESIA (2001).
48
warrants, charges or court proceedings,” and regularly “tortured detainees.”186 In November
2001, Theys Eluay, a prominent pro-independence leader in West Papua, was assassinated. He
was kidnapped and then apparently tortured to death. This death came two weeks after Indonesia
promulgated Law No. 21/2001 on Special Autonomy for the Province of Papua, which both the
pro-independence advocates and the police force in Papua rejected.187
Finally, on August 31, 2002, gunmen ambushed a group of foreign schoolteachers
employed by Freeport-McMoRan who were returning from an afternoon picnic near the Freeport
mine in Tembagapura. The attackers fired more than 130 bullets, killing two Americans and an
Indonesian and injuring twelve others. According to U.S. officials, evidence indicates that
members of the Indonesian army were responsible for the murders and may have sought to frame
members of the Free Papua Movement in order to convince the State Department to add the
group to the department’s terrorist list or, alternatively, to induce Freeport to increase its
payments to the military.188 This tragic incident reaffirms the close and complex relationship
between Indonesian security forces and Freeport McMoRan. It also suggests the lengths to
which the military may be willing to go to bolster its own power at the expense of the West
Papuan people.
Violence, civil unrest, and grievous abuses of human rights continue to affect the lives of
West Papuan civilians. Recent developments suggest that without significant international
pressure, the pattern of violent repression in West Papua is likely to continue. Whether this
186 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR, COUNTRY
REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES: INDONESIA (2002).
187 See Siegfried Zollner, Conference: “Autonomy for Papua. Opportunity or Illusion?” 11 EUROPE PACIFIC
SOLIDARITY BULLETIN 3 (June-July 2003); Abigail Abrash, Indonesia Assassinates Indigenous Leader in Quest to
Keep Papua, 26 CULTURAL SURVIVAL QUARTERLY (March 2002). Apparently, the pro-independence group rejected
the legislation because Indonesia did not consult the people of Papua beforehand. The police rejected it because it
made some concessions to the Papuan people, including allowing them to fly the Morning Star flag. Id.
188 See Dana Priest, A Nightmare, and a Mystery, in the Jungle: Ambush of School Outing Left 3 Dead, 8 Wounded,
And Suspicion of Involvement by Indonesian Army, WASHINGTON POST, June 22, 2003, at A1.
49
history of repression and violence constitutes genocide, as defined in the Genocide Convention,
is the question that Part II of this paper addresses.
IV. APPLICATION OF THE LAW OF GENOCIDE TO THE CASE OF WEST
PAPUA
A. Introduction to the Law of Genocide
On December 9, 1948, the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.189 The Convention proscribes the
intentional physical destruction of national, ethnical, racial and religious groups. It declares that
genocide, whether committed in times of peace or in times of war, is a crime under international
law. It further provides that persons committing genocide or genocidal acts “shall be punished,
whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials, or private individuals,” and
obligates States Parties to undertake to prevent and punish the crime. As the International Court
of Justice noted in its 1951 advisory opinion, “the principles underlying the Convention are
principles which are recognized by civilized nations as binding on States, even without any
conventional obligation.”190 The ICJ has since recognized the Convention’s proscription against
the crime of genocide as a part of customary international law and a jus cogens norm.191
The Genocide Convention affirms that States may not fail to act in the face of mass
atrocities directed at the destruction of a particular group. Polish scholar and jurist Raphael
Lemkin coined the word “genocide” during the Second World War as a means of describing the
mass extermination by the Third Reich of millions of Jews and other national, ethnic, and
189 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Dec. 9, 1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 277,
reprinted in 45 AM. J. INT’L. L. 7 (1951) [hereinafter Genocide Convention].
190 Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Advisory Opinion),
[1951] I.C.J. REPORTS 16, at 21, quoted in Legality of the Treat or Use of Nuclear Weapons (Advisory Opinion,
[1996] I.C.J. REPORTS 226, 31. See also Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to 2 of the Security Council
Resolution 808 (1993), U.N. Doc. S/25704, 45.
191 Prosecutor v. Goran Jelsic, Case No. IT-95-10-T, ICTY T. Ch. I, 14 Dec. 1999, para. 60.
50
religious groups. The term, which merged the Greek word “genos” (race or tribe) with the Latin
“cide” (killing), took hold almost immediately and was prosecuted, within the scope of “crimes
against humanity,” by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal in 1945-46. On December 11, 1946,
the United Nations General Assembly adopted by unanimous vote a resolution that explicitly
condemned the crime of genocide. The Convention was adopted by General Assembly
resolution in 1948 and entered into force on January 12, 1951.
Article II of the 1948 Convention defines genocide as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.192
This definition of genocide has been repeated without significant change in subsequent
instruments, including Article 4(2) of the statute creating the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Article 2(2) of the statute creating the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and Article 6 of the Rome Statute for the Creation of the
International Criminal Court.193
Genocide is a collective crime that targets a national, racial, ethnical, or religious
group.194 A national group is “a collection of people who are perceived to share a legal bond
192 Genocide Convention, art. 2.
193 Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, U.N. Doc. S/RES/827 (1993), annex,
art. 4(2); Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, U.N. Doc. S/RES/955 (1994), annex, art. 2(2);
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9, art. 7(1).
194 In Prosecutor v. Akayesu, the first case in which an individual defendant was charged with genocide before an
international court, Trial Chamber I of the ICTR suggested a broader understanding of the group requirement,
holding that the drafters of the Convention did not mean to exclude from its protection “any stable and permanent
group.” Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, ICTR T. Ch. I, 2 Sept. 1998, paras. 516, 701.
51
based on common citizenship, coupled with reciprocity of rights and duties.”195 An ethnical
group is a group defined by its common language and culture.196 A racial group is
distinguishable by physical traits consistent with specific geographical areas.197 A religious
group is one whose members share common beliefs or denominations.198 A common attribute of
the four groups protected by the Genocide Convention is that “membership in such groups would
seem to be normally not challengeable by its members, who belong to it automatically, by birth,
in a continuous and often irremediable manner.”199 The definition of genocide does not apply to
more mobile groups, which one may join through individual voluntary commitment, such as
political, social, or economic groups. As a leading scholar of the law of genocide has suggested,
the four categories of groups “operat[e] much as four corner posts that delimit an area within
which a myriad of groups covered by the Convention find protection.”200 Thus, it is not
necessary to show that a group specifically meets one of the four criteria set forth in the
Convention in order to make a claim of genocide, but only to demonstrate that it fits within the
four corners defined by these criteria. In recent years, adjudicators have showed a willingness to
use this approach to hold that a number of kinds of groups fall under the Convention’s
protection, including, most prominently, tribal groups.201
The crime of genocide itself consists of two important elements: the prohibited act (the
material element, or actus reus) and the requisite intent (the moral/mental element, or mens rea).
However, subsequent decisions retreated from this broad and inherently subjective standard. Prosecutor v.
Kayishema and Ruzinda, Case No. ICTR-95-1-T, Judgment, 21 May 1999; Prosecutor v. Rutaganda, Case No.
ICTR-96-3-T, Judgment, 6 December 1999.
195 Akayesu, para. 512 (Sept. 2, 1998).
196 An ethnical group may identify itself as such or be identified as such by others, including the perpetrators of
genocide. Id., para. 513; see Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 98.
197 Akayesu, para. 514.
198 Id., para. 515; Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 98.
199 Akayesu, para. 511.
200 WILLIAM A. SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: THE CRIME OF CRIMES 111 (2000).
201 See Report of the International Law Commission on the World of Its Forty-Eighth Session, 6 May-26 July 1996,
U.N. Doc. A/51/10, at 89.
52
The act element of genocide is explicitly set forth in the five subparagraphs of Article II of the
Convention, where the drafters list the five types of “acts” that, if committed with the requisite
intent and directed against a group protected by the Convention, constitute genocide. Of the five
genocidal acts, three require proof of a result—killing members of the group, causing serious
bodily or mental harm to members of the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group. The other two acts—deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part and imposing measures
intended to prevent births within the group—do not require proof of the result, but instead
require a further specific intent to destroy the group. For the three acts that require proof of a
result, a finding of genocide does not require establishment of a cause and effect relationship
between the acts and the destruction of the group, but may instead be based on a showing that
one or more victims suffered physical or mental harm and that the act was committed with the
requisite intent.202 Genocide can be committed by acts or by omissions. For example, military
officers’ failure to intervene when their subordinates are violating the Convention has been held
to constitute genocide.203
The act element of genocide is inextricably connected to the element of intent. Genocide
is distinguishable from crimes against humanity in international law largely on the basis of the
intent behind the crime.204 This intent must be specific—it cannot be a general intent to murder,
in the case of Article II(a); it must be a specific intent to kill someone because of his or her
membership in a group. Genocidal intent may involve the desire to exterminate a large number
of members of a protected group or, alternatively, the desire to destroy a more limited number of
202 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 164-65.
203 See Prosecutor v. Kambanda, Case No. ICTR-97-23-S, ICTR T. ch. 4, Sept. 1998 (holding that failure by
governmental leaders to take action to stop ongoing, known massacres, constituted genocide). The jurisdiction of
the Convention also extends, in Article III, to include attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide,
and complicity in genocide as crimes under international law.
204 See Jelisic, para. 66.
53
members of the group who are selected because of the potential impact of their destruction on the
survival of the group as such.205 Although specific intent is required, it may be inferred in most
cases from the acts themselves, as well as from the context in which those acts took place. As
the ICTR held in Prosecutor v. Akayesu, “it is possible to deduce the genocidal intent inherent in
a particular act charged from the general context of the perpetration of other culpable acts
systematically directed against that same group, whether these acts were committed by the same
offender or by others.”206 It is also possible to infer intent when genocidal acts are committed in
connection with a separate objective with a non-genocidal motive; for example, when otherwise
genocidal acts are carried out with the ultimate motive of giving the government greater access
to natural resources.207
Absent a showing of genocidal intent, severe offenses committed on a mass scale and
directed against a civilian population are likely to constitute “crimes against humanity” under
customary international law. There are several definitions of crimes against humanity, but all
involve the persecution of individuals or groups in a widespread and systematic fashion.208 The
concept of crimes against humanity was first discussed in Article 6(c) of the Charter of the
International Military Tribunal (the “Nuremberg Tribunal”), which provides:
[Crimes against humanity include] murder, extermination,
enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed
against any civilian population, before or during the war, or
persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution
of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the
205 Id., paras. 81-82.
206 Akayesu, paras. 523.
207 The ICTY and the ICTR have been largely silent on the question of dual motives. However, the Australian
Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission has ruled that “even if motives were mixed, a fundamental
element in the programme [of transferring indigenous children to families of European descent] was the elimination
of indigenous cultures, and that as a result the co-existence of other motives was no defense.” Australian Human
Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, Bringing Them Home, Report of the National Inquiry into the
Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, 270-75, available at
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen (last visited Apr. 26, 2002).
208 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200.
54
Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the
country where perpetrated.
Crimes against humanity do not necessarily require a connection to war or armed
conflict. While the jurisdiction of the ICTY extends only to crimes against humanity committed
in the context of armed conflict,209 the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, like
the Statute of the ICTR, affirms that such crimes may occur in times of peace as well as in times
of war, so long as they are committed as “part of a widespread or systematic attack directed
against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.”210 Building upon the statutes and
case law of the ICTY and ICTR, the Rome Statute expands the definition of crimes against
humanity to expressly include such acts as torture; the forcible transfer of population;
imprisonment or severe deprivation of physical liberty; acts of sexual violence, including rape,
sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilization; persecution on
national, ethnic, cultural, gender, or other impermissible grounds; disappearance; and
apartheid.211 With the entry into force of the International Criminal Court on July 1, 2002,
perpetrators of crimes against humanity, like perpetrators of genocide, may be held criminally
responsible for their crimes under international law.212
B. The “Group” Element of the Crime of Genocide
As a distinct racial and/or ethnic group with a common national identity strengthened in
the course of the common struggle for independence from Indonesian neo-colonial rule, West
Papuans fit within the ambit of protection delimited by the four enumerated groups in Article II
of the Genocide Convention.
209 Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, U.N. Doc. S/RES/827 (1993), annex,
art. 5; Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, U.N. Doc. S/RES/955 (1994), annex, art. 4.
210 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9, art. 7(1).
211 Id. art. 7(1).
212 However, the ICC may exercise jurisdiction only if the person accused of crimes against humanity is a national of
a State Party to the Statute, or if the crime was committed on the territory of a State Party. Id., art. 12(2).
55
1. National Group
Within the context of the 1948 Genocide Convention and the writings of Raphael
Lemkin, the term “national group” refers not only to groups identified with an established nation
state,213 but also to national minorities with shared, distinct historical and cultural links, which
may encompass racial, ethnical, and religious groups.214 The International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda has defined a national group as “a collection of people who are perceived to share a
legal bond based on common citizenship, coupled with reciprocity of rights and duties.”215
Alternatively, scholars have argued that “national” may refer to one’s origin when viewed
through a sociological or ethnological lens.216
Any of these definitions support the conclusion that West Papuans are a national group
protected by the 1948 Convention. They constitute a tiny minority in Indonesia. Their
population was estimated to be about 2.11 million of the whole population of Indonesia, which
stood at 193.92 million as of July 1, 2000. 217 West Papuans’ struggle for independence dates
back to the days of Dutch colonial rule, and West Papuans chose their own national anthem and
national flag. The common struggle against Indonesian rule has forged a strong sense of national
unity, expressed through such actions as raising and defending the West Papuan flag despite
violent Indonesian military crackdowns.
213 See Matthew Lippman, The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: Fifty Years
Later, 15 ARIZ. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 415, 456, quoting 3 U.N. GAOR C.6, 74th mtg. at 98, U.N. Doc. A/C.6/SR. 74
(1948) (Mr. Petren, Swed.).
214 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 118.
215 Akayesu, para. 512.
216 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 116-17& n.95.
217 See Indonesian Census 2000 Discussion Paper, available at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/demonetasia/message/34.
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2. Ethnical Group
The pure objective test of an ethnical group requires a common language and a common
culture.218 West Papuans speak a myriad of languages219 and manifest diverse cultures.
Historical accounts suggest that West Papuans have grouped largely along tribal lines governed
by ecological conditions and separated by cultural-linguistic barriers even between close clan
neighbors.
However, an interpretation that includes a subjective element suggests that West Papuans
may constitute an ethnical group. A trial chamber of the ICTR opined that an ethnic group could
be a group “which distinguishe[d] itself, as such; or, a group identified as such by others,
including perpetrators of the crimes.”220 The Indonesian government, by its actions, appears to
identify the West Papuans as a common ethnic group. In the 1970s and 1980s, the government
sought to “Indonesianize” West Papuan education and culture, compelling West Papuans to
abandon their “primitive” customs and to speak and dress like Indonesians. The Indonesian
police shot and killed Papuans who resisted these “civilization” efforts. While West Papuans
may distinguish between people of different cultural-linguistic units, the Indonesian government
appears to have treated West Papuans as an inherently unified ethnic group; thus, West Papuans
may meet the criteria of “ethnical group” for the purpose of determining whether genocide has
occurred.
3. Racial Group
West Papuans constitute a racial group from both an objective and a subjective
perspective. The objective test for “racial group” requires a determination that the relevant
218 Akayesu, para. 513.
219 See OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 2 (“[W]hen Holland handed over West Papua to
Indonesia, it had listed more than 200 languages among 500,000 people in an estimated population of 700,000.”).
220 Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 98.
57
group is distinguished from others by hereditary physical traits frequently identified with
geographic areas, irrespective of linguistic, cultural, national or religious factors.221 Indigenous
West Papuans belong to the Melanesian race, the descendants of three broad races of migrant
people who settled in parts of the South Pacific. Melanesians are of different origin than the
Javanese, who constitute the majority of the Indonesian population. Despite regional differences
among the West Papuans, as among other Melanesian groups, anthropologists believe that
classifying Melanesians as a race is valid because of the many shared characteristics of the
people.222
The subjective test for “racial group” considers the perceptions of the perpetrators toward
the victimized group.223 Indonesians historically have regarded West Papuans as a “primitive,
barbaric and unproductive” race. 224 The government’s transmigration program and its exclusion
of West Papuans from the government bureaucracy, the business sector, and upper levels of
education was grounded, at least in part, on the assumption that West Papuans were an inferior
race to the Javanese people. The racist “Project for the Guidance of Alien Societies” sought to
“civilize” the West Papuans without suggesting that they might ever attain the sophistication of
the racially superior Indonesians. The army’s slogan, “Let the rats run into the jungle so that the
chickens can breed in the coop,” suggests that Indonesian military campaigns targeted West
Papuans—civilians as well as members of the OPM—as an inferior race. Clearly, the Indonesian
government has consistently viewed the people of West Papua as a group that is racially distinct
from the majority Javanese population.
221 Akayesu, para. 514.
222 OSBORNE, INDONESIA’S SECRET WAR, supra note 4, at 2. See Final Report of the Commission of Experts
Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 935 (1994), UN Doc. S/1995/1405, annex, para. 159.
According to the Commission of Experts on Rwanda, “to recognize that there exists discrimination on racial or
ethnic grounds, it is not necessary to presume or posit the existence of race or ethnicity itself as a scientifically
objective fact.”
223 See Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 98.
224 BUDIARDJO & LIONG, WEST PAPUA, supra note 10, at 48, 56.
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4. Religious Group
Christianity is the dominant faith among West Papuans. Although West Papuans
detained by Indonesian authorities routinely suffer humiliation on the basis of their religious
faith, it is not clear that Indonesian policy toward West Papuans has been based
on their religious faith. Moreover, not all West Papuans are Christians, and many follow
traditional religions. This suggests that West Papuans have not been targeted for destruction as a
religious group.
5. Ambit of Protection Established by the Four Enumerated Groups
The language and the legislative history of the Genocide Convention strongly suggest a
holistic interpretation of the four enumerated groups. The four categories overlap and help
define each other, including within their scope a wide range of different groups, all of which are
covered by the Convention.225 A claim of genocide does not require that a group specifically
meet one of the four criteria set forth in the Convention. Rather, it is sufficient to prove that the
group fits within the corners delineated by these criteria.226 This approach has extended the
application of genocide to cover groups, including tribal groups, without determining whether
they are subsumed within one particular category—national, racial, ethnical or religious.227
From this holistic perspective, consistent with the intent of the Genocide Convention’s drafters,
the case of West Papuans fits squarely into the ambit of protection established by the “corner
posts” of the four enumerated groups.
225 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 111.
226 Id. at 112.
227 E.g., the International Law Commission on the Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind
determined that tribal groups should be protected by the Convention; see Report of the International Law
Commission on the Work of Its Forty-Eighth Session, 6 May- 26 June 1996, UN Doc. A/51/10, p.89. The Canadian
Criminal Code, in its provisions relating to genocide, protects groups that are distinguished by color as well as those
identified by race, religion, or ethnic origin. See Criminal Code (Canada), RSC 1985, c. C-46, s. 318(4).
59
C. The Act Element of the Crime of Genocide
Since Indonesia gained control of West Papua, the Indonesian government has engaged
in conduct toward West Papuans that falls within several of the categories of act that constitute
genocide under the Genocide Convention. The Indonesian authorities have killed thousands of
members of the West Papuan group, and they have “caus[ed] serious bodily and mental harm to
members of the group.”228 Evidence strongly indicates that the Indonesians have also
deliberately inflicted on the group “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction.”229
1. Massacres and Extrajudicial Killings
The Indonesian military and its related security forces have engaged in widespread
violence and killings in West Papua. Such a pattern of massacres and killings falls squarely
within the first category of act identified by the Genocide Convention. The act of killing has
been interpreted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as having two elements: (1)
that the victim is dead, and (2) that the death resulted from an unlawful act or omission by the
accused.230
The incidents described above clearly fulfill both of these elements. Indonesian police
and military officials have killed numerous West Papuans as a result of unlawful acts and
omissions, including the 1970 massacre of more than 85 West Papuans in western Biak, the
killing by aerial bombardment of several thousand villagers in Jayawijaya in 1977, and the use of
napalm and chemical weapons against villagers during Operation Clean Sweep in 1981. More
recent examples, including the Indonesian military operations in the Central Highlands
(Mapnduma, Bela, Alama and Jila) and the October 2000 Wamena massacre that resulted in 32
228 Genocide Convention, art. 2(2).
229 Genocide Convention, art. 2(3).
230 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 157.
60
deaths, demonstrate the continuity and widespread nature of such acts even in the current stage
of Indonesian control of West Papua.
Individual extrajudicial killings by the military and security forces also come under the
heading of “killing members of the group.” They have occurred most often when detained
prisoners have been tortured to death. Examples include the 1976 deaths of two men beaten with
iron bars; the killing of Mimi Fatahan, whose body was chopped into pieces by members of the
regional military command in Jayapura; the torture and killing of Naranebalan Anggaibak in
1994; and the three students detained and killed in the 2000 raid on the Abepura student
dormitory. In all of these circumstances, both legal elements of killing have been met, and the
murders of these victims are prohibited by international law.
The Indonesian military and KOPKAMTIB have been responsible for the assassinations
of numerous political and village leaders in an effort to wear down the West Papua resistance
movement. These extrajudicial killings fall within the “killing” category of acts that can
constitute genocide. The beating to death of Baldus Mofu, the shooting of Arnold Ap and
Eduard Mofu, and the 2001 kidnapping and killing of Theys Eluay, demonstrate that these
political killings are deliberate and planned. The Indonesian military’s attacks on West Papua’s
political, intellectual, and community leaders clearly fall within the category of “killing members
of the group” and, because they specifically target an influential segment of the population,
reflect the requisite intent to destroy the group in part.
2. Torture, Disappearance, and Detention
The Indonesian security forces’ torture, disappearance, and arbitrary arrest of West
Papuans constitute unequivocal acts of serious bodily and/or mental harm. The ICTR defined
“serious bodily or mental harm” as “acts of torture, be they bodily or mental, inhumane or
61
degrading treatment, persecution.”231 Another Trial Chamber of the ICTR defined this category
of act as “harm that seriously injures the health, causes disfigurement, or causes any serious
injury to the external, internal organs [sic] or senses.”232 The Trial Chamber of the ICTY has
similarly held that torture and inhuman or degrading treatment constitute “serious bodily or
mental harm” under the Genocide Convention.233 Indonesian authorities have repeatedly caused
West Papuans serious bodily or mental harm by subjecting them to torture, disappearance, and
cruel and inhuman treatment and punishment.
Throughout the inland areas of West Papua, security forces have engaged in arbitrary and
mass detention of indigenous Papuans, frequently supplemented by cruel and inhuman
punishments, including electric shocks, beating, pistol whipping, water torture, and skinning
alive. Documented cases include men being detained in steel containers in total darkness for
three months and women being kept for long periods of time in closets filled with filthy water.
During the Abepura violence, one hundred individuals from four residential neighborhoods were
rounded up and severely tortured with wooden blocks, iron bars, cigarettes, and electric cables.
Similarly, numerous West Papuans have been reported missing over the last three
decades, especially in the Highland areas. The kidnapping of these individuals, although they
cannot be confirmed as killings, are, nevertheless, a form of “serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group.” Although the effects of kidnapping may not be permanent (some people
have managed to return to their homes), they still have serious long-term effects. The
disappearance of Martin Luther Waren after his release from jail, and the detention and then
disappearance of the Kwalik brothers in 1994, are examples of such violations. People who have
231 Akayesu, para. 504.
232 Kayishema and Ruzindana, para. 109.
233 Prosecutor v. Karadzic and Mladic (Case Nos. IT-95-5-R61, IT-95-18-R61), Consideration of the Indictment
within the Framework of Rule 61 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, July 11, 1996, para. 93.
62
“disappeared” have been deprived of their right to bodily integrity and likely have been killed or
subjected to torture or cruel and unusual punishment. Moreover, the spouses and children of
individuals who have been “disappeared” suffer serious physical or mental harm. They are
subjected to the psychological trauma of not knowing the fate of their family members. Often,
they suffer serious financial deprivation as a result of the disappearance.
Indonesian government and military authorities have subjected West Papuans to torture,
cruel and inhuman treatment and punishment, kidnapping, and disappearance. Such acts deprive
victims of their basic human rights and clearly constitute the kind of bodily and mental harm that
is proscribed by the Genocide Convention.
3. Violence Against Women and Rape
During Indonesia’s rule, soldiers have raped, killed and mutilated indigenous West
Papuan women, causing serious bodily and mental harm. In Akayesu, the ICTR held that:
Rape and sexual violence certainly constitute infliction of serious bodily
and mental harm on the victims and are even, according to the Chamber,
one of the worst ways of inflicting harm on the victim as he or she suffers
both bodily and mental harm.234
The ICTR found that the genocidal intent required under the Convention was clear in the sexual
violence carried out in Rwanda:
[T]he acts of rape and sexual violence . . . were committed solely against
Tutsi women, many of whom were subjected to the worst public
humiliation, mutilated, and raped several times, often in public . . . and
often by more than one assailant. . . . Sexual violence was an integral part
of the process of destruction, specifically targeting Tutsi women and
specifically contributing to their destruction and to the destruction of the
Tutsi group as a whole.235
234 Akayesu, para. 731 (Sept. 2, 1998).
235 Id.
63
In West Papua, similarly, the military’s use of rape was targeted specifically and exclusively
against indigenous Papuan women, was committed in public (sometimes by more than one
soldier), against girls as well as women, and was sometimes accompanied by murder or
mutilation or both.
While the reports of rape and violence against indigenous Papuan women by the
Indonesian military are legion, two examples demonstrate especially clearly the use of rape to
inflict serious bodily and mental harm upon West Papuans. First, in 1970, soldiers patrolling the
jungle border area shot and killed a pregnant woman, cut the baby from the mother’s womb, and
dissected it in front of 80 women and children of the village. At the same time, a group of
soldiers raped and killed the pregnant woman’s sister. In 1998, in order to disrupt a proindependence
demonstration, the Indonesian navy used force on the participants.
It is alleged that women were taken out to sea on Indonesian navy ships,
where they were raped, sexually mutilated and thrown overboard.
Women’s corpses reportedly washed up on the Biak coast. Some of them
showed signs of sexual mutilation; breasts had been removed.236
These reports of rape, mutilation, and murder committed by the Indonesian military solely
against indigenous Papuan women fulfill the requirements of the Genocide Convention’s second
type of act, “causing serious bodily or mental harm.”237 Many of these acts have also resulted in
the death of Papuan women, thus meeting the requirements of the “killing” category of act that is
set out in Article 2 of the Convention.
4. Resource Exploitation, Relocation of Groups, and Environmental Harm
Systematic resource exploitation, one of the explicit goals of the Indonesian
government’s involvement with West Papua, has led to the forced relocation of indigenous
236 Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, supra note 157, at 14.
237 Rape has sometimes been interpreted as a “condition of life calculated to destroy the group.” See SCHABAS,
GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 170.
64
peoples within West Papua and has caused serious and pervasive environmental harm to the area.
While the following acts may not constitute “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated
to destroy the group in whole or in part” under a narrow conventional analysis of the Genocide
Convention, a more expansive reading of this category of act is appropriate in this case.
In recent years, considerable case law has developed around what kinds of acts or
omissions constitute the requisite “conditions of life” inflicted upon a specific group, calculated
to destroy that group in whole or in part. In Akayesu, the ICTR Trial Chamber held that
deliberately inflicting conditions of life “should be construed as the methods of destruction by
which the perpetrator does not immediately kill the members of the group, but which, ultimately,
seek their physical destruction.”238 Examples of acts that would fit this definition, when
committed with the requisite specific intent, were “systematic expulsion from homes and the
reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirements.”239
The Indonesian government, in conjunction with various mining and timber corporations,
has done both of these things to Papuans. To enable PT Freeport mining operations, the
Amungme people were compelled to move from their homes in the Tembagapura area (in the
cool, highlands region) to the hot, coastal Timika region. This move, in fact, caused the death of
a large number of the group, due to their introduction to new diseases for which they had no
immunity. In another case, a government-owned plantation seized the property of indigenous
people, forcing them to relocate on land that was insufficient to support their needs, and refused
to compensate them fairly.
The government has consistently refused to provide adequate medical services to the
people of West Papua—even for diseases that were introduced as a result of the Indonesian
238 Akayesu, para. 505.
239 Id., para. 506. For additional examples, see SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at
166-171.
65
government’s transmigration policies. When the government renegotiated PT Freeport’s
Contract of Work in 1991, it required the company to provide increased benefits—including
medical care and hospitals—for the company’s workers and the Indonesian military, but did not
require the company to extend these benefits and services to the local, indigenous population.
While indigenous West Papuans have suffered from cysticercosis over the last thirty years due to
infected pigs, government officials in Jakarta have prohibited exportation of the drugs necessary
to fight the disease. Finally, Indonesian health authorities in Papua have excluded or
discriminated against Papuans in the provision of basic reproductive health care and in essential
HIV/AIDS prevention and education programs. Under recent international case law, these acts
by the Indonesian government on behalf of or in collaboration with corporations operating in
West Papua may, if committed with the requisite intent, be considered genocidal acts.
The environmental damage caused by the mining and logging of West Papua may
constitute a third way in which the Indonesian government has imposed conditions of life
calculated to destroy indigenous West Papuans as a group. While the intent element may be
harder to prove for these acts, the results of the mining and logging have been devastating to the
health and existence of the indigenous people. According to one report, scores of Papuans have
suffered illnesses related to Freeport’s discharge of mining waste into the rivers, and in 1999,
five Papuans died from copper poisoning when they ate mollusks and other organisms from a
polluted river.
Unlike the acts of “killing” or “causing serious bodily or mental harm,” the act of
inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group contains within it an additional,
specific intent element. The scope of what constitutes such intent has been examined in a
66
number of cases and scholarly articles, with mixed results.240 According to one interpretation,
the intent of the actor must be the eventual destruction of the group alone, unalloyed with
economic intentions.241 Another interpretation, however, adopted by the Rome Statute creating
the International Criminal Court, holds that intent exists if the actor “meant to cause that
consequence or is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events.”242 While no tribunal
or other judicial body has yet followed the latter interpretation of intent with respect to the
Genocide Convention, the West Papuan case demonstrates that such an interpretation is
appropriate and necessary.
Acts motivated by economic goals, coupled with indifference toward the existence of a
group, that result in the destruction of that group in whole or in part, should not escape a finding
that they are genocidal acts, simply because the actors did not explicitly express their intentions
in terms of the group’s extermination. In the case of the Aché Indians of Paraguay (the facts of
which were never brought before any court), most scholars have recognized that genocide
occurred, despite the State’s claim that its motives (development of the land on which the Aché
lived) were entirely economic and that the resultant death of half of the Aché population over ten
years was entirely incidental.243 The Indonesian government’s use of economic development
language suggests a similar excuse-making for the deaths of thousands of indigenous Papuans.
The obvious connection between development goals and genocidal intent reveals itself in the
240 For a description of the various interpretations, see SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note
200, at 169-70, 201, & 243-44.
241 See id.
242 Rome Statute, Art. 30 § 2(b). Professor Alexander Greenawalt has argued that the Genocide Convention should
be interpreted to define intent in this same manner. Alexander K. A. Greenawalt, Rethinking Genocidal Intent: The
Case for a Knowledge-Based Interpretation, 99 COLUM. L. REV. 2259 (1999). Many domestic jurisdictions use a
similar definition of intent for criminal causes of action. See Model Penal Code § 2.02 (1985) (“A person acts
purposely with respect to a material element of an offense when . . . it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of
that nature or to cause such a result; and . . . if the element involves the attendant circumstances, he is aware of the
existence of such circumstances or he believes or hopes that they exist.).
243 See GENOCIDE IN PARAGUAY (Richard Arens ed., 1976); Greenawalt, Rethinking Genocidal Intent, supra note
242, at 2285-87; Joy Gordon, When Intent Makes All the Difference in the World: Economic Sanctions on Iraq and
the Accusation of Genocide, YALE HUM. RTS. AND DEVEL. L. J. 57, 63 (2002)
67
attitude of the Kopassus lieutenant commander described above who flatly admitted that the
military’s job was to clear the highlands of West Papuans in order to make room for investors.
Deaths that result, even indirectly, from Indonesia’s policies and conduct during the 40 years of
its rule reflect, at least, an indifference toward the lives of Papuans that is consistent with this
broader and more appropriate notion of intent.
The result of Indonesia’s actions—the deaths of thousands of indigenous Papuans over
the course of Indonesia’s forty-year rule—is the same whether those actions were based on
development goals or the government’s intent was to exterminate Papuans outright. If, as one
scholar has argued, the “core concern” of the Genocide Convention is the “permanent losses to
humanity that result from the annihilation of enumerated groups,” then “the requirement of
genocidal intent should be satisfied if the perpetrator acted in furtherance of a campaign targeting
members of a protected group and knew that the goal or manifest effect of the campaign was the
destruction of the group in whole or in part.”244 Thus, while this is a more expansive
interpretation of the specific intent requirement than has been endorsed judicially, its application
to the acts surrounding resource exploitation, relocation, and environmental harm in West Papua
is consistent with the requirement’s purpose. Application of such an analysis to the history of
Indonesian control of West Papua leads to the conclusion that the required specific intent was
present: the State knew that the effect of its acts — in support of and in collaboration with the
relevant corporations — would be the destruction of the indigenous people of West Papua.245 By
engaging in such acts, the Indonesian government “deliberately inflict[ed] conditions of life
calculated to destroy the [West Papuan] group in whole or in part,” thus violating Article 2 of the
Genocide Convention.
244 Greenawalt, Rethinking Genocidal Intent, supra note 242, at 2288.
245 See note 240-41 & 244 and accompanying text.
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5. Destruction of Property and Crops
The Indonesian military has regularly engaged in the destruction of property and crops
belonging to and cultivated by the indigenous people of West Papua. This type of destruction,
when engaged in with the requisite intent, constitutes “deliberately inflicting conditions of life
calculated to destroy a group in whole or in part.” The Guatemalan Commission for Historical
Clarification found that acts of genocide had been committed against the Mayan people of
Guatemala when the army razed villages, destroyed property and collectively-worked fields, and
burned crops.246 Indonesian military forces burned church buildings, homes, and crops in West
Papua. The result of these attacks on the property of the West Papuans was to force them to flee
their homes and into the forests. Many subsequently starved to death or suffered from diseases
due to exposure to the elements. These consequences were the foreseeable result of the
“ordinary course of events,” and thus were committed by the military with the intent required for
such conduct to fit within the definition of genocidal acts.
6. Forced Labor
Throughout Indonesia’s rule of West Papua, Indonesian authorities have occasionally
forced indigenous Papuans to work without fair, or sometimes any, compensation. While these
forced labor programs have been relatively infrequent, they may constitute “deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in
whole or in part.”247
Forced labor, used in Nazi Germany as part of the Final Solution, was among the
examples given during the drafting of the Geneva Convention as one of those “conditions of life
246 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 168.
247 Genocide Convention, art. 2(c) (1948).
69
calculated to destroy a group in whole or in part.”248 Two incidents of forced labor in West
Papua have been documented: the obligatory labor in the Paniai Timur region, beginning in the
early 1980s and lasting throughout the 1990s, and the forced logging of the south coast of West
Papua. The Indonesian government forced the West Papuans of the Paniai region to supply free
labor to a nearby military post; any failure to do so was punished with fines, corporal
punishment, and torture. In another incident described above, Indonesian authorities relocated
the Asmat tribe and forced them to engage in logging at below-subsistence wages. The
Indonesian authorities enforced the system of forced labor with threats of arrest. The specific
intent of the Indonesian authorities to destroy the Asmat tribe in whole or in part is evidenced by
the length of time they had to remain away from their homes and by the below-subsistence
wages the Asmat workers received. Being away from their villages and families for long periods
of time disrupted not only village life, but also the creation of families and the procreation of the
Asmat people.
7. Transmigration Program
Indonesia’s transmigration program seems clearly to constitute the deliberate infliction of
“conditions of life calculated to destroy” West Papuans. The evidence strongly suggests that the
Indonesian government must have been aware that such a policy would eventually bring about
the physical (as well as cultural) destruction of the indigenous West Papuan population. Such
knowledge fulfills the “intent” requirement, as described above.
In furthering its transmigration policy, the Indonesian government moved transmigrants
from elsewhere in Indonesia to West Papua. Indonesian authorities intentionally forced West
248 SCHABAS, GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 165 (“Under its heading physical genocide, the
Secretariat draft presented two provisions addressing this issue [including] the subjection to conditions of life which,
by lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care, or excessive work or physical exertion, are
likely to result in the debilitation or death of the individuals . . . .”).
70
Papuans from their traditional land to land with conditions to which they were not accustomed.
This forcible removal left West Papuans with no means of subsistence. In many cases, they were
also denied opportunities for employment. They were exposed to diseases for which they had no
immunity. The Indonesian government intended its actions and was aware of the consequences
likely to follow. These consequences, which were devastating for the West Papuans, occurred in
the ordinary course of events as a result of the transmigration policy. The transmigration policy
and its attendant acts “deliberately inflict[ed]” on the West Papuan group conditions aimed to
“bring about the its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Implementation of the
transmigration policy itself may therefore be considered a genocidal act.
D. Inferring Intent: West Papua and the Contemporary Standard
As the ICTY concluded in the Jelisic case, “It is in fact the mens rea [the mental-state
element of the crime] which gives genocide its speciality and distinguishes it from an ordinary
crime and other crimes against international humanitarian law.”249 In other words, whereas the
act element is what makes the genocide a crime in the first place, the intent element is what
makes the crime genocide. Under the 1948 Convention, the intent must be specific—it cannot be
just a general intent to murder.250 Although specific intent is required, however, the ad hoc
tribunals have interpreted the standard to allow specific intent to be inferred, in most cases, from
the acts themselves. According to the ICTR, “[I]t is possible to deduce the genocidal intent
inherent in a particular act charged from the general context of the perpetration of other culpable
acts systematically directed against that same group, whether these acts were committed by the
same offender or by others.”251
249 Jelisic, para. 66.
250 For example, under Article II(a) of the Convention, the mens rea must be a specific intent to kill someone
because of their membership in a group.
251 Akayesu, para. 523.
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As one scholar summarizes, “[I]ntent may be inferred from a number of facts such as
words or deeds or a pattern of purposeful action that deliberately, consistently, and
systematically targets victims on account of their membership in a particular group while
excluding the members of other groups.”252 In the case of West Papua, inferring intent from the
acts seems to be a difficult proposition, because the relevant acts, on their own, do not clearly
suggest the kind of systematic campaign that the text of the Genocide Convention explicitly
requires. Yet, the pattern of activity undertaken by the Indonesian government, when considered
in aggregation, begins to emerge as the sort of conduct that the Convention was designed to
proscribe.
The Indonesian government, particularly the military, Brimob, and the KOPKAMTIB,
has regularly brutalized the people of West Papua since the end of the colonial period, killing
uncounted thousands in a series of incidents. Through its transmigration programs, the
Indonesian government has undermined the social and cultural heritage of the people of West
Papua by altering, at a fundamental level, the demographics and the underlying social structures
of the region. Through the economic development efforts that it has sponsored, the Indonesian
government has caused widespread and devastating pollution and other environmental damage,
which, in turn, have led to the further obliteration or forced relocation of numerous West Papuan
groups. Through its refusal to introduce necessary measures of medical and economic relief for
a plague that, evidence suggests, the government itself introduced, the Indonesian government
has turned a willfully blind eye to the decimation of the people of West Papua. Indeed,
throughout the past forty years, the Indonesian government has shown a callous disregard for—
and, at times, an intentional and specific malevolence toward—the basic human rights and
dignity of the people of West Papua.
252 KRIANGSAK KITTICHAISAREE, INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW 74 (2002).
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Although no single act or set of acts can be said to have constituted genocide, per se, and
although the required intent cannot be as readily inferred as it was in the cases of the Holocaust
or the Rwandan genocide, there can be little doubt that the Indonesian government has engaged
in a systematic pattern of acts that has resulted in harm to—and indeed the destruction of—a
substantial part of the indigenous population of West Papua. The inevitability of this result was
readily obvious, and the government has taken no active measures to contravene. According to
current understanding of the Genocide Convention, including its interpretation in the
jurisprudence of the ad hoc international criminal tribunals, such a pattern of actions and
inactions—of acts and omissions—supports the conclusion that the Indonesian government has
acted with the necessary intent to find that it has perpetrated genocide against the people of West
Papua.
In the case of West Papua, however, it is necessary to consider whether the requisite
intent can be inferred when genocidal acts have been committed in furtherance of an objective
with a non-genocidal motive. The Genocide Convention’s intent requirement speaks to the
intended consequences of certain categories of acts—the objective to destroy a group in whole or
in part. Motive, on the other hand, addresses the question of why the perpetrator desires these
consequences to occur. In this case, the Indonesian government might maintain that its actions
have all been designed to achieve economic gain and that the destruction of—or attempt to
destroy—the people of West Papua was not intended “as such.” Can the required intent be
established when the government makes a credible claim that the motive behind the acts was not
directly related to the extermination of the group against whom the acts were directed?
Commentators generally agree that the inclusion of the words “as such” in Article II of
the Genocide Convention is the Convention’s lone attempt to address motive as an element
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additional to and distinct from intent, but there is no commonly accepted interpretation of what
the term actually means.253 One argument is that the “as such” requirement mandates that the
crime of genocide can only cover acts committed against groups where the destruction of that
group is not only intended but is the motive behind the acts. Such a reading, however, is too
narrow to be reconciled with the history of the Convention’s drafting, which shows that an
explicit reference to motive was left out of the text largely because of a fear that such a reference
would limit the Convention’s application.254 Nevertheless, despite the drafters’ intent not to
limit the Convention’s application to cases where there was also an explicitly genocidal motive,
the Convention has never been extended to cover cases where such motive was not present.
Neither the ICTY nor the ICTR have helped to resolve this question of interpretation.255
The problem is particularly troubling in cases where the commission of genocide is
arguably a means, rather than an end. Is the intent requirement satisfied when otherwise
genocidal acts are carried out with the ultimate motive of increasing government or governmentsanctioned
access to natural resources? In one pertinent case, the Australian Human Rights and
Equal Opportunities Commission ruled that “even if motives were mixed, a fundamental element
in the programme [sic] [of transferring indigenous children to families of European descent] was
the elimination of indigenous cultures, and that as a result the co-existence of other motives was
no defence [sic].”256 While it has no analogue in the case law of the ICTY or ICTR, the
conclusion of the Australian commission is implicit in the purpose and logic of the Genocide
253 Indeed, the record indicates that there was significant debate in the drafting of the Convention about whether or
not to include a requirement for there to be an explicitly genocidal motive as part of the mens rea. See SCHABAS,
GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW, supra note 200, at 245-56.
254 Id.
255 Id. at 252 (“The case law of the ad hoc tribunals is hardly enlightening as to this vexing problem of
interpretation.”).
256 Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, Bringing Them Home, Report of the National
Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, at 270-75,
available at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen (last visited on March 11, 2002).
74
Convention and consistent with its legislative history. This conclusion suggests that motivation
need not be exclusive in order for the crime to constitute genocide. Instead, animus or racism
toward the victim group may be coupled with the desire to achieve political, territorial, or other
goals.257
Without further research, it may not be possible to determine conclusively whether the
acts perpetrated by the Indonesian government against the West Papuans were committed with
the intent to destroy the West Papuan group, as such. However, the presence of other motives
should not negate a claim of genocide so long as the motive for the acts of the Indonesian
government, taken as a whole, includes or reflects opposition to or animus toward the West
Papuans qua West Papuans. Relying on contemporary and appropriate interpretations of the
Convention’s intent requirement, a strong argument can be made that the conduct of the
Indonesian government toward the people of West Papua over the last forty years has involved
the requisite intent or mens rea to constitute genocide.
V. CONCLUSION
Since Indonesia gained control of West Papua, the West Papuan people have suffered
persistent and horrible abuses at the hands of the government. The Indonesian military and
security forces have engaged in widespread violence and extrajudicial killings in West Papua.
They have subjected Papuan men and women to acts of torture, disappearance, rape, and sexual
violence, thus causing serious bodily and mental harm. Systematic resource exploitation, the
destruction of Papuan resources and crops, compulsory (and often uncompensated) labor,
transmigration schemes, and forced relocation have caused pervasive environmental harm to the
region, undermined traditional subsistence practices, and led to widespread disease, malnutrition,
257 See Lippman, The 1948 Convention Forty-Five Years Later, supra note 213, at 23-24 (1994) (discussing the
legislative history of the Genocide Convention).
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and death among West Papuans. Such acts, taken as a whole, appear to constitute the imposition
of conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the West Papuans. Many of
these acts, individually and collectively, clearly constitute crimes against humanity under
international law. Further, the West Papuans, objectively, and in the eyes of their Indonesian
persecutors, appear to constitute a group as defined by Article II of the Genocide Convention.
In the final analysis, whether the sum of acts committed by the Indonesians against the
West Papuans rises to the level of genocide turns largely on the question of whether these acts
were committed with the requisite mens rea or intent to destroy the West Papuan group.
Obviously, few perpetrators of genocide leave behind a clear record of intent akin to Hitler’s
explicit statements of intent to destroy the Jews or the Rwandan Hutu government’s carefully
laid plan to rid Rwanda of all ethnic Tutsis. Usually, intent must be inferred from the
perpetrators’ acts, considered as a whole, along with any other available evidence that the victim
group was targeted as such. In the West Papuan case, any such inference necessarily remains
tentative given the difficulties in procuring comprehensive qualitative or quantitative data about
Indonesian human rights abuses in West Papua, past and present. However, the historical and
contemporary evidence set out above strongly suggests that the Indonesian government has
committed proscribed acts with the intent to destroy the West Papuans as such, in violation of the
1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the customary
international law prohibition this Convention embodies.
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