In his first official visit to West Papua, the War Criminal Prabowo Subianto travelled to Merauke to oversee the ecocidal plantations that are destroying millions of hectares of virgin rainforest.
West Papua’s forest is a lung of the earth. Even if you have never heard of West Papua before, our forest allows you to breathe. And yet governments that claim to be tackling climate change continue to support Indonesia as they destroy it. The UK government recently signed a ‘critical minerals deal’ with Indonesia, at the same time as the occupier committed to destroying an area of our forest bigger than Wales. It is a sick joke that Indonesia talks about the ‘strengthening of environmental standards’ as it launches the biggest deforestation programme in the history of the world.
It is not a coincidence Prabowo has announced a new transmigration programme at the same time as their ecocidal deforestation regime intensifies. These twin agenda represent the two sides of Indonesian colonialism in West Papua: exploitation and settlement. Indonesia only wants West Papua’s resources; they do not want our people. The wealth of West Papua – gas from Bintuni Bay, copper and gold from the Grasberg mine, palm oil from Merauke – has been sucked out of our land for six decades, while our people are replaced with Javanese settlers loyal to Jakarta.
And what has West Papua been given, in return for the ongoing theft of our resources and destruction of our birthright? Over 500,000 West Papuans have been killed since Indonesia’s genocide began in 1963. Even though Indonesia finances its new developments from our palm oil and gold and keeps its people warm with West Papuan gas, West Papua is still Indonesia’s poorest province. Every element of West Papua is being systematically destroyed: our land, our people, our Melanesian culture identity. This is why it is not enough to speak about the Act of No Choice in 1969: the violation of our self-determination is continuous, renewed with every new settlement programme, police crackdown, or ecocidal development.
But we will not submit to financing the coloniser’s food security through the obliteration of our ancestral forest. West Papua is not Indonesia’s kitchen. I support and applaud the Papuan students who are standing up to resist Indonesia’s illegal settlement programme. The ULMWP stands behind you. We will continue to resist until we have finally been allowed to exercise our God-given right to self-determination.
Benny Wenda
Interim President
ULMWP Provisional Government
