Summary

Nineteen-year-old Alfa Hisage was arrested on August 30, 2019, for joining a student-led protest against anti-Papuan racism in Jayapura, a city in the Indonesian territory of West Papua. He told Human Rights Watch that at the police station, officers beat and racially abused him, particularly for his dreadlocks. “They pushed my head on the table,” he said. “And they used a bayonet to cut off my hair.”

The Indigenous Papuan population of Indonesia has long encountered racial discrimination based on their ethnic origin, including from government agencies and institutions, as well as in laws and regulations. Ever since the Netherlands turned over West Papua to the newly independent government of Indonesia following a deeply flawed United Nations resolution in 1969, many Papuans have sought independence – primarily peacefully but also through the force of arms – from Indonesian rule.

The Indonesian government has responded with numerous grave abuses by the government security forces, the isolation of West Papua from the rest of the world, and the arrest, prosecution, and long prison terms for Papuan activists who have peacefully called for independence or other forms of self-determination. The Indonesian authorities have encouraged tens of thousands of non-Papuan families to work and to settle in West Papua, which has driven many Indigenous Papuans from their land.

The resistance of Papuans and many non-Papuans in Indonesia to discrimination took on a new dimension following an August 17, 2019 attack by security forces on a Papuan student dormitory in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, in which the students were subjected to racial insults. The attack renewed discussions on anti-Papuan racial discrimination and sovereignty for West Papua. Papuan students and others acting through a social media movement called Papuan Lives Matter, inspired by Black Lives Matter in the United States, took part in a wave of protests that broke out in many parts of Indonesia. Alfa Hisage was among the many students who joined the demonstrations.

The Indonesian government responded by detaining hundreds. Papuans Behind Bars, a nongovernmental organization that monitors politically motivated arrests in West Papua, recorded 418 new cases from October 2020 to September 2021. At least 245 of them were charged, found guilty, and jailed for joining the protests, with 109 convicted of “treason.” However, while in the past, Papuans charged with political offenses typically were sentenced to years – in many cases, 10 years or more – of imprisonment, in the recent cases, perhaps because of international and domestic attention and pressure, the courts handed down much shorter sentences, and many of those convicted were soon released because they had already served much of their term in pretrial detention.

Victor Yeimo, a prominent Papuan rights activist and spokesperson for the West Papua National Committee (Komite Nasional Papua Barat, KNPB), was arrested on May 9, 2021, but had to be hospitalized for tuberculosis three months later. He was eventually detained again in January 2023 to face trial for treason, and was convicted. When he was released after completing his one-year jail sentence (including pre-trial detention) on September 23, 2023, he was welcomed at a large public gathering, where he called on Papuans to resist racial discrimination: “It is imperative that the Papuan people learn that the annexation of this region is based on racist prejudice.”

West Papuan independence campaigners have largely protested peacefully against repression by Indonesians authorities. However, since the 1960s a small Papuan separatist insurgency has mainly targeted Indonesian security forces, but has also at times targeted Indonesian settlers to West Papua, foreign workers and corporations, and others they claim to be “spies.” The Indonesian military has been deployed in West Papua in large numbers to counter the insurgents. Secessionist demands have also been fueled by countless government and security force human rights violations.

Human Rights Watch takes no position on claims for independence in Indonesia or in any other country. We support the right of everyone to peacefully express their political views, including for independence, without fear of arrest or other forms of reprisal. The Indonesian government has legitimate security concerns in West Papua stemming from Papuan militant attacks. But these provide no justification for the government’s failure to uphold international human rights and humanitarian law prohibitions against arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment of persons in custody, and unlawful killings.

This report profiles cases of Papuan activists convicted after the Papuan Lives Matter protests, and also describes ongoing human rights violations rooted in racial discrimination, in particular, the right to education and to the highest attainable standard of health. We also documented recent abuses by security forces and Papuan militants during the ongoing conflict.

Discrimination Against Papuans

Racism remains at the core of Papuan disaffection and protests calling for recognition of their right to self-determination.

Papuans consist of numerous Indigenous peoples with their own customs and practices, such as face painting and dancing the waeta, mimicking bird movements. Papuans, many of whom are Christian, consider pork to be an important part of their diet, while for most communities in Muslim-majority Indonesia, pork is forbidden.

Many Papuans face bigotry and discrimination from non-Papuan Indonesians in their daily lives. Government officials and others openly refer to them by pejorative terms such as animals to suggest that they are inferior or savage. They describe being refused entry to public transportation and shops.

The government directly or indirectly denies Papuans national welfare benefits and other basic rights. For instance, many Papuan children are denied adequate access to education because the government has failed to recruit teachers or ensure teachers hired turn up for work. In some places, soldiers have stepped in as schoolteachers for Papuan children and mostly teach children about Indonesian nationalism.

The government does not ensure adequate access to public health services, especially in areas where Indigenous Papuans predominantly reside. Clinics and hospitals have closed due to a lack of regular medical supplies. According to Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the 2020 census showed that Papua and West Papua provinces had the highest numbers of child mortality rates, infant mortality rates, neo-natal mortality rates, and maternal mortality rates in the country. For instance, Jakarta at 48 per 100,000 live births has the lowest maternal mortality rate, while the highest is in Papua with 565 per 100,000 live births.

Papuan students often have difficulties to find lodging while at universities outside West Papua, with landlords unwilling to rent to them. Some Papuans face ostracism at work because of their racial identity. For instance, Ruth Ogetay, a Papuan medic, said she resigned from her job in Jakarta after an Indonesian colleague harassed her about her hygiene.

Impunity for abuses remains a serious problem in West Papua. In March 2024, a video emerged showing soldiers torturing Definus Kogoya in custody. Soldiers had arrested three young Papuan men – Definus Kogoya, Alianus Murib, and Warinus Kogoya – on February 4, 2024, apparently because they were suspected of trying to burn down a medical clinic in Gome, Highland Papua province. The police later released Definus Kogoya and Alianus Murib, because there was no evidence against them. The third man, Warinus Kogoya, died after allegedly “jumping off” a military vehicle, according to the Indonesian army. Benny Wenda, a West Papua leader in exile in the United Kingdom, denounced such torture as the “mode of governance in West Papua.”

The military said that it would “take action” against 13 soldiers that it had identified as being responsible. Maj. Gen. Izak Pangemanan, the military commander in Papua, apologized, saying that the soldiers had “tarnished the name of the military and disrupted efforts to handle conflicts in Papua.” However, the same officer had in 2007 apologized when a Special Forces soldier under his command had beaten the district head of Arso in Keerom, Papua, over a traffic incident. There has been no public disclosure of any punishment or action taken against that soldier, and most Papuan activists fear the same outcome in the more recent incident.

Attack in Surabaya and Ensuing Protests

On August 17, 2019, Indonesian security forces joined a militant mob promoting Indonesian nationalism to attack students from West Papua at a university dormitory in Surabaya, East Java. Video footage shows army officers shouting racist insults at the Papuan students for allegedly failing to unfurl the Indonesian national flag to celebrate the country’s Independence Day. The police later forced their way into the dormitory using tear gas and arrested 43 Papuan students.

Protests ensued in at least 33 cities across Indonesia after the video footage spread online, sparking a social media campaign called #PapuanLivesMatter. The movement highlighted racism, injustice, and violence against Indigenous Papuans. In West Papua, the protests led to some riots, arson attacks, and several deaths. Papuans killed non-Papuan settlers, while the settlers and security forces killed Papuans.

The authorities arrested hundreds of Papuans, and several of their non-Papuan supporters in Indonesia, during the street protests, particularly for unfurling the Morning Star flag, which is widely used by pro-independence and anti-racism Papuan protesters. The authorities have long regarded it as an act of treason. Most of those arrested had not been involved in violent protests.

Several protesters said that they were beaten and verbally insulted in police custody. Yoseph Ernesto Matuan, a 19-year-old student, was arrested on December 1, 2021, for raising the Morning Star in Jayapura. Seven others were arrested and tortured with him including 20-year-old Zode Hilapok, who was hospitalized after he collapsed from the beatings in police detention. Hilapok never recovered and died in October 2022. Matuan said:

They cursed us, calling us dogs or pigs. They said, “Answer quickly, dog, or else you'll be killed out there!” They hit me on my face, head, and spine. Some police officers shoved my head to the wall. It was more than 24 hours of interrogation and beating. We were all tortured.

Ariana Elopere, a theology student, had joined a protest in August 2019 in Jakarta. She was photographed by an intelligence official draped in the Morning Flag. “When I saw the Morning Star, our flag, I embraced it. It is the symbol of our movement for peace, for freedom, in West Papua,” she said. Elopere was later convicted of treason along with five others for the protests in Jakarta. Among them was Surya Anta Ginting, a non-Papuan activist who had been peacefully protesting racial discrimination against Papuans. Since Ginting is not a Papuan, the police officers were particularly suspicious of him, and forced him to spend 73 of his 78 days of detention in solitary confinement before a court convicted him of treason.

At least 22 people were convicted of treason for joining the Papuan Lives Matter protests. The late Filep Karma, among the most prominent Papuan rights activists, told Human Right Watch that “protesting racism should not be considered treason.”

Recent Trends

When President Joko Widodo, known as “Jokowi,” was elected president in 2014, many had hoped for human rights reforms in West Papua. In May 2015, he released five Papuan political prisoners from the Abepura prison, infamous for torture and a symbol of earlier authoritarian rule in Indonesia. Jokowi had also promised reforms, including increased access to foreign media, diplomats, and human rights monitors.  

But he failed to deliver. Ten years later, at the end of Jokowi’s second and final term, little has changed in West Papua. The authorities continue to arbitrarily arrest and prosecute Papuans for expressing peaceful support for self-determination. Security forces personnel implicated in abuses are seldom held to account.

The fighting between Papuan pro-independence insurgents and the Indonesian security forces is widely viewed as contributing to the deteriorating human rights situation in West Papua. Indonesian security forces engage in arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, and mass forced displacement, but are seldom held to account for these abuses. The insurgents have been implicated in the killings of migrants and foreign workers and attacks on foreign factories.

Rather than seeking to reduce tensions and respond to the concerns of Indigenous people in West Papua, the Indonesian parliament split the two Papuan provinces, Papua and West Papua, into six separate provinces in June 2022. While the parliament justified this move to extend the autonomy of West Papua, scholars and activists raised concerns that this division will lead to the increased militarization of West Papua while enabling the Indonesian government to gain greater control over the resource-rich region.

Agus Sumule, a lecturer at the University of Papua in Manokwari, said that the division of the territory had disadvantaged Indigenous Papuans. He pointed out that the Central Highlands, where almost all of the residents are Indigenous Papuans, does not have a single teacher’s training college. He said, “State universities are all located in coastal cities, like Jayapura, Manokwari, Fakfak and Merauke. Many of the settlers live in these cities. The Central Highlands does not have a single state university. If it’s not racism, what should I call it?”

The process for foreign correspondents to acquire official permission to travel to West Papua has remained opaque and unpredictable. Indonesian officials strongly resist what they call “internationalization” of the West Papua issues– human rights abuses, environmental degradation, or land grabbing– and this underpins the official restrictions to prevent independent foreign observers and UN monitors from visiting West Papua, even as Papuans remain desperate to expose the racial, economic, and social inequalities that they endure on a structural and everyday basis.

The government has also actively sponsored disinformation campaigns, hiding or distorting rights abuses and environmental damage in West Papua, while accusing Papuans of criminal actions, including attacks on non-Papuans. This can incite racial violence and discrimination. In January 2020, Reuters news agency reported that the Indonesian army operated at least 10 websites that make false claims to demonize government critics, mostly Papuans, and human rights defenders.  

In a June 26, 2020 letter to the Indonesian government, UN special rapporteurs raised alarm about the harassment, intimidation, and criminalization of human rights defenders in West Papua. In March 2022, UN human rights experts expressed “serious concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua, citing shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people.” They called for “urgent action” to “end ongoing human rights violations." In December 2023, the Indonesian government told Valerie Julliand, the UN resident coordinator in Jakarta, “to immediately leave” the country due to UN criticism of the human rights situation in Indonesia, including West Papua.

On January 2, 2023, the government enacted a new criminal code containing problematic provisions that, if implemented and enforced, would undermine freedoms of speech, belief, and association and imperil the rights of women, religious minorities, and LGBT people. Papuans are likely to face further abuse once the law comes into effect in January 2026, particularly by using treason charges like were often used against protesters in West Papua.

Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo was elected Indonesia’s new president in February 2024. Prabowo faces allegations of committing serious human rights violations when he was in the army in 1983 in East Timor, and in 1997 in Jakarta. He ran for office with Jokowi's eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as his running mate, on pledges of economic development and social justice. However, for many Papuans, his past record of abuse raises concerns about the policies he will adopt toward West Papua.

There is an urgent need for Indonesia’s new government to review existing policies on West Papua, recognize the government’s history of systemic racial discrimination against Indigenous Papuans and adopt measures to end it, and hold to account those responsible for violating their rights.

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Methodology

Human Rights Watch conducted research for this report from June 2023 to May 2024. This report also includes accounts gathered soon after the Papuan Lives Matter movement began in 2019. We conducted 49 in-depth interviews with Papuan activists, who were arrested and prosecuted. In addition, we interviewed lawyers, academics, officials and church leaders.

Interviews took place in Jakarta and Surabaya on Java Island,  Makassar on Sulawesi Island, as well as Jayapura, Manokwari, Merauke, Sarmi, Sorong, and Wamena in West Papua.

Interviews were conducted in English, Indonesian, as well as Mee and Dani languages in West Papua. We informed interviewees how the information gathered would be used and told them they could decline the interview or terminate it at any point. We also explained there would be no compensation for participation. 

We also wrote to the Indonesian Vice President Ma’ruf Amin on June 24, 2024, and communicated with two of his staff regarding the findings of this report. Human Rights Watch had not received any responses to our questions as of 5 September 2024.

Human Rights Watch decided to use the term “West Papua” for the whole six Indonesian provinces, avoiding confusion either with the Papua New Guinea – a different country, on the eastern half of the Papua Island – as well as the two provinces within the territory, namely Papua (capital Jayapura) and West Papua (capital Manokwari). The four new provinces, carved out in June 2022, include Southwest Papua (capital Sorong), Highland Papua (Wamena), South Papua (Merauke), and Central Papua (Nabire). 

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I. Background: Six Decades of Protest

The two million Indigenous Papuan population of Indonesia consider themselves of Melanesian origin. Many identify as Black. They are diverse, comprising over 300 distinct ethno-linguistic groups.[1] Many Papuans are Christian, and like all religious minorities in Muslim-majority Indonesia, are subject to discriminatory government regulations.[2] Christian Papuans who live outside West Papua are especially targeted.[3]

The Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, which was sparked by a not uncommon incident of racialized police brutality and subsequent demands for racial justice, inspired a social media movement in Indonesia called Papuan Lives Matter. The movement formed after a racist attack against a Papuan student dormitory in the Javanese city of Surabaya in August 2019.[4] This incident reignited Papuan discussions about sovereignty linked to what many consider to be the historical injustice of being denied independence promised to them by the former Dutch colonial rulers.[5] The Voice of Papua newsletter noted in June 2020:

Why do we need to discuss the extent of similarities and differences between #BlackLivesMatter and #PapuanLivesMatter before deciding on solidarity? Perhaps we should go back to basics and just think about what the core of these movements are about; a demand for respect and dignity from communities that have been denied that for so long. Yet we are still stuck here, having to hear that calls for Papuan dignity is a threat to the integrity of a state that claims to love Papua, yet considers these calls subversive and treasonous.[6]

End of Dutch Colonial Rule and West Papua

Indonesia became a sovereign state in 1949, following a five-year war with its Dutch colonial rulers. However, the Dutch retained control of West Papua. On December 1, 1961, the Papuan Council, a representative body sponsored by the Dutch administration, announced the start of a decolonization process to establish an independent nation with a national flag called the Morning Star. In March 1962, Indonesia’s president, Sukarno, called upon the Dutch to “peacefully” hand over the region to Indonesia, declaring that Papuans that opposed this were “Dutch puppets.”[7]

When the Dutch did not comply, the Indonesian military on June 23, 1962 parachuted troops into West Papua to break the Dutch defenses.[8] This Indonesian military operation worried the United States government.[9] The US then brokered the New York Agreement on West Papua between Indonesia and the Netherlands on August 15, 1962, letting the UN prepare a referendum on the future of West Papua.[10]

The Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, or OPM) was soon organized in opposition to Indonesian control. Its founders included members of the Papuan Council, some Papuan police officers, and others who alleged that Papuans had not been consulted in the treaty negotiations.

Violence Ahead of “Integration”

On May 1, 1963, the UN handed over some administrative duties in West Papua, including security, to Indonesia. A violent confrontation followed as the Indonesian military began to subdue Papuans who opposed what was termed “integration.”[11]

In September 1965, a group of army officers in Jakarta, who many believed were associated with the Indonesian Communist Party, kidnapped and killed several Indonesian army generals.[12] The state responded with massive brutality. The army, led by Maj. Gen. Soeharto, oversaw a campaign of mass killings targeting Communist Party members, giving free rein to a mix of soldiers and local militias to execute suspects. [13] By 1967, when Soeharto, now backed by Western powers who sought to crush Communist influence in Indonesia, replaced President Sukarno, nearly a million people had been killed across most major islands nationwide.[14]

In 1968, President Soeharto sent his Special Forces commander, Maj. Gen. Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, who was deeply involved in the massacres, to oversee security in West Papua.[15] Wibowo introduced those same repressive tactics to “integrate” West Papua with Indonesia. Estimates of the number of Papuans killed or displaced during this period, however, are unknown because United Nations officials and journalists faced tight restrictions on movement and reporting inside West Papua.[16]

Indonesia insisted upon the customary international legal principle of uti possidetis juris to integrate West Papua: that newly formed sovereign states should retain the internal borders that the colonial government recognized before independence. This meant that when the Netherlands Indies became Indonesia, it would include West Papua.

Under the 1962 agreement, the Dutch had called for an “Act of Free Choice” in which every adult would be eligible to determine Papua’s future status through a referendum. However, instead of creating a process of universal suffrage, the Indonesian authorities decided to conduct the plebiscite in 1969 through so-called “representative” assemblies. The government claimed that the level of education was so low in the territory, that the “one man, one vote” principle could not be applied. The Indonesian government did not allow the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA), created after the New York Agreement and tasked to organize a referendum on the future of the territory, to function properly to prevent the holding of a plebiscite.[17]

As a result, only 1,026 Papuans in eight cities, selected ostensibly by the UNTEA, but in fact hand-picked by the Indonesian military, participated in the Act of Free Choice. They voted unanimously to join Indonesia. Even at the time many Papuans declared the process a fraudulent justification for Indonesia’s annexation of Papua.[18]

Violent Crackdown on Resistance to Integration

For much of President Soeharto's rule, the name “Papua'' itself was forbidden, as were many forms of cultural self-expression. The then single province was known instead as “Irian Jaya.”[19]

In 1977-1978, the military launched operations in the Central Highlands. There is no official record of the number of people killed or displaced, but in 1981, a former governor of Papua, Eliezener Bonay, said publicly that the death toll was around 3,000.[20] Through the 1980s, Indonesian forces continued a campaign against pro-independence supporters and campaigners, displacing many Papuans who became refugees in neighboring Papua New Guinea.[21]

In 1996, the National Liberation Army West Papua took hostage a group of young Indonesian and foreign biologists from Mapenduma district in Central Highlands. Special Forces commander Brig. Gen. Prabowo Subianto – who in February 2024 was elected Indonesia’s president – led a military operation to rescue the hostages. In the ensuing military sweeps, many civilians were arrested and killed, and their property destroyed.[22]

In July 1998, after President Soeharto stepped down from three decades in power, a mass protest took place on Biak Island, near Papua’s northern coast, where the Morning Star flag was raised above a water tower. Filep Karma, a Biak native and a civil servant, who later became a prominent Papuan human rights defender, led the peaceful protest. In his book he wrote:

I conveyed this message repeatedly to the Papuan people. Especially those in Biak. Let's fight peacefully. Don't be afraid. There is no need to run into the forest and the important thing is that we are not armed. So, there is no justification for the police to act against us arbitrarily. That's what I said. My goal in raising the flag on the Biak water tower was to declare to the world that the Papuan people want independence.[23]

Security forces responded to the demonstrations by gunning down more than 100 protesters.[24] Witnesses at the time told Human Rights Watch that they had seen dead bodies thrown into trucks and brought to the Biak seaport, probably to be tossed overboard at sea.[25]

In December 1999, Abdurrahman Wahid, a pro-democracy activist, became president. Declaring the Morning Star flag to be “a cultural symbol,” he allowed it to be unfurled along with the Indonesian national flag. It was a relatively peaceful era in West Papua.[26] But Wahid stayed in power for only 21 months and was impeached in July 2001. His vice president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, replaced him as president.

The crackdown on Indigenous Papuans has continued since. On November 11, 2001, Theys Eluay, who many considered West Papua’s most important pro-independence leader, was found dead in his car outside Jayapura.[27] Initially, Indonesia’s Special Forces denied involvement in the killing, but two years later, after an international outcry, a court in Surabaya found seven military personnel, including their commander Lt. Col. Hartomo, guilty of mistreatment and battery leading to Eluay’s death – but crucially not of murder.[28] The military did not dismiss them, and Hartomo was even promoted to head the military intelligence service, eventually retiring as a major general.[29]

After Joko Widodo, known as “Jokowi,” was elected president in 2014, many in West Papua hoped for human rights reforms. However, 10 years later, at the end of Jokowi’s second and final term, little had changed. The authorities continued to arbitrarily arrest and prosecute Papuans for peacefully supporting self-determination.[30] The government also restricted travel and access to West Papua by foreign media, diplomats, and human rights monitors. Security force members were seldom held to account for serious abuses.[31]

Papuan Resistance

Pan-Papuan identity has broadened over the years in response to entrenched racial discrimination, an abusive military presence in West Papua, and the influx of non-Papuans composed of both state-sponsored “transmigrants” and economic migrants such as ethnic Javanese from Java Island, or Bugis, Makassarese, and Torajans from Sulawesi.[32] Said Raga Kogeya, a prominent activist who was detained and beaten in custody in 2018 for her work on forced displacement in the Nduga region:

At that time, there were only a few Papuans who became police officers. The priority was to recruit non-Papuan settlers to join the police and the military. One police officer came from behind and hit me on the head. I passed out for about 15 minutes. As a result of the beatings, sometimes I suddenly forget my memories.[33]

Most Papuans protest peacefully. There has also been a small but persistent armed insurgency that stretches back to the 1960s.[34] The Free Papua Movement was established in 1965 and has since maintained a low-level insurgency targeting mainly members of the Indonesian security forces, but has also at times attacked migrants from elsewhere in Indonesia and foreign workers at multinational corporations.

The armed conflict between Indonesian security forces and the West Papua National Liberation Army (Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat, TPN-PB) has fueled human rights abuses against the local population. State security forces in Papua have repeatedly failed to distinguish between violent acts and peaceful expression of political views.

Papuan militants have also increased their attacks on civilians. “We really appreciate all native Papuans who are struggling through peaceful means, but we consider this desire to be an empty hope,” said TPN-PB spokesperson Sebby Sambom in May 2024. “Javanese people do not understand democratic rights. The Indonesian government remains stubborn as a rock. So, we must expel Indonesia by force through a massive war.”[35]

Renewed Calls for Independence

For six decades since being integrated with Indonesia after what is widely considered to be a “sham” referendum,[36] many Papuans have demanded self-determination. This disaffection, with allegations of racism at its core, has sparked many protests.[37]

In 2017, a petition to the United Nations seeking a vote for independence, although banned by the Indonesian government, was physically passed around and reportedly signed by 1.8 million West Papuans – more than 70 percent of the population. Indonesian officials rejected the petition as a “publicity stunt.” The petition asked the UN to appoint a special representative to investigate human rights abuses in the provinces and to “put West Papua back on the decolonisation committee agenda and ensure their right to self‐determination … is respected by holding an internationally supervised vote.” The UN decolonization committee responded that West Papua was outside its mandate.[38] The Papuan activist who organized the petition, Yanto Awerkion, was later arrested and jailed for “possessing bullets.”[39]

In August 2023, the Vanuatu-based United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua (UMLWP) sought full membership in the Melanesian Spearhead Group, a regional organization, composed of the four Melanesian states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, as well as the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front of New Caledonia.[40] Indonesia is an associate member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, but the UMLWP wanted the grouping to recognize West Papua as an independent entity. Benny Wenda, the leader of the UMLWP, stated: “We've been killed, we've been tortured, we've been imprisoned. So it's been with Indonesia for 60 years, and there is no hope. We're not safe. That's why it is time for the [Melanesian leaders] to make a right decision.”[41]

Indonesian diplomats lobbied Melanesian leaders to reject the proposal, and staged a walkout when Benny Wenda was about to address the gathering in Vanuatu. The Melanesian leaders in their final statement said that the UMLWP had not met “the existing criteria” to join the regional group.[42]

Human Rights Watch takes no position on claims for independence in Indonesia or in other countries. Consistent with international human rights law, we support the right of all individuals, including independence supporters and the communities to which they belong, to express their political views peacefully without fear of arrest or other forms of reprisal.

II. Racial Discrimination Against Indigenous Papuans

Yusni Iyowau, a Papuan student in Malang, East Java, said that while on a bus journey she noticed that some non-Papuan passengers were covering their noses and laughing at her. “When it comes to being laughed at or ridiculed, it's a frequent occurrence,” she said. “Wherever you go, Javanese people laugh at us [Papuan people].” But this time, inspired by the Papuan Lives Matter movement that broke out in 2019 to protest against racial discrimination, she decided to resist. She silently stared at her offensive co-passengers until, she said, they felt awkward and stopped holding their noses. “After the Surabaya attack, we must try and reduce this racist behavior,” she said.[43]

Iyowau was referring to a common form of racial abuse faced by Indigenous Papuans in Indonesia. Papuans, who are ethnically Melanesian, have physical features that are distinct from most ethnic groups in Indonesia, including the Javanese, Sundanese, Malay, Madurese, and Bugis. They also celebrate and uphold traditions, customs, and ways of living rooted in their indigeneity, including face painting and dancing the waeta, mimicking bird movements. Papuans also consider pork to be an important part of their diet and culture, while for most ethnic groups in Muslim-majority Indonesia, pork is forbidden.[44]

Many Indonesians have internalized racist stereotypes that describe Papuans as dirty, half-naked, lazy, and primitive, using bows and arrows to settle tribal squabbles. Successive national governments have done little to address ongoing racism, and instead, have adopted policies that systemically discriminate against Papuans, while exploiting the financial gains that are possible from resource-rich West Papua.[45]

President Soeharto’s administration, for instance, created a program to introduce Western-style clothes to the Indigenous Papuans in the 1980s. His administration pursued a policy of transmigration as a “civilizing influence” on Indigenous Papuans in a bid “improve their livelihood.”[46] Officials have also used anti-Papuan propaganda to justify human rights abuses that they claim are needed to control an unruly community.[47]

Indonesian authorities have encouraged and subsidized non-Papuan settlers – pendatang in Indonesian – to relocate in West Papua, often driving out the Indigenous people and grabbing their land for mining and oil palm plantations. Between 1964 and 1999, the Indonesian government implemented its “transmigration program,” moving an estimated 78,000 families from densely populated islands such as Java to West Papua.[48] The government exploited the fact that Papuan traditional land ownership claims have rarely been recognized.[49] Indonesian police, prosecutors, and judges have continued to treat protests, including the raising of the Morning Star flag, as treason.[50]

Filep Karma, a prominent defender of Papuan rights, spent nearly 15 years in prison for leading a peaceful movement to “fight for freedom for West Papua.”[51] While in prison, he wrote about the systemic human rights violations against Papuans including beatings, rape, and extrajudicial killings, and later published a book, Seakan Kitorang Setengah Binatang: Rasialisme Indonesia di Tanah Papua (As If We’re Half Animals: Indonesian Racism in the Land of Papua). He wrote:

I see racial discrimination from Indonesian government officials and non-Papuan brothers and sisters who have migrated to Papua to look for work. They view, consider, and treat Papuans as half-human, not recognized as humans in general. Then there was the confiscation of Papuan people’s rights, including land, positions in government, or private companies, which were owned by Papuans. Their companies were sometimes simply taken over.[52]

At age 63, Karma, an avid scuba diver, drowned on Base G beach, Jayapura, on October 30, 2022.[53] Thousands of Papuans mourned his passing because he had so effectively raised his voice against racial discrimination and human rights violations.[54]

Enduring Racism

Papuans remain a marginalized community within Indonesia. UNICEF reports that poverty rates in the region are “considerably higher than the national average” among the Indigenous population. Almost half the Papuan children over age 5 living in rural and remote areas of Papua have never attended school, compared with 5 percent in urban areas.[55] Sophie Chao, an academic researcher with the University of Sydney, wrote in 2020 that “racism is a recurring motif for many Papuans across rural and urban environments.”[56]

Deka Anwar, a research analyst at the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, said that human rights violations against indigenous Papuans, which are rooted in racial discrimination, are systemic and are a factor in provoking their call for independence from Indonesia. “Violence persists in West Papua because the Indonesian government continues to ignore long held Papuan grievances,” he said. “Whether due to racism or prejudice, the security personnel often resort to racial profiling, targeting any young males with distinct looks or attributes.”[57]

The authorities have frequently punished Papuans for peacefully advocating for their rights. For instance, many Papuans feel the authorities target them because of their skin color and physical appearance. Alfa Hisage, a 19-year-old student at Cenderawasih University, Jayapura, wore his hair in dreadlocks. He joined a protest against anti-Papuan racism on August 30, 2019, and police arrested and brought him to a police station in Jayapura. He said that in a police interrogation room, four officers beat him, and criticized his dreadlocks:

They pushed my head on the table. They used a bayonet to cut my hair. It was very rough, pulling my hair till bleeding. The four officers also beat me with their hands. I lost consciousness. I later learned that my head was bleeding. Of all my 16 dreadlocks, there is just one that remains on my head.[58]

Papuan students living in other parts of Indonesia report that they often have difficulties finding lodging, with landlords expressing or indicating various anti-Papuan tropes. The experience of Papuans living or traveling outside Papua has been that many landlords claim to prefer “Muslim tenants.”

Jhon Gobai, a Papuan student in Yogyakarta, spent three months visiting homes with rental notices but was repeatedly rejected. "It's not just Papuans who get drunk and cause trouble,” Gobai said. “Not all Papuans do that either.” He then led the Alliance of Papuan Students and worked with university students – Papuans and non-Papuans – to overcome the barriers to finding adequate housing, usually negotiating with landlords and submitting sponsor letters from their non-Papuan lecturers.[59] In Jakarta, Penata Wanimbo, a Papuan student leader, complained to the Jakarta deputy governor about racial discrimination when renting properties.[60] Laurens Ikinia, a lecturer at the Indonesian Christian University in Jakarta, said that such lodging problems are common because landlords fear “inappropriate manners like drinking.”[61]

In the leaked video from February 2024, several Indonesian soldiers are seen not just beating and kicking Definus Kogoya, but also taunting him with racist insults, calling him, “dog …stupid … ape.”[62] Soon after, Ambrosius Mulait, a Papuan human rights researcher in Jakarta, posted a poem on social media, addressing Indonesians:

Why did you hit me, and then tell me to love you? How come you shot me with bullets, and then told me to love you? Why torture me, step on me, and then force me to call you, “Darling.” You call me monkey, but if I protest because I have self-respect, you will jail me, right?[63]

He said he was immediately subjected to online hate. “There are around 1,000 comments, using the words dogs, pigs, an Australian proxy, or accusing me of ignoring the Papuans who kill Indonesian soldiers,” he said. Some also sent intimidating messages, even saying that they will “mutilate” him.[64]

A Papuan student in Malang, East Java, said that while dining in a restaurant with her friend, the waitress was holding her nose as if something was stinking, while a male waiter laughed. She said she complained to the owner: “’Is this the way your waitress should serve a customer?’ I asked him. ‘Using one hand to hold her nose?’ The owner apologized.”[65]

Fransiskus Kedeikoto, a graduate student in Jakarta, said that he took in two Papuan children who had run away from an Islamic boarding school in Depok, near Jakarta. When their Muslim teachers came to pick up the boys from Kedeikoto’s dormitory, they called the Papuan students “pork eaters” and “monkeys.” “They look down at us, saying that our culture is inferior,” Kedeikoto said.[66]

Yance Rumbino, a teacher in Nabire, wrote a song in 1985 entitled, “Tanah Papua” (The Land of Papua), celebrating Papuans, including their dark skin and curly hair as well as the beauty of the land with the mountains, valleys, and the birds of paradise. It remains one of the most famous songs about West Papua in Indonesia. Rumbino said that he wrote the lyrics to uplift young Papuans, so that they feel proud with their physical appearance and love their motherland.[67]

Deka Anwar, a research analyst at the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict said that racism was entrenched in West Papua, including within the military, citing a recent statement from Papua province Army commander Maj. Gen. Izak Pangemanan that soldiers could not distinguish between Papuan civilians and rebel combatants “because they all look the same.” He said:

Successive government administrations in Jakarta believed that economic development, co-opting local Papuan elites with new political positions, or carving up the land of Papua into more provinces and more districts would solve all the problems. Meanwhile, the Papuan's call to review the disputed history of West Papua integration into Indonesia and their demand to address past injustices and gross human rights violations, are ignored.[68]

Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

In 2008, Indonesia’s Supreme Court divided Papua into two provinces: West Papua, with its capital Manokwari, and Papua, with its capital Jayapura. Since then, the Indonesian government has sought to splinter pan-Papuan identity by carving up West Papua into six provinces in June 2022, and ever smaller administrative units within the provinces.[69] The Papuan People’s Assembly, the Indigenous Papuans’ representatives, stated that the new division weakened the special autonomy in West Papua.[70]

The population has surged in the region, with over 70,000 families officially relocated from other parts of country. In 1997, the entire West Papua had 1,678 villages in a single province.[71] In 2021, Papua province had 5,560 villages and West Papua province had 1,567.[72] This means that West Papua, as a whole, had increased the number of villages from 1,678 to 7,127 -- a four-fold increase.

However, infrastructure, including roads, healthcare facilities, and schools have not been added to support the growing population. These services are particularly inadequate in areas occupied by Indigenous Papuans.

Problems Accessing Health Services

The 2020 census showed that Papua and West Papua provinces had the highest numbers of child mortality rates, infant mortality rates, neonatal mortality rates, and maternal mortality rates in Indonesia. The infant mortality rate in Indonesia is 20 per 1,000 live births, but the ratio in Papua is a high 49 per 1000 live births. On maternal mortality rate, Jakarta at 48 per 100,000 live births has the rate nationally, while the highest is in Papua at 565 per 100,000 live births.[73]

These disparities reflect health services that have deteriorated over time, with district clinics in West Papua lacking medical workers and supplies, while bigger hospitals lack proper medical equipment. Earlier, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Dutch colonial administration had set up healthcare services, training Papuan doctors and nurses, including in rural areas. In the late 1960s, the invading Indonesian military looted equipment and goods, transporting them to other regions.[74]

Dr. Maria Louisa Rumateray, a physician at the Wamena General Hospital since 2009, serving remote villages either with a small plane or a helicopter, said that bureaucratic hurdles and a lack of understanding of local cultures has become a serious handicap in providing health care to Indigenous Papuans:

Local medical workers, who were trained as nurses, have difficulties in applying for a job in Wamena because they need to take a standard certification either in Jayapura or Makassar [on Sulawesi Island]. They don’t have the money to fly to those cities. Thus, the jobs go to the settlers. Before the certification began, my hospital had more Papuan workers than settlers. But it is now the other way around.[75]

The pemekaran, or the rapid creation of new administrative units by the Indonesian government in West Papua, triggered a building boom. But this has not been matched with an expanding healthcare system, including supplies of medicine and equipment. Nor are there adequate roadways and other infrastructure. As a so-called flying doctor, Rumateray must oversee about 30 districts with more than 200 villages in the Central Highlands. She said, “Some villages simply have no roads. Villagers must walk for days to find health care. We can only access these villages with helicopters. Ironically, they have the clinic buildings nearby, but without medical workers or supplies.”[76]

On May 26, 2024, doctors, nurses, and other medical workers emptied the Paniai public hospital in Enarotali, Central Papua, after Indonesian security forces occupied the third floor of the building. They had to remove patients even as they were receiving treatment, including infusion. Medical workers stood outside watching as Indonesian soldiers entered the hospital, some relatives of patients said. The Ministry of Health and the Papuan military command had ordered them to empty the building, said the head of the hospital.[77]

Several hospitals and clinics in remote areas have stopped functioning due to the ongoing conflict between the Indonesian security forces and the West Papuan militants. Others shut down due to a lack of medical supplies or workers. In June 2023, the Scholoo Keyen public hospital in South Sorong, Southeast Papua, “almost collapsed” due to the lack of medical supplies. A patient died because of oxygen shortages.[78] On May 21, 2024, the Abepura mental health hospital in Jayapura, Papua, announced that it was closing due to the lack of medicine.[79]

Insufficient medical supplies mostly occur in hospitals and clinics that handle Papuan patients. In her 2023 book, Madelyn van Rijckevorsel, a Dutch-American public health specialist, noted that private, police or military hospitals in West Papua seldom face shortages. She wrote that President Soeharto had improved public health nationwide, including West Papua, in the 1980s. One of the programs was called the “posyandu” (pos pelayanan terpadu, integrated maternal, newborn, and child health center) to reduce morbidity by combining preventive and curative services. In West Papua, van Rijckevorsel observed that preventive services still function, but not curative care, which had usually been transferred to the district’s clinics.

Unfortunately, many of these posyandus did not meet the national or World Health Organization standards for preventive services.[80] She saw big differences between the posyandus in transmigrant villages and gated communities for police families, compared to those in Indigenous Papuan areas. Early childcare services should include a table tracking growth (weight and height), health, education, nutrition, vaccinations, etc. In the predominantly settlers’ areas, and in urban areas, the records were maintained by trained staff. However, in many Indigenous Papuan villages she visited, there were no such records, and she noted the lack of standard supplies such as vaccines, as well as absenteeism among medical workers. “In one rural village, there had not been a single posyandu session in the past nine months,” she said. “How can you then do the vaccinations properly? No wonder there have been measles epidemics in West Papua.”[81]

She overheard Indonesian medical workers complaining about how Papuans are “dirty” or "chewing betel nuts,” with their red stained teeth, while praising the hygiene among the settlers. Conversely, some Papuan mothers told her that the Indonesian health workers were condescending. “One mother I met refused to attend the posyandu for this very reason,” she said. “Thus, her babies did not receive the necessary preventive care.” Also, many Papuan women volunteers expressed discontent that the Indonesian staff did not recognize their work, or because they felt excluded.”[82]

Ruth Ogetay, a Papuan medic who previously worked in a Jakarta-based medical group operating in remote areas, including in West Papua, said she resigned from her job because of racism. She then got a job at a Jakarta hospital, but said that a Muslim nurse asked her to wear the hijab. “She asked me to try,” Ogetay said. “She said I will look pretty with a hijab.” Ogetay refused, saying she’s a Christian.[83]

Discrimination in Education

According to Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics, Papua province has the lowest literacy rate in Indonesia with 13 percent adult illiteracy. West Papua province, which has a bigger percentage of settlers, has a better performance at 0.9 percent in 2023.[84] In 2023, over 15 percent of Papuan children aged up to 15 years were illiterate in Papua as compared to the national average of 3.5 percent.[85]

The poor state of education in West Papua, and the historical under-resourcing and under-investment, are made worse with the divisions of the territory in post-Soeharto Indonesia. Education experts also say that instead of using available public funds to develop human resources, particularly teacher training, the money was used up to build new administrative buildings, including schools, or to pay civil servants. Papuan officials have little say over education matters, including to deal with multiple forms of indirect discrimination.

Agus Sumule, a lecturer at the University of Papua in Manokwari, who led research on education in West Papua including a pilot project to improve education in two regencies, long opposed the division of the territory, saying that this had disadvantaged Indigenous Papuans and encouraged the Indonesian government to organize transmigration from other parts of Indonesia to West Papua.[86] The number of villages have increased by over 400 percent since 1997.[87] Villages in West Papua theoretically should have their own elementary schools as well as a health clinic. But many villages in West Papua do not have an elementary school. Even on the district level, many areas have inadequate number of elementary schools.

Sumule discussed Mimika, one of the regencies with the biggest budgets in West Papua where Freeport McMoran, the giant mining company, has operated since the 1970s. Based on the education data published annually by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, he found, that of the 135 elementary schools, 70 (about 52 percent) were in urban areas. He said:

Not surprisingly, the total school-age population, who do not attend school in Mimika – 25,873 children – live especially in rural districts. I estimated 80 percent of them are Indigenous Papuans. The Mimika regency has the budget, and in addition, the Freeport company says it has contributed 750 billion rupiah [US$ 48.6 million] on education in the last two years. The money is there, but the implementation is a big question mark.[88]

Sumule said that the Central Highlands, where almost all their residents are Indigenous Papuans, does not have a single teacher’s training college:

State universities are all located in coastal cities, like Jayapura, Manokwari, Fakfak and Merauke. Many of the settlers live in these cities. The Central Highlands does not have a single state university. If it’s not racism, what should I call it?[89]

Schools in West Papua also face high levels of absenteeism among teachers. According to UNICEF, this is caused by a lack of proper transportation, because they are posted far from their families, or because they take other jobs on the side. In some cases, teachers did not teach for as long as six months, in some cases even three years.[90]

After their teacher failed to show up for two weeks at a public junior high school in Mbahamdandara, Fakfak, West Papua in May 2024, some students made a TikTok video to complain.[91]  

Comparative Illiteracy Rates in West Papua and Papua Provinces by Age Groups[92]

Teachers have also been compelled to stop traveling to work when there is an outbreak of armed hostilities between Indonesian security forces and West Papuan militants in the area. Ambrosius Mulait, a Papuan researcher in Jakarta, recalled his primary school years between 2001 and 2006 in Wamena, when absent teachers were replaced by Indonesian soldiers. He said at least three soldiers taught his class at a Catholic school. “These soldiers wore military uniforms in the classroom. They also had their guns,” said Mulait.[93]

Indonesian soldiers still teach in some schools in West Papua, especially in areas with security operations. The Indonesian military website says that these soldiers were “teaching nationalism and love of the [Indonesian] homeland for Papuan children.”[94] While the Indonesian provincial and local governments could easily recruit more Indigenous Papuan teachers among the many university graduates, they are inhibited by the widespread perception among the Indonesian military, which dominates the territory, that Papuans cannot be trusted, and that they might promote a “Free Papua” ideology.

The lack of Papuan teachers and the militarized model means Papuan students face racism and discrimination in schools. According to Chao, an anthropologist who did her research in Merauke, South Papua:

Military forces frequently intimidated Papuan children with their batons and guns, calling them “monkeys” and taunted them for their “dark skin and curly hair.” Parents spoke of their children being derided by non-Papuan students for foraging in the forest “like animals.” Children who missed school to participate in customary rituals, sago expeditions, and other cultural practices were often reprimanded publicly by their teachers and called stupid, naïve, lazy, and dirty.[95]

On September 18, 2019, an Indonesian teacher allegedly used racial insults against Papuan students at a public high school in Wamena, in the Papuan Highlands. Although she denied the allegation, it prompted a street protest that quickly turned to riots and arson attacks. Mobs burned down many settler-owned shops.[96] Many were killed while trapped inside their burning houses. According to the police, 33 people were killed – 8 Papuans, including 2 children, and 25 settlers, including 3 children.[97]

Indonesian Laws and Policies Having Discriminatory Effects

In December 2007, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono banned the Morning Star as well as two other separatist flags – Free Aceh Movement and the Southern Malukus Republic.[98] The president’s office instructed Indonesian police, prosecutors, and judges to treat the raising of these flags as treason.[99] Pro-independence and anti-racism protesters still widely use the Morning Star, despite the risk of treason prosecutions.  

Indonesian authorities and courts use treason laws only to target those campaigning for Papuan rights, including Surya Anta Ginting, a non-Papuan who played a prominent part in the Papuan Lives Matter campaign. Of the 1219 political detainee cases recorded by Papuans Behind Bars, at least 50 were convicted of makar (treason) under articles 106 and 110 of the Indonesian Criminal Code.

In December 2022, the Indonesian parliament passed a new criminal code that contains provisions that severely violate international human rights law and standards on freedom of speech and association. Article 192 criminalizes treason, which can also be used to arrest peaceful activists. Some rights activists believe it will be used only against Indigenous Papuans. Punishments can include the death penalty, life imprisonment, or imprisonment for a maximum of 20 years.[100]

Foreign journalists face restrictions from entering and reporting from West Papua. They must apply for access through an interagency “clearing house,” supervised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and involving 18 working units from 12 different ministries as well as the National Police, the State Intelligence Agency, and military intelligence (Badan Intelijen Strategis). Indonesia’s immigration law empowers the foreign ministry to prohibit foreign citizens from traveling to “certain areas” and West Papua is always on the red list. The clearing house has served as a gatekeeper, often denying applications outright or simply failing to approve them.[101]

Indonesian authorities often fail to prosecute attacks, harassment, and intimidation against members of religious minorities, including Christians, Hindus, Buddhists as well as Ahmadiyah and Shia Muslims. This also harms Papuans, who are predominantly Christian.

In Indonesia, majority Sunni Muslims often make blatantly discriminatory statements against minority communities, refuse building permits for their places of worship, and pressure congregations to relocate. Such actions are in part made possible by discriminatory laws and regulations, including a national blasphemy law that officially recognizes only six religions, and house of worship decrees that give local majority populations significant leverage over religious minority communities. Thousands of churches were closed since the government had issued the 2006 house of worship regulation. Conversely, some Sunni Muslim communities in areas of eastern Indonesia, including West Papua, where Christians are a majority, have also sometimes become victim of such regulations and in a few instances have had difficulty obtaining permission to build mosques.[102]

Indonesian government institutions played a role in the violation of the rights and freedoms of the country’s religious minorities. These institutions, which include the Ministry of Religious Affairs (established since 1946), the Coordinating Board for Monitoring Mystical Beliefs in Society (Bakor Pakem) under the Attorney General’s Office, whose role is to investigate and to charge “blasphemy case,” and the semi-official Indonesian Ulema Council, have eroded religious freedom by issuing decrees and fatwas (religious rulings) against religious minorities and using their position of authority to press for the prosecution of “blasphemers.”[103]

Academics contend that the transmigration program set up since the 1970s and the pemekaran, the rapid division of West Papua, has encouraged discrimination against Papuans. The division, from a single province in 1998, to six provinces in 2022, prompted settlers to look for civil service and other jobs in new administrative areas, and taking over businesses and lands from Indigenous Papuans.[104]

Relevant International Human Rights Standards

Indonesia is a party to core international human rights treaties and is also bound by customary international law as is reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various United Nations declarations. Relevant treaties include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which includes the rights to health and education, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). All these treaties prohibit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion, among other grounds. Among key standards is the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Self-determination

The ICCPR and the ICESCR both provide that, “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”[105]

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination, including to autonomy or self-government in their internal or local affairs.[106]

Freedom of Expression, Peaceful Assembly

The ICCPR upholds the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and movement, and prohibits torture and other ill-treatment, and unfair trials. The UN Human Rights Committee, the independent expert body that monitors state compliance with the ICCPR, in its General Comment No. 34 on the right to freedom of expression, states that “harassment, intimidation or stigmatization of a person, including arrest, detention, trial or imprisonment for reasons of the opinions they may hold, constitutes a violation” of the covenant.[107] Article 19(3) of the ICCPR permits governments to impose restrictions on freedom of expression only if such restrictions are provided by law and are necessary to protect the rights or reputations of others, and for the protection of national security, public order, public health, or morals.[108]

The UN Human Rights Committee has stated that restrictions on free expression should be constructed and interpreted narrowly and that the restrictions “may not put in jeopardy the right itself.”[109] A government may impose restrictions only if they are prescribed by legislation and meet the standard of being “necessary in a democratic society.” This implies that the limitation must respond to a pressing public need and be compatible with the basic democratic values of pluralism and tolerance. “Necessary” restrictions must also be proportionate, that is, balanced against the specific need for the restriction.[110]

The committee also stated that “restrictions must not be overbroad.”[111] A restriction should be formulated with sufficient precision to enable an individual to regulate his or her conduct accordingly.[112] Restrictions on freedom of expression to protect national security “are permissible only in serious cases of political or military threat to the entire nation.”[113] Since restrictions based on national security grounds have the potential to severely undermine freedom of expression, “particularly strict requirements must be placed on the necessity (proportionality) of a given statutory restriction.”[114]

The Rabat Plan of Action is an international effort to address the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence. The Rabat Plan of Action, the outcome of an initiative by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to clarify the scope of state obligations under article 20 of the ICCPR, urges that prohibitions on incitement be reserved for the most extreme cases, and require specific safeguards to prevent their abuse.[115]

The Rabat Plan of Action voices concern about countries in which the “legislation that prohibits incitement to hatred uses variable terminology and is often inconsistent with article 20 of the ICCPR. The broader the definition of incitement to hatred is in domestic legislation, the more it opens the door for arbitrary application of these laws.”[116] The Rabat Plan of Action provides that article 20 of the ICCPR requires a high threshold because, as a matter of fundamental principle, limitation of speech needs to remain an exception.[117]

Prohibition on Racial Discrimination

The prohibition against discrimination is enshrined in many international human rights treaties. For instance, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Indonesia ratified in 2006, obligates governments to guarantee that the rights enunciated in the ICESCR will be exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.[118] The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights outlines that the ICESCR prohibits direct or indirect discrimination based on either membership of a group or characteristics of that group.[119]

Indonesia has been a party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) since 1999.[120] ICERD defines "racial discrimination" as:

any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.[121]

Under the ICERD, governments are obligated, among other things, not to engage in racial discrimination against persons and groups, and to amend, rescind or nullify any laws and regulations that have the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination wherever it exists. They also must prohibit and cease, including through legislation, racial discrimination by any persons, group or organization.[122]

In compliance with their fundamental obligations under the ICERD, governments “undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone,” without racial or other distinction, the enjoyment of fundamental rights, including the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, to public health, medical care, social security and social services, to education, and to equal participation in cultural activities.

Furthermore, governments must ensure everyone effective protection and remedies through the courts and other government institutions against acts of racial discrimination that violate human rights and fundamental freedoms, and adequate reparation for damage suffered.[123]

Likewise, under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, all peoples have the right to be free from any kind of discrimination in the exercise of their rights, particularly those based on their Indigenous origin or identity.[124]

To eradicate racism on their territory, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommends that governments undertake “information campaigns and educational policies calling attention to the harms produced by racist hate speech,” and that training for police and legal systems is “essential” to foster “familiarization with international norms protecting freedom of opinion and expression and norms protecting against hate speech.”[125]

III. Papuan Lives Matter: Protest and Crackdown

When, in July 2013, activists in the United States first began Black Lives Matter, a campaign against systemic racism,[126] activists in Indonesia found resonance in the movement. Oktovianus Pogau, a Papuan journalist wrote during a visit to the United States: “Police behaviour in Ferguson [Missouri] is almost the same as in Papua, but in Papua, they are worse. There is racial discrimination, coupled with violence, beatings, arrests, imprisonment, and Papuans are often shot like animals.”[127]

In November 2016, some progressive non-Papuan student groups in Indonesia decided to campaign against racial discrimination in West Papua.[128] In December they set up a special solidarity organization called the Indonesian People's Front for West Papua (FRI-West Papua) and named Surya Anta Ginting, who studied in Yogyakarta in Java, as the spokesperson.[129]

FRI-West Papua organized discussions, social media campaigns, online seminars, and public education events on human rights abuses in West Papua, slowly setting up branches in provincial cities across Indonesia like Bandung, Kupang, Palu Malang, Mataram, Ternate, Yogyakarta, and others. Their members worked closely with Papuan students, including the Alliance of Papuan Students (Aliansi Mahasiswa Papua, AMP) –the largest Papuan student network in Java and Bali– as well as smaller Papuan groups. Filep Karma was a regular speaker at these events.

This network of non-Papuan students and activists succeeded in generating awareness concerning abuses in West Papua in the rest of Indonesia.[130] On August 15, 2019, they organized simultaneous demonstrations in several cities, as well as inside West Papua, to mark the anniversary of the 1962 New York Agreement that paved the way for Indonesia’s annexation of West Papua.[131] In Jakarta, about 100 FRI West Papua protesters, mostly Indigenous Papuan women and men, organized a peaceful rally outside the US Embassy, condemning the US government’s role in forging the agreement.[132]

Indonesian militant nationalists and army officers retaliated with racist attacks. In Malang, a demonstration outside the City Council ended up in clashes after some Indonesian extremists used racial insults against the peaceful protesters. A Papuan student suffered head injuries when she was struck by a rock.[133] Malang police dispersed the protest, saying that the Papuan protesters had “no permit.”[134] In Surabaya, militant nationalists and security forces attacked a West Papuan student dorm on August 17, 2019. Videos showed some Indonesian soldiers repeatedly banging on the dormitory’s gate while shouting words such as “monkeys” and “pork eaters.” 

Drawing inspiration from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the hashtag #PapuanLivesMatter was embraced in Indonesia.[135]

Surabaya Attack Sparks Protests and Rioting

When Indonesian military officers and ultra-nationalists attacked the Papuan student dormitory in Surabaya – a building owned by the West Papua provincial government – there was a standoff with the students who refused to evacuate the building even as they ran out of food. Surya Anta Ginting of FRI West Papua tried to help the students by providing food supplies. He explained: “The attackers said that the Indonesian flagpole outside the dormitory had been damaged by the Papuans. It is not clear how it happened. The students did not know.”[136]

Eventually police fired tear gas, stormed the dormitory, and arrested 43 Papuan students.[137] Images of the assault on the Surabaya students spread rapidly on social media. On August 19, 2019, thousands of protesters took to the streets to demonstrate against the Surabaya attack in several places in West Papua: Sorong, South Sorong, Manokwari, and Jayapura.[138]

Protests eventually broke out in at least 33 cities in Indonesia involving numerous organizations, ethnic groups, religious groups, universities, high schools, and others. In West Papua, some protests turned violent as Indonesian settlers clashed with Indigenous Papuans.

In Sorong, protesters burned cars at the airport and torched parts of the local prison, enabling some prisoners to escape. In Manokwari, the West Papua provincial parliament building was partially burned.[139] In Jayapura, Alexander Gobai, the student president of the Universitas Sains dan Teknologi Jayapura, led a peaceful protest, handing over their petition to the Papua parliament and Governor Lukas Enembe.[140] Gobai also led a student delegation to Surabaya to hand a petition to East Java Governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa, protesting the racist attack and demanding the perpetrators be brought to justice.[141]

In Jakarta, FRI West Papua organized a protest on August 22, demonstrating outside the Indonesian army headquarters, and eventually joining the Aksi Kamisan, a weekly protest by the families of the disappeared.[142] The most important and frequent demand of Indonesian speakers at the protest was for an apology for what happened in the Surabaya racist attack.

But the protests also exposed some disagreement among the Papuan activists. Ginting said he was having difficulty distinguishing protests that involved “our political front which was simply expressing mass anger, and others that [Indonesian] intelligence elements were using to fuel riots and political escalation.” He said there were dangerously coded words spreading on social media, including “komen” the word for Indigenous Papuan and “amber” for Indonesian settlers. Ginting said: “We ourselves are starting to worry about this development. ‘We’ means the FRI West Papua and the Papuan movement. I asked my friends, ‘Where is this going?’ This is an escalation, and the dynamics are very likely to cause a clash between komen and amber.”[143]

The crowd at the second protest in Jakarta on August 28, 2019 was smaller because many Papuan students had already left to go home, fearing a crackdown. The protest went on as planned for about an hour when a group led by “Alberth Mungguar" (mungguar is the Yali word for ghost) arrived.[144] His real name is Alberth Pahabol, and he was enrolled at a Jakarta university and a member of the Alliance of Papuan Students.[145] Pahabol’s group brought two Morning Star flags, and as these were unfurled, they received an emotional response from the protesters. Many Papuans embraced the flag and posed with it. Other protesters burned tires outside the Merdeka Palace.

Ariana Elopere, a student at the Jaffray School of Theology, and her sister, Naliana, who studied communication at the Bung Karno University in Jakarta, said they were not political, but the racist attack in Surabaya had angered them. Ariana said:

That morning, my friends and I decorated our entire bodies with our cultural makeup. We wore our traditional clothes, the salis [traditional grass skirts], and decorated our faces with the color of the Morning Star – red, white, and blue. Black and brown colors were also used. It's a symbol that we are the children of our tradition. When I saw the Morning Star, our flag, I embraced it. It is the symbol of our movement for peace, for freedom, in West Papua.[146]

In the evening, the protest became bigger, but the tone of the speeches had shifted from the peaceful protest towards incitement of violence against individuals. Ginting said he was worried:

Someone gave a speech about killing Lenis Kogoya [a Papuan advisor to President Jokowi]. I wanted the speaker to have more discipline. For example, Charles Kossay, made a speech, calling, "Jokowi kaleng-kaleng [a puppet]."

I started to get suspicious as to why the authorities were letting us pass the State Palace. I saw a man, who later became a star witness in our trial, entering the protest lines and recording with his cell phone. After finishing recording, he watched for a while and then he left. His video went viral, showing our protest outside the State Palace with the Morning Star flags. His video also showed my friends running under the Morning Star, doing waeta [traditional dances] around the flag.[147]

Ariana Elopere was pictured with the Morning Star flag wrapped around her. “I didn’t realize someone took my photo. But that's me, that's what I did. I touched the Morning Star, putting it around my body,” she said.[148]

Recognizing that the protest might be used to prosecute them, many of the protest organizers, including Ginting and Alberth Pahabol, immediately went into hiding. Authorities sought them out and arrested six of the prominent activists that had been filmed.  

The Jakarta protest proved to be an inspiration for a much bigger protest in Jayapura on August 29, 2019. More than 5,000 demonstrators occupied the Papua Governor’s building, taking down the Indonesian flag and raising the Morning Star flag.[149] About 700 protesters stayed overnight in the building. Governor Lukas Enembe ordered security officers not to take down the Morning Star flag, saying that “these are just students. They’re angry with the racist attack in Surabaya. They are not separatists. Let things calm down.”[150]

However, through 2019, the situation escalated in Jayapura, where Indonesian settlers set up checkpoints and attacked Indigenous Papuans with clubs and machetes. On September 1, a group of settlers attacked a Papuan student dorm in Jayapura, killing one student and seriously wounding two others. The incident raised serious tensions between settlers and Indigenous Papuans. In Wamena, a teacher had allegedly used racist insults against her students, triggering a violent protest in which 33 people were killed and dozens of settler-owned shops were burned down. [151]

“The protests were not peaceful, and in several places, there were riots,” said Surya Anta Ginting, who was monitoring the situation from Jakarta. “There was not a single group that claimed to be leading the protest movement.”[152]

While activists agreed that the security situation had deteriorated, they also blamed police and military officers deployed from other parts of Indonesia who, they said, were not sensitive to Papuan culture, traditions, and way of living. These officers did little to protect Indigenous Papuans, they said. Instead, they arrested activists, especially those linked to the West Papua National Committee, who were not involved in planning the protests. [153]

Papuans Behind Bars, the website that monitors politically motivated arrests in West Papua, recorded 418 new political prisoners arrested between October 2020 to September 2021. At least 245 of them were charged, found guilty, and jailed for joining the anti-racism protests, and 109 were convicted of “treason.”[154]

Alberth Pahabol finished his thesis in Jakarta, and returned to West Papua, where he became ill and faced financial hardship. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 24 in January 2021. Ginting, Mulait, Elopere, Kossay, and Wenda were all arrested and charged with treason.

Treason Charges

The Papuan Lives Matter movement of 2019-2020 highlighted systemic racism, injustices, and violence against Indigenous Papuans but also led to some riots, arson attacks, and deaths. Hundreds of Papuans, and a smaller number of non-Papuan Indonesians, were arrested during the street protests. Most of them had not been involved in violent protests. Government officials and security officers, including those responsible for human rights violations, were not prosecuted. At least 22 activists were convicted of treason, although the courts handed down relatively short sentences of up to two years in prison. Filep Karma noted that protesting racism should not be considered treason, but thought the shorter sentences could be a result of international pressure on the Indonesian government.

The “Balikpapan 7” 

After the protests in Jayapura, the Indonesian police arrested seven Papuan activists in September 2019. They included Buchtar Tabuni, a leader of the Vanuatu-based United Liberation Movement for West Papua; Agus Kossay and Stevanus Itlay from the West Papua National Committee; Ferry Kombo, the Cenderawasih University student union head; and Alexander Gobai, Jayapura, a student leader at the University of Science and Technology and his two colleagues, Irwanus Uropmabin and Hengki Hilapok, who rented a truck and sound system for the protest on August 29, 2019.[155]

In October 2019, the authorities transferred the seven more than 3,000 kilometers away to be tried in distant Balikpapan on Kalimantan Island for “security reasons,” and they became known as the Balikpapan 7. Prosecutors sought between 5 and 17 years in prison for each of the defendants for treason.[156] More than 150 Papuan politicians, civic leaders, and religious clerics, including members of parliament and the senate, signed a petition calling on President Jokowi to drop the charges against them.[157]

In June 2020, the court found all seven guilty of treason and sentenced them up to 11 months in prison, a term that included the nine months that they had already spent in custody.[158] All seven were released in August 2020.[159]

Ternate Island Protests and Arrests

On December 2, 2019, nearly 50 students gathered outside the Muhammadiyah University campus in Ternate Island calling for the release of Papuan political prisoners and for Papuan self-determination. The police dispersed the protesters and arrested 10 persons, including four from Khairun University and Asri Abukhair, a Muhammadiyah University student.[160]

University administrators expelled the four student activists from Khairun University – Fahrul Abdullah W. Bone, Fahyudi Kabir, Ikra S. Alkatiri, and Arbi M. Nur. On July 13, 2020, the Ternate police charged one of the four, Arbi M. Nur, with “treason” and “public provocation.” The students later said that police had questioned them aggressively, using violence at the Ternate police station.[161] But the police did not further pursue the case after the Khairun University expelled these four students.

In April 2020, the students filed a lawsuit against the rector of the Khairun University, challenging their dismissal.[162] The court sided with the university in September 2020. The students appealed and lost again at the Makassar high court.[163] But the four students finally won their appeal at the Supreme Court in Jakarta in June 2021.[164] They returned to the campus and finished their undergraduate studies between 2022 and 2023.[165]

Arrests in Jakarta

Police arrested two Papuan students, Charles Kossay and Dano Tabuni, on August 30, 2019 for the protest outside the State Palace in Jakarta and unfurling the Morning Star flag. On August 31, police arrested Ambrosius Mulait and Issay Wenda, while they were protesting the arrest of Kossay and Tabuni outside the Jakarta police headquarters.

Police separately arrested Surya Anta Ginting on August 31, when he went to meet a Malaysian activist in a Jakarta mall. The police were particularly suspicious about Surya Anta Ginting because he is not a Papuan. He spent 73 of his 78 days in detention in solitary confinement at the Brigade Mobile headquarters in Depok, outside Jakarta.[166]

The police arrested Ariana Elopere, who was pictured with the Morning Star flag, her sister and an aunt outside a grocery store in Jakarta on August 31. They were interrogated for several hours before the aunt and sister were eventually released. Elopere said:

What annoyed me during the arrest was that a policewoman said, “You, black Papuans, don't know how to bathe.” At the Metro Jakarta regional police office, as they recorded our identities, one officer told me to dance and asked me to drink. He said, “You Papuans like to dance, right?” He told me to drink [alcohol] but I didn't even look at him. He said, “Let's take a selfie.” They confiscated our mobile phones.[167]

When the trial of the six activists began in December 2019, there was significant media attention. All were charged with treason, each facing a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Dano Tabuni, Charles Kossay and Ambrosius Mulait wore traditional Papuan attire with kotekas (penis gourds) and face painting at the hearing.

On April 24, 2020, the court found them all guilty and sentenced them to nine months in prison, including the period that they had already been in custody. They were released in May 2020.

Arrests in West Papua

The security forces in Papua arrested dozens of Papuans who protested peacefully during 2019-2021 after the spread of the Papuan Lives Matter movement, including by raising the Morning Star flag. Most were prosecuted for treason.

Sayang Mandabayan in Sorong, a protest coordinator, jailed in Manokwari

In 2016, Sayang Mandabayan helped establish the local branch of the political party United Indonesia Party (Perindo) in the West Papuan town of Sorong. Perindo was headed by Indonesian media titan Hary Tanoesoedibjo whose Jakarta-based MNC Group controlled multiple television, cables, radios, and newspapers.[168]

The attack on Papuan students in Surabaya angered Mandabayan, so she organized a meeting on August 18, 2019, in Sorong, and decided to hold protests. She printed thousands of small Morning Star flags at her Perindo party office to distribute in Sorong, Fakfak, and Manokwari. On September 2, she flew to the provincial capital, Manokwari, to support the protests there. When she was about to board the plane, she saw a former high school classmate, now a police officer.[169] Upon arrival, airport authorities announced that a life jacket was missing from the aircraft and that passenger baggage would be checked. Mandabayan suspected that it was not about the life jacket, but because the police officer had recognized her.

Airport security officials found the small Morning Star flags in her bags. They brought her to the Manokwari police station where some journalists were already waiting to take her photo. Perindo immediately dismissed her.[170] She was charged under article 106 of the Criminal Code for inciting violence at the August 19 protest in Sorong, and for producing and transporting Morning Star flags into Manokwari.[171]

After the police finished questioning her, Mandabayan was placed in the Manokwari police detention center, where she shared a small, damp cell with four other women for several months. At one point, she said, when a drunk Papuan police officer learned her name, he laughed and said, “Monkey eh… You are a monkey!” She said:

I went to prison, I lost my position, because people said there were “monkeys” in Surabaya. Now inside this prison, there was a Papuan policeman who said I was a monkey. He said, "You're just a monkey, and a monkey asks for [West Papua’s] freedom?" Other police officers told him to leave. I shouted that he was a Papuan without shame.[172]

Mandabayan was charged with incitement to violence and treason. On May 27, the Manokwari court sentenced her to nine months in prison for attempted incitement but did not find her guilty of treason. She was released on June 3, 2020.[173]

Assa Asso, a member of Papuan Voices filmmaker community

Assa Asso, nicknamed Straky Yally, graduated from the Jayapura University of Science and Technology in 2013.[174] He was part of the West Papua National Committee (Komite Nasional Papua Barat, KNPB), now West Papua’s largest youth organization, which promotes a referendum on Indonesian rule.

A videographer, Asso posted extensively on Facebook, and in August 2019 posted videos of the racist attack in Surabaya. He also posted videos of other protests as part of the #PapuansLiveMatter social media campaign.[175]

Police arrested Assa Asso on September 23, 2019, in Tanjung Elmo, near Lake Sentani, and brought him to the Papua police headquarters. He recalled that there were seven other detainees:

We were brought to the Intelkam [intelligence and security] room at the police headquarters and told to sleep on the floor. Our hands were handcuffed to a wooden chair or a desk. The next day, the police began to interrogate us. They basically wanted me to admit that I was involved in the riots on August 29 in Jayapura. But I told them that I was not even in Jayapura. They arrested me mostly because of my association with the KNPB. They thought I had incited riots in Jayapura. But I could prove that I was not in Jayapura.[176]

The police kept him in detention because of his videos. Asso said he had to share his cell with 14 others, although it had been built to accommodate four men:

I was the only treason detainee from Jayapura. The other detainees had been transferred from Wamena, Nabire, Paniai, Kaimana and other regencies in Papua and West Papua provinces. Some had been shot in their legs. One detainee from Wamena had six bullet injuries, four shots on the left leg and two on the right leg. He was already having surgery at the police hospital to fix his broken legs. In all the six cells, I counted a total of 95 detainees at that time. We were all protesting racism, but we were all arrested, accused of treason, or provocation to violence.[177]

After two months in police detention, police charged Asso with treason under article 106 of the Criminal Code, along with article 160 regarding incitement. His trial commenced on February 20, 2020 and he was found guilty of incitement, but not treason, and sentenced to 10 months in prison. He was released on July 20, 2020.[178]

Yoseph Ernesto Matuan and seven other students

Yoseph Ernesto Matuan, 19, joined seven other students on December 1, 2021, to raise the Morning Star flag at the Cenderawasih stadium in downtown Jayapura. They also carried a banner calling for a UN investigation into the human rights situation in West Papua. They then marched with the banner and the flag to the police headquarters, next to the stadium. Police immediately arrested them.

The other seven students were Malwin Manfre Yobe, 29, a former student union leader at the University of Science and Technology Jayapura; Melvin Fernando Waine, 25, who had recently graduated from the Cenderawasih University in Abepura; Devion Tekege, 23, Maksimus Simon Petrus You, 18, Lukas Kitok Uropmabin, 21 and Ambrosius Fransiskus Elopere, 21, who were all students at the University of Science and Technology Jayapura; and Zode Hilapok, 20, of the Fajar Timur Theological Philosophy College, a Catholic seminary and college, in Abepura.[179]

Matuan said that after they were arrested, the police confiscated their Morning Star flag and political banner. He said:

The police beat us, interrogating us with various questions like “Who is the mastermind behind all this? Who is the coordinator?” They cursed us, calling us dogs or pigs. They said, “Answer quickly, dog, or else you'll be killed out there!” They hit me on my face, head, and spine. Some police officers shoved my head to the wall. It was more than 24 hours of interrogation and beating. We were all tortured.[180]

Yobe said the police beat them on their backs, heads, and faces, cursing them with words like dog, pig, and monkey. Some police officers also took off their shoes and ordered the detainees to kiss their socked feet. “They hit me on my forehead many times until a lump appeared,” he said. “Now there is a bump as a mark on my forehead.”[181]

Yobe told the police that he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and that he needed to continue with his medication, but “the police did nothing specific regarding my lung problem.” Finally, two and half months after his arrest, on February 16, 2022, the police took Yobe to Dian Harapan hospital in Jayapura to get his tuberculosis medicine.[182]

Hilapok, the Catholic student, became increasingly unwell in custody. Police officials did not act on his complaint until he collapsed while walking to the bathroom in the police detention center. He was then hospitalized.

The eight students were eventually charged with treason.[183] They were transferred to the Abepura prison, and their trial began on April 11, 2022, initially online because of the coronavirus pandemic, and later in-person at the Jayapura district court. Zode Hilapok’s trial was postponed because of his hospitalization.[184]

In August 2022, the Jayapura district court convicted the seven others of treason and sentenced them to 10 months in prison, including time already spent in custody. On September 27, 2022, they were released from Abepura prison after completing their sentences.

Zode Hilapok died in October 2022 before he could be tried.[185]

Ernesto Matuan, Devion Tekege, and Ambrosius Fransiskus Elopere

Ernesto Matuan, Devion Tekege, and Ambrosius Fransiskus Elopere staged a peaceful protest on the Jayapura university campus on November 10, 2022. They held an open mic event, talking about decades of human rights abuses against Indigenous Papuans and criticized Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights for failing to intervene. They unfurled the Morning Star flag and called for the release of political prisoners.

All three were arrested, interrogated, and charged with treason. The prosecutors accused them of trying “to separate” West Papua from Indonesia.[186] On August 8, 2023, the Jayapura district court found them guilty of treason and sentenced them to 10 months in prison.[187]

When they emerged from Abepura prison on September 7, 2023, they all wore traditional Papuan attire and held a news conference. Matuan said that they had peacefully protested the decades of abuses against Indigenous Papuans, and yet they were jailed and allegedly tortured. “As long as Papuans have to live under Indonesia’s colonialism, our suffering will never end,” he said.[188]

Three Papuan Men from Manokwari Jailed in Makassar

After the arrests of many Papuan student protesters, three fishermen who were residents of Manokwari – Hellesvrad Bezaliel Soleman Waropen, 55, Andreas Sangganefa, 65, and Kostan Karlos Bonay, 58 – decided to hold a prayer for the well-being of the detainees.[189]

The three held the ceremony on October 19, 2022, in Waropen’s backyard on Bali Street in Manokwari. They prayed and unfurled the United Nations flag, the United States flag, and the Morning Star. Waropen said that they knew the risks and had decided to be unobtrusive, and thus held the prayer in the backyard. “The celebration and the prayer were legally risky,” he said. “Manokwari is still the territory of the Republic of Indonesia. I suggested my house’s backyard, hoping not many people would see it.”[190]

It is not clear how the police had learned about the ceremony, but they arrested Sangganefa and Waropen in the latter's house on October 22. When Kostan Bonay learned that his friends had been arrested, he went to the Manokwari police station to inquire. There, he was questioned by several police officers. “Finally, I was also arrested and accused of treason," said Bonay.[191]

They remained detained at the Manokwari police headquarters for four months. On February 28, 2023, the Manokwari chief prosecutor said that the three detainees had been sent to a Makassar prison for a trial “based on security considerations.”[192] Makassar is 2,000 kilometers southwest of Manokwari on the island of Sulawesi.[193]

On June 12, 2023, the three were sentenced to two years in prison at the Makassar District Court, which found them guilty of treason under article 110 of the Criminal Code. The men were held at Makassar Detention Center, where they shared the cramped and damp quarters with 32 other detainees. When sleeping, they must fold their legs. It is too far for their families to visit, and they feared they might die far away from their own land.[194] They finished their jail term in September 2024, going back to Manokwari.[195]

Arrest of Victor Yeimo, KNPB Spokesman

Victor Yeimo became an activist while still in high school in Sentani, near Jayapura, inspired by Filep Karma, whom he met during a protest in 2002.[196] He helped set up the West Papua National Committee (KNPB) in November 2008, becoming one of the organization’s top leaders. He speaks English fluently, traveling overseas to attend conferences, and is often quoted in the media.

He was first arrested in 2009 for taking part in a campaign to establish the International Parliamentarians for West Papua[197] and the International Lawyers for West Papua in London.[198] During his imprisonment, he met Filep Karma inside the Abepura prison. Police arrested Yeimo again in 2013, during a KNPB demonstration in Waena, Jayapura, to protest human rights violations in West Papua. He said that Indonesia’s law enforcement officials “seemed determined to punish Papuan activists, especially those involved in the KNPB, without trying to investigate properly whether they are involved in real crime.”[199]

In August 2019, Yeimo was imprisoned again, accused of “incitement” of the mass protests and riots. “I was not involved at all in the protest,” he said. The Jayapura court convicted Yeimo and sentenced him to eight months in jail in May 2023.[200] When Yeimo was released on September 23, 2023, he spoke at rally of hundreds of his supporters saying, “It is imperative that the Papuan people learn that the annexation of this region is based on racist prejudice.”[201]

IV. Ongoing Human Rights Abuses

Indonesian government human rights violations against Papuans and their civil society organizations have continued since the 1960s.[202] Papuans have been denied the right to freedom of expression, association and movement and other fundamental rights and freedoms.[203]

The Indonesian government is responsible for addressing security concerns in West Papua stemming from periodic attacks by Papuan militants mainly targeting police and other security forces in the Central Highlands or the border area with Papua New Guinea. The threat from an insurgency, however, does not provide a justification under international human rights law for the broad-brush and indefinite restrictions on freedoms that the Indonesian government has long imposed on West Papua.

Long-term and severe restrictions on the media, reflecting government fears that international journalists could prompt so-called internationalization of the conflict, has limited in-depth reporting on West Papua. The media blackout and use of disinformation, mostly from the Indonesian military and police, has kept the Indonesian public in the dark about the problems in West Papua.[204] For instance, this has meant minimal coverage of the forced displacement of Indigenous communities from Maybrat, Nduga, Pegunungan Bintang, and many other regencies since 2018 when West Papuan militants attacked and killed 17 workers.[205]

In March 2022, three United Nations human rights experts expressed “serious concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua,” because of “shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people.”[206]

In a 2016 paper, several Indonesian academics wrote that West Papua would likely see increased guerrilla activity and independence movements going forward due to demographic changes in the region. “Continuous migration has increased the probability of having ethnic conflicts in the area,” they concluded.[207]

Abuses by State Forces

The Indonesian authorities have arbitrarily detained, tortured, and displaced hundreds of Papuans. The government has denied the allegations of human rights abuses in West Papua. But there is a growing body of information that supports allegations of serious abuses including killings, torture, and rape.[208]

For instance, dozens were killed, while thousands have fled from their villages since the 2018 TPN-PB attack in Nduga. In 2021, human rights organizations documented at least 10 cases of extrajudicial killings in West Papua.

On September 17, 2020, Rev. Yeremia Zanambani of the Indonesian Gospel Tabernacle Church in Intan Jaya regency, was shot dead during a military operation that led many to flee into the forests.[209] After some Christian boys in the Nduga area were arrested and tortured to death in 2023, Dorman Wandikbo, the president of the Indonesian Evangelical Church said, “We feel, as Papuans, if we stay within the nation of Indonesia, we will be finished. We will be wiped out.[210]

In 2022, the rarely used Indonesian human rights court began the trial of retired army Maj. Isak Sattu for alleged crimes, including the death of four teenagers, during a 2014 protest in Enarotali, Papua. However, the court acquitted Sattu and no one else has been brought to justice for that incident.[211]

In their March 2022 communication, United Nations experts called for an independent investigation into these abuses, saying that between 60,000 to 100,000 people had been displaced since the violence escalated in 2018.[212]

Restrictions on Media and Independent Observers

President Jokowi initially sparked some optimism that Indonesia would soon end its decades-long media restrictions in West Papua. In May 2015, several foreign journalists were invited to Jayapura to cover President Jokowi’s visit there.[213] Jokowi went to the Abepura prison and officially granted clemency to five Papuan political prisoners. Then, outside the prison, he said that foreign journalists, including those accredited in Indonesia, could freely visit West Papua without asking for a special permit, and that he would like to end the policy that had isolated West Papua since the late 1960s.[214]

Foreign journalists and representatives of domestic and international nongovernmental organizations were skeptical.[215] The process for foreign correspondents to acquire official permission to travel to Papua has remained opaque and unpredictable.[216]

In October 2015, Jakarta-based French journalist Marie Dhumieres received permission to visit West Papua, and did not experience any police harassment or surveillance during her trip. But a week after she left, police detained her traveling companion, a Papuan activist, along with two of his friends.[217] The police interrogated them for 10 hours, asking multiple questions about her trip and the people whom she had met. He was released after Dhumieres reached out to President Jokowi on social media.[218]

In November 2015, the security minister Luhut Pandjaitan, responding to a Human Rights Watch report citing ongoing media restrictions, said that he would fire any official who obstructs foreign journalists visiting West Papua. He said, “I promise you this: we are not just playing with words. If we make a promise, that's a promise."[219]

But the restrictions persist. Indonesian officials strongly resist internationalization of the West Papua issues – human rights abuses, environmental degradation, land grabbing – and refuse to grant access to journalists and United Nations monitors.[220] An opinion piece in the government-backed Antara argued in 2017:

Human rights issues in Papua are often politicized by many circles ... the settlement of human rights abuse in the past may not create new problems in the future. This implies that there should not be any politicization and internationalization of the issues.”[221]

In February 2018, during a visit by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, President Jokowi agreed to allow a UN team to visit West Papua.[222] But the permission did not come through, and in June 2018, Zeid Al Hussein told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, "In Indonesia, I am concerned that despite positive engagement by the authorities in many respects, the government's invitation to my office to visit Papua – which was made during my visit in February – has still not been honored."[223]

Indonesian authorities have resorted to bribes and threats to ensure favorable reporting by journalists. Journalists from international media outlets, in particular, come under acute pressure to restrict “internationalizing the West Papua problem.”[224]

Detention of BBC Journalist Rebecca Henschke

On February 1, 2018, Indonesian soldiers detained BBC correspondent Rebecca Henschke for her social media posts describing malnourishment among Papuan children.[225] Henschke had the necessary official authorizations to visit Timika and Asmat.[226] Still she was questioned for a total of 17 hours by immigration and military officials before being freed. Indonesian military spokesman Col. Muhammad Aidi said the military had detained Henschke because her posts had “hurt the feelings” of the soldiers.[227]

Case of Radio New Zealand Journalist

In August 2023, Kelvin Anthony, a Radio New Zealand (RNZ) journalist, was covering the Melanesian Spearhead Group meeting in Port Vila, Vanuatu. He said he came under pressure from Indonesian authorities after he had interviewed Benny Wenda, the leader of the United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua.[228] 

Ardi Nuswantoro, an Indonesian delegate, approached Anthony, complaining about the RNZ coverage on West Papua. "I was offered an exclusive interview with the Indonesian ambassador to Australia and Vanuatu after being told earlier in the week [by Nuswantoro] that his government did not like what RNZ had published on West Papua and that it was not balanced," Anthony was quoted as saying.[229]

Nuswantoro accompanied Anthony when he met Ambassador Siswo Pramono. After the interview, Nuswantoro walked Anthony to the parking lot and gave him an envelope with money inside. Nuswantoro said it was “taxi money.” Anthony declined, reporting the incident to his RNZ editors.[230]

Attack on Papuan Journalist Victor Mambor

Victor Mambor is an award-winning Papuan journalist who worked for Jubi Daily in Jayapura, and has also contributed to international outlets like Benarnews and Al Jazeera. In 2019, along with several journalists in South Pacific countries, he also helped found the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum, working with media outlets including Radio New Zealand and Vanuatu Daily. Mambor also helped produce an investigative documentary titled “Selling Out West Papua'' for Al Jazeera’s 101 East program, exposing land grabs in West Papua’s forests.[231]

On April 21, 2021, unknown assailants broke the windshield of his car at night, while his car was parked outside his home in Jayapura. On January 23, 2023, a bomb detonated outside his home. He heard a motorcycle speeding away. No one was injured and his house was not damaged.[232]

In March 2024, the Jayapura police decided to end the investigation on the bombing, never having identified the attackers, and citing a lack of evidence. Mambor filed a lawsuit against the police but the Jayapura district court rejected his case, allowing the police to stop looking for more evidence.[233]

Criminal Defamation Charges Against Haris Azhar and Fatia Maulidiyanti 

In 2021, Indonesian authorities filed criminal defamation charges against two prominent human rights defenders in Jakarta based on a complaint filed by Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, a coordinating minister in President Jokowi’s cabinet.[234] Haris Azhar and Fatia Maulidiyanti had discussed human rights abuses in Indonesia’s Papua provinces in an online show.[235]

Azhar is also a founder of the Jakarta-based Lokataru human rights group and operates his own YouTube channel on which he has a regular talk show. Maulidiyanti has been the coordinator of KontraS, since 2020. She is also a vice president of the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights.

On August 20, 2021, Azhar interviewed Maulidiyanti on his show to discuss a newly released Greenpeace report, which concluded that the Indonesian government conducted “illegal military operations” in Papua’s Central Highlands, and that the military sought to control huge gold deposits in an area known as the “Wabu Block” in Intan Jaya regency.[236] The report alleged that the military deployment was intended to reduce the Indigenous population in the area, thus making it easier to move forward with mining operations. During the interview, Maulidiyanti discussed Luhut Pandjaitan’s financial stake in one of the companies, securing plots of mineral-rich land in Intan Jaya, which sparked the complaint of criminal defamation.

During the trial, numerous groups defended the right to discuss human rights abuses.[237] Rocky Gerung, an Indonesian intellectual, said in court that “the first click” on West Papua is “human rights abuses.”[238]

Azhar and Maulidiyanti were acquitted on January 7, 2024. Luhut Pandjaitan has appealed.[239]

Disinformation and Misinformation

The Indonesian government does not only restrict foreign monitors to report on West Papua, but actively sponsors disinformation and misinformation.

In January 2020, Reuters reported that the Indonesian army operated at least 10 websites to conduct disinformation campaigns. The websites present themselves as independent news outlets but were registered to a mobile phone number of an officer employed at the Jakarta Military Command’s information unit where military personnel produce press releases and manage military web pages and social media accounts.[240]

Apart from inaccurate coverage of the Indonesian government, military, and police, what is particularly dangerous is that these outlets also demonize government critics, mostly Indigenous Papuans and human rights defenders. They also publish outright falsehoods. One of the websites – kitorangpapuanews.com – which translates as “Our Papuan People’s News,” with 80,000 views per month, is one of three of the military-sponsored websites that registered its address as the Jakarta Military Command.[241]

Tirto, a media outlet in Jakarta, reported the “ghost media” in West Papua, listing 18 “news websites” that use so-called Papuan experts to counter reports on human rights abuses. Content under these fake Papuan by-lines also produce disinformation on the West Papua independence movement.[242]

On March 25, 2022, a local newspaper in West Papua reported that "Second Inspector Olivian Rumagit was promoted as the chief intelligence officer at the Mamberamo Raya police precinct." This surprised the many people who knew Rumagit as a reporter at state-owned wire service Antara in Jayapura and had no idea he was working for the police. For decades, there have been leaked reports, as well as rumors, about Indonesian journalists working as “agents” and “informers” in West Papua.[243] Rumagit had made friends with some of the leading journalists in Jayapura.[244] He worked as a journalist between 2012 and 2016 while he was, in fact, an active police officer.[245]

Abuses by Armed Groups

West Papua groups that advocate for independence are not homogenous, and some have adopted armed opposition. The Free Papua Movement armed group began in 1965 but split in 1976 into Seth Rumkorem’s Victoria faction, which operates in Keerom on the border areas between Indonesia’s West Papua and Papua New Guinea, and Jacob Prai’s Pembela Keadilan (“Justice Defenders”), which operates in the Central Highlands.

Rumkorem, a former Indonesian Army officer, died in the Netherlands in 2010. He was replaced by Rex Rumakiek, a fellow ethnic Biak. Jacob Prai, a native Keerom, retired in exile in Sweden and was replaced by John Otto Ondowame.  

Both Rumakiek and Ondowame lived in Australia, helping the two factions to reconcile. The organization sought membership in the Melanesian Spearhead Group, prompting the regional group to urge both factions and some other West Papuan organizations to merge. In 2014 they formed the Vanuatu-based United Movement for the Liberation of West Papua with Benny Wenda as its leader, who now lives in Oxford, England.[246]

The military structures within West Papua are called the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPN-PB) and operate independently from these overseas groups. For decades, the TPN-PB has engaged in armed clashes with Indonesian security forces. It also lacks a coordinated strategy because there are several smaller groups that operate somewhat independently under the TPN-PB’s several military commands.[247]

In January 2018, the TPN-PB announced a more coordinated separatist insurgency effort and committed to protecting civilians. But it also declared that security officials, those working with public infrastructure companies or foreign corporations, and government officials were legitimate targets.[248] Violence escalated thereafter, and between 2018 and 2021, at least 125 civilians were killed. This figure includes Papuans caught in the crossfire during clashes between government forces and the TPN-PB as well as those the TPN-PB killed as suspected suanggi, which in the Biak language means “enemy collaborators” (literally “ghosts”).[249]

The highest number of civilian casualties occurred in December 2018 in Nduga when a TPN-PB unit under Egianus Kogoya killed 17 roadworkers. His group attacked a bridge construction site in Nudga, saying that the laborers were actually soldiers. Officials, however, said that those killed were workers from state-owned companies PT Istaka Karya and PT Brantas Abipraya, sent from Sulawesi Island to work on a highway project, and that only the soldiers protecting the workers were armed, including three killed in the attack.[250]

After the Papuan Lives Matter movement drew international attention and energized the separatist ideology in 2020 by calling out racism in Indonesia against Papuan people,[251] Indonesia in September 2021 designated the West Papua National Liberation Army as a terrorist organization.[252]

Abduction of New Zealand Pilot Philip Mehrtens

On February 7, 2023, the TPN-PB took Phillip Mehrtens, a New Zealand pilot, hostage after he landed his small Susi Air commercial plane in Nduga area. The armed group also burned his plane.[253]

The Indonesian military deployed about 1,000 soldiers to free the pilot, encircling the vast and forested area that the West Papuan militants controlled. In March 2023, after some sporadic shooting, the West Papua armed group attacked a military post and killed nine Indonesian soldiers. A total of 36 soldiers, including 16 Special Forces officers, had been stationed in the post.[254]

The New Zealand government has continually appealed for Mehrtens’ release. More than a year after Mehrtens’ capture, the TPN-PB leadership publicly pressed Kogoya to release him “for the sake of humanity.” “If the pilot dies at the hands of the TPN-PB, it will be detrimental to the Papuan people who have been fighting for more than 60 years,” TPN-PB Maj. Gen. Terryanus Satto wrote in a statement on February 3, 2024.[255]

Another New Zealand pilot, Glen Conning, was killed in August 2024 after he had landed his helicopter in the village of Alama, near Timika, the mining area. It is not clear who had shot him.[256]

The group released a video in February in which Mehrtens says he is being well treated by his captors.[257] Mehrtens remains a hostage as of September 2024.

Killing of Michelle Kurisi Doga

In August 2023, Michelle Kurisi Doga, an Nduga native and politician, said she was trying to meet Egianus Kogoya to persuade him to release the pilot, Mehrtens.[258]

The West Papua militants apparently warned transport drivers in the area not to bring her into their area. A nervous driver apparently dropped Doga in the wilderness. Her final Instagram posts indicate she kept walking, probably seeking to meet the militants. Her posts include pictures of mountains, with trees and vast areas of greenery. Not a single house was seen in her pictures. She wrote on Instagram on August 22:

When I got out [from the car], I immediately faced people who no longer believed in the state, people who were hurt. All the drivers refused to take me because there had been a warning that the woman in the name of Michelle Kurisi Doga had to return. I was dropped off in the middle of the wilderness, and I was told to walk home alone. I cried uncontrollably, screaming, “God I want to achieve my dreams and aspirations for women and children. I have sacrificed everything including my heart and feelings. Why was I rejected?” I walked and leaned on the rock then cried for almost five hours.[259]

A week later, on August 29, the TPN-PB issued a WhatsApp message, saying that it had executed Doga because she was “a spy” trying to locate the group and the pilot. The message showed her dead body as well as her pictures with police generals, apparently taken from her Instagram.[260] Said TPN-PB spokesperson Sebby Sambom, “You can see the linked photo and others, she is part of BIN [State Intelligence Agency]. We have identified her, it’s not new.”[261]

Fr. John Jonga, a Catholic priest who used to live in Central Highlands, confirmed the execution. Jonga said that Doga was a courageous woman: “She had been warned not to go to the area, but she believed that she could talk to Egianus Kogoya. She believed that Kogoya should release the pilot.”[262]

On October 9, 2023, the Indonesia police announced that they had arrested three Papuan men, including one in Jayapura, who had allegedly been involved in the murder of Doga. The police commissioner, Faizal Ramadhani, said the men were linked to the West Papua National Committee in West Baliem.[263] KNPB West Baliem chairman Pendinus Wanimbo denied the allegation, saying that one of the men was “a sympathizer” of his group, but not a member.[264]

Recommendations

To the Government of Indonesia

• In line with its obligations under international law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, enact and enforce legislation to end racial discrimination against Papuans and other ethnic minorities, and adopt laws and policies that are inclusive and safeguard Papuans’ right to participation in public life.
• Acknowledge the historical, economic, and political grievances of Papuans, including their root causes and effects, as a pathway towards social and racial justice as well as grant access to remedy and redress for human rights violations based on transparent and inclusive consultation and dialogue with Papuans.
• End the arrests and prosecutions of Papuans for exercising their fundamental rights under international human rights law, including the rights to freedom of expression, association and peacefully assembly, such as raising the Morning State flag. 
• Drop charges or quash convictions and unconditionally release Papuans arrested for the peaceful exercise of their fundamental rights, including activists whose cases are detailed in this report, plus compensate for their losses while in detention.
• Establish, publicize, and implement guidelines for the Indonesian security forces, including the military, police, and intelligence agencies, on the lawful, nondiscriminatory response to pro-independence actions and expression consistent with international human rights standards.
• Lift restrictions on foreign media access to West Papua, as pledged in 2015, and direct all government ministries and state security forces to comply with the order. The National Police should be prohibited from requiring accredited foreign correspondents to apply for surat jalan, or travel permits, to West Papua.
• Renew the 2018 invitation to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua and direct all government ministries and state security forces to comply with the invitation.
• Revoke article 6 of Government Regulation No. 77/2007, which prohibits the display of “separatist” logos or flags, or revise the regulation to bring it into compliance with international human rights standards. The regulation should make a clear distinction between display of pro-independence symbols in private homes and property, which should not be subject to government interference, and display in government offices and property, which the authorities have the discretion to regulate.
• Pursue thorough, independent and impartial investigations into all acts of violence, in particular torture and killings, and for all those responsible – regardless of position or rank, to be held accountable.
• Propose legislation for:
  • Amending the 2008 law on ending racial and ethnic discrimination to ensure that Indigenous groups are included in public services and protected from discrimination.
  • Revoking all articles of the 2022 Criminal Code that could be used to prosecute individuals for peaceful activities, including articles on “treason” to bring the code into conformity with international standards.
  • Reforming the legal framework on pro-independence expression to be consistent with international legal standards.
• Allow outside human rights observers to visit Papua and meet freely with Papuans and relevant government officials.
• Formally invite for visits to Papua:
  • The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights;
  • The UN International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the Context of Law Enforcement;
  • The special rapporteurs on the rights of indigenous peoples; freedom of expression and opinion; and contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
• Present a policy paper to the cabinet that explains Indonesia’s obligations under international law to protect the rights of Indigenous Papuans.

• Direct the military and the National Police to provide appropriate training to officers, especially those assigned to West Papua, to understand and appropriately address racial discrimination; and ensure that military personnel who engage in racial discrimination are properly disciplined.

• Endorse the Safe Schools Declaration and Implement the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict. Include explicit protections to ensure schools, especially in West Papua, are not used for military purposes in relevant legislation, military manuals, doctrine, policies, and trainings.

• Direct the Ministry of Education and Culture to:
  • Ensure only adequately trained teachers are able to teach in public schools across West Papua.
  • Prohibit the use of soldiers or personnel associated with Indonesia’s security forces from teaching in public schools.
  • Provide guidelines and appropriate training programs to educate public school and university students and faculty about racial discrimination.
  • Promptly review all national curriculum applying an anti-racist and non-discrimination lens, and remove content from printed and online educational material that promotes or encourages racist or discriminatory beliefs, discriminates against Indigenous populations and other groups, and undermines ethnic diversity.
  • Widely consult and involve Indigenous experts, including Indigenous Papuan experts and representatives from other Indigenous groups, in the revision of the national curriculum, and in the formulation of guidelines and training programs.
• Direct the Ministry of Religious Affairs to:
  • Provide guidelines and appropriate training programs in all religious schools – Islamic, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist – to educate lecturers and students on racial discrimination.
  • Review all curricula to eliminate any form of discrimination against Papuans and other ethnic and religious minorities.
• Call on the Minister of Law and Human Rights to review regulations and decrees that discriminate against Indigenous people, including Papuans.

To Papuan Community Leaders

• Call for an end to threats and violence against migrants in West Papua and propose specific steps to end anti-migrant violence.

• Encourage community interactions to address racial discrimination.

To the United Nations and Partner Governments

• The UN and donor countries should urge the Indonesian government to unconditionally release West Papuan and other detainees and prisoners being held for the peaceful exercise of their fundamental human rights and provide appropriate redress for those wrongfully held. 

• The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights should encourage the Indonesian government to take concrete steps to fulfill its 2018 promise to permit UN rights monitors to visit West Papua.

• UN special rapporteurs and other relevant UN expert groups and mechanisms should provide guidance to the Indonesian government in addressing complaints of discrimination, investigating and appropriately disciplining or prosecuting those responsible, and providing prompt, effective remedies given to victims. 
   

Acknowledgments

The report was written by Andreas Harsono, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. It was edited by Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director. James Ross, legal and policy director, and Tom Porteus, deputy program director, provided legal and programmatic review, respectively. Specialist review was provided by Elin Martinez, senior researcher, Children’s Rights Division, Almaz Teffera, researcher, Europe and Central Asia division, and Luciana Tellez-Chavez, senior researcher, Environment and Human Rights division. Robbie Newton, Asia senior coordinator, provided editorial and production assistance. This report was prepared for publication by Travis Carr, publications officer. Franki Jenkins, multimedia officer, produced the video that accompanies this report.

Special thanks to our external reviewers Sophie Chao of the University of Sydney, Cahyo Pamungkas of Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN) in Jakarta, and Gerry van Klinken, emeritus professor at the Leiden-based Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV).

We thank all those individuals and organizations who aided in our research and who generously shared their time, energy, and experiences with Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch would like to particularly express appreciation to Papuan activists who have risked arrest and torture to campaign against discrimination.

We want to remember Filep Karma, the prominent Papuan activist and former political prisoner, friend to Human Rights Watch, who drowned in 2022.