West Papua's Forgotten Struggle for Independence | Opinion | teleSUR English

16.9.16

West Papua's Forgotten Struggle for Independence | Opinion | teleSUR English: “Indonesia is able to massacre my people. Almost 500, 000 men and women have been killed. While I’m speaking there are arrests and intimidations and imprisonments still going on in West Papua,” said Benny Wenda, an exiled West Papuan Indigenous leader. That figure is consistent with human rights organizations' estimates.

Wenda said West Papuans essentially live in an apartheid, or a political system reminiscent of Jim Crow in the U.S. deep South. Without freedom of assembly, for instance, West Papuans cannot legally protest and organize social movements, Wenda said, and as a result, Indonesia currently detains 54 West Papuans as political prisoners. In the last three years, 27 activists had been killed, nearly half this year alone.

Wenda also mentioned Indonesian forces targeting and killing young West Papuan high school boys, almost as a preemptive strike.