Transmigration Is the Last Thing That Papua and Its People Need | Jakarta Globe

4.1.16

Transmigration Is the Last Thing That Papua and Its People Need | Jakarta Globe: Papuans are utterly marginalized by the Indonesian government, from the ministerial level on downwards. They have the lowest life expectancies in Indonesia, the highest maternal and child mortality rates, the lowest educational levels, and the lowest incomes. In the hinterlands where most indigenous Papuans live, the presence of the state is found in shuttered schools and empty clinics. The area hosts the last active insurgency in Indonesia, and the majority of Papuans support independence because the state has no relevance in their lives. Special Autonomy has provided nothing beneficial to ordinary Papuans: returns from Papua’s mineral wealth are soaked up by a constipated bureaucracy or otherwise misused.