CIAO DATE: 04/2010
March 2010
ndonesia’s easternmost province of Papua saw an upsurge in political violence in 2009, continuing into 2010. One factor was the increased activity of militant activists from the central highlands, many of them members of the West Papua National Committee (Komite Nasional Papua Barat, KNPB). They decided there was no longer any hope of achieving their main objective – a referendum on independence – through peaceful means, and led some to advocate violence and in some cases directly participate in violent acts. Their tactics are decried by many Papuans, but their message resonates widely, and the frustrations they articulate are real. A dialogue between Papuan leaders and central government officials, if carefully prepared, offers the possibility of addressing some longstanding grievances, without calling Indonesian sovereignty into question. The KNPB had its origins in the growth of pro-independence student activism in Papua following the fall of Soeharto in 1998. As various coalitions formed and fissured, KNPB emerged as a group of mostly university-educated students and ex-students who adopted a militant left-wing ideology and saw themselves as revolutionaries, fighting the Indonesian state and the giant Freeport copper and gold mine near Timika. There were two main consequences to their increased militancy. They moved closer to their highland counterparts in the guerrilla army of the Free Papua Movement (Tentara Pembebasan Nasional/ Organisasi Papua Merdeka, TPN/OPM) and they increasingly saw that the only hope of achieving their cause lay in showing the world that Papua was in crisis – and that meant more visible manifestations of conflict.
Resource link: Radicalisation and Dialogue in Papua [PDF] - 1.5M