SPECIAL AUTONOMY IN WEST PAPUA: SOLUTION OR SOURCE OF PROBLEMS? (3)

Special autonomy in Papua: Indonesia's political deception?

In theory, Papua's 2001 Special Autonomy Law (known as Otsus) implies that the Indonesian government is implementing special policies to empower and to protect indigenous Papuans. As a form of redress for forty years of violence and abuse, Jakarta intends to develop Papua for the welfare of its people.

Unfortunately, what is written and what is implemented are very different. Twenty years of Special Autonomy regime has destroyed the culture of indigenous Papuans. "All data shows that the Papuan people are undergoing a process of genocide, ethnocide and ecocide!", exclaimed Markus Haluk, director of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua.

For Zuzan Griapon, militant of the Green Papua community, infrastructure development such as bridges, roads, buildings, airports, is intended to speed up the transportation of raw materials and company logistics. Indigenous peoples are severely disadvantaged because they lose their land and livelihoods. Papuans consider nature as their mother, and culture is the means that connects them to nature. Destroying nature and culture is tantamount to destroying Papuan identity! Therefore, economic development that does not consider human factors and local culture is bound to fail.

In 2001-2022, Indonesia ranked fourth in the world in tree cover loss, at 29.4 million hectares. The percentage of permanent tree loss is 95%. Indonesia ranked second in terms of primary forest destruction with 10.2 million hectares, followed by wet forest loss of 93.8 million hectares. (World Resource Institute, 2023)

Forest loss in Papua reached 793,623 hectares in the period 2001-2021. Infrastructure development, housing construction for indonesian settlers, oil palm development, mining, and industrial timber plantations are the causes of forest clearing in Papua. (Pusaka, 2022)

For I Ngurah Suryawan, a University of Papua academic, Otsus and provincial expansion in Papua are like thorns in the flesh. Take for example the planned expansion of the new autonomous region of MalaMoi Regency which has its capital in Klasow District, the customary land of Klaben (Moi Kelim). This will bring in various giant business investments as a condition of local revenue, which will later seize the customary land of the Moi indigenous people. It will also destroy their forests and traditional way of life.

In short, what the Indonesian government has been doing during the implementation of Otsus is nothing but colonization and exploitation of Papua's human and natural resources.

To be continued ... https://markushalukpapua.blogspot.com/2023/07/special-autonomy-in-west-papua-solution.html