West Papua genocide: how many victims?

A report from the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide (CPG) in 2022 shows that Indonesia ranks 27th on the list of countries at risk of mass atrocities.

Those familiar with Indonesian history will certainly not be surprised, given the series of crimes against humanity that have taken place in the country since its independence in 1945.

Despite Jakarta’s promise to open a human rights court in 2001, there has never been any act of justice, as was done in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge genocide (1975-1979). The lack of historical rectification in Indonesia has led to the repetition of humanitarian crimes in the country. Worse still, some of the alleged perpetrators now hold senior positions in the Indonesian government.

Human rights violations are particularly serious in West Papua, Indonesia's easternmost region, annexed in 1963. The most frequently quoted figure for the number of Papuans killed by the Indonesian military is 500,000. However, this figure is not absolute. Since access to West Papua for investigations is systematically blocked by Indonesia, it remains difficult to determine the exact death toll. Estimates vary between 100,000 and 1.5 million victims.

A study conducted by Yale University in 2003 found that 100,000 Papuans were killed. Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, Yale Law School, November 2003, pages 14-22, provides a comprehensive report and confirms that this was indeed an act of genocide.

Indonesia expert Dr Kees Lagerberg previously estimated that 300,000 West Papuans had disappeared. In the early 1960s, the West Papuan population was about 700,000 and about one million in the 1980s, when Dr Lagerberg made this claim. This means that about 30% of the population of West Papua had disappeared.

According to Tom Beanal, head of the Papua Presidium Council (PDP), more than 600,000 Papuans were killed between 1963 and 1998. Benny Wenda, former chairman of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), has repeatedly claimed that more than 500,000 West Papuans died as a result of violence during the 60-year Indonesian occupation. Jakobus E. Dumupa, leader of the Papuan People’s Assembly (PPA), in his book Hunting for Justice (2006), put the figure at 1.5 million people!

An old adage teaches us to look to the past to understand the present. Considering what happened in East Timor during the twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation (1975-1999), where international observers acknowledged the genocide of 200,000 Timorese, it is not unreasonable to suspect that the Indonesian regime is doing something similar on a larger scale in West Papua. The latter is several times larger than East Timor and has been occupied for a much longer period.

The question now is how long can the international community tolerate this human tragedy? How much longer will our intellectual elites, religious leaders and politicians remain silent? When will we all wake up from our own indifference?