West Papua Is Rising — And Jakarta Is Terrified

Since the racist attack on Papuan students in Surabaya—yes, that incident where young Black Papuans were abused, called "monkeys," and locked up for allegedly disrespecting an Indonesian flag—the tide has turned. The humiliation was too public. The insult too deep. The rage too heavy to swallow. And so, Papuans have begun rising.

In unprecedented numbers, they are rallying under the banner of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), demanding the one thing that Indonesia fears the most: self-determination.

Who are these Papuans? They are not militants with guns. They are students with books. Young women with megaphones. Grandparents in traditional dress. Ordinary people who have had enough of pretending that they are “part of Indonesia” while being treated like animals in their own land.

According to Markus Haluk, ULMWP’s executive director, the majority are youth—especially students. But increasingly, elders and women are stepping forward too, confronting soldiers, staring down riot police, marching in the heart of cities that once silenced them.

And what has been Jakarta’s answer? Violence. Beatings. Arrests. Torture.

But they keep rising.

The largest wave of protest shook the archipelago in 2019. It was not a protest—it was an uprising. Forty cities. West Papua, Java, Sulawesi. Even abroad. It was the raw cry of a people spitting in the face of a system that has enslaved them for six decades.

But the resistance doesn’t end with slogans in the street.

Papuans are fighting on every front. Take the Papuan entrepreneurs from the Customary Chamber of Papuan Entrepreneurs (KAP-Papua)—demanding laws to stop economic apartheid on their own soil.

Or look to 'Tongoi Papua', the labor union at PT Freeport—the colonial gold mine bleeding Papua dry while throwing scraps to its original landowners. Between 2007 and 2010, Papuan workers organized, demanded dignity. In 2015, over 8,000 workers stood up to Freeport’s racist, exploitative system—and they paid the price. All of them laid off. Blacklisted. Forgotten.

Eight thousand Papuans, still unemployed.

This is what happens when Papuans demand equality under the so-called “Indonesian republic.” They are discarded like waste.

Even in exile, the resistance burns. From Port Moresby to Canberra, from the Netherlands to the UK, from Sydney to Washington D.C., Papuans in the diaspora organize, march, shout, and demand the end of Indonesian occupation.

The world may not yet listen as it did to Ukraine—but the movement is growing, the voices are multiplying, and the fire is spreading.

West Papua is not asking for charity. West Papua is demanding justice.

And Jakarta? Jakarta is afraid. Not of guns, but of truth. Not of riots, but of voices that cannot be silenced.

Because one day soon, the world will have to choose:

Stand with a dying colonial empire.

Or stand with a free West Papua.