An International Perspective on the West Papuan Struggle

An article about West Papua was just released by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) yesterday, November 13 2023.

Decolonization of West Papua: Supporting a Nonviolent Struggle from Abroad

To get to know this international NGO and its relevance to the West Papuans' struggle for independence, I invite you to read the following testimony from Amber French, Managing Editor of Minds of the Movement and Editorial Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. She is currently based in Paris, France, where she teaches classes on nonviolence, politics, and diplomacy at two universities and serves on the editorial board of Alternatives non-violentes. Amber is also a French to English translator and frequent contributor to Minds of the Movement and a number of French journals.

Since joining ICNC in 2014, Amber French has led in developing and managing ICNC’s editorial and media initiatives. Amber led the development of the Minds of the Movement blog. In 2016, she oversaw the launch of the Nonviolent Conflict News website, a news aggregator site on civil resistance around the world. She also launched and managed ICNC Press from 2015 to 2017, overseeing the production of its first nine books and reports in online and print editions.Previously, Amber served as editor of the Migration Policy Institute’s Migration Information Source and the UNESCO/Max Planck Institute journal New Diversities.

Amber, when and how did you first learn about the West Papuan independence struggle?

I learned about the West Papuan struggle when I began working at the ICNC in 2014. ICNC is an international NGO based in the United States that focuses on how ordinary people around the world nonviolently struggle for rights, justice and freedom. One of my ICNC colleagues at the time, Althea Middleton-Detzner, was working on indigenous-led decolonization struggles. I learned that Benny Wenda, the Chairman of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua had attended ICNC's summer institute on nonviolent struggle a few years before I joined the organization. 

As I launched ICNC's blog, Minds of the Movement in 2017, I was thinking about potential contributors, and Benny Wenda came to mind (though as I recall, I wasn't successful in reaching him). At the time, I had stumbled upon an article about a brilliant nonviolent tactic West Papuans had successfully pulled off. A petition for West Papuan independence banned by the Indonesian government had been smuggled from one end of Papua and West Papua provinces to the other, amassing 1.8 million signatures. While international support for West Papua is important, I still hope that West Papuans and their allies will also use their ingenuity, smart organizing skills, connections and commitment to nonviolent discipline to continue strengthening participation and drawing allies to their cause inside Papua and Indonesia.

To what extent is the West Papua issue known in your country, America?

In the United States, indigenous rights and land rights are prominent social justice issues; however, we are very focused on our own indigenous populations—Native Americans in areas across the country. I can't know for sure, but I would bet that very few people you would run into in there would have ever heard of West Papua. Indonesia is better known, especially since it is a major producer of oil and gas. But even then, the US' major international interests lay elsewhere, so Indonesia and West Papua are very out of sight, out of mind for most people in the US.

I think part of the unfamiliarity also stems from the complexity of the West Papuan issue: its history and geography. More broadly, US colonial history is very unique and we in the US often think that colonialization doesn't exist anymore. Our predecessors brought people from Africa and other regions in within US borders to "colonize" them in the form of slavery. I think this makes a huge difference in terms of history and politics today. 

Here in France, colonialism is something that happened outside of Metropolitan French borders. Both slavery and colonization, while different in their nature and impacts, are still both forms of domination. Having studied international relations in college in the US, I once attended a talk given by Francis Bok, a Southern Sudanese who escaped slavery. I will forever remember the way I felt when it sunk in for me that slavery still exists in the world. As with slavery, colonization is not a relic of the past. It's a tragedy and one that not enough people are aware of in the US and, sadly, most parts of the world. 

Does ICNC collaborate with other international NGOs to voice the aspirations of the West Papuan people?

I won't be able to answer this with a simple yes or no! ICNC's organizational model has been a source of confusion for many. It is unique. It is a nongovernmental organization that indeed does not engage in partisanship. This is difficult for some people to understand, especially when they hear that ICNC is based in Washington, DC! However, it is crucial for movement support organizations like ICNC to communicate publicly their operating guidelines, and ICNC does. Our work is demand-driven, so if a West Papuan activist, movement-focused scholar, journalist or group approaches ICNC, we engage with them through a number of specific ways. Other than Benny Wenda and Markus Haluk, I know Australia-based movement scholar and activist Jason MacLeod works on the West Papuan struggle, and he's a longtime ICNC collaborator. 

Being demand-driven means that ICNC responds to "contacts and requests initiated by groups or people seeking to end oppression or injustice through nonviolent methods" (see all of our Operating Guidelines here). What's amazing—and perhaps sad??—is that demand for knowledge, resources and connections about nonviolent struggle for rights, justice and freedom is so high that we stay busy with minimal online promotion of our work and without proactively soliciting activists and groups. People email us, apply for our fellowships and programs, consult our online Resource Library with 900+ freely consultable resources available in 70+ languages, write blog posts for us (in up to 12 languages), and much, much more.

In your opinion, will the people of West Papua succeed in achieving independence?

Decolonization and anti-occupation struggles have the lowest rates of success, according to Chenoweth and Stephan's 2011 study, Why Civil Resistance Works. They are territorial in nature and are overtly asymmetrical: the occupier/colonizer country's whole army is mobilized against a smaller, practically unarmed population, often indigenous and therefore less visible to the world. Therefore, armed struggle just isn't even an option. 

As an outsider, I admire West Papuans' ingenuity and commitment to nonviolent action in the face of such violence and domination. While nonviolent struggle is literally West Papuans' (and many indigenous populations') only viable option for survival, it still requires immeasurable courage, resourcefulness, steadfastness and outstanding leadership. I am proud to be part of the international support network amplifying West Papuan voices for freedom.