Introduction to West Papua

from West Papua Information Kit

New Guinea, or Papua is the world's second largest island. Over forty thousand years ago people colonized Papua and Australia where they developed thousands of indigenous cultures; but from the 1860s western Papua took a different path. Western Papua from the 1860s had extensive Dutch missionary contact and adapted many western sciences to suit their Papuan cultures and from the 1930s several hundred tribes speaking three hundred languages agreed they should develop an united national identity – the above national seal says "One People, One Soul".

When Japan invaded after Dec. 1941, the Papuan people denied them aid, movement; but then gave every aid to the United States and Australians, carried and cared for their wounded, gave permission, helped build and supplied food for the US bases. General MacArthur decided West Papua should be his Pacific Headquarters and the US staging base for a half million American troops. After the war, West Papua continued its civil developement and the nation's first electoral roles were completed in July 1960 for the election of the New Guinea Council in January 1961, the Councillors were sworn in by Governor Platteel and officials from Australia, New Zealand, Britain, France, and South Pacific Commission nations excepting the United States attended the inaugration of the New Guinea Council on 5th April 1961.

Unfortunately U.S. oil executives and their associates at Freeport Sulphur and Bechtel Inc. wanted West Papua's gold and copper wealth. The American government did not know that Standard Oil in 1936 had covertly discovered West Papua's vast gold and copper; the American public did not know Corporate America wanted West Papua to be a colony of Indonesia to be mined by Freeport and its friends. After Indonesia's military proved unable to seize the territory itself, a pro-Indonesia group at the Whitehouse told Kennedy that he could only save America from communism by coercing the Netherlands to sign a New York Agreement selling West Papua to Indonesian control. A few months later UN Sec. General Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a airplane accident, the temporary Secretary General U Thant found the UN was short of money, and that US President Kennedy was offering to support a UN sale of US$200m of UN Bonds; at the same time that Kennedy wanted the United Nations to lend its name to the selling of the people of West Papua to Indonesian 'administration'.

Although the SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) and NYT (New York Times) newspapers both stated this selling of West Papua was a violation of the United Nations Charter, this violation, as well as the subsequent licencing of Papua's Gold and Copper to US corporations, the Indonesian military bombing of West Papuan highland townships and other slaughters of well over a hundred thousand people – has been ignored by Australian and US governments as well as the United Nations which had been handsomely rewarded for its part in selling the people of West New Guinea to Indonesian control and foreign mining. The Department of State summary for 1962 tells how the pro-Indonesia group convinced the President that he had to force the Netherlands to sell the West Papua people to Indonesia; told the President lies that West Papua had no economic wealth; tell how the New York Agreement was "almost a total victory for Indonesia". As a result General Suharto was in 1967 able to sell a thirty year license to Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. to mine West Papua's wealth.

According to the US Dept. of State and hundreds of NGO records and reports the Indonesian military and government continues a brutal regime of theft, murder, rape; and according to the opinion of the Yale Law School, genocide.

Some corporations share three anti-Papuan motives (Gold, Oil, Colonization), such as Freeport McMoRan mining of Papua's gold & copper with the world's largest mine dumping over 300,000 tonnes of waste per day into the world's oceans and environment. The Tangguh LNG Project despite foreign and local concerns and reports; seeks the Indonesian military's (TNI) colonial access to the nation's wealth and to suppress the people's objections, a military who cut down the Papuan forests for China Olympics, Japanese paper, European and US furniture markets while eliminating the Papuan population's homelands and hope of hiding from TNI attack. Exxon, Freeport, Bechtel, and their US Indonesia Society lobby want silence about West Papua, want colonial access to its minerals; even the US Congress were not allowed to ask these questions about West Papua; so we hope you will ask questions and let the US electorate know.