Our first Australasian centered video focused on mainland Papua New Guinea’s imperialist occupation of Bougainville, which happily has been resolved by the Bougainville independence movement and the Papuan government, with Bougainville set to gain independence in 5 years by 2027. This video has to do with the New Guinea island again, but this time not as antagonists. The Western half of New Guinea, the 2nd largest island in the world, was annexed by Indonesia in 1962 after the Dutch finally left their last Asian colony. Some New Guineans have protested this new foreign power, sometimes violently. Today, we cover the Papua conflict.

West Guinea is unlike the rest of Indonesia with its Malay-speaking Austronesian ethnic groups from its major islands such as Borneo, Java and Sumatra. While there is incredible diversity in the language and culture in West Guinea, like the East of the Island these people are ethnically under the umbrella term Melanesian. With their dark skin and reclusive nature, the Papuans were seen both by the Dutch and by their Austronesian neighbors as more primitive than the rest of the population of what became Indonesia when Portuguese explorers discovered it in the early 1500s. After a century of Portuguese rule, the Dutch East India Company took over, presiding over a number of client states while extracting revenue and resources from the densely populated main islands but leaving the sparsely populated (and densely jungled) New Guinea almost entirely alone, even after Company rule was replaced by direct Dutch administration in 1816.

The period of non-interference on New Guinea ended around the turn of the century, when Australia, Germany and the Dutch all scrambled to claim chunks of the island reminiscent of European squabbles over Africa. Like African colonization, this was only possible with improvements of anti-malarial and other medicines to combat the deadly diseases that afflicted European explorers and conquerors much more than the native population. The invention of aircraft also allowed Europeans to make contact with the Dani people, who had an advanced agricultural (and stateless) society but no contact with the outside world until 1938 due to the vast mountains and jungles that surrounded them. With the Germans removed from the island’s politics in World War 1, it became half Dutch, half Australian/British. The War in the Pacific made New Guinea an extremely bloody battleground in the war against Japan, with Japanese forces not surrendering until the end of WW2.

With the War’s end, Pan-Indonesian nationalists (with the help of many ex-Japanese officers and soldiers) began a struggle for independence against the Dutch. The Dutch eventually lost this fight in 1949 everywhere except West New Guinea. The Dutch state reacted to this new situation by vastly increasing their support towards the development of civil institutions in West New Guinea, most likely hoping to develop a pro-Dutch independent government there. With the dispute over the islands becoming more and more tense, the Dutch sped up their process of decolonization and founded the New Guinea Council, along with a national flag and anthem in 1961. This led to an Indonesian assault on the territory in 1962, and the Dutch finally settled the matter that year, with the promise of a referendum on independence or union with Indonesia. In 1969 Indonesia administered a “referendum” that was basically a joke, coercing 1000 citizens and demanding they vote (with implicit threats about how they were to vote) and gaining “unanimous consent” for the union of West Guinea with Indonesia.

Quickly following the transition to Indonesian “advisory” government in 1963 a movement calling themselves the Free Papua Movement formed, which flew the flag given to them by the Dutch. In 1965 a major violent incident occurred in Manokwari with dozens dying on both sides, followed by harsh reprisals against suspected independence supporters. This cycle of raids and reprisals continued on a low level until the infamous 1978 Jayapura operation to finally crush the rebels, a huge operation with at least 10,000 Indonesian soldiers and air support against rebel villages, killing thousands of them with indiscriminate fire. However, resistance survived, with operatives crossing over the border to neutral Papua New Guinea to avoid capture. While Papua New Guinea itself is neutral, assisting the Indonesian state somewhat in capturing rebels (probably because of their own secessionist conflict in Bougainville), the conflict has drawn many volunteers from PNW to fight and many Free Papua fighters support a federation with PNW. The Free Papua Movement also has explicit moral (and probably secretive material support) from the pacific nations of Nauru, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, all populated like New Guinea by Melanesian people. To combat the guerilla operations of the Free Papuans, the Indonesian military often displaces whole villages with the intent to sniff out hiding places of the rebels, leading to increased resentment among the natives. In 2019 West New Guinea was basically shut down by a month of protests for Independence, leading to an internet blackout of the region and a severe police crackdown.

The popular nature of the 2019 protests shows that despite the “referendum” in 1969, the people of West New Guinea do NOT want the Indonesian state there. They have developed their own culture over thousands of years with little interference or even contact from the wider world, and their case for self determination is crystal clear. As happened in East Timor, another ex-colony Indonesia invaded and attempted to annex from 1975 to 1999, libertarians and supporters of free nations should hope the central government will finally see the folly of its ways and allow a true referendum on the status of the island. Because of Indonesian state policy called “transmigration”, many coastal areas have significant non-Melanesian populations so a satisfactory arrangement should allow their areas (especially in the westernmost part of Papua) to stay within Indonesia with the majority native population taking the rest of the country into a union with Papua New Guinea or as an independent nation. Either course is within the rights of the Papuan people, and we should all support their struggle towards freedom. Long live New Guinea! And may 1000 flowers bloom.