Thousands of Papuans in the western part of the island of New Guinea have been beaten, jailed, raped and in many cases murdered by Indonesian police and military, since West Papua came under Indonesian control 50 years ago, according to a new paper released by the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council.
Peter Arndt, Executive Officer of the Brisbane Archdiocese’s Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, writes in Into the Deep: Seeking Justice for the People of West Papua that the vast majority of Papuans are Christians whose faith has sustained them in their resistance to Indonesian occupation. Many public acts of resistance took the form of prayer gatherings; their faith was often mocked by the authorities.
“It is clear to me that when they spoke of freedom, my Papuan sisters and brothers not only wanted an end to the violence that constantly surrounded them,” Mr Arndt wrote. “They clearly wanted an end to Indonesian occupation of their lands and an opportunity to live as Papuans with their own languages, culture and religion.
“Many Australians, Americans and Europeans seeking to support the people of West Papua baulk at any form of support for a political objective [and] restrict themselves to human rights advocacy ... I am immensely troubled by any approach that actively discourages Papuans from seeking freedom in the way they want it.”
In his introduction to the paper, the Council’s Chairman, Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen of Parramatta, wrote that Mr Arndt had placed his West Papuan friends’ experience in the context of the Scriptures, had looked deeply into the Church’s teachings on justice and asked what he must do. He had discerned the answer “with clarity and courage”.
West Papua came under Indonesian control in the 1960s after the Dutch withdrew, when the pro-independence Free Papua Movement was also formed.
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