23 February 2021Politics
In August 2020, seven West Papuan political prisoners, held in Jakarta for protesting outside the Indonesian Presidential Palace, were released early following an international campaign. They received a rapturous reception on their return. Thousands gathered to greet them – a demonstration of the widespread opposition to Indonesian rule in this province on the island of New Guinea. A year earlier, hundreds of thousands marched, rioted and burned down state buildings across the country during a month-long uprising. Emboldened by this resistance, in December the largest West Papuan independentist group declared a provisional government-in-waiting, ready to form the world’s newest nation state. Jakarta’s political and media elites promptly went into meltdown. A star line-up of Indonesian officials, from the head of the military to the security minister, clamoured to denounce the liberation movement and its leader, the newly appointed Interim President Ben
At least, that’s how planners and politicians envisaged the highway from their Jakarta offices.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo was so enthusiastic about the project as a cornerstone for his infrastructure strategies that he had publicity photographs taken of him astride his motorbike on the highway.
But that isn’t how West Papuans see “The Road”.
In reality, writes Australian journalist John Martinkus in his new book
The Road: Uprising in West Papua, the highway brings military occupation by Indonesian troops, exploitation by foreign companies, environmental destruction and colonisation by Indonesian transmigrants.
“The road would bring the death of their centuries-old way of life, previously undisturbed aside from the occasional Indonesian military incursion and the mostly welcome arrival of Christian missionaries.