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West Papua/Irian Jaya
Executive Summary |
West Papua, also known as Irian Jaya, is Indonesia’s most easterly province, comprising the western half of the world’s second largest island. Home to one of the world’s principal copper and gold mining operations, West Papua/Irian Jaya is the nation’s least developed region, with a majority of the population occupied with agriculture, fishing and hunting. West Papua/Irian Jaya is also one of the primary locations for Indonesia’s program on transmigration, the voluntary relocation of Indonesians from overcrowded cities to the peripheral regions of the archipelago.
West Papua/Irian Jaya is home to a secessionist movement that has been in the making for 40 years. The province left Dutch rule in 1962, was briefly under UN authority, and in 1963 joined the Indonesian state. Many indigenous inhabitants, however, believed that the province achieved independence on December 1, 1961 when Dutch rulers agreed to allow self-rule.
Despite a heavy military presence that has lasted since the annexation in 1963, West Papua/Irian Jaya has experienced limited, although severe, outbursts of violence. The Free Papua Movement (OPM), a low-level guerilla movement, has been fighting for independence since 1961. Troubles between the military and the Papuan population escalated, however, after Suharto’s fall in 1998 and a new round of calls for independence was ignited.
The present state of the conflict is dominated by heightened violence due to military “sweeps” in search of OPM guerillas, and an expected autonomy proposal from Jakarta. Megawati Sukarnoputri has stated that although she will never allow an independence referendum in either West Papua/Irian Jaya or Aceh, she is very eager to end peacefully the conflicts in both regions. Megawati’s proposed solution is a greater degree of autonomy, but it is unclear how pro-independence movements will likely react to such a move.
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