At last, we have a clear position from the EU: they are calling for Indonesia to allow a UN visit to West Papua. The EU Commission, head of a bloc of 27 countries, has joined 81 countries in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) in calling for Indonesia to stop blocking the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from our land.

Our people have been crying out for this visit for the last 20 years.

Thanks to the questions raised by IPWP Vice-Chair for the European Parliament, President Carles Puigdemont MEP, we also now know how much EU money has been sent to Indonesia to be spent in West Papua.

Since 2001, EUR 4.7 million has been sent, in the name of ‘democracy, civil society, peace process, health care, education, and land-use planning’. But where is this democracy? Where is this peace? In West Papua, we don’t have basic human rights. Our land has been illegally occupied by Indonesia for nearly 60 years.

The EU needs to know that Indonesia has been using these funds to deploy armed military in our villages, to bomb our houses and displace our communities. To kill over 500,000 of our men, women and children.

Currently, there are over 60,000 people internally displaced inside West Papua. In the last 3 years alone, Indonesia has deployed over 25,000 additional troops. All of this, while in the middle of a pandemic.

The EU, and all other organisations and states that send money to Indonesia need to know that they are funding a genocide against the West Papuan people.

They are wiping us out, they are slaughtering us like animals and the international community is paying the bill.

To the EU, and the international community, I say this:

  1. Stop your trade negotiations and stop funding Indonesia. The resources Indonesia are trading come from our illegally occupied land. Your trade agreement is based on the blood and the bones of West Papuans.
  2. Any EU based businesses with investments or interests inside West Papua need to stop operating.
  3. Stop supporting ‘Special Autonomy’ which is not the solution and has been clearly rejected by the West Papuan people.
  4. We welcome the call for the visit of the High Commissioner. The ULMWP Provisional Government and the people of West Papua are ready to welcome the UN. The world needs to see what Indonesia has been doing to our people for the last 60 years.

The ULMWP Provisional Government is ready to engage with the world’s states to solve the West Papuan issue, according to international mechanisms. The denial of our fundamental right to self-determination is the root of the problem and this is what the West Papuan people demand. The world now needs to listen.

Benny Wenda
Interim President
ULMWP Provisional Government