The Philippines has signed a contract with Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) to acquire an additional batch of 12 FA-50PH light combat aircraft worth approximately US$700 million, the government-run Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) announced on 5 June. KAI noted that the contract calls for deliveries of the aircraft to be completed by June 2030 and […]
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By Ben McKay
America’s retreat from foreign aid is being felt deeply in Pacific media, where pivotal outlets are being shuttered and journalists work unpaid.
The result is fewer investigations into dubiously motivated politicians, glimpses into conflicts otherwise unseen and a less diverse media in a region which desperately needs it.
“It is a huge disappointment … a senseless waste,” Benar News’ Australian former head of Pacific news Stefan Armbruster said after seeing his outlet go under.
Benar News, In-depth Solomons and Inside PNG are three digital outlets which enjoyed US support but have been hit by President Donald Trump’s about-face on aid.
Benar closed its doors in April after an executive order disestablishing Voice of America, which the United States created during World War II to combat Nazi propaganda.
An offshoot of Radio Free Asia (RFA) focused on Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Benar kept a close eye on abuses in West Papua, massacres and gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea and more.
The Pacific arm quickly became indispensable to many, with a team of reporters and freelancers working in 15 countries on a budget under A$A million.
Coverage of decolonisation
“Our coverage of decolonisation in the Pacific received huge interest, as did our coverage of the lack of women’s representation in parliaments, human rights, media freedom, deep sea mining and more,” Armbruster said.
In-depth Solomons, a Honiara-based digital outlet, is another facing an existential threat despite a proud record of investigative and award-winning reporting.
Last week, it was honoured with a peer-nominated award from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan for a year-long probe into former prime minister Manasseh Sogavare’s property holdings.
“We’re just holding on,” editor and co-founder Ofani Eremae said.
A US-centred think tank continues to pay the wage of one journalist, while others have not drawn a salary since January.
“It has had an impact on our operations. We used to travel out to do stories across the provinces. That has not been done since early this year,” Eremae said.
A private donor came forward after learning of the cuts with a one-off grant that was used for rent to secure the office, he said.
USAID budget axed
Its funding shortfall — like Port Moresby-based outlet Inside PNG — is linked to USAID, the world’s biggest single funder of development assistance, until Trump axed its multi-billion dollar budget.
Much of USAID’s funding was spent on humanitarian causes — such as vaccines, clean water supplies and food security — but some was also earmarked for media in developing nations, with the aim of bolstering fragile democracies.
Inside PNG used its support to build an audience of tens of thousands with incisive reports on PNG politics: not just Port Moresby, but in the regions including independence-seeking province Bougainville that has a long history of conflict.
“The current lack of funding has unfortunately had a dual impact, affecting both our dedicated staff, whom we’re currently unable to pay, and our day-to-day operations,” Inside PNG managing director Kila Wani said.
“We’ve had to let off 80 percent of staff from payroll which is a big hit because we’re not a very big team.
“Logistically, it’s become challenging to carry out our work as we normally would.”
Other media entities in the region have suffered hits, but declined to share their stories.
Funding hits damaging
The funding hits are all the more damaging given the challenges faced by the Pacific, as outlined in the Pacific Islands Media Freedom Index and RSF World Press Freedom Index.
The latest PFF report listed a string of challenges, notably weak legal protections for free speech, political interference on editorial independence, and a lack of funding underpinning high-quality media, in the region.
The burning question for these outlets — and their audiences — is do other sources of funding exist to fill the gap?
Inside PNG is refocusing energy on attracting new donors, as is In-depth Solomons, which has also turned to crowdfunding.
The Australian and New Zealand governments have also provided targeted support for the media sector across the region, including ABC International Development (ABCID), which has enjoyed a budget increase from Anthony Albanese’s government.
Inside PNG and In-depth Solomons both receive training and content-focused grants from ABCID, which helps, but this does not fund the underpinning costs for a media business or keep on the lights.
Both Eremae, who edited two major newspapers before founding the investigative outlet, and Armbruster, a long-time SBS correspondent, expressed their dismay at the US pivot away from the Pacific.
‘Huge mistake’ by US
“It’s a huge mistake on the part of the US … the world’s leading democracy. The media is one of the pillars of democracy,” Eremae said.
“It is, I believe, in the interests of the US and other democratic countries to give funding to media in countries like the Solomon Islands where we cannot survive due to lack of advertising (budgets).
As a veteran of Pacific reporting, Armbruster said he had witnessed US disinterest in the region contribute to the wider geopolitical struggle for influence.
“The US government was trying to re-establish its presence after vacating the space decades ago. It had promised to re-engage, dedicating funding largely driven by its efforts to counter China, only to now betray those expectations,” he said.
“The US government has senselessly destroyed a highly valued news service in the Pacific. An own goal.”
Ben McKay is an AAP journalist. Republished from National Indigenous Times in Australia.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Scholar Kassas in Port Moresby
A Papua New Guinea minister has raised concerns about “serious issues” at the PNG-Indonesia border due to a lack of proper security checkpoints.
Culture and Tourism Minister Belden Namah, who is also the member for the border electorate Vanimo-Green, voiced these concerns while supporting a new Biosecurity for Plants and Animals Bill presented in Parliament by Agriculture Minister John Boito.
He said Papua New Guinea was the only country in the Pacific Islands region that shared a land border with another nation.
According to Namah, the absence of proper quarantine and National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority (NAQIA) checks at the border allowed people bringing food and plants from Indonesia to introduce diseases affecting PNG’s commodities.
Minister Namah, whose electorate shares a border with Indonesia, noted that while the PNG Defence Force and police were present, they were primarily focused on checking vehicles coming from Indonesia instead of actively patrolling the borders.
He clarified the roles, saying, “It’s NAQIA’s job to search vehicles and passengers, and the PNGDF’s role is to guard and patrol our borders.”
Namah expressed concern that while bills were passed, enforcement on the ground was lacking.
Minister Namah supported the PNG Biosecurity Authority Bill and called for consistency, increased border security, and stricter control checks.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Asia Pacific Report
An escalation in fighting between Indonesian security forces and Papuan pro-independence fighters in West Papua has seriously threatened the security of the largely indigenous population, says Human Rights Watch in a new report.
The human rights watchdog warned that all parties to the conflict are obligated to abide by international humanitarian law, also called the laws of war.
The security forces’ military operations in the densely forested Central Highlands areas are accused of killing and wounding dozens of civilians with drone strikes and the indiscriminate use of explosive munitions, and displaced thousands of indigenous Papuans, said the report.
The National Liberation Army of West Papua, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, has claimed responsibility in the killing of 17 alleged miners between April 6 and April 9.
“The Indonesian military has a long history of abuses in West Papua that poses a particular risk to the Indigenous communities,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.
“Concerned governments need to press the Prabowo [Subianto] administration and Papuan separatist armed groups to abide by the laws of war.”
The fighting escalated after the attack on the alleged miners, which the armed group accused of being targeted soldiers or military informers.
Operation Habema
The Indonesian military escalated its ongoing operations, called Operation Habema, in West Papua’s six provinces, especially in the Central Highlands, where Papuan militant groups have been active for more than four decades.
On May 14, the military said that it had killed 18 resistance fighters in Intan Jaya regency, and that it had recovered weapons including rifles, bows and arrows, communications equipment, and Morning Star flags — the symbol of Papuan resistance.
Further military operations have allegedly resulted in burning down villages and attacks on churches. Papuan activists and pastors told Human Rights Watch that government forces treated all Papuan forest dwellers who owned and routinely used bows and arrows for hunting as “combatants”.
Information about abuses has been difficult to corroborate because the hostilities are occurring in remote areas in Intan Jaya, Yahukimo, Nduga, and Pegunungan Bintang regencies.
Pastors, church workers, and local journalists interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that Indonesian forces had been using drones and helicopter gunships to drop bombs.
“Civilians from the Korowai tribe community, known for their tall treehouse dwellings, have been harmed in these attacks, and have desperately fled the fighting,” said the Human Rights Watch report.
“Displaced villagers, mostly from Intan Jaya, have sought shelter and refuge in churches in Sugapa, the capital of the regency.”
Resistance allegations
The armed resistance group has made allegations, which Human Rights Watch could not corroborate, that the Indonesian military attacks harmed civilians.
It reported that a mortar or rocket attack outside a church in Ilaga, Puncak regency, hit two young men on May 6, killing one of them, Deris Kogoya, an 18-year-old student.
The group said that the Indonesian military attack on May 14, in which the military claimed all 18 people killed were pro-independence combatants, mostly killed civilians.
Ronald Rischardt Tapilatu, pastor of the Evangelical Christian Church of the Land of Papua, said that at least 3 civilians were among the 18 bodies. Human Rights Watch has a list of the 18 killed, which includes 1 known child.
The daughter of Hetina Mirip said her mother was found dead on May 17 near her house in Sugapa, while Indonesian soldiers surrounded their village. She wrote that the soldiers tried to cremate and bury her mother’s body.
A military spokesman denied the shooting.
One evident impact of the renewed fighting is that thousands of indigenous Papuans have been forced to flee their ancestral lands.
Seven villages attacked
The Vanuatu-based United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) reported that the military had attacked seven villages in Ilaga with drones and airstrikes, forcing many women and children to flee their homes. Media reports said that it was in Gome, Puncak regency.
International humanitarian law obligates all warring parties to distinguish at all times between combatants and civilians. Civilians may never be the target of attack.
Warring parties are required to take all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians and civilian objects, such as homes, shops, and schools. Attacks may target only combatants and military objectives.
Attacks that target civilians or fail to discriminate between combatants and civilians, or that would cause disproportionate harm to the civilian population compared to the anticipated military gain, are prohibited.
Parties must treat everyone in their custody humanely, not take hostages, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.
The Free Papua Movement has long sought self-determination and independence in West Papua, on the grounds that the Indonesian government-controlled “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 was illegitimate and did not involve indigenous Papuans.
It advocates holding a new, fair, and transparent referendum, and backs armed resistance.
Vast conflict area
Human Rights Watch reports that the conflict areas, including Intan Jaya, are on the northern side of Mt Grasberg, spanning a vast area from Sugapa to Oksibil in the Pegunungan Bintang regency, approximately 425 km long.
Sugapa is also known as the site of Wabu Block, which holds approximately 2.3 million kilos of gold, making it one of Indonesia’s five largest known gold reserves.
Wabu Block is currently under the licensing process of the Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.
“Papuans have endured decades of systemic racism, heightening concerns of further atrocities,” HRW’s Asia director Ganguly said.
“Both the Indonesian military and Papuan armed groups need to comply with international standards that protect civilians.”
Republished from Human Rights Watch.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
There’s a notorious stretch of road in Indonesia, by the border of North Sumatra and Aceh provinces, that passes through kilometres and kilometres of oil palm plantations. There are few people there, besides the occasional plantation worker. Trees stretch in grids as far as the eye can see. It’s beautiful country, but the pastoral scene provides cover for the illegal activities that take place along its fringes.
Truckers who pass along the road have told me that bandits roam the area. The bandits typically follow behind transport trucks, then mount them at high speeds to throw valuable goods off the back. Lost goods are subtracted from the truckers’ wages, so it’s in their best interests to avoid the hijacking at all costs.
For this, the truckers have devised a strategy: they stop in the last town before the empty stretch of road and wait for a convoy to form before taking off into the danger zone. They’ve learned that it’s safer to travel in a group.
While the truckers sit and wait for their convoy, they often smoke methamphetamine (sabu-sabu) together. Meth is popular among truckers due to its specific effects: as an upper, it gives users prolonged feelings of euphoria, energy, and invincibility, allowing them to work for hours on end without eating or sleeping. Drug use is so widespread in Indonesia’s trucking industry that it is specifically monitored by the National Narcotics Agency (Badan Narkotika Nasional/BNN), which reports that 10% of all employees in the transportation and warehousing sector used drugs in the past year. From my conversations with truckers, it would appear the real figure is much higher.
High on meth, and ready to outrun the robbers, the truckers take off together towards Medan, North Sumatra’s capital. No one wants to be at the back of the convoy—the most vulnerable position—so they jockey with each other as they accelerate down the highway, speed coursing through their veins.
A truck carrying palm oil fruit waits on the side of the road for others to join (author photo)
Meth helps truckers outrun the hazards they find along this empty stretch of road, but it also reflects a stance towards modern working life that is affecting young workers throughout Indonesia. As the country’s economy grows, and workers come under increasing time pressure, young people are racing to meet the demands placed on them to deliver Indonesia’s promised prosperous future. For many, drug use is becoming a tool of survival in this new economy of speed.
Over the past year, I have been conducting field work in Aceh, Indonesia, as part of my doctoral project on youth drug cultures. As a volunteer at a drug recovery centre in a medium-sized city, I’ve had many chances to speak with recovering addicts about their trajectories into and out of the world of illicit drug use. While many existing theories of addiction focus on drug use as an “escape”, either from traumatic life experiences or from structural violence, my research participants instead talk about the ways that meth “helps” them to find money.
I have had to start my research with a different question: In what ways does drug use work with the demands of contemporary labour?
This has brought me to the question of temporality itself. Drugs, especially amphetamines, change users’ sense of the passage of time—much like work. Historian E.P. Thompson famously argued that during industrial revolution, “clock time” newly segmented the day into productive and unproductive units. Nowadays, however, it seems that every minute is potentially optimisable. In Indonesia, the acceleration of the economy has placed new demands on the bodies of workers, and drug users have told me that meth aligns with their perception of their country’s historical moment: ever faster, ever upwards.
Studying drugs helps answer the question: what are the costs of Indonesia’s economic transition, especially for those working to make it happen?
Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, is undergoing a major economic transition. Former president Joko Widodo pledged to make Indonesia a high-income country by 2045. This plan relies heavily on the “demographic bonus” that Indonesia is predicted to benefit from in the coming decades as a large cohort of young people ages into their productive years. Those of working age currently make up 70% of the population—the highest ever share of “productive” citizens since the national census began. On top of that, almost 25% of the population is under the age of 14 and will come of age in the coming decades. Unlike ageing populations in Japan, North America, and Europe, Indonesia’s population is young, growing, and poised for economic transition.
Yet Indonesia is still a vastly unequal country. Much of the wealth is centred on the island of Java, while for underclass and undereducated workers in outlying provinces, future prospects look grim. Moreover, the most productive industries—mining, agriculture, and manufacturing—are still heavily reliant on manual labour. In other words, responsibility for this industrial transition weighs heavily on the shoulders, quite literally, of the younger generation. Add to this increased job insecurity and a shrinking middle class, and many seem to be turning to drugs just to keep up.
A construction worker shows his stash of methamphetamine (author photo)
Drug use both facilitates and responds to changes in the Indonesian economy—changes that are largely premised on the acceleration of everyday life. Truckers, delivery drivers, and gig economy workers, for example, are tasked with delivering just-in-time goods for online shopping conglomerates like Shopee and Tokopedia. One drug user writes, “I still use [meth], especially when I work at night so that I have the energy to work and don’t get sleepy.” Increasing rates of drug use seem to indicate that some young workers are unable to keep up with the demands of a shifting economy, turning to chemical support to stay afloat in a new economy of speed.
In Aceh province, where I have been conducting my research, young people I talk to complain of dwindling job prospects. After the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that devastated the province and obliterated the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, billions of dollars of development aid flowed in. But most of this aid dried up by 2010, and many of the hastily planned development projects are now empty and crumbling. Aceh today has an unemployment rate higher than Indonesia’s national average.
Through my conversations with recovering addicts, I’ve learned that many young people feel left behind and are turning to the drug trade to support themselves. Nyak (not his real name) was only a teenager when he started making money from drugs. Nyak comes from a small town on the north coast of Aceh, where he grew up with a single mother and two younger siblings. At age 14, he was recruited as a drug mule by some dealers in his village.
Nyak’s job was to go out to sea at night to meet a boat coming from Malaysia. He would meet the boat on the open waters, make the exchange, then come back to shore and pass the meth to the dealers. The amount of money on offer was hard to resist: Nyak was promised Rp5 million (about US$320) each time he went out to sea—almost double the average monthly salary in Aceh. But often he would only be paid Rp1–2 million per operation, with a promise that he would be paid the rest the next time he went out. This trapped Nyak in a cycle of dependence on the dealers, who would force him to continue smuggling just to access money he was already owed.
While meth production within Indonesia is minimal, the country’s close neighbour, Myanmar, is one of the largest producers in the world. The ongoing conflict there has fuelled drug production as armed groups produce and sell meth in exchange for weapons. Aceh, the closest Indonesian province to Myanmar, has now become a major point of entry. The drug is brought to Aceh via the Malacca Strait—usually in small fishing boats, which use the vast inlets and mangrove forests on the north coast for cover. Some of the smuggled meth flows through Indonesia on its way to Australia, while some is sold locally.
A discarded bong (author photo)
After a few years of smuggling, Nyak started using meth himself, and his addiction quickly spiralled out of control. He dropped out of high school and started smuggling in exchange for drugs rather than cash. Nyak’s family worried about his future and finally scraped together the money to send him to rehab (the average rehab stint in Aceh costs Rp2.5 million per month, about US$150). When I met Nyak at the rehab centre he seemed keen to turn his life around but unsure how to do it. He worries about going back home, since many people he grew up with now use drugs, making it easy to relapse. Besides, he admits that he still has cravings—not just for meth, but also for the quick money he can get from smuggling. “I don’t know what else I can do to make money,” he tells me “I haven’t graduated high school, and without an insider contact (orang dalam), it’s hard to find a job”.
Politicians and development experts have dubbed Indonesia’s younger generation the “golden generation” (generasi emas). Their plan for a “qualified, competent, and highly competitive” generation by 2045 focuses on the development of young people’s personal character as a path towards national prosperity. Some of the qualities emphasised by the plan include “healthy social interactions,” “having a strong character,” and “comprehensive intelligence in service of productivity and innovation.” In other words, the golden generation framework repositions individual health and wellbeing as a matter of national concern.
Drug use evidently works against this plan. Many anti-drug campaigners argue that drugs are “destroying the mentality of the nation” and threatening young people’s standing as “the nation’s asset”. BNN, in its 2023 National Survey on Drug Abuse, frets over how “drug abuse (has) a negative impact on a nation’s economic competitiveness” and will “produce a damaged generation”. For BNN, drug prevention is a matter of national concern—reflected in Indonesia’s extremely harsh drug laws—and virtually all prevention campaigns are targeted towards young people.
A sign that reads- “Together we can all support a strong generation without drugs” (author photo)
Ibrahim worked as a truck driver for five years before he finally made the decision to go to rehab. He drove the heavily trafficked route between Banda Aceh and Medan described above. “I started using sabu-sabu at work”, he told me. Ibrahim said he was first given meth by the person who taught him how to drive. His mentor not only taught him how to weave in and out of busy traffic, but also how to make a bong and smoke meth.
Ibrahim kept up with the job—and the drug use—because the pay was good. Besides that, he enjoyed the nights in Medan. “We’d get to Medan and we’d still be high, so we would go and enjoy ourselves. The women in Medan, they like to have fun”, he said with a smile. “And they like Acehnese men. We usually come ready to spend.” It was only after Ibrahim contracted an STI that he considered going to rehab. “I’m married, and I realised I was putting my family at risk.” His family was supportive of his decision to seek help, but now Ibrahim is worried about returning to his old life: “If I go back to trucking, I know I will start using drugs again. I have to try to find another job, but trucking is all I know. How will I support my family? This is what worries me about the future.”
Men make up 70% of drug users in Indonesia, and gendered expectations around providing for the family often place particular economic pressure on young men. In Aceh, traditional family values are strong, and men are expected to become the economic and spiritual heads of their households. Whereas older Acehnese theories of masculinity emphasised religious knowledge (adab) and rational thought (akal), contemporary economic change has reshaped what it means to be a man around the demands of the economy. For Ibrahim, drugs are so tied up with his sense of identity that he can’t imagine working without them.
A delivery driver rides past a mural that reads “Protect yourself:your family from the danger of drugs” (author photo)
On the flip side of the economy of speed are those who have been left out of it entirely. For some, it’s not the requirements of work that drives them to drug use, but the boredom and sense of worthlessness brought on by unemployment.
“Nothing scares me more than being called a pemalas (lazy person)”, says Saed, another drug user in recovery. Saed comes from a well-off family and graduated from university with a degree in electrical engineering but found it hard to find a job after graduation. “I applied to a few companies, but they all said I wasn’t a good fit. One told me I was overqualified, while another told me that I needed more work experience. It was confusing.” For Saed, it feels like he can’t get anything right. “I think they wanted to hire someone they already knew, a family member or something. What can I do in that situation?”
What began as casual drug use in university turned into a regular habit once Saed struggled to find a job. “At first I started doing it just for fun when hanging out (bergaul), but after a while I started to do it alone in my room”. He says he didn’t want to feel like a pemalas, and meth made it feel like he was working towards something. “After a while, I started smoking meth and gambling online”, he explains. “Meth would help me focus. I would win some money, and it would make me feel excited.”
How state-building can work from the bottom up
As the government speeds towards a “developed economy” status, not everyone is pulled along in its wake. For those who watch friends and acquaintances move forward while they themselves can’t get a break, developmentalism makes them feel left behind, and left out. Some, like Saed, turn to drugs to pass the days and chase away their feelings of worthlessness.
BNN’s 2023 National Survey on Drug Abuse shows there are upwards of 3 million drug users in Indonesia. In the face of this large and persistent problem, small, underfunded drug recovery centres are one of the last hopes for drug users looking to get clean.
Every week, the head of the recovery centre in Aceh where I work takes some of the patients to his farm about an hour away where they practice skills in farming and construction. All the patients love it there; they say it refreshes their minds. The head of the centre chooses each week who needs it most and takes the group there in his four-wheel drive. On one of the side doors he has painted three big English words: “Band of Brothers”.
The jeep that takes the men in recovery to work on the owner’s farm (author photo)
Back at the centre, Nyak, the drug smuggler from the small village along the coast, received some bad news. His family came by to say they no longer had money to pay for his treatment and that they had to take him home early. As he was leaving, I asked what he was planning to do when he got back to his hometown. “I’m not sure”, he said, “there aren’t many opportunities for me there. I might try to work as a fisherman until I can move to another city (merantau). Or I might have to go back to smuggling. We all need money to survive, after all.”
The post Indonesia’s new economy of speed appeared first on New Mandala.
This post was originally published on New Mandala.
By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist
A West Papua independence leader says escalating violence is forcing indigenous Papuans to flee their ancestral lands.
It comes as the Indonesian military claims 18 members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) were killed in an hour-long operation in Intan Jaya on May 14.
In a statement, reported by Kompas, Indonesia’s military claimed its presence was “not to intimidate the people” but to protect them from violence.
“We will not allow the people of Papua to live in fear in their own land,” it said.
Indonesia’s military said it seized firearms, ammunition, bows and arrows. They also took Morning Star flags — used as a symbol for West Papuan independence — and communication equipment.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda, who lives in exile in the United Kingdom, told RNZ Pacific that seven villages in Ilaga, Puncak Regency in Central Papua were now being attacked.
“The current military escalation in West Papua has now been building for months. Initially targeting Intan Jaya, the Indonesian military have since broadened their attacks into other highlands regencies, including Puncak,” he said.
Women, children forced to leave
Wenda said women and children were being forced to leave their villages because of escalating conflict, often from drone attacks or airstrikes.
Earlier this month, ULMWP claimed one civilian and another was seriously injured after being shot at from a helicopter.
Last week, ULMWP shared a video of a group of indigenous Papuans walking through mountains holding an Indonesian flag, which Wenda said was a symbol of surrender.
“They look at us as primitive and they look at us as subhuman,” Wenda said.
He said the increased military presence was driven by resources.
President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has a goal to be able to feed Indonesia’s population without imports as early as 2028.
Video rejects Indnesian plan
A video statement from tribes in Mappi regency in South Papua from about a month ago, translated to English, said they rejected Indonesia’s food project and asked companies to leave.
In the video, about a dozen Papuans stood while one said the clans in the region had existed on customary land for generations and that companies had surveyed land without consent.
“We firmly ask the local government, the regent, Mappi Regency to immediately review the permits and revoke the company’s permits,” the speaker said.
Wenda said the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) had also grown.
But he said many of the TPNPB were using bow and arrows against modern weapons.
“I call them home guard because there’s nowhere to go.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Anish Chand in Suva
Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Fiji’s coalition government are “detached from the values that Fijians hold dear”, says the NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji (NGOCHR).
The rights coalition has expressed deep concern over Rabuka’s ongoing engagements with Indonesia.
“History will judge how we respond as Fijians to this moment. We must not stay silent when Pacific people are being occupied and killed,” said NGOCHR chair Shamima Ali.
She said Rabuka was extended a grant of $12 million by Indonesia recently and received proposals for joint military training.
“Is Fiji’s continuing silence on West Papua yet another example of being muzzled by purse strings?”
“As members of the Melanesian and Pacific family, bound by shared ancestry and identity, the acceptance of financial and any other benefit from Indonesia—while remaining silent on the plight of West Papua—is a betrayal of our family member and of regional solidarity.”
“True leadership must be rooted in solidarity, justice, and accountability,” Ali said.
“It is imperative that Pacific leaders not only advocate for peace and cooperation in the region but also continue to hold Indonesia to account on ongoing human rights violations in West Papua.”
Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist
West Papuans in Merauke claim the Indonesian government is stealing land to build its global “food barn” and feed its population of 280 million.
Indonesia denies this and says all transactions are lawful.
President Prabowo Subianto’s administration wants Indonesia to be able to feed its population without imports as early as 2028, with the greater goal of exporting food.
To get there, Indonesia plans to convert millions of hectares into farmland.
Wensi Fatubun, from Merauke in Indonesian-occupied Papua close to Papua New Guinea’s border, said forests where he grew up were being cleared.
“[The] Indonesian government took the land for the [food] security project, it was not consulted with or consented to by Indigenous Papuans,” Fatubun said.
Prabowo’s goal is a continuation of his predecessors.
National food estate project
In 2020, President Joko Widodo announced the establishment of a national food estate project which aimed at opening up new areas of farmland outside the Java main island,
It is similar to the failed Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate, spearheaded by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2010.
About 1.3 million hectares were set aside in Merauke for it — half for food crops, 30 percent sugar cane, and 20 percent for palm.
A report from the US Department of Agriculture said it encountered resistance from locals and legal challenges.
“Approximately 90 percent of the targeted areas were forest, which provided a source of livelihood for many locals. Accordingly, the development plans became a flashpoint for local activists concerned about environmental and biodiversity impacts,” the report said.
Probowo’s government has a more ambitious goal of opening up 3 million ha of agricultural land in Merauke — two million for rice and one million for sugarcane.
Human Rights Watch Indonesia researcher Andreas Harsono said President Prabowo had elevated the “so-called food security issue”.
“[The President] wants Merauke in West Papua to be the so-called national food barn. This deforestation land grabbing is much more deeper in Merauke than in the past.”
Conflict has escalated
Harsono said conflict had escalated in West Papua and was now on par with some of the most violent periods in the past 60 years, but he was not sure if it was connected to the President’s focus on food security.
BenarNews reported that about 2000 troops had been deployed late last year in Merauke to provide security at a 2 million ha food plantation.
Rosa Moiwend, from Merauke, said the soldiers worked alongside farmers.
“They are expected to teach local farmers how to use mechanical agriculture equipment,” Moiwend said.
“But as West Papuan people, the presence of the military in the middle of the community, watching communities activities, people’s movement when they travel from one place to another, actually creates fear among the people in Merauke.”
Like Harsono and Fatubun, Moiwend said “land grabs” were happening.
However, she said it still involved a land broker, which created a facade of a fair procedure.
‘We do not sell land’
“Indigenous Merauke, indigenous Marind people like myself and my people, we do not sell land because land belongs to the community. It is communal land.”
However, a spokesperson for Indonesia’s Embassy in Wellington said all processes and steps involving land sales had been lawful, “always respecting the inclinations of local tribes”.
“Its development always involving local authorities, especially chief tribes for the consent of their ulayat (traditional land),” they said.
“There is no land grab without consent, and the government also working on the biodiversity conservation and forestry production to create space harmonisation model with Conservation International, Medco Group, and couple of other independent organisations.”
‘They are stripping communities’ – campaigner
West Papua Action Aotearoa spokesperson Catherine Delahunty, formerly a Green Party MP, said the region was part of the lungs of the Pacific, which was now being destroyed.
“The plan has been around for a long time but it seems to have escalated under Prabowo,” Delahunty said.
“They are stripping those lands and stripping those communities who live there from their traditional foods such as the sago palm to turn the whole of Merauke into sugar cane, rice and palm plantations.
“The effects have been massive and they’re just getting worse.”
She said New Zealand and Australia — the two “most powerful” governments in the South Pacific — were failing in their obligations to the citizens of West Papua.
“You could almost justify, because it’s a long way away from other parts of the world, that Europe and the northern hemisphere don’t really understand West Papua but there’s no excuse for us.
“These people are in our region but they’re not white people. I think there’s a huge element of racism towards Papuans and towards Pacific nations who aren’t perceived as important in the Western worldview.”
She said there was willingness to trade with Indonesia as a regional powerhouse, and New Zealand did not want to rock the boat.
That coupled with a media blackout made it easy for Indonesia to act with impunity, Delahunty said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Image credit: Dossier no. 87 ‘The Bandung Spirit’, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, 2025.
Seventy years ago this month, leaders of twenty-nine newly or nearly independent Asian and African nations inaugurated the historic Bandung Conference, embarking on the ‘Freedom Walk’ along Asia-Africa Road to the conference’s Freedom Building (Gedung Merdeka) in Bandung, Indonesia. As a diplomatic performance and collective political action, these leaders walked among the teeming crowds to announce that the peoples of the Third World had stood up after centuries of colonialism.
There was, however, no consensus on the future towards which these countries were marching. Participating nations ranged from those in US military alliances (Turkey, the Philippines) to non-aligned states (Indonesia, Egypt, India), and included ideologically distinct regimes – from newly communist nations (North Vietnam and China) to those accusing Soviet communism of being ‘another form of colonialism’ (Ceylon, now Sri Lanka). In other words, it was unclear how unity could be built from such diversity.
In his opening speech, Indonesian President Sukarno emphasised that ‘colonialism is not dead’ and that it persists in new forms. He declared:
Colonialism also has its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control, and actual physical control by a small alien community within a nation.
Now these nations were united in their opposition to colonialism – ‘the lifeline of imperialism’ – to defend their hard-won independence. As former colonies:
This line [that] runs from the Straits of Gibraltar, through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and the Sea of Japan. For most of that enormous distance, the territories on both sides of this lifeline were colonies; the peoples were unfree, their futures mortgaged to an alien system.
‘We have so much in common’, he added, ‘and yet we know so little of each other’.
Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai played a pivotal role by raising the banner of ‘seek[ing] common ground while reserving differences’, as part of the young communist country’s debut on the international diplomatic stage. One of the conference’s major achievements was the unanimous adoption of a ten-point ‘Declaration on the Promotion of World Peace and Cooperation’. These principles – including sovereign equality, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence – have since become the cornerstone of Global South diplomacy.
Itji Tarmizi (Indonesia), Bandung Lautan Api, 1972.
The Bandung Spirit, as an assertion of the historical agency of the formerly colonised world, rejected the Cold War logic of military blocs and great-power domination. It offered an alternative vision: That these countries could establish a set of universal norms to ensure their own survival and sovereignty. The conference also served as a testing ground in diplomacy for nascent nations, allowing them to ‘localise’ diplomatic norms and push for regionalism – seen as a powerful instrument for defending national independence.
Yet the Bandung moment was hard-won and immediately contested. Western imperialist powers viewed the awakening of the Third World with alarm. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles saw the conference’s Afro-Asian solidarity as ‘by its very nature and concept anti-Western’ and feared that inviting the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would give Zhou Enlai a platform to broadcast communist ideology to what he called the ‘naïve audience of anti-colonialists’. In the following years, the West retaliated violently against the emerging Third World project that Bandung helped propel – most notably through a wave of CIA-backed coups in countries such as Indonesia that deposed Sukarno a decade later. Despite these efforts, the ideals of Bandung have endured in the political imagination of the Global South.
A New Mood: The Rise of China and the Global South
Seventy years on, a new world order is slowly emerging, aspiring towards one of Bandung’s core ideas: that international affairs need not be dominated by Western powers. The rise of the Global South has generated new multilateral institutions embedded with the principles of equality and mutual benefit in international relations.
Notably, BRICS has grown in prominence as a platform for the Global South to cooperate – both economically and politically. It has expanded to include five new members – Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the UAE – along several partner states. This new mood is backed by material changes. The centre of gravity of the world economy has shifted eastward, with China and other Asian countries becoming engines of global growth.
By 2023, China was the largest global economy in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and 47% of its foreign trade was with countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative – a figure that rose to 50% in 2024, reflecting a deliberate diversification away from Western markets. Likewise, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a multilateral trade pact spanning Asia and the Pacific, has strengthened regional trade ties, with intra-RCEP trade growing by 12% year-on-year. These developments signal a major shift: China is now the largest trading partner for over 120 countries in the world.
As in 1955, China today occupies a central position in this unfolding Global South project –serving as both a target of imperialist aggression and a torchbearer of an alternative path. Nowhere is this dual role clearer than in the global trade war unleashed by the United States, particularly under Donald Trump’s administration. In a throwback to Cold War hostility – employing tariffs instead of troops – Trump began his series of offensives by signing an executive order placing a blanket 10% tariff on all imports into the United States in February. Then, on April 2 – labelled by Trump as ‘Liberation Day’, the US President unleashed a series of punitive ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on 57 countries. These were ostensibly to correct trade imbalances and hit friends and foes alike. A week later, Trump grandiosely announced, via social media, a ninety-day tariff reprieve for countries that ‘have not…retaliated in any way’, while doubling down on China as the primary target with a 145% tariff on all goods.
Amrus Natalsya, Mereka Yang Terusir Dari Tanahnya (Indonesia), Those Chased Away from Their Land, 1960.
Much like Dulles in 1955, the US establishment today fears China’s emergence, which in the past served as an ideological threat as the world’s largest communist Third World nation and is today seen as an economic and existential threat. The tariff onslaught has injected instability into the global economy and further eroded the norms of multilateral trade – ironically undermining the very international trading system that the US helped build in its own favour.
Beijing, however, has refused to bow to this economic aggression. China responded swiftly and resolutely to Trump’s tariff barrage. Within days, the Chinese government announced reciprocal tariffs, zeroing in on sensitive sectors to maximise pressure. ‘We have abundant means to retaliate and will by no means sit by if our interests are harmed’, Chinese officials declared, denouncing Washington’s economic coercion and asserting China’s right to defend its national sovereignty. This stance was met with an outpouring of public support inside China: Patriotic sentiment surged on social media, with the hashtag ‘China’s countermeasures are here’ with 180 million engagements in a week. As one Chinese netizen highlighted, ‘Patriotism is not just a feeling – it is an action’. That China and the Chinese people have stood united against US’ bully tactics carries symbolic significance for the Global South.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, invoking President Xi Jinping’s words from 2018, summed up this spirit of resistance on April 8: ‘A storm may churn a pond, but it cannot rattle the ocean. The ocean has weathered countless tempests – this time is no different’. Two weeks after Trump unleashed tariffs on the world, hitting Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia (49%) and Vietnam (46%) the hardest, Xi toured the region, signing 31 and 37 agreements spanning various sectors in Malaysia and Cambodia, respectively. In Vietnam, where Xi called on deeper bilateral ties to resist ‘unilateral bullying’, 45 agreements were signed while party-to-party exchanges underscored the alignment between the countries’ communist parties.
Trump’s strongarm tactics and economic warfare dressed as ‘reciprocity’ is the antithesis of the Bandung principles of non-interference and equality. Within this context, South-South cooperation frameworks are receiving increased attention, together with renewed calls to strengthen cooperation and unity within the BRICS, RCEP, and other Global South multilateral platforms. Finding unity among the extreme diversity of the Global South is a tall order. This unity, however, cannot rely solely at the level of states and their leaders, but it must also come from below, from the energy of peoples’ movements and progressive forces across Africa, Asia, and Latin America to revive a true Bandung Spirit against US imperialism and unilateralism. As Zhou Enlai evoked at the Bandung Conference, the hand of imperialism has five fingers – political, military, cultural, social, and economic spheres – which can only be overcome through the unity of the Global South and its peoples.
As Sukarno wrote in ‘Towards Indonesian Independence’ (1933): ‘If the Banteng (bull) of Indonesia can work together with the Sphinx of Egypt, with the Nandi Ox of the country of India, with the Dragon of the country of China, with the champions of independence of other countries – if the Banteng of Indonesia can work together with all the enemies of international capitalism and imperialism around the world – O, surely the end of international imperialism is coming fairly soon!’ One of the major blows against US imperialism was the victory of the Vietnamese people, celebrated fifty years ago today.
René Mederos (Cuba), Viet Nam Shall Win, 1971. (courtesy: Center for the Study of Political Graphics)
For more about the Bandung Spirit, read our Institute’s latest dossier.
– Tings Chak, Tricontinental Asia
The post Coexistence Not Co-Destruction: Remembering Bandung 70 Years On first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Asia Pacific Report
An Australian solidarity group for West Papuan self-determination has called on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to raise the human rights crisis in the Melanesian region with the Indonesian president this week.
Albanese is visiting Indonesia for two days from tomorrow.
AWPA has written a letter to Albanese making the appeal for him to raise the issue with President Prabowo Subianto.
“The Australian people care about human rights and, in light of the ongoing abuses in West Papua, we are urging Prime Minister Albanese to raise the human rights situation in West Papua with the Indonesian President during his visit to Jakarta,” said Joe Collins of AWPA.
He said the solidarity group was urging Albanese to support the West Papuan people by encouraging the Indonesian government to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua to investigate the human rights situation in the territory.
The West Papuan people have been calling for such a visit for years.
Concerned over military ties
“We are also concerned about the close ties between the ADF [Australian Defence Force] and the Indonesian military,” Collins said.
“We believe that the ADF should be distancing itself from the Indonesian military while there are ongoing human rights abuses in West Papua, not increasing ties with the Indonesian security forces as is the case at present.”
Collins said that the group understood that it was in the interest of the Australian government to have good relations with Indonesia, “but good relations should not be at the expense of the West Papuan people”.
“The West Papuan people are not going to give up their struggle for self-determination. It’s an issue that is not going away,” Collins added.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist
The escalation of violence in West Papua is on par with some of the most intense times of conflict over the past six decades, a human rights researcher says.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) claims that Indonesia killed at least one civilian and severely injured another last Tuesday in Puncak Regency.
In a statement, ULMWP interim president Benny Wenda said Deris Kogoya, 18, was killed by a rocket attack from a helicopter while riding his motorbike near Kelanungin Village.
Jemi Waker, meanwhile, sustained severe violent injuries, including to both his legs.
The statement said Waker had refused to go to hospital, fearing he would be killed if he went.
Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono said that over the past month he had received an unusually high number of messages accompanied by gruesome photos showing either Indonesian soldiers or civilians being killed.
“The fighting is much more frequent now,” Harsono said.
More Indonesian soldiers
“There are more and more Indonesian soldiers sent to West Papua under President Pradowo.
“At the same time, indigenous Papuans are also gaining more and more men, unfortunately also boys, to join the fight in the jungle.”
He said the escalation could match similarly intense periods of conflict in 1977, 1984, and 2004.
A spokesperson for Indonesia’s Embassy in Wellington said they could not confirm if there had been a military attack in Puncak Regency on Tuesday.
However, they said all actions conducted by Indonesia’s military were in line with international law.
They said there were attacks in March and April of this year, instigated by an “armed criminal group” targeting Indonesian workers and civilians.
Harsono said if the attack was on civilians, it would be a clear breach of human rights.
Confirmation difficult
However, he said it was difficult to confirm due to the remoteness of the area. He said it was common for civilians to wear army camouflage because of surplus Indonesian uniforms.
— Benny Wenda (@BennyWenda) May 7, 2025
ULMWP’s Benny Wenda said West Papuans were “a forgotten, voiceless people”.
“Where is the attention of the media and the international community? How many children must be killed before they notice we are dying?”
Wenda compared the lack of attention with the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Palestine conflict that was getting more media attention.
He said Indonesia had banned media “to prevent journalists from telling the world what is really going on”.
The Indonesian Embassy spokesperson said foreign journalists were not allowed in the area for their own safety.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
ANALYSIS: By Ali Mirin
On April 24, 2025, Indonesia made a masterful geopolitical move. Jakarta granted Fiji US$6 million in financial aid and offered to cooperate with them on military training — a seemingly benign act of diplomacy that conceals a darker purpose.
This strategic manoeuvre is the latest in Indonesia’s efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the independence movement in West Papua.
“There’s no need to be burdened by debt,” declared Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka during the bilateral meeting at Jakarta’s Merdeka Palace (Rabuka, 2025).
More significantly, he pledged Fiji’s respect for Indonesian sovereignty — diplomatic code for abandoning West Papua’s struggle for self-determination.
This aligns perfectly with Indonesia’s Law No. 2 of 2023, which established frameworks for defence cooperation, including joint research, technology transfer, and military education, between the two nations.
This is not merely a partnership — it is ideological assimilation.
Indonesia’s financial generosity comes with unwritten expectations. By integrating Fijian forces into Indonesian military training programmes, Jakarta aims to export its “anti-separatist” doctrine, which frames Papuan resistance as a “criminal insurgency” rather than legitimate political expression.
The US $6 million is not aid — it’s a strategic investment in regional complicity.
Geopolitical chess in a fractured world
Indonesia’s manoeuvres must be understood in the context of escalating global tensions.
The rivalry between the US and China has transformed the Indo-Pacific into a strategic battleground, leaving Pacific Island nations caught between competing spheres of influence.
Although Jakarta is officially “non-aligned,” it is playing both sides to secure its territorial ambitions.
Its aid to Fiji is one move in a comprehensive regional strategy to diplomatically isolate West Papua.
While the world focuses on superpower competition, Indonesia is quietly strengthening its position on what it considers an internal matter — effectively removing West Papua from international discourse.
The Russian connection: Shadow alliances
Another significant yet less examined relationship is Indonesia’s growing partnership with Russia, particularly in defence technology, intelligence sharing, and energy cooperation
This relationship provides Jakarta with advanced military capabilities and reduces its dependence on Western powers and China.
Russia’s unwavering support for territorial integrity, as evidenced by its position on Crimea and Ukraine, makes it an ideal partner for Indonesia’s West Papua policy.
Moscow’s diplomatic support strengthens Jakarta’s argument that “separatist” movements are internal security issues rather than legitimate independence struggles.
This strategic triangulation — balancing relations with Washington, Beijing, and Moscow– allows Indonesia to pursue regional dominance with minimal international backlash. Each superpower, focused on countering the others’ influence, overlooks Indonesia’s systematic suppression of Papuan self-determination.
Institutionalising silence: Beyond diplomacy
The practical consequence of Indonesia’s multidimensional strategy is the diplomatic isolation of West Papua. Historically positioned to advocate for Melanesian solidarity, Fiji now faces economic incentives to remain silent on Indonesian human rights abuses.
A similar pattern emerges across the Pacific as Jakarta extends these types of arrangements to other regional players.
It is not just about temporary diplomatic alignment; it is about the structural transformation of regional politics.
When Pacific nations integrate their security apparatuses with Indonesia’s, they inevitably adopt Jakarta’s security narratives. Resistance movements are labelled “terrorist threats,” independence advocates are branded “destabilising elements,” and human rights concerns are dismissed as “foreign interference”.
Most alarmingly, military cooperation provides Indonesia with channels to export its counterinsurgency techniques, which are frequently criticised by human rights organisations for their brutality.
Security forces in the Pacific trained in these approaches may eventually use them against their own Papuan advocacy groups.
The price of strategic loyalty
For just US$6 million — a fraction of Indonesia’s defence budget — Jakarta purchases Fiji’s diplomatic loyalty, military alignment, and ideological compliance. This transaction exemplifies how economic incentives increasingly override moral considerations such as human rights, indigenous sovereignty, and decolonisation principles that once defined Pacific regionalism.
Indonesia’s approach represents a sophisticated evolution in its foreign policy. No longer defensive about West Papua, Jakarta is now aggressively consolidating regional support, methodically closing avenues for international intervention, and systematically delegitimising Papuan voices on the global stage.
Will the Pacific remember its soul?
The path ahead for West Papua is becoming increasingly treacherous. Beyond domestic repression, the movement now faces waning international support as economic pragmatism supplants moral principle throughout the Pacific region.
Unless Pacific nations reconnect with their anti-colonial heritage and the values that secured their independence, West Papua’s struggle risks fading into obscurity, overwhelmed by geopolitical calculations and economic incentives.
The question facing the Pacific region is not simply about West Papua, but about regional identity itself. Will Pacific nations remain true to their foundational values of indigenous solidarity and decolonisation? Or will they sacrifice these principles on the altar of transactional diplomacy?
The date April 24, 2025, may one day be remembered not only as the day Indonesia gave Fiji US$6 million but also as the day the Pacific began trading its moral authority for economic expediency, abandoning West Papua to perpetual colonisation in exchange for short-term gains.
The Pacific is at a crossroads — it can either reclaim its voice or resign itself to becoming a theatre where greater powers dictate the fate of indigenous peoples. For West Papua, everything depends on which path is chosen.
Ali Mirin is a West Papuan from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands that share a border with the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He graduated with a Master of Arts in international relations from Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
To mark the release of the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) partnered with the agency The Good Company to launch a new awareness campaign that puts an ironic twist on the glossy advertising of the tourism industry.
Three out of six countries featured in the exposé are from the Asia Pacific region — but none from the Pacific Islands.
The campaign shines a stark light on the press freedom violations in countries that seem perfect on postcards but are highly dangerous for journalists, says RSF.
It is a striking campaign raising awareness about repression.
Fiji (44th out of 180 ranked nations) is lucky perhaps as three years ago when its draconian media law was still in place, it might have bracketed up there with the featured “chilling” tourism countries such as Indonesia (127) — which is rapped over its treatment of West Papua resistance and journalists.
Disguised as attractive travel guides, the campaign’s visuals use a cynical, impactful rhetoric to highlight the harsh realities journalists face in destinations renowned for their tourist appeal.
Along with Indonesia, Greece (89th), Cambodia (115), Egypt (170), Mexico (124) and the Philippines (116) are all visited by millions of tourists, yet they rank poorly in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, reports RSF.
‘Chilling narrative’
“The attention-grabbing visuals juxtapose polished, enticing aesthetics with a chilling narrative of intimidation, censorship, violence, and even death.
“This deliberately unsettling approach by RSF aims to shift the viewer’s perspective, showing what the dreamlike imagery conceals: journalists imprisoned, attacked, or murdered behind idyllic landscapes.”
The RSF Index 2025 teaser. Video: RSF
Indonesia is in the Pacific spotlight because of its Melanesian Papuan provinces bordering Pacific Islands Forum member country Papua New Guinea.
Despite outgoing President Joko Widodo’s 10 years in office and a reformist programme, his era has been marked by a series of broken promises, reports RSF.
“The media oligarchy linked to political interests has grown stronger, leading to increased control over critical media and manipulation of information through online trolls, paid influencers, and partisan outlets,” says the Index report.
“This climate has intensified self-censorship within media organisations and among journalists.
“Since October 2024, Indonesia has been led by a new president, former general Prabowo Subianto — implicated in several human rights violation allegations — and by Joko Widodo’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as vice-president.
“Under this new administration, whose track record on press freedom offers little reassurance, concerns are mounting over the future of independent journalism.”
Fiji leads in Pacific
In the Pacific, Fiji has led the pack among island states by rising four places to 40th overall, making it the leading country in Oceania in 2025 in terms of press freedom.
Both Timor-Leste, which dropped 19 places to 39th after heading the region last year, and Samoa, which plunged 22 places to 44th, lost their impressive track record.
Of the only other two countries in Oceania surveyed by RSF, Tonga rose one place to 46th and Papua New Guinea jumped 13 places to 78th, a surprising result given the controversy over its plans to regulate the media.
RSF reports that the Fiji Media Association (FMA), which was often critical of the harassment of the media by the previous FijiFirst government, has since the repeal of the Media Act in 2023 “worked hard to restore independent journalism and public trust in the media”.
In March 2024, research published in Journalism Practice journal found that sexual harassment of women journalists was widespread and needed to be addressed to protect media freedom and quality journalism.
In Timor-Leste, “politicians regard the media with some mistrust, which has been evidenced in several proposed laws hostile to press freedom, including one in 2020 under which defaming representatives of the state or Catholic Church would have been punishable by up to three years in prison.
“Journalists’ associations and the Press Council often criticise politicisation of the public broadcaster and news agency.”
On the night of September 4, 2024, Timorese police arrested Antonieta Kartono Martins, a reporter for the news site Diligente Online, while covering a police operation to remove street vendors from a market in Dili, the capital. She was detained for several hours before being released.
Samoan harassment
Previously enjoying a good media freedom reputation, journalists and their families in Samoa were the target of online death threats, prompting the Samoan Alliance of Media Professionals for Development (SAMPOD) to condemn the harassment as “attacks on the fourth estate and democracy”.
In Tonga, RSF reports that journalists are not worried about being in any physical danger when on the job, and they are relatively unaffected by the possibility of prosecution.
“Nevertheless, self-censorship continues beneath the surface in a tight national community.”
In Papua New Guinea, RSF reports journalists are faced with intimidation, direct threats, censorship, lawsuits and bribery attempts, “making it a dangerous profession”.
“And direct interference often threatens the editorial freedom at leading media outlets. This was seen yet again at EMTV in February 2022, when the entire newsroom was fired after walking out” in protest over a management staffing decison.
“There has been ongoing controversy since February 2023 concerning a draft law on media development backed by Communications Minister Timothy Masiu. In January 2024, a 14-day state of emergency was declared in the capital, Port Moresby, following unprecedented protests by police forces and prison wardens.”
This impacted on government and media relations.
Australia and New Zealand
In Australia (29), the media market’s heavy concentration limits the diversity of voices represented in the news, while independent outlets struggle to find a sustainable economic model.
While New Zealand (16) leads in the Asia Pacific region, it is also facing a similar situation to Australia with a narrowing of media plurality, closure or merging of many newspaper titles, and a major retrenchment of journalists in the country raising concerns about democracy.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter
In 1979, Sam Neill appeared in an Australian comedy movie about hacks on a Sydney newspaper.
The Journalist was billed as “a saucy, sexy, funny look at a man with a nose for scandal and a weakness for women”.
That would probably not fly these days — but as a rule, movies about Australian journalists are no laughing matter.
Back in 1982, a young Mel Gibson starred as a foreign correspondent who was dropped into Jakarta during revolutionary chaos in The Year of Living Dangerously. The 1967 events the movie depicted were real enough, but Mel Gibson’s correspondent Guy Hamilton was made up for what was essentially a romantic drama.
There was no romance and a lot more real life 25 years later in Balibo, another movie with Australian journalists in harm’s way during Indonesian upheaval.
Anthony La Paglia had won awards for his performance as Roger East, a journalist killed in what was then East Timor — now Timor-Leste — in December 1975. East was killed while investigating the fate of five other journalists — including New Zealander Guy Cunningham — who was killed during the Indonesian invasion two months earlier.
The Correspondent has a happier ending but is still a tough watch — especially for its subject.
Met in London newsrooms
I first met Peter Greste in newsrooms in London about 30 years ago. He had worked for Reuters, CNN, and the BBC — going on to become a BBC correspondent in Afghanistan.
He later reported from Belgrade, Santiago, and then Nairobi, from where he appeared regularly on RNZ’s Nine to Noon as an African news correspondent. Greste later joined the English-language network of the Doha-based Al Jazeera and became a worldwide story himself while filling in as the correspondent in Cairo.
Greste and two Egyptian colleagues, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy, were arrested in late 2013 on trumped-up charges of aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation labeled “terrorist” by the new Egyptian regime of the time.
Six months later he was sentenced to seven years in jail for “falsifying news” and smearing the reputation of Egypt itself. Mohamed was sentenced to 10 years.
Media organisations launched an international campaign for their freedom with the slogan “Journalism is not a crime”. Peter’s own family became familiar faces in the media while working hard for his release too.
Peter Greste was deported to Australia in February 2015. The deal stated he would serve the rest of his sentence there, but the Australian government did not enforce that. Instead, Greste became a professor of media and journalism, currently at Macquarie University in Sydney.
Movie consultant
Among other things, he has also been a consultant on The Correspondent — now in cinemas around New Zealand — with Richard Roxborough cast as Greste himself.
Greste told The Sydney Morning Herald he had to watch it “through his fingers” at first.
“I eventually came to realise it’s not me that’s up there on the screen. It’s the product of a whole bunch of creatives. And the result is … more like a painting rather than a photograph,” Greste told Mediawatch.
“Over the years I’ve written about it, I’ve spoken about it countless times. I’ve built a career on it. But I wasn’t really anticipating the emotional impact of seeing the craziness of my arrest, the confusion of that period, the claustrophobia of the cell, the sheer frustration of the crazy trial and the really discombobulating moment of my release.
“But there is another very difficult story about what happened to a colleague of mine in Somalia, which I haven’t spoken about publicly. Seeing that on screen was actually pretty gut-wrenching.”
In 2005, his BBC colleague Kate Peyton was shot alongside him on their first day in on assignment in Somalia. She died soon after.
“That was probably the toughest day of my entire life far over and above anything I went through in Egypt. But I am glad that they put it in [The Correspondent]. It underlines … the way in which journalism is under attack. What happened to us in Egypt wasn’t a random, isolated incident — but part of a much longer pattern we’re seeing continue to this day.”
‘Owed his life’
Greste says he “owes his life” to fellow prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah — an Egyptian activist who is also in the film.
“There’s a bit of artistic licence in the way it was portrayed but . . . he is easily one of the most intelligent, astute and charismatic humanitarians I’ve ever come across. He was one of the main pro-democracy activists who was behind the Arab Spring revolution in 2011 — a true democrat.
“He also inspired me to write the letters that we smuggled out of prison that described our arrest not as an attack on … what we’d actually come to represent. And that was press freedom.
“That helped frame the campaign that ultimately got me out. So, for both psychological and political reasons, I feel like I owe him my life.
“There was nothing in our reporting that confirmed the allegations against us. So I started to drag up all sorts of demons from the past. I started thinking maybe this is the universe punishing me for sins of the past. I was obviously digging up that particular moment as one of the most extreme and tragic moments. It took a long time for me to get past it.
“He’d been in prison a lot because of his activism, so he understood the psychology of it. He also understood the politics of it in ways that I could never do as a newcomer.”
“Unfortunately, he is still there. He should have been released on September 29th last year. His mother launched a hunger strike in London . . . so I actually joined her on hunger strike earlier this year to try and add pressure.
“If this movie also draws a bit of attention to his case, then I think that’s an important element.”
Another wrinkle
Another wrinkle in the story was the situation of his two Egyptian Al Jazeera colleagues.
Greste was essentially a stranger to them, having only arrived in Egypt shortly before their arrest.
The film shows Greste clashing with Fahmy, who later sued Al Jazeera. Fahmy felt the international pressure to free Greste was making their situation worse by pushing the Egyptian regime into a corner.
“To call it a confrontation is probably a bit of an understatement. We had some really serious arguments and sometimes they got very, very heated. But I want audiences to really understand Fahmy’s worldview in this film.
“He and I had very different understandings of what was going … and how those differences played out.
“I’ve got a hell of a lot of respect for him. He is like a brother to me. That doesn’t mean we always agreed with each other and doesn’t mean we always got on with each other like any siblings, I suppose.”
His colleagues were eventually released on bail shortly after Greste’s deportation in 2015.
Fahmy renounced his Egyptian citizenship and was later deported to Canada, while Mohamed was released on bail and eventually pardoned.
Retrial — all ‘reconvicted’
“After I was released there was a retrial … and we were all reconvicted. They were finally released and pardoned, but the pardon didn’t extend to me.
“I can’t go back because I’m still a convicted ‘terrorist’ and I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve, which is a little bit weird. Any country that has an extradition treaty with Egypt is a problem. There are a fairly significant number of those across the Middle East and Africa.”
Greste told Mediawatch his conviction was even flagged in transit in Auckland en route from New York to Sydney. He was told he failed a character test.
“I was able to resolve it. I had some friends in Canberra and were able to sort it out, but I was told in no uncertain terms I’m not allowed into New Zealand without getting a visa because of that criminal record.
“If I’m traveling to any country I have to say … I was convicted on terrorism offences. Generally speaking, I can explain it, but it often takes a lot of bureaucratic process to do that.”
Greste’s first account of his time in jail — The First Casualty — was published in 2017. Most of the book was about media freedom around the world, lamenting that the numbers of journalists jailed and killed increased after his release.
Something that Greste also now ponders a lot in his current job as a professor of media and journalism.
Ten years on from that, it is worse again. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by Israel in its war in Gaza.
The book has now been updated and republished as The Correspondent.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
ANALYSIS: By Ben Bohane
This week Cambodia marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the murderous Khmer Rouge, and Vietnam celebrates the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in April 1975.
They are being commemorated very differently; after all, there’s nothing to celebrate in Cambodia. Its capital Phnom Penh was emptied, and its people had to then endure the “killing fields” and the darkest years of its modern existence under Khmer Rouge rule.
Over the border in Vietnam, however, there will be modest celebrations for their victory against US (and Australian) forces at the end of this month.
Yet, this week’s news of Indonesia considering a Russian request to base aircraft at the Biak airbase in West Papua throws in stark relief a troubling question I have long asked — did Australia back the wrong war 63 years ago? These different areas — and histories — of Southeast Asia may seem disconnected, but allow me to draw some links.
Through the 1950s until the early 1960s, it was official Australian policy under the Menzies government to support The Netherlands as it prepared West Papua for independence, knowing its people were ethnically and religiously different from the rest of Indonesia.
They are a Christian Melanesian people who look east to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Pacific, not west to Muslim Asia. Australia at the time was administering and beginning to prepare PNG for self-rule.
The Second World War had shown the importance of West Papua (then part of Dutch New Guinea) to Australian security, as it had been a base for Japanese air raids over northern Australia.
Japanese beeline to Sorong
Early in the war, Japanese forces made a beeline to Sorong on the Bird’s Head Peninsula of West Papua for its abundance of high-quality oil. Former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam served in a RAAF unit briefly stationed in Merauke in West Papua.
By 1962, the US wanted Indonesia to annex West Papua as a way of splitting Chinese and Russian influence in the region, as well as getting at the biggest gold deposit on earth at the Grasberg mine, something which US company Freeport continues to mine, controversially, today.
Following the so-called Bunker Agreement signed in New York in 1962, The Netherlands reluctantly agreed to relinquish West Papua to Indonesia under US pressure. Australia, too, folded in line with US interests.
That would also be the year when Australia sent its first group of 30 military advisers to Vietnam. Instead of backing West Papuan nationhood, Australia joined the US in suppressing Vietnam’s.
As a result of US arm-twisting, Australia ceded its own strategic interests in allowing Indonesia to expand eastwards into Pacific territories by swallowing West Papua. Instead, Australians trooped off to fight the unwinnable wars of Indochina.
To me, it remains one of the great what-ifs of Australian strategic history — if Australia had held the line with the Dutch against US moves, then West Papua today would be free, the East Timor invasion of 1975 was unlikely to have ever happened and Australia might not have been dragged into the Vietnam War.
Instead, as Cambodia and Vietnam mark their anniversaries this month, Australia continues to be reminded of the potential threat Indonesian-controlled West Papua has posed to Australia and the Pacific since it gave way to US interests in 1962.
Russian space agency plans
Nor is this the first time Russia has deployed assets to West Papua. Last year, Russian media reported plans under way for the Russian space agency Roscosmos to help Indonesia build a space base on Biak island.
In 2017, RAAF Tindal was scrambled just before Christmas to monitor Russian Tu95 nuclear “Bear” bombers doing their first-ever sorties in the South Pacific, flying between Australia and Papua New Guinea. I wrote not long afterwards how Australia was becoming “caught in a pincer” between Indonesian and Russian interests on Indonesia’s side and Chinese moves coming through the Pacific on the other.
All because we have abandoned the West Papuans to endure their own “slow-motion genocide” under Indonesian rule. Church groups and NGOs estimate up to 500,000 Papuans have perished under 60 years of Indonesian military rule, while Jakarta refuses to allow international media and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit.
Alex Sobel, an MP in the UK Parliament, last week called on Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner to visit but it is exceedingly rare to hear any Australian MPs ask questions about our neighbour West Papua in the Australian Parliament.
Canberra continues to enhance security relations with Indonesia in a naive belief that the nation is our ally against an assertive China. This ignores Jakarta’s deepening relations with both Russia and China, and avoids any mention of ongoing atrocities in West Papua or the fact that jihadi groups are operating close to Australia’s border.
Indonesia’s militarisation of West Papua, jihadi infiltration and now the potential for Russia to use airbases or space bases on Biak should all be “red lines” for Australia, yet successive governments remain desperate not to criticise Indonesia.
Ignoring actual ‘hot war’
Australia’s national security establishment remains focused on grand global strategy and acquiring over-priced gear, while ignoring the only actual “hot war” in our region.
Our geography has not changed; the most important line of defence for Australia remains the islands of Melanesia to our north and the co-operation and friendship of its peoples.
Strong independence movements in West Papua, Bougainville and New Caledonia all materially affect Australian security but Canberra can always be relied on to defer to Indonesian, American and French interests in these places, rather than what is ultimately in Australian — and Pacific Islander — interests.
Australia needs to develop a defence policy centred on a “Melanesia First” strategy from Timor to Fiji, radiating outwards. Yet Australia keeps deferring to external interests, to our cost, as history continues to remind us.
Ben Bohane is a Vanuatu-based photojournalist and policy analyst who has reported across Asia and the Pacific for the past 36 years. His website is benbohane.com This article was first published by The Sydney Morning Herald and is republished with the author’s permission.
Island states tend to be anxious political entities. Encircled by water, seemingly defended by natural obstacles, the fear of corrupting penetration is never far. Threats of such unwanted intrusion are embellished and magnified. In the case of Australia, these have varied from straying Indonesian fishermen who are seen as terrors of border security, to the threatened establishment of military bases in the Indo-Pacific by China. With Australia facing a federal election, the opportunity to exaggerate the next threat is never far away.
On April 14, the specialist military publication Janes reported that Indonesia had “received an official request from Moscow, seeking permission for Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) aircraft to be based at a facility in [the country’s] easternmost province.” The area in question is Papua, and the relevant airbase, Biak Numfor, home to the Indonesian Air Force’s Aviation Squadron 27 responsible for operating surveillance aircraft of the CN235 variety.
Indonesian government sources had informed the magazine of a request received by the office of the defence minister, Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, following a February meeting with the Security Council of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu. This was not the first time, with Moscow making previous requests to Jakarta for using a base for its long-range aircraft.
The frazzled response in Australia to the possibility of a Russian presence on Indonesian soil betrays its presumption. Just as Australia would rather not see Pacific Island states form security friendly ties with China, an anxiety directed and dictated by Washington, it would also wish those in Southeast Asia to avoid the feelers of other countries supposedly unfriendly to Canberra’s interests.
Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who has an addict’s fascination with security menaces of the phantom variety, sprung at the claims made in Janes. “This would be a catastrophic failure of diplomatic relations if [Australian Foreign Minister] Penny Wong and [Prime Minister] Anthony Albanese didn’t have forewarning about this before it was made public,” he trumpeted. “This is a very, very troubling development and suggestion that somehow Russia would have some of their assets based in Indonesia only a short distance from, obviously, the north of our country.”
The Albanese government has tried to cool the confected heat with assurances, with the PM reaffirming Canberra’s support for Ukraine while stating that “we obviously do not want to see Russian influence in our region”. It has also accused Dutton for a streaky fabrication: that Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto had “publicly announced” the details.
Australia’s Defence Minister, Richard Marles, also informed the press that he had spoken to his counterpart Sjamsoeddin, who duly replied “in the clearest possible terms [that] reports of the prospect of Russian aircraft operating from Indonesia are simply not true.”
Besides, a country such as Indonesia, according to Marles, is of the friendly sort. “We have a growing defence relationship with Indonesia. We will keep engaging with Indonesia in a way that befits a very close friend and a very close friendship between our two countries.” This sweetly coated nonsense should have gone out with the façade-tearing acts of Donald Trump’s global imposition of tariffs, unsparing to adversaries and allies alike.
Marles continues to operate in a certain twilight of international relations, under the belief that the defence cooperation agreement with Jakarta “is the deepest level defence agreement we’ve ever had with Indonesia, and we are seeking increasing cooperation between Australia and Indonesia at the defence level.” Whether this is the case hardly precludes Indonesia, as an important regional power, from conducting defence and foreign policy on its own terms with countries of its own choosing.
In January, Jakarta officially added its name to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group, an alternative power alignment that has been foolishly disregarded in terms of significance by the United States and its satellites. Subianto’s coming to power last October has also heralded a warmer turn to Moscow in military terms, with both countries conducting their first joint naval drills last November in the Java Sea near Surabaya. (Indonesia is already a market for Russian fighter jets, despite the cloud of potential sanctions from the US Treasury Department.) For doing so, self-appointed disciplinarians, notably such pro-US outlets as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, have questioned the country’s fabled non-aligned foreign policy. Engaging Russia in cooperative military terms supposedly undermined, according to the think tank’s publication The Strategist, Jakarta’s “own stated commitment to upholding international law.”
Such commentary is neither here nor there. The Indonesian military remains jealous and proprietary, taking a dim view of any notion of a foreign military base. Retired Major General TB Hasanuddin, who is also a Member of Commission I of the Indonesian House of Representatives, points to constitutional and other legal impediments in permitting such a policy. “Our constitution and various laws and regulations expressly prohibit the existence of foreign military bases.”
Any criticism of Jakarta’s recent gravitation to Moscow also refuses to acknowledge the flexible, even sly approach Indonesia has taken to various powers. It has done so while maintaining a firm independence of mind. In the afterglow of the naval exercises with the Russian Navy, Indonesia’s armed forces merrily went about the business of conducting military exercises with Australia, named Keris Woomera. Between November 13 and 16 last year, the exercise comprised 2,000 personnel from the navy, army and air force from both countries. As Australia frets and fantasises about the stratagems of distant authoritarian leaders, Indonesia having the last laugh.
The post Flexible and Sly: Indonesian Defence Policy, Russia, and Australian Anxiety first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Over the last several weeks, demonstrations have erupted across Indonesia. They were reported in Medan (North Sumatra), Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Solo, Malang, Surabaya, Makassar and, no doubt, they erupted in other towns as well. Although these demonstrations have not been massive, – ranging from a few hundred to one or two thousand people, they have been notably militant. The incidents include a police post being set on fire, street clashes between students and police, students breaking down gates of government buildings and shattering the Parliament’s compound walls, and the use of few Molotov cocktails. The police have used water cannons and resorted to beatings to disperse some demonstrations. Meanwhile, the government, unanimously backed by the Parliament, has been downplaying the unrest, yet it is unable to ignore the uprising. The demonstrations, which have been going on for several weeks, continue as we near the end of March.
Agus Suwage (Indonesia), Circus of Democracy I, 1997.
The protests are not limited to students, they reflect the broader sentiment among the public. Coalitions of non-government organisations, trade unions, and other civil society groups have issued statements echoing the concerns of the students. Academics and public intellectuals have also articulated similar criticism.
The demonstrations were broadly held under the banner or slogan: “Indonesia Gelap” (Indonesia is Dark), reflecting the bitter and angry sentiments about the state of the country.
What has triggered the demonstrations? What lies behind this sentiment?
The demonstrations were triggered by the accelerated passing of a new law in the Parliament, regarding the Indonesian Army. The part of the new law that has attracted the most hostility is the expansion of the list of civil institutions where military officers can be appointed. While the list has not been drastically increased, to 16, it comes at a time when more military officials, often cronies of President Prabowo, are being placed key positions, both within and outside the scope of the Law. Some of the military cronies have also been placed in crucial economic of business positions. These moves are perceived by the protesters as the first steps towards returning to the military-backed crony capitalist rule, one that ruled Indonesia from 1965 until 1998. This period began with the mass slaughter of Indonesia’s communists and Sukarnoist leftists, it led to a near totalitarian rule for 32 years. It is under such a rule that a class of crony capitalists emerged throughout the country, with bog conglomerates at the top of the crony pyramid.
Taring Padi (Indonesia), in the name of resistance we fight till the end, 2023.
The students, NGOs and academics are protesting against the moves of the ruling elite who are turning back in that direction.
The banner “Indonesia is Dark” is not only a reflection of anger because people believe Indonesia is sliding back into the corrupt, militarist, crony capitalist period of the past. It is an expression that the “darkness” has already arrived for the mass of the people and for democracy. Over the past several weeks, many horrific corruption scandals have come to light. The scandals mount to hundreds of millions of dollars, involving the Pertamina (the state oil company) as well as operations in the banking sector, palm oil sector, import and export segments and others. These cases were suddenly exposed by the Attorney-General’s Department and by the Corruption Eradication Commission.
Being exposed one after the other, without any pause, over the past several weeks, these scandals have widely revealed the extent of corrupt relations between government officials and the private sector. In December, the Corruption Eradication Commission raided the residence of an official of the Supreme Court, who accused of taking bribes from business interests, and found tens of millions of dollars’ worth of cash and 51 kilograms of gold. The exposure of these cases 25 years after the fall of the notoriously corrupt President Suharto has deepened the sense of worsening “darkness” with absolutely no signs of lessening corruption.
The fear that the situation would worsen has intensified with President Prabowo’s announcement of the creation of a new state-holding company, Danantara which he will directly oversee. It would include a company owned by his own brother, and members of his cabinet and close business associates , will hold key positions within the Danantara. Former Presidents Yudhoyono and Widodo, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin have been appointed as advisors. This includes the plan that dividends from all public companies, estimated to be US$980 billion, will need to be surrendered to the company. The company’s funds are supposed to be used to finance more upstream production projects in the country. Given that it is under the direct control of Prabowo and his close circle, however fantastic the idea may seem on paper, it is viewed as a situation of never-ending corruption and cronyism, and people do not trust the government’s plans. This decision comes after almost a year of the government, first under Widodo and then Prabowo, granting coal mining licences to secure political support from private players, including religious organisations and universities.
Meanwhile, Prabowo gains military backing by making the currently serving and ex-military officers in-charge of government project with large budgets. Such as the welfare program providing lunch to school students or a major Food Estate project in Papua.
Heri Dono (Indonesia), Bull VS Pistol, 1984.
At the same time, the feeling of engulfing “darkness” is exacerbated by the sudden announcement of huge budget cuts in the name of efficiency, which have affected the functioning of several ministries. It has worsened the working conditions of public servants who lose lighting and air-conditioning for some parts of the day or have fewer equipment to work with. The funds from these cuts have been diverted to some private sectors for their services to the ministries, such as the transport sector.
Meanwhile, the state has imposed more burdens on the people, such as increasing the application fee for two-wheeler license.. These trends are accompanied by increase in unemployment. There have been announcements of layoffs in manufacturing and textiles industries as the businesses are shutting shop due to loss. Media reports estimate 40,000 layoffs over the past several weeks.
The “Indonesia in Darkness” protests, petitions and statements are not the only manifestation of the sense of “darkness” and political despair. Another response that went viral on social media, was the cry “Kabur aja dulu” (Let’s Get of Here First), suggesting an escape overseas. Of course, this sentiment resonates with the millions of Indonesia’s poor who have been forced to seek work abroad, often working as maids or coolies in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Middle East for several decades. However, there is a positive side to “Indonesia in Darkness,” it is accompanied by a word popularised in the poetry of the disappeared poet of the 1990s, Wiji Thukul: “Lawan!” (Resist!). While one side of the darkness is answered with Escape, the other side bravely calls for Fight!
The most recent wave of demonstrations has shared the call: “The Army Should Stay in Their Barracks”. Notably, the first wave of the “Indonesia in Darkness” protests had no specific demands. But the following waves have so far raised nine demands under the Dark Indonesian banner, which include: review President Prabowo’s budget cuts; change the Mineral and Coal Mining Law that allowed arbitrary allocation of mining licences; reject the Army’s interference in civilian affairs, and more transparency in development projects and taxes and imposts on the common people.
Agung Kurniawan (Indonesia), Very, Very Happy Victims, 1996.
A defining feature of these demonstrations is their largely spontaneous character, organised by local coalitions of students and NGOs, with each town having its distinct pattern. However, the slogans and demands are shared nationally, with no national organisation of mass resistance or opposition. The political opposition in the country remains dispersed, lacking unified organisation, strong leadership or a clear ideological perspective. Many are aware of this challenge, and the constructive discussions are unfolding among student groups, workers and farmers unions, democratic rights campaign organisations, feminist groups, political formations and others. Their discussions also focus on the unity of progressive forces. Some of this discussion is already formal, while others underway are informal in setting. The emergence of a national leadership and organisations would accelerate the current ferment and could alter the whole political framework. As of now, Indonesia, without a progressive opposition, is in a state of hiatus, waiting for the necessary jolt for the next step.
The post Student Protests Continue in Indonesia first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Asia Pacific Report
A West Papuan doctoral candidate has warned that indigenous noken-weaving practices back in her homeland are under threat with the world’s biggest deforestation project.
About 60 people turned up for the opening of her “Noken/Men: String Bags of the Muyu Tribe of Southern West Papua” exhibition by Veronika T Kanem at Auckland University today and were treated to traditional songs and dances by a group of West Papuan students from Auckland and Hamilton.
The three-month exhibition focuses on the noken — known as “men” — of the Muyu tribe from southern West Papua and their weaving cultural practices.
It is based on Kanem’s research, which explores the socio-cultural significance of the noken/men among the Muyu people, her father’s tribe.
“Indigenous communities in southern Papua are facing the world’s biggest deforestation project underway in West Papua as Indonesia looks to establish 2 million hectares of sugarcane and palm oil plantations in the Papua region,” she said.
West Papua has the third-largest intact rainforest on earth and indigenous communities are being forced off their land by this project and by military.
The ancient traditions of noken-weaving are under threat.
Natural fibres, tree bark
Noken — called bilum in neighbouring Papua New Guinea — are finely woven or knotted string bags made from various natural fibres of plants and tree bark.
“Noken contains social and cultural significance for West Papuans because this string bag is often used in cultural ceremonies, bride wealth payments, child initiation into adulthood, and gifts,” Kanem said.
“This string bag has different names depending on the region, language and dialect of local tribes. For the Muyu — my father’s tribe — in Southern West Papua, they call it ‘men’.
In West Papua, noken symbolises a woman’s womb or a source of life because this string bag is often used to load tubers, garden harvests, piglets, and babies.
“My research examines the Muyu people’s connection to their land, forest, and noken weaving,” said Kanem.
“Muyu women harvest the genemo (Gnetum gnemon) tree’s inner fibres to make noken, and gift-giving noken is a way to establish and maintain relationships from the Muyu to their family members, relatives and outsiders.
“Drawing on the Melanesian and Indigenous research approaches, this research formed noken weaving as a methodology, a research method, and a metaphor based on the Muyu tribe’s knowledge and ways of doing things.”
Hosting pride
Welcoming the guests, Associate Professor Gordon Nanau, head of Pacific Studies, congratulated Kanem on the exhibition and said the university was proud to be hosting such excellent Melanesian research.
Professor Yvonne Underhill-Sem, Kanem’s primary supervisor, was also among the many speakers, including Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai of Lagi Maama, and Daren Kamali of Creative New
The exhibition provides insights into the refined artistry, craft and making of noken/men string bags, personal stories, and their functions.
An 11 minute documentary on the weaving process and examples of noken from Waropko, Upkim, Merauke, Asmat, Wamena, Nabire and Paniai was also screened, and a booklet is expected to be launched soon.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Diverse procurement strategies exacerbates capability gaps within and between Indonesia’s armed forces. Indonesia proposed raising its defence expenditure to $10.6 billion (IDR165.2 trillion) for FY2025, of which nearly 42 percent will go on procurements. In election campaigning, incoming president Prabowo Subianto promised to elevate defence spending to attain a level of 1.5 percent of GDP […]
The post Indonesia Still Opts for Silo Procurement Over Interoperability appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
By Christine Rovoi of PMN News
A human rights group in Aotearoa New Zealand has welcomed support from several Pacific island nations for West Papua, which has been under Indonesian military occupation since the 1960s.
West Papua is a region (with five provinces) in the far east of Indonesia, centred on the island of New Guinea. Half of the eastern side of New Guinea is Papua New Guinea.
West Papua Action Aotearoa claims the Indonesian occupation of West Papua has resulted in serious human rights violations, including a lack of press freedom.
Catherine Delahunty, the group’s spokesperson, says many West Papuans have been displaced as a result of Indonesia’s military activity.
In an interview with William Terite on PMN’s Pacific Mornings, the environmentalist and former Green Party MP said most people did not know much about West Papua “because there’s virtually a media blackout around this country”.
“It’s an hour away from Darwin [Australia], and yet, most people don’t know what has been going on there since the 1960s. It’s a very serious and tragic situation, which is the responsibility of all of us as neighbours,” she said.
“They [West Papuans] regard themselves fully as members of the Pacific community but are treated by Indonesia as an extension of their empire because they have all these natural resources, which Indonesia is rapidly extracting, using violence to maintain the state.”
Delahunty said the situation was “very disturbing”, adding there was a “need for support and change alongside the West Papuan people”.
UN support
In a recent joint statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the leaders of Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Sāmoa and Vanuatu called on the global community to support the displaced people of West Papua.
Delahunty said the Pacific island nations urged the UN Council to advocate for human rights in West Papua.
She also said West Papua Action Aotearoa wanted Indonesia to allow a visit from a UN human rights commissioner, a request that Indonesia has consistently denied.
She said Sāmoa was the latest country to support West Papua, contrasting this with the “lack of action from larger neighbours like New Zealand and Australia”.
Delahunty said that while smaller island nations and some African groups supported West Papua, more powerful states provide little assistance.
“It’s great that these island nations are keeping the issue alive at the United Nations, but we particularly want to shout out to Sāmoa because it’s a new thing,” she told Terite.
“They’ve never, as a government, made public statements. There are many Sāmoan people who support West Papua, and I work with them. But it’s great to see their government step up and make the statement.”
Historically, the only public statements supporting West Papua have come from American Sāmoan congressman Eni Faleomavaega, who strongly advocated for it until he died in 2017.
Praise for Sāmoa
Delahunty praised Sāmoa’s support for the joint statement but voiced her disappointment at New Zealand and Australia.
“What’s not encouraging is the failure of Australia and New Zealand to actually support this kind of joint statement and to vigorously stand up for West Papua because they have a lot of power in the region,” she said.
“They’re the big states, and yet it’s the leadership of the smaller nations that we see today.”
In September 2024, Phillip Mehrtens, a pilot from New Zealand, was released by West Papua rebels after being held captive for 19 months.
Mehrtens, 39, was kidnapped by West Papua National Liberation Army fighters in February 2023 and was released after lengthy negotiations and “critical’ diplomatic efforts by authorities in Wellington and Jakarta.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Vaovasamanaia Winston Peters welcomed his release.
Why is there conflict in West Papua?
Once a Dutch colony, the region is divided into five provinces, the two largest being Papua and West Papua. It is separate from PNG, which gained independence from Australia in 1975.
Papuan rebels seeking independence from Indonesia have issued threats and attacked aircraft they believe are carrying personnel and delivering supplies for Jakarta.
The resource-rich region has sought independence since 1969, when it came under Indonesia’s control following a disputed UN-supervised vote.
Conflicts between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian authorities have been common with pro-independence fighters increasing their attacks since 2018.
The Free Papua Movement has conducted a low-intensity guerrilla war against Indonesia, targeting military and police personnel, along with ordinary Indonesian civilians.
Human rights groups estimate that Indonesian security forces have killed more than 300,000 West Papuans since the conflict started.
But the Indonesian government denies any wrongdoing, claiming that West Papua is part of Indonesia and was integrated after the controversial “Act of Free Choice” in 1969.
Manipulated process
The Act of Free Choice has been widely criticised as a manipulated process, with international observers and journalists raising concerns about the fairness and legitimacy of the plebiscite.
Despite the criticism, the United States and its allies in the region, New Zealand and Australia, have supported Indonesia’s efforts to gain acceptance in the UN for the pro-integration vote.
Human rights groups, such as Delahunty’s West Papua Action Aotearoa, have raised “serious concerns” about the deteriorating human rights situation in Papua and West Papua.
They cite alarming abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture, and mass displacement.
Delahunty believes the hope for change lies with the nations of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa. She said it also came from the younger people in Indonesia today.
“This is a colonisation issue, and it’s a bit like Aotearoa, in the sense that when the people who have been part of the colonising start addressing the issue, you get change. But it’s far too slow. So we are so disappointed.”
Republished with permission from PMN News.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Thousands of acres of rainforest is being cleared to produce palm oil, used in popular Nestlé and Mondelēz brands
West Papua’s Indigenous people have called for a boycott of KitKat, Smarties and Aero chocolate, Oreo biscuits and Ritz crackers, and the cosmetics brands Pantene and Herbal Essences, over alleged ecocide in their territory.
All are products that contain palm oil and are made, say the campaigners, by companies that source the ingredient directly from West Papua, which has been under Indonesian control since 1963 and where thousands of acres of rainforest are being cleared for agriculture.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
There are many that we’re excited about, a couple of examples are fermentation including for example new types of sustainable ingredients, also interesting coating technologies that help extend the life of food and more.
We’re open to anything that brings down emissions within our food system. If it has an impact on making a better food system, we are open to it. That includes reducing food waste, lowering emissions from fertilizer and working on blends that can lower the meat footprint in existing large channels and form factors.
During the past 5 years, the first cultivated meat was regulated and sold, and whilst there’s plenty of work to be done over the long term to bring the potential to the masses, it will go down as a major milestone and achievement.
The basics – price, texture, taste, plus cleaner labels and improved consumer awareness. That said, we see the offerings are improving, and also feel blends are a compelling solution to lower meat emissions in the short term as well.
Several: being open-minded, willing to take innovation risks and try something different, ability to learn (and track record of execution and learning), communicate and bring others along in the journey, build a team. There’s no one silver bullet – many things are important.
Perhaps getting involved even earlier. As an early-stage investor, there are companies that we might decide are a bit too far along their journey, but otherwise we might want to have engaged with them even earlier.
We have several very promising portfolio companies, but as an early-stage investor just a little over three years into our journey, it’s too early to proclaim winners.
We try to follow good decision epistemics and judge our investment calls by the quality of the process we ran through (criteria, analysis, projecting possible scenarios). When we do our future reviews each year, we’re trying to understand if we did a good job with those. I’d say on a meta level, we expanded into other areas of the food system including agri and looking back we could have done that a bit earlier to take advantage of opportunities there.
That every VC is different in how they run, what their sweet spot is, and how they engage with startups. I’d encourage founders to ask and get to know what each VC they engage with is after, how they make decisions and run, etc.
Probably the shredded pulled shiitake mushroom filling from Fable Foods in Guzman y Gomez’s taco bowl – that was great! About to travel some more in the coming months, so look forward to adding more entries to the list soon!
I haven’t tried yet some of the bioprinted or new fibre-spun whole-cut products (though my partner Michal has tried a bunch) – that would be fun to taste.
Personally, I’m driven by making a better food system for all – better for the people, for the animals, for the climate and for the planet. That’s why I got into impact investing and food projects many years ago. It’s a challenging but fun job, and getting to learn from and support all the founders innovating is the best part.
The post 5 Minutes with A Future Food VC: Better Bite Ventures’s Simon Newstead appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
Asia Pacific Report
A West Papuan liberation advocacy group has condemned the arrest of 12 activists by Indonesian police and demanded their immediate release.
The West Papuan activists from the West Papua People’s Liberation Movement (GR-PWP) were arrested for handing out pamphlets supporting the new “Boycott Indonesia” campaign.
The GR-PWP activists were arrested in Sentani and taken to Jayapura police station yesterday.
In a statement by the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), interim president Benny Wenda, said the activists were still “in the custody of the brutal Indonesian police”.
The arrested activists were named as:
Ones M. Kobak, GR-PWP leader, Sentani District
Elinatan Basini, deputy secretary, GR-PWP Central
Dasalves Suhun, GR-PWP member
Matikel Mirin, GR-PWP member
Apikus Lepitalen, GR-PWP member
Mane Kogoya, GR-PWP member
Obet Dogopia, GR-PWP member
Eloy Weya, GR-PWP member
Herry Mimin, GR-PWP member
Sem. R Kulka, GR-PWP member
Maikel Tabo, GR-PWP member
Koti Moses Uropmabin, GR-PWP member
“I demand that the Head of Police release the Sentani 12 from custody immediately,” Wenda said.
“This was an entirely peaceful action mobilising support for a peaceful campaign.
“The boycott campaign has won support from more than 90 tribes, political organisations, religious and customary groups — people from every part of West Papua are demanding a boycott of products complicit in the genocidal Indonesian occupation.”
Wenda said the arrest demonstrated the importance of the Boycott for West Papua campaign.
We express deep concern over the recent arrests of individuals in Sentani, West Papua for
distributing pamphlets advocating a boycott of Indonesian products from West Papua and
raising awareness of ongoing political issues in the region. The detention of these individuals
likely… pic.twitter.com/4e4hJ7FxUJ— Benny Wenda (@BennyWenda) March 18, 2025
“By refusing to buy these blood-stained products, ordinary people across the world can take a stand against this kind of repression,” he said.
“I invite everyone to hear the West Papuan cry and join our boycott campaign. No profit from stolen land.”
Source: ULMWP
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Indonesia is expected to ratify an agreement with Vietnam on the demarcation of their exclusive economic zones next month, settling a decade-long dispute in overlapping waters, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto said.
Jakarta and Hanoi reached an agreement on the boundaries of the zones, called EEZs, in December 2022 after 12 years of negotiations. They had been locked in disputes over overlapping claims in waters surrounding the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea.
For the agreement to take effect, it needs to be ratified by both of their parliaments.
“We hope that our parliament will ratify it in April, after Eid al-Fitr, and their legislature is also expected to ratify it soon,” Prabowo told Vietnamese leader To Lam, who visited Jakarta this week.
Vietnam and Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country by population, elevated bilateral ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership during Lam’s visit, reflecting their closer cooperation.
Prabowo also said that he planned a reciprocal state visit to Vietnam soon, when he would sign an implementing agreement with his Vietnamese hosts, adding that he was confident that the deal would “bring prosperity to both our peoples.”
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Clear demarcation of maritime zones
The shared waters north and east of Natuna Islands saw intense confrontations between the law enforcement agencies of both Vietnam and Indonesia over the activities of Vietnamese fishermen. Indonesia accused them of unlawful encroachment and illegal fishing, and it detained and destroyed dozens of Vietnam’s fishing boats.
The two countries began negotiating on EEZ delimitation in 2010 and were engaged in more than a dozen rounds of talks before reaching an agreement.
An EEZ gives a state exclusive access to the natural resources in the waters and seabed, and a clear demarcation would help avoid misunderstanding and mismanagement, said Vietnamese South China Sea researcher Dinh Kim Phuc.
“The promised ratification of the agreement on EEZs sends a positive signal from both security and economic perspectives,” Phuc said. “Among the latest achievements in the bilateral relations, this in my opinion is the most important one.”
“It will also serve as a valuable precedent for ASEAN countries to settle maritime disputes between them via peaceful means,” the researcher added.
I Made Andi Arsana, a maritime law specialist at Gadjah Mada University, said the agreement clarifies fishing rights in the South China Sea.
“With a clear EEZ boundary, cross-border management and law enforcement become more straightforward,” Arsana said. “Before this, both countries had their own claims, making it hard to determine whether a fishing vessel had crossed the line. Now, with a legally recognized boundary, it’s easier to enforce regulations and address violations.”
He likened the situation to dealing with a neighbor without a fence.
“It’s difficult to say whether they’ve trespassed or taken something from your property,” he said.
“But once the boundary is set, we can confidently determine whether someone is fishing illegally in our waters.”
China has yet to comment on the Indonesian president’s statement. Both Vietnam’s and Indonesia’s EEZs lie within the “nine-dash line” that Beijing prints on its maps to demarcate its “historical rights” over almost 90% of the South China Sea.
Pizaro Gozali Idrus in Jakarta contributed to this article.
Edited by Mike Firn.
BenarNews is an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA and BenarNews Staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
On February 6, the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) announced the successful completion of a counter-piracy training exercise held the previous day off Cape Muroto in Shikoku, Japan. The exercise involved the 3,100-ton, helicopter-equipped patrol vessel Settsu and the commercial bulk carrier Corona Queen, operated by the Japanese logistics company Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Ltd. This exercise […]
The post Counter-Piracy Endeavors by the Japan Coast Guard and Prospects for Shipbuilding Companies appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
BANGKOK – Vietnam and Indonesia have agreed to upgrade ties to the top level Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, Vietnamese state media reported on Tuesday.
The announcement followed a Monday meeting between Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam and Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto.
The two sides agreed on a Strategic Partnership in 2013 and wanted to build on its achievements, the two leaders said.
Indonesia is Vietnam’s third-largest trading partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Vietnam is Indonesia’s fourth-largest trading partner in ASEAN, according to the Vietnam News Agency, or VNA.
Two-way trade rose to $16.7 billion last year from US$9 billion in 2019 and the two countries aim to increase it to $18 billion within three years.
At Monday’s meeting, Lam and Prabowo agreed to remove tariff barriers, increase agricultural and fisheries exports and encourage business leaders to invest in each other’s country with a focus on the digital and green economies and the transition to clean energy.
Indonesia had 123 projects in Vietnam with a total investment of $682 million last year, according to VNA.
Vietnamese companies are increasing investment in Indonesia, including electric car maker VinFast, which has built a $200 million factory in the town of Subang in West Java.
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Vietnam’s so-called bamboo diplomacy, characterized by flexibility and independence, has led it to court both China and the U.S. for business but a tariff-driven trade war between the world’s two biggest economies means Hanoi is looking for other trading partners in Asia and Europe.
Indonesia is the ninth country to be elevated to the highest level of relations with Vietnam and the first in Southeast Asia. The others are China, Russia, India, South Korea, the U.S., Japan, Australia and France.
Lam was the first party chief to visit Indonesia in eight years and wrapped up his three-day trip on Tuesday.
Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Mike Firn for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
ANALYSIS: By Ali Mirin
Last week, on 26 February 2025, President Prabowo Subianto officially launched Indonesia’s first bullion banks, marking a significant shift in the country’s approach to gold and precious metal management.
This initiative aims to strengthen Indonesia’s control over its gold reserves, improve financial stability, and reduce reliance on foreign institutions for gold transactions.
Bullion banks specialise in buying, selling, storing, and trading gold and other precious metals. They allow both the government and private sector to manage gold-related financial transactions, including hedging, lending, and investment in the global gold market.
Although bullion banks focus on gold, this move signals a broader trend of Indonesia tightening control over its natural resources. This could have a significant impact on West Papua’s coal industry.
With the government already enforcing benchmark coal prices (HBA) starting this month, the success of bullion banks could pave the way for a similar centralised system for coal and other minerals.
Indonesia also may apply similar regulations to other strategic resources, including coal, nickel, and copper. This could mean tighter government control over mining in West Papua.
If Indonesia expands national control over mining, it could lead to increased exploitation in resource-rich regions like West Papua, raising concerns about land rights, deforestation, and indigenous displacement.
Indonesia joined BRICS earlier this year and is now focusing on strengthening economic ties with other BRICS countries.
In the mining sector, Indonesia is using its membership to increase exports, particularly to key markets such as China and India. These countries are large consumers of coal and mineral resources, providing an opportunity for Indonesia to expand its export market and attract foreign direct investment in resource extraction.
India eyes coal in West Papua
India has shown interest in tapping into the coal reserves of the West Papua region, aiming to diversify its energy sources and secure coal supplies for its growing energy needs.
This initiative involves potential collaboration between the Indian government and Indonesian authorities to explore and develop previously unexploited coal deposits in West Papuan Indigenous lands.
However, the details of such projects are still under negotiation, with discussions focusing on the terms of investment and operational control.
Notably, India has sought special privileges, including no-bid contracts, in exchange for financing geological surveys — a proposition that raises concerns about compliance with Indonesia’s anti-corruption laws.
The prospect of coal mining in West Papua has drawn mixed reactions. While the Indonesian government is keen to attract foreign investment to boost economic development in its easternmost provinces, local communities and environmental groups express apprehension.
The primary concerns revolve around potential environmental degradation, disruption of local ecosystems, and the displacement of indigenous populations.
Moreover, there is scepticism about whether the economic benefits from such projects would trickle down to local communities or primarily serve external interests.
Navigating ethical, legal issues
As India seeks to secure energy resources to meet its domestic demands, it must navigate the ethical and legal implications of its investments abroad. Simultaneously, Indonesia faces the challenge of balancing economic development with environmental preservation and the rights of its indigenous populations.
While foreign investment in Indonesia’s mining sector is welcome, there are strict regulations in place to protect national interests.
In particular, foreign mining companies must sell at least 51 percent of their shares to Indonesian stakeholders within 10 years of starting production. This policy is designed to ensure that Indonesia retains greater control over its natural resources, while still allowing international investors to participate in the growth of the industry.
India is reportedly interested in mining coal in West Papua to diversify its fuel sources.
Indonesia’s energy ministry is hoping for economic benefits and a potential boost to the local steel industry. But environmentalists and social activists are sounding the alarm about the potential negative impacts of new mining operations.
During project discussions, India has shown an interest in securing special privileges, such as no-bid contracts, which could conflict with Indonesia’s anti-corruption laws.
Implications for West Papua
Indonesia, a country with a population of nearly 300 million, aims to industrialise. By joining BRICS (primarily Brasil, Russia, India, and China), it hopes to unlock new growth opportunities.
However, this path to industrialisation comes at a significant cost. It will continue to profoundly affect people’s lives and lead to environmental degradation, destroying wildlife and natural habitats.
These challenges echo the changes that began with the Industrial Revolution in England, where coal-powered advances drastically reshaped human life and the natural world.
West Papua has experienced a significant decline in its indigenous population due to Indonesia’s transmigration policy. This policy involves relocating large numbers of Muslim Indonesians to areas where Christian Papuans are the majority.
These newcomers settle on vast tracts of indigenous Papuan land. Military operations also continue.
One of the major problems resulting from these developments is the spread of torture, abuse, disease, and death, which, if not addressed soon, will reduce the Papuans to numbers too small to fight and reclaim their land.
Mining of any kind in West Papua is closely linked to, and in fact, is the main cause of, the dire situation in West Papua.
Large-scale exploitation
Since the late 1900s, the area’s rich coal and mineral resources have attracted both foreign and local investors. Large international companies, particularly from Western countries, have partnered with the Indonesian government in large-scale mining operations.
While the exploitation of West Papua’s resources has boosted Indonesia’s economy, it has also caused significant environmental damage and disruption to indigenous Papuan communities.
Mining has damaged local ecosystems, polluted water sources and reduced biodiversity. Indigenous Papuans have been displaced from their ancestral lands, leading to economic hardship and cultural erosion.
Although the government has tried to promote sustainable mining practices, the benefits have largely bypassed local communities. Most of the revenue from mining goes to Jakarta and large corporations, with minimal reinvestment in local infrastructure, health and education.
For more than 63 years, West Papua has faced exploitation and abuse similar to that which occurred when British law considered Australia to be terra nullius — “land that belongs to no one.” This legal fiction allowed the British to disregard the existence of indigenous people as the rightful owners and custodians of the land.
Similarly, West Papua has been treated as if it were empty, with indigenous communities portrayed in degrading ways to justify taking their land and clearing it for settlers.
Indonesia’s collective view of West Papua as a wild, uninhabited frontier has allowed settlers and colonial authorities to freely exploit the region’s rich resources.
Plundering with impunity
This is why almost anyone hungry for West Papua’s riches goes there and plunders with impunity. They cut down millions of trees, mine minerals, hunt rare animals and collect precious resources such as gold.
These activities are carried out under the control of the military or by bribing and intimidating local landowners.
The Indonesian government’s decision to grant mining licences to universities and religious groups will add more headaches for Papuans. It simply means that more entities have been given licences to exploit its resources — driving West Papuans toward extinction and destroying their ancestral homeland.
An example is the PT Megapura Prima Industri, an Indonesian coal mining company operating in Sorong on the western tip of West Papua. According to the local news media Jubi, the company has already violated rules and regulations designed to protect local Papuans and the environment.
Allowing India to enter West Papua, will have unprecedented and disastrous consequences for West Papua, including environmental degradation, displacement of indigenous communities, and human rights abuses.
As the BRICS nations continue to expand their economic footprint, Indonesia’s evolving mining landscape is likely to become a focal point of international investment discourse in the coming years.
Natural resources ultimate target
This means that West Papua’s vast natural resources will be the ultimate target and will continue to be a geopolitical pawn between superpowers, while indigenous Papuans remain marginalised and excluded from decision-making processes in their own land.
Regardless of policy changes on resource extraction, human rights, education, health, or any other facet, “Indonesia cannot and will not save West Papua” because “Indonesia’s presence in the sovereign territory of West Papua is the primary cause of the genocide of Papuans and the destruction of their homeland”.
As long as West Papua remains Indonesia’s frontier settler colony, backed by an intensive military presence, the entire Indonesian enterprise in West Papua effectively condemns both the Papuan people and their fragile ecosystem to a catastrophic fate, one that can only be avoided through a process of decolonisation and self-determination.
Restoring West Papua’s sovereignty, arbitrarily taken by Indonesia, is the best solution so that indigenous Papuans can engage with their world on their own terms, using the rich resources they have, and determining their own future and development pathway.
Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He lives in Australia and contributes articles to Asia Pacific Report.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
ANALYSIS: By Ali Mirin
Last week, on 26 February 2025, President Prabowo Subianto officially launched Indonesia’s first bullion banks, marking a significant shift in the country’s approach to gold and precious metal management.
This initiative aims to strengthen Indonesia’s control over its gold reserves, improve financial stability, and reduce reliance on foreign institutions for gold transactions.
Bullion banks specialise in buying, selling, storing, and trading gold and other precious metals. They allow both the government and private sector to manage gold-related financial transactions, including hedging, lending, and investment in the global gold market.
Although bullion banks focus on gold, this move signals a broader trend of Indonesia tightening control over its natural resources. This could have a significant impact on West Papua’s coal industry.
With the government already enforcing benchmark coal prices (HBA) starting this month, the success of bullion banks could pave the way for a similar centralised system for coal and other minerals.
Indonesia also may apply similar regulations to other strategic resources, including coal, nickel, and copper. This could mean tighter government control over mining in West Papua.
If Indonesia expands national control over mining, it could lead to increased exploitation in resource-rich regions like West Papua, raising concerns about land rights, deforestation, and indigenous displacement.
Indonesia joined BRICS earlier this year and is now focusing on strengthening economic ties with other BRICS countries.
In the mining sector, Indonesia is using its membership to increase exports, particularly to key markets such as China and India. These countries are large consumers of coal and mineral resources, providing an opportunity for Indonesia to expand its export market and attract foreign direct investment in resource extraction.
India eyes coal in West Papua
India has shown interest in tapping into the coal reserves of the West Papua region, aiming to diversify its energy sources and secure coal supplies for its growing energy needs.
This initiative involves potential collaboration between the Indian government and Indonesian authorities to explore and develop previously unexploited coal deposits in West Papuan Indigenous lands.
However, the details of such projects are still under negotiation, with discussions focusing on the terms of investment and operational control.
Notably, India has sought special privileges, including no-bid contracts, in exchange for financing geological surveys — a proposition that raises concerns about compliance with Indonesia’s anti-corruption laws.
The prospect of coal mining in West Papua has drawn mixed reactions. While the Indonesian government is keen to attract foreign investment to boost economic development in its easternmost provinces, local communities and environmental groups express apprehension.
The primary concerns revolve around potential environmental degradation, disruption of local ecosystems, and the displacement of indigenous populations.
Moreover, there is scepticism about whether the economic benefits from such projects would trickle down to local communities or primarily serve external interests.
Navigating ethical, legal issues
As India seeks to secure energy resources to meet its domestic demands, it must navigate the ethical and legal implications of its investments abroad. Simultaneously, Indonesia faces the challenge of balancing economic development with environmental preservation and the rights of its indigenous populations.
While foreign investment in Indonesia’s mining sector is welcome, there are strict regulations in place to protect national interests.
In particular, foreign mining companies must sell at least 51 percent of their shares to Indonesian stakeholders within 10 years of starting production. This policy is designed to ensure that Indonesia retains greater control over its natural resources, while still allowing international investors to participate in the growth of the industry.
India is reportedly interested in mining coal in West Papua to diversify its fuel sources.
Indonesia’s energy ministry is hoping for economic benefits and a potential boost to the local steel industry. But environmentalists and social activists are sounding the alarm about the potential negative impacts of new mining operations.
During project discussions, India has shown an interest in securing special privileges, such as no-bid contracts, which could conflict with Indonesia’s anti-corruption laws.
Implications for West Papua
Indonesia, a country with a population of nearly 300 million, aims to industrialise. By joining BRICS (primarily Brasil, Russia, India, and China), it hopes to unlock new growth opportunities.
However, this path to industrialisation comes at a significant cost. It will continue to profoundly affect people’s lives and lead to environmental degradation, destroying wildlife and natural habitats.
These challenges echo the changes that began with the Industrial Revolution in England, where coal-powered advances drastically reshaped human life and the natural world.
West Papua has experienced a significant decline in its indigenous population due to Indonesia’s transmigration policy. This policy involves relocating large numbers of Muslim Indonesians to areas where Christian Papuans are the majority.
These newcomers settle on vast tracts of indigenous Papuan land. Military operations also continue.
One of the major problems resulting from these developments is the spread of torture, abuse, disease, and death, which, if not addressed soon, will reduce the Papuans to numbers too small to fight and reclaim their land.
Mining of any kind in West Papua is closely linked to, and in fact, is the main cause of, the dire situation in West Papua.
Large-scale exploitation
Since the late 1900s, the area’s rich coal and mineral resources have attracted both foreign and local investors. Large international companies, particularly from Western countries, have partnered with the Indonesian government in large-scale mining operations.
While the exploitation of West Papua’s resources has boosted Indonesia’s economy, it has also caused significant environmental damage and disruption to indigenous Papuan communities.
Mining has damaged local ecosystems, polluted water sources and reduced biodiversity. Indigenous Papuans have been displaced from their ancestral lands, leading to economic hardship and cultural erosion.
Although the government has tried to promote sustainable mining practices, the benefits have largely bypassed local communities. Most of the revenue from mining goes to Jakarta and large corporations, with minimal reinvestment in local infrastructure, health and education.
For more than 63 years, West Papua has faced exploitation and abuse similar to that which occurred when British law considered Australia to be terra nullius — “land that belongs to no one.” This legal fiction allowed the British to disregard the existence of indigenous people as the rightful owners and custodians of the land.
Similarly, West Papua has been treated as if it were empty, with indigenous communities portrayed in degrading ways to justify taking their land and clearing it for settlers.
Indonesia’s collective view of West Papua as a wild, uninhabited frontier has allowed settlers and colonial authorities to freely exploit the region’s rich resources.
Plundering with impunity
This is why almost anyone hungry for West Papua’s riches goes there and plunders with impunity. They cut down millions of trees, mine minerals, hunt rare animals and collect precious resources such as gold.
These activities are carried out under the control of the military or by bribing and intimidating local landowners.
The Indonesian government’s decision to grant mining licences to universities and religious groups will add more headaches for Papuans. It simply means that more entities have been given licences to exploit its resources — driving West Papuans toward extinction and destroying their ancestral homeland.
An example is the PT Megapura Prima Industri, an Indonesian coal mining company operating in Sorong on the western tip of West Papua. According to the local news media Jubi, the company has already violated rules and regulations designed to protect local Papuans and the environment.
Allowing India to enter West Papua, will have unprecedented and disastrous consequences for West Papua, including environmental degradation, displacement of indigenous communities, and human rights abuses.
As the BRICS nations continue to expand their economic footprint, Indonesia’s evolving mining landscape is likely to become a focal point of international investment discourse in the coming years.
Natural resources ultimate target
This means that West Papua’s vast natural resources will be the ultimate target and will continue to be a geopolitical pawn between superpowers, while indigenous Papuans remain marginalised and excluded from decision-making processes in their own land.
Regardless of policy changes on resource extraction, human rights, education, health, or any other facet, “Indonesia cannot and will not save West Papua” because “Indonesia’s presence in the sovereign territory of West Papua is the primary cause of the genocide of Papuans and the destruction of their homeland”.
As long as West Papua remains Indonesia’s frontier settler colony, backed by an intensive military presence, the entire Indonesian enterprise in West Papua effectively condemns both the Papuan people and their fragile ecosystem to a catastrophic fate, one that can only be avoided through a process of decolonisation and self-determination.
Restoring West Papua’s sovereignty, arbitrarily taken by Indonesia, is the best solution so that indigenous Papuans can engage with their world on their own terms, using the rich resources they have, and determining their own future and development pathway.
Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He lives in Australia and contributes articles to Asia Pacific Report.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The UAE-based Milanion Group has entered into an agreement with Indonesia’s Republik Defens Indonesia (RDI) – a subsidiary of Republikorp Group – to supply the Indonesian Navy (TNI-AL) with uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs). Under the agreement, which was announced at NAVDEX 2025 on 17 February, Milanion will integrate its advanced autonomous conversion kits into locally […]
The post Milanion Group teams up with RDI for Indonesian Navy USVs appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
Between early 2003 and January 2025, 26 boats with about 3,342 Rohingya people fleeing either from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh or from Rakhine, Myanmar, arrived in Indonesia, mainly in provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra. While most of them have continued their onward journeys to Malaysia, about 1,500 people remained in different temporary shelters in Indonesia at the time of writing. The sailing season is not over yet, and more boats could potentially arrive in the coming weeks and months, especially if the political situation in Myanmar deteriorates further.
While Aceh used to be a rather welcoming place for Rohingya refugees, from late 2023 onwards their disembarkations were met with strong rejection from the local population, causing some boats to remain offshore for several days or move on to other sites where local people were more welcoming. Many have wondered what might have caused the drastic shift from hospitality to hostility and indeed many factors have contributed to this swift.
Hate speech and provocations that circulated mainly on social media since mid-2023 have undoubtedly stirred up xenophobia, and outright racism, towards Rohingya in some parts of Indonesia. Eventually hate speech translated into action on the ground: in late December 2023, hundreds of students were protesting in front of one of the holding sites in Banda Aceh, where the refuges were house in the basement. Because of the ferocity of the protests, the Rohingya refugees—most of them women and children—had to be evacuated to the immigration office for some hours before being returned to the very same site. As investigations by TEMPO magazine later showed, these students had not only been equipped with protests posters to use during the demonstrations but received payments and other incentives for their involvement.
According to TEMPO’s reports, these anti-Rohingya resentments were e meant to discredit Anies Baswedan, one of the candidates in the presidential election held in February 2024. However, the protests did not wane in the aftermath of the elections. The hate speech and the online provocations had fallen on fertile ground. Throughout 2024, several people claiming to be local residents were seen waiting at the designated shelter to protest against the temporary reception of Rohingya. Both online and on-the-ground campaigns saw the defamation of the UNHCR and other local and international NGOs and prominent individuals, such as head of the Majelis Permusyawaratan Ulama Aceh, an official council of Islamic leaders. The fact that some Rohingya absconded from the camp were used by the media to portray them as ungrateful, which strengthened the stigmatisation of Rohingya further.
Several attempts to calm down the situation, including by Muzzakir Manaf, Aceh’s recently-elected governor, and also by Malik Mahmud, the Wali Nanggroe (a customary leader, who reminded the Acehnese people of the humanitarian need but also the international duties to protect the Rohingya for the time being), were only minimally successful. Like tens of thousands of other Acehnese, Governor Muzzakir had sought refuge in Malaysia during the Aceh conflict (1976–2005).
Kulam Village camp, Batee District, Pidie Regency, Aceh Province. March 2024. Photo by SinarPidie .
Further rejections of Rohingya happened onshore and also at the initial reception sites. In November 2024,152 Rohingya who were held in South Aceh district were loaded onto trucks and driven all the way to the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, where they were rejected. Then, in a journey back down the east coast that lasted 48 hours and did not include a single toilet break or meal, they were returned to Lhokseumawe and eventually back to South Aceh, where they were sheltered for another month. In other cases, local people were only prepared to receive the Rohingya after the UNHCR and IOM managed to convince them of the economic benefits to the wider local community. For example, at the end of Ramadan, IOM donated a cow to the village in addition to a cow for the refugees.
The more regular, and therefore more significant, benefits offered to villages that are open to hosting refugees include the renting of land for where the camp is erected from local owners, catering and security services; costs are usually born by either UNHCR or IOM. For example, it is very common that the official village-owned enterprise corporation (BUMDes) is tasked to cook three meals a day for an overall payment of Rp 45,000 (A$4.30) per person, for which they charge a fee of up to 15%. But additional charges for distribution and others task, reaching in some instances 20%, also apply, which has negative consequences for the nutrition of refugees. Locals are also hired as security guards and deployed at the camps, earning Rp100,000 (A$9.75) per shift. This is equal the daily salary of a blue-collar worker, but these jobs require less effort than most blue-collar work, as guards’ main task is to mediate between the refugees and the local community.
Kulee Village Camp, Batee District, Pidie Regency, Aceh Province. February 2025. Photo by Nino Viartasiwi.
The local economy is also stimulated, as new kiosks pop up around the camps to cater for the refugees and to casual visitors who come to see the Rohingya. Individual villagers also act as intermediaries for receiving remittances from the relative of the Rohingya for which they are being paid a commission. Rohingya need the money for their daily expenses but also to move on from Aceh. Those who are caught being involved in such transactions or the facilitations of onward travel can face people smuggling allegations.
While in the past, Malaysia—where there is a community of 120,000 registered Rohingya residing already—was the most desired destination, lately many Rohingya have also moved on the Pekanbaru, in Riau province. One of the key pull factors are the cash allowances Rohingya receive from the IOM—Rp1,050,000 (A$102) for adults and Rp500,000 (A$49) for minors—instead of the catered meals and earlier on also the better quality accommodation provided in proper dormitories.
However, in January 2025 the IOM had to stop the funding for these dormitories and moved all the Rohingya to an empty site, where the Rohingya have now erected self-built tents and barracks. In February 2025, IOM also had to end medical care for the Rohingya, as part of their funding was coming from the United States (in addition to the EU), whose aid program has seen drastic cuts after the re-election of Donald Trump.
Ex-immigration building camp, Lhokseumawe City, Aceh Province. February 2025. Photo by Nino Viartasiwi.
The latest treatment of the Rohingya is a clear setback for how refugees have been handled in Indonesia in the past. While in other cities, refugee children are allowed to attend school and vocational training, Rohingya children are not. According to some Rohingya who have recently moved to Pekanbaru and whom we contacted in February 2025, the conditions there are worse than in the shelters in Aceh. In fact, some we spoke to said they have noticed a resemblance of the new camp to their previous shelters in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, were many have spent up to 8 years since the mass exodus from Myanmar in 2017.
International media outlets’ clichéd descriptions of the ongoing conflict are at best self-incriminating
Despite the substandard conditions, the new camp site in Pekanbaru has quickly filled up. As of February 2025, there were more than 600 camp inhabitants. While the overall situation in Pekanbaru is dire due to overcrowding and extremely poor hygiene, this will not necessarily deter future arrivals. The increase in violence, abduction and forced conscription in Cox’s Bazar—and the intensifying armed conflict in Rakhine—remain the main push factors for Rohingya to leave by boat and seek safety in neighbouring South(east) Asia. In light of the frequent pushbacks conducted by India, Thailand and Malaysia, Indonesia remains their only hope.
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Forgotten war in Burma, ignored war in Myanmar
Rawang camp, Seuneubok Rawang Village, Peureulak Timur district, Aceh Timur Regency, Aceh Province. February 2025. Photo by Nino Viartasiwi.
The necessity to move to safer places has also created many new infrastructures for human smuggling across the Andaman Sea, within Indonesia, and between Indonesia and Malaysia that show strong exploitative features, for example in marriage arrangements for young Rohingya women. In particular, if the Rohingya have to borrow money from others, they may face heightened risk of abuse in the future when they have to repay their debts. It is safe to assume that criminal activities in the camp may increase, if the current hands-off approach continues.
While Indonesia’s Presidential Regulation No 125 of 2016 Concerning the handling of foreign refugees allows the use of the state budget for covering the care needs of refugees, the technical regulations on how to exactly do so have yet to be issued. The revision and the refinement of the Presidential Regulation is overdue and needs to be tackled by the new Indonesian government under President Prabowo Subianto without any further delay.
Karang Gading camp, Labuhan Deli district, Deli Serdang Regency, Aceh Province. February 2025. Photo by Nino Viartasiwi.
It is fair to note that neither Aceh—the poorest province in Sumatra—nor Riau Province may not have the resources to cover the upkeep of refugees in the long run. The current uncertainty over the treatment of Rohingya results from the central government’s preference for a hands-off approach, that leaves the caretaking entirely to IOM and UNHCR. Considering the recent funding cuts for these international organisations, the quality of care is receding, raising concerns about the sustainability of the current protection system. (In 2024, for instance, UNHCR received US$2.49 billion in funding from the United States, amounting to a fifth of the agency’s total budget—funds now suspended as part of the Trump administration’s suspension of the US foreign aid program.)
Pekanbaru camp, Pekanbaru city, Riau Province. February 2025. Photo by an anonymous inhabitant.
It is highly unlikely that other international donors will make up for the current funding losses to the IOM and the UNHCR in the foreseeable months, not least as the global attention is still focusing on the crises in Gaza and Ukraine. It is also highly unlikely that resettlements to safe third countries will increase any time soon: in fact, as of 20 January 2025 Donald Trump once again put resettlements to the United States on hold, except for refugees from South Africa of European descent.
The only way to prevent the creation of financially unsustainable refugee camps in Indonesia, which could potentially evolve into hubs for smuggling and trafficking, is to allow the refugees a self-sustained form of living after an initial emergency phase. Rohingya, like most other refugees, are talented and entrepreneurial people.
Despite limited resources, they are able to carve out a living if allowed to do so. Some Rohingya raise ducks in the camps in Aceh, others go fishing or assist local farmers in the rice fields. To date, they risk punishment and possibly undetermined arrest in detention centres for receiving remunerations. Given that the overall numbers of refugees (fewer than 13,000) in Indonesia remain much lower than in Thailand and Malaysia, the potential for competition over jobs with locals is negligible. The right to earn a living for refugees in Indonesia serves as a viable and pragmatic option, enabling them to attain self-sufficiency amid a diminishing refugee protection framework.
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