Indonesia's armed forces murdered villagers for raising the West Papuan national flag, the Morningstar. They butchered the survivors and covered it up. Not one person has been prosecuted
An all too familiar scenario - people living on ancestral lands are murdered so that empire might profit from the wealth of minerals buried below the ground.
It's happening again in Gaza - there's a wealth of minerals below the Levant.
this is a straight invasion and occupation followed by colonisation through transmigrassi by Indonesia.
It's completely different to Gaza. Unfortunately a fake history has been spread by the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas, Qatar, controls Al-Jazeera).
Gaza is not colonised. Israel is not colonised.
The entire region used to belong to the Greeks, the Jews and a smattering of other tribes and religions eg Druze, Samaritans.
The Romans invaded and took it over (remember the romans nailed Jesus to the cross thinking he was another jewish rebel?)
So the Romans colonised. The Greek speaking eastern half of the Roman empire stood for 1000 years after the West fell, and when the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity they became Christians.
So the region in question was Christian and Jewish with tribes.
In 132 AD the Jews of Judea revolted and the Romans crushed them. That was the Bar Kokhba rebellion. Many Jews fled including to the region and some ended up in Europe.
The Jews were utterly defeated and as punishment to them the Romans renamed their land "Syria Philastinae" ie: Philistine region of Syria. They called it this after the Philistines, a tribe of Greeks living on the coast roughly where Gaza is now.
there are no Philistines left. They were all exterminated in wars and left long ago.
The Muslims invaded and eventually all the lands were colonised by Islam, coming under the Ottoman Caliphate by WWI.
The Ottomans lost WWI by siding with Germany. Britain used the Muslims of Arabia (the Hashemites and the Saudis) to fight against the Muslim Ottomans (Turks).
Britain riled up the Arabs who got behind the flag of the Arab Revolt (slightly tweaked, waved as the flag of the Syrian Ba'ath Party, the flag of Transjordania and Iraq, and the flag of the Arab Muslims of Gaza who are claiming to be "Palestinian").
Jews lived all over the Caliphate including in Judea as of WWI.
They weren't all migrants from Europe at all, that's a fabrication.
When the Ottoman empire fell apart as a result of losing WWI it was carved up by the victors.
France got some parts and Britain got some parts to administer - but they were getting out of the empire business. They only wanted to administer until they could create stable self-governing nations and get out.
Britain called its region British Mandate Palestine and it included Jordan and the area from the Jordan river to the sea.
Britain had promised land to the Hashemites, the Arabs and the Jews. They gave Jordan to the Hashemites. SOME (not all) Jews had entered the area to resettle in their homeland, joining the OTHER Jews that had always been there. The Arabs complained and didn't want any more Jewish migration. SOME Arabs migrated in from Arabia.
When the Ottoman lands fell apart the Arabs got several large countries including Jordan and Iraq. But they wanted it all.
The UN voted in 1947 to carve some of the remaining land from the river to the sea into 2 states, one arab, one jew, it was the Arabs who immediately all joined forces and said the Jews couldn't have any country at all.
the UN voted to give them a nation because the Muslims of the Ottoman empire had just finished genociding the Armenian Christians and the Greeks who had to be resettled in Greece. So everyone could see what would happen to the region's jews if they didn't get some homeland there.
The arab muslims started a war against Israel the second it was declared a nation. The Muslims then kicked out the native jews of all their surrounding countries including Yemen and Iraq. A million regional jews immediately lost their land and had to flee to israel.
So the two situations are chalk and cheese.
Gaza is nothing AT ALL like what happened to West Papua.
Israel is not the Levant which is huge, encompassing all the lands which used to be Greek. Israel is a tiny sliver of desert so small it doesn't even fit the type of its own name on a map.
That does not matter to Hamas because religiously they will not tolerate an Israel even the size of a postage stamp. It's in their charter.
It's not the native land of the Arabs who are from Arabia. It's not the native lands of Islam which is from Arabia. It's the native land of the Greeks and then the Jews, and few others eg samaritans etc.
they all lived there long enough that they all have a claim to it, though. And that claim was satisfied when the UN gave the Arabs their own territory in 1947. It was the Arabs that declared war and lost it.
So it's nothing at all like West Papua
West Papua was the native land of the Papuans since before recorded history. The Indonesians, who are ethnically, linguistically, religiously and culturally completely different from Papuans invaded in 1964 then shipped in a million migrants to take the land.
it's clear-cut colonisation. And a religious colonisation for Islam.
So very true. So many dont ask, so they font know. I think they dont ask because everyone pretends they know everything, about everything. I fidnt find out about West Papua until late 1990s, early 2000s. Nobody knew when i asked questions, so it easnt until the band Blue King Brown brought it up at a reggae festival that i finally asked and peo p le knew.😐🤐😤
Interestingly, when you look at indonesias ties/influences theres a common denominator.😉 I asked an Australian today, "why do you follow USA?". Response, " because they are our allie."
I asked, "What does that mean to Australia?" Response, "it means if we go to war, we can get their help."
I said, "oh thats convenient then." Then i asked, "and who has been involved with the largest armed conflicts in the last 50 years, like Ukraine, Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, Taiwan, Bosnia, Vietnam...?". No response.😐🤦♀️🤦♀️
Many don't ask the crucial questions about who benefits - while all the evidence points to empire and it's willing servants.
In the end the US is one of empires leading servants however historically this appears to be a new development since empire is much older than the US [which has been at war for over 93% of the time since 1776]
Waging war is all part of the racket to divert public funds into the bank accounts of the financial elite while it also serves to maintain control over the narrative and ultimately control over political power.
Australia [or Terra Australis] is another prime example of where ancestrial lands have stood in the way of corporate profits - the end result is the same - Government steps in and enables corporate profits to take priority.
I could go on and on - the crux of the matter is that there's no accountability for public servants when they have catered to the corporate agenda - in the end the steps up to government house double as corporate steppingstones.
Indonesia benefits through taxes - however more specifically which company owned by which corporations are exploiting and reaping the benefits of plundering West Papua's resources?
I'll just focus on one for the moment no doubt there's much more to this.
''The $100bn gold mine and the West Papuans who are counting the cost''
American mining firm Freeport McMoRan owns the majority of the Grasberg mine which has become Indonesia's largest source for tax revenue
Who owns Freeport McMoran?
I apologize I think my pc is playing up, I'm not able to find out who the majority shareholders are - this link should reveal however the results are blank to me - https://au.finance.yahoo.com/quote/FCX.BA/analysis/
Here's more from Green Left with a very very good article about Grasberg - ''The mine at the centre of West Papua’s colonisation''
My daughter just spent a semester at Uni in Indonesia, and in one of her subjects asked to present on the history of Australian and Indonesian relations across the Suharto years, in the context of West Papua. I did a lot of material research - her job was to translate and present it in Indonesian which was difficult enough.
I had to tell her that, born in 1961, I grew up believing only that Irian Jaya was a very dangerous place, full of head hunters, and that we wouldn't want to go there. So close, but a black hole.
From the material I gathered it was all about the mine, about a Freeport director selecting JF Kennedy's National Security Advisor, bringing Suharto there in 1962. I almost saw them promising him leadership, West Papua back to Indonesia, plus a lot of the mine's wealth, if he 'shared it' with the west, and if he slaughtered 500K-1m leftists (as done from Oct 1965 - March 1966). Australian diplomats and media (ABC Radio National) played a propaganda role. On West Papua, we did nothing but appease - this to keep the US bosses happy, as much as anything. That mine is Indonesia's largest single taxpayer.
On Indonesian views on W Papua, she said that occasionally victims of the propaganda will describe the W Papuans as terrorists, justifying all of the Indonesian military/police behaviour.
There's so much money/resources in W Papua, it would be more difficult to negotiate independence than getting Julian Assange out of London.
Adding... Suharto's son in law was recently voted in as Indonesia's President, and that Indonesia would be frightened to let one region go, lest all the other regions/ethnicities agitating for independence be encouraged.
I worked in West Papua in the 1990s. I've seen the way the Papuans are treated. Freeport Mining company running their tailings and chemicals down the river destroying sago plantations, villagers being massacred by the Indonesian army when the OPM (Free Papuan Movement) took some Dutch people hostages in 1996, being treated as lower class citizens, poor housing etc etc. How many more massacres I wonder?
I am 69 years old & I am ashamed to say I had no idea about this massacre. I have always known though that the Indonesians have treated the West Papuan people badly. And yes our decades of cowardly, corrupt governments have known about the treatment of our neighbours & turned a blind eye. Should anyone be surprised. I'm not.
My daughter's generation gets their 'news' from social media, and the only 'serious worldly news' that has been passing through her feed is Palestine/Israel. The young ones have been absolutely flooded with pro-Palestine news, and my daughter finally committed, under such pressure, to sharing a couple of 'stop the genocide' posts, lest it be observed that she hadn't. I had advised her not to get involved because that issue is a very complex one, has lasted over eons, it's a two-sided thing, and that there seemed to be a propaganda drive happening.
Indonesia has been a long time supporter of Palestine. They are 95% Islamic, and also sympathise because they were a colonised region that had to throw off their oppressor (the Dutch).
So... there came a social media trend "All eyes on Palestine". It was huge in Indonesia. (And those of us familiar with social direction would wonder where our eyes would better be looking.) But as thickly as that trend came, it suddenly switched, to "All eyes on (West) Papua". [I bracket (West) because what we call West Papua has been split into four regions.]
And I wonder who flicked that switch. For sure, while Indonesia supports populations throwing off their imperial oppressors, they are not quite the same when it comes to their oppression of West Papua.
I'm not sure the hedonistic young would've driven that switch. It more falls into the ambit of the UN-green-new-tech movement to raise the power of the indigenous populations, while simultaneously encouraging the colonists to loathe and belittle themselves (writing here from 'evil white Australia'). We might be thrown off soon.
It seems West Papua has had many names, now I know why. I also had no idea of this massacre. This is so terribly sad. I for some reason, thought Indonesia took over the “Western part” of Papua New Guinea as part of a peaceful decision. No no, I’m so wrong.
But the burning element is our government blatantly not giving a damn about these people. Not wanting to offend Indonesia. I’ve heard some lame excuses but this is pathetic.
See how upset we get over bullies, like Indonesia. But we’ve all got bigger and more widely spread problems now, being created by bullies again, and we are still just talking about them, after more than 4 1/2 years. It’s an education for me, about how cruel and contemptuous some people(s) can be, in light of this massacre. The scary part is, we all may experience something like this in years, or less, to come. Not downplaying what has happened to the West Papuan people, but are we up to it? Especially since it might come from our own government. Thanks Alison for showing us this.
I’m more scared by our own Australian fascist government than anything happening overseas past or present. The Australian governments total inaction past and present on the Biak Massacre tells me all I need to know, just look at the last 4 years and how many democided with impunity right here!
We are being told this isn’t our land and it was stolen, should tell us where this is headed. How does that song go “it belongs to them, let’s give it back “. Australians first and last are going to end up like the West Papuans.
Excellent report.
An all too familiar scenario - people living on ancestral lands are murdered so that empire might profit from the wealth of minerals buried below the ground.
It's happening again in Gaza - there's a wealth of minerals below the Levant.
this is a straight invasion and occupation followed by colonisation through transmigrassi by Indonesia.
It's completely different to Gaza. Unfortunately a fake history has been spread by the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas, Qatar, controls Al-Jazeera).
Gaza is not colonised. Israel is not colonised.
The entire region used to belong to the Greeks, the Jews and a smattering of other tribes and religions eg Druze, Samaritans.
The Romans invaded and took it over (remember the romans nailed Jesus to the cross thinking he was another jewish rebel?)
So the Romans colonised. The Greek speaking eastern half of the Roman empire stood for 1000 years after the West fell, and when the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity they became Christians.
So the region in question was Christian and Jewish with tribes.
In 132 AD the Jews of Judea revolted and the Romans crushed them. That was the Bar Kokhba rebellion. Many Jews fled including to the region and some ended up in Europe.
The Jews were utterly defeated and as punishment to them the Romans renamed their land "Syria Philastinae" ie: Philistine region of Syria. They called it this after the Philistines, a tribe of Greeks living on the coast roughly where Gaza is now.
there are no Philistines left. They were all exterminated in wars and left long ago.
The Muslims invaded and eventually all the lands were colonised by Islam, coming under the Ottoman Caliphate by WWI.
The Ottomans lost WWI by siding with Germany. Britain used the Muslims of Arabia (the Hashemites and the Saudis) to fight against the Muslim Ottomans (Turks).
Britain riled up the Arabs who got behind the flag of the Arab Revolt (slightly tweaked, waved as the flag of the Syrian Ba'ath Party, the flag of Transjordania and Iraq, and the flag of the Arab Muslims of Gaza who are claiming to be "Palestinian").
Jews lived all over the Caliphate including in Judea as of WWI.
They weren't all migrants from Europe at all, that's a fabrication.
When the Ottoman empire fell apart as a result of losing WWI it was carved up by the victors.
France got some parts and Britain got some parts to administer - but they were getting out of the empire business. They only wanted to administer until they could create stable self-governing nations and get out.
Britain called its region British Mandate Palestine and it included Jordan and the area from the Jordan river to the sea.
Britain had promised land to the Hashemites, the Arabs and the Jews. They gave Jordan to the Hashemites. SOME (not all) Jews had entered the area to resettle in their homeland, joining the OTHER Jews that had always been there. The Arabs complained and didn't want any more Jewish migration. SOME Arabs migrated in from Arabia.
When the Ottoman lands fell apart the Arabs got several large countries including Jordan and Iraq. But they wanted it all.
The UN voted in 1947 to carve some of the remaining land from the river to the sea into 2 states, one arab, one jew, it was the Arabs who immediately all joined forces and said the Jews couldn't have any country at all.
the UN voted to give them a nation because the Muslims of the Ottoman empire had just finished genociding the Armenian Christians and the Greeks who had to be resettled in Greece. So everyone could see what would happen to the region's jews if they didn't get some homeland there.
The arab muslims started a war against Israel the second it was declared a nation. The Muslims then kicked out the native jews of all their surrounding countries including Yemen and Iraq. A million regional jews immediately lost their land and had to flee to israel.
So the two situations are chalk and cheese.
Gaza is nothing AT ALL like what happened to West Papua.
Israel is not the Levant which is huge, encompassing all the lands which used to be Greek. Israel is a tiny sliver of desert so small it doesn't even fit the type of its own name on a map.
That does not matter to Hamas because religiously they will not tolerate an Israel even the size of a postage stamp. It's in their charter.
It's not the native land of the Arabs who are from Arabia. It's not the native lands of Islam which is from Arabia. It's the native land of the Greeks and then the Jews, and few others eg samaritans etc.
they all lived there long enough that they all have a claim to it, though. And that claim was satisfied when the UN gave the Arabs their own territory in 1947. It was the Arabs that declared war and lost it.
So it's nothing at all like West Papua
West Papua was the native land of the Papuans since before recorded history. The Indonesians, who are ethnically, linguistically, religiously and culturally completely different from Papuans invaded in 1964 then shipped in a million migrants to take the land.
it's clear-cut colonisation. And a religious colonisation for Islam.
Can you see any similarities?
Possibly a colonization of a particular non-empathic soul type embedded within humanity.
So very true. So many dont ask, so they font know. I think they dont ask because everyone pretends they know everything, about everything. I fidnt find out about West Papua until late 1990s, early 2000s. Nobody knew when i asked questions, so it easnt until the band Blue King Brown brought it up at a reggae festival that i finally asked and peo p le knew.😐🤐😤
Interestingly, when you look at indonesias ties/influences theres a common denominator.😉 I asked an Australian today, "why do you follow USA?". Response, " because they are our allie."
I asked, "What does that mean to Australia?" Response, "it means if we go to war, we can get their help."
I said, "oh thats convenient then." Then i asked, "and who has been involved with the largest armed conflicts in the last 50 years, like Ukraine, Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, Taiwan, Bosnia, Vietnam...?". No response.😐🤦♀️🤦♀️
yes reggae has woken a lot of people to the situation in West Papua. Also, surfing
Many don't ask the crucial questions about who benefits - while all the evidence points to empire and it's willing servants.
In the end the US is one of empires leading servants however historically this appears to be a new development since empire is much older than the US [which has been at war for over 93% of the time since 1776]
Waging war is all part of the racket to divert public funds into the bank accounts of the financial elite while it also serves to maintain control over the narrative and ultimately control over political power.
Australia [or Terra Australis] is another prime example of where ancestrial lands have stood in the way of corporate profits - the end result is the same - Government steps in and enables corporate profits to take priority.
I could go on and on - the crux of the matter is that there's no accountability for public servants when they have catered to the corporate agenda - in the end the steps up to government house double as corporate steppingstones.
Free West Papua.
Likes not working.
yes. But who benefits? Indonesia.
Indonesia benefits through taxes - however more specifically which company owned by which corporations are exploiting and reaping the benefits of plundering West Papua's resources?
I'll just focus on one for the moment no doubt there's much more to this.
''The $100bn gold mine and the West Papuans who are counting the cost''
https://asiapacificreport.nz/2016/12/01/the-100bn-gold-mine-and-the-west-papuans-who-say-they-are-counting-the-cost/
American mining firm Freeport McMoRan owns the majority of the Grasberg mine which has become Indonesia's largest source for tax revenue
Who owns Freeport McMoran?
I apologize I think my pc is playing up, I'm not able to find out who the majority shareholders are - this link should reveal however the results are blank to me - https://au.finance.yahoo.com/quote/FCX.BA/analysis/
Here's more from Green Left with a very very good article about Grasberg - ''The mine at the centre of West Papua’s colonisation''
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/mine-centre-west-papuas-colonisation
My daughter just spent a semester at Uni in Indonesia, and in one of her subjects asked to present on the history of Australian and Indonesian relations across the Suharto years, in the context of West Papua. I did a lot of material research - her job was to translate and present it in Indonesian which was difficult enough.
I had to tell her that, born in 1961, I grew up believing only that Irian Jaya was a very dangerous place, full of head hunters, and that we wouldn't want to go there. So close, but a black hole.
From the material I gathered it was all about the mine, about a Freeport director selecting JF Kennedy's National Security Advisor, bringing Suharto there in 1962. I almost saw them promising him leadership, West Papua back to Indonesia, plus a lot of the mine's wealth, if he 'shared it' with the west, and if he slaughtered 500K-1m leftists (as done from Oct 1965 - March 1966). Australian diplomats and media (ABC Radio National) played a propaganda role. On West Papua, we did nothing but appease - this to keep the US bosses happy, as much as anything. That mine is Indonesia's largest single taxpayer.
On Indonesian views on W Papua, she said that occasionally victims of the propaganda will describe the W Papuans as terrorists, justifying all of the Indonesian military/police behaviour.
There's so much money/resources in W Papua, it would be more difficult to negotiate independence than getting Julian Assange out of London.
Adding... Suharto's son in law was recently voted in as Indonesia's President, and that Indonesia would be frightened to let one region go, lest all the other regions/ethnicities agitating for independence be encouraged.
I worked in West Papua in the 1990s. I've seen the way the Papuans are treated. Freeport Mining company running their tailings and chemicals down the river destroying sago plantations, villagers being massacred by the Indonesian army when the OPM (Free Papuan Movement) took some Dutch people hostages in 1996, being treated as lower class citizens, poor housing etc etc. How many more massacres I wonder?
I am 69 years old & I am ashamed to say I had no idea about this massacre. I have always known though that the Indonesians have treated the West Papuan people badly. And yes our decades of cowardly, corrupt governments have known about the treatment of our neighbours & turned a blind eye. Should anyone be surprised. I'm not.
So much brutal history covered up- thank you for bringing this to awareness Alison.
I am a 63 year old Kiwi and had no awareness of this at all.
A little bit of hope (in a sort of a way)...
My daughter's generation gets their 'news' from social media, and the only 'serious worldly news' that has been passing through her feed is Palestine/Israel. The young ones have been absolutely flooded with pro-Palestine news, and my daughter finally committed, under such pressure, to sharing a couple of 'stop the genocide' posts, lest it be observed that she hadn't. I had advised her not to get involved because that issue is a very complex one, has lasted over eons, it's a two-sided thing, and that there seemed to be a propaganda drive happening.
Indonesia has been a long time supporter of Palestine. They are 95% Islamic, and also sympathise because they were a colonised region that had to throw off their oppressor (the Dutch).
So... there came a social media trend "All eyes on Palestine". It was huge in Indonesia. (And those of us familiar with social direction would wonder where our eyes would better be looking.) But as thickly as that trend came, it suddenly switched, to "All eyes on (West) Papua". [I bracket (West) because what we call West Papua has been split into four regions.]
And I wonder who flicked that switch. For sure, while Indonesia supports populations throwing off their imperial oppressors, they are not quite the same when it comes to their oppression of West Papua.
I'm not sure the hedonistic young would've driven that switch. It more falls into the ambit of the UN-green-new-tech movement to raise the power of the indigenous populations, while simultaneously encouraging the colonists to loathe and belittle themselves (writing here from 'evil white Australia'). We might be thrown off soon.
It seems West Papua has had many names, now I know why. I also had no idea of this massacre. This is so terribly sad. I for some reason, thought Indonesia took over the “Western part” of Papua New Guinea as part of a peaceful decision. No no, I’m so wrong.
But the burning element is our government blatantly not giving a damn about these people. Not wanting to offend Indonesia. I’ve heard some lame excuses but this is pathetic.
See how upset we get over bullies, like Indonesia. But we’ve all got bigger and more widely spread problems now, being created by bullies again, and we are still just talking about them, after more than 4 1/2 years. It’s an education for me, about how cruel and contemptuous some people(s) can be, in light of this massacre. The scary part is, we all may experience something like this in years, or less, to come. Not downplaying what has happened to the West Papuan people, but are we up to it? Especially since it might come from our own government. Thanks Alison for showing us this.
Freedom West Papua by Joe Geia is a very heartfelt song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXp99Tds02I&list=OLAK5uy_muc-SB9ZHVV_55QQUh-juthBjVHJlbqUg&index=6
I’m more scared by our own Australian fascist government than anything happening overseas past or present. The Australian governments total inaction past and present on the Biak Massacre tells me all I need to know, just look at the last 4 years and how many democided with impunity right here!
We are being told this isn’t our land and it was stolen, should tell us where this is headed. How does that song go “it belongs to them, let’s give it back “. Australians first and last are going to end up like the West Papuans.