Speaker
Description
This presentation examines the intensifying regime of state terrorism in West Papua under Indonesian rule, not simply as counter-insurgency but as a sustained assault on Indigenous Papuans and their environment. It argues that violence in Papua is not limited to isolated abuses, but forms part of an ongoing and cumulative regime of destruction operating through extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary detention, forced displacement, racialised repression, ecocide, ethnocide, and the restriction of independent scrutiny.
The presentation develops this argument through three connected dimensions. First, it highlights the continuing role of the Indonesian military and security apparatus in producing fear and insecurity through direct violence and impunity. Second, it shows how state terror also works through the destruction of the ecological and cultural conditions of Indigenous survival, making ecocide and ethnocide integral to a wider process of slow-motion genocide rather than separate from militarised repression. Third, it examines the politics of invisibility through which Indonesia restricts access for foreign journalists, researchers, and UN monitors, limiting investigation and enabling impunity.
Finally, it connects Papua to Indonesia’s broader trajectory through the March 2026 acid attack on Andrie Yunus, suggesting that coercive methods long normalised in Papua are increasingly visible in national political life.
| Institutional Affiliation | Department of Politics, The University of Manchester |
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