West Papua is home to one of the world’s largest gold mines (and third largest copper mine), known as the Grasberg Mine. Grasberg is majority controlled by the American mining firm Freeport McMoRan. It has reserves worth an estimated $100 billion, and the company is Indonesia’s biggest taxpayer.

Since 1963, West Papuans are suffering from on-going genocide by Indonesian annexation, wherein hundreds of thousands of Papuans have been killed, tortured, jailed, or forcibly disappeared.  Colonizing Indonesians daily, carry out human rights violations. These heinous acts are supported by the Dutch and the United States. The United Nations has not intervened to stop the very public abuses of West Papuans by Indonesians. West Papuans suffering under this full-scale genocide have neither political sway nor economic autonomy. While West Papua demands international peace talks and a legitimate UN-sponsored referendum on their status, these colonial circumstances rob them of any position to realistically engage or negotiate with Indonesia.

The colonization process back in 1969 was facilitated by the UN, and even ironically called an ‘Act of Free Choice.’ Indonesia’s longstanding violation of the Guiding Principles by their official under-reporting and reclassifying of Internally-Displaced Peoples from West Papua is only one instance affirming their choice to breach the international humanitarian rights.

The land belongs to Indigenous West Papuans. Force colonizers out of West Papua.  Give the land rights, resources, and mineral rights back to the aboriginal West Papuans. Decolonize. How are colonizers allowed to continue with this inhumane mistreatment of the West Papuan Peoples and the theft of their lands and resources? Why is nothing being done?

I started this campaign to aid in bringing attention to the atrocities against West Papuan People. I am not West Papuan. However, Benny Wenda is a West Papuan independence leader. Please go to his site and offer support. https://www.freewestpapua.org/