Press statement issued by the West Papua Working Group, International Bureau of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM)
The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) strongly condemns the brutality perpetrated by the Indonesian military that resulted in the death of a freedom fighter from West Papua, Atius Kum, on 6 July 2024. Atius Kum was arrested on 30 June 2024, tortured by Indonesian security forces to extract information from him, and ultimately killed and burned brutally in the Intan Jaya Regency of Central Papua Province.
The history of West Papua being annexed by Indonesia is a result of political maneuvering by superpowers during the Cold War without the participation of the indigenous West Papuan people themselves. The struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua for self-determination has been met with military repression and systematic racist sentiment from Indonesian security forces. This oppression and struggle bear similarities to the issue of Palestine, but rarely receive media coverage despite the worsening human rights situation in West Papua.
The Indonesian elites not only fail to recognize the rights of the indigenous people of West Papua but also collaborate with large capitalists to exploit the region’s abundant natural resources, allowing the intensification of violence and torture while manipulating nationalist and religious sentiments to distract the Indonesian people from their efforts to accumulate wealth.
Where there is oppression, there will be struggle. Apart from guerrilla warfare, more and more young people from West Papua in different regions of Indonesia are rising up to protest against these brutal actions, as seen in the human rights protest in the city of Nabire on 5 April 2024, against the cruel actions of Indonesian military personnel torturing civilians in the Puncak Regency. However, this peaceful protest was violently dispersed by the Indonesian police.
Furthermore, the All Eyes on Papua campaign, inspired by the Palestinian humanitarian campaign All Eyes on Rafah, aims not only to support the Awyu and Moi ethnic groups in their struggle to defend their ancestral forests from destruction caused by corporate profit but also to remind the public of how, over the 61 years of Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua, the indigenous people have endured a slow-motion genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide.
PSM firmly supports the right to self-determination of the people of West Papua. To achieve this goal, it is crucial to remove the perpetrators of brutality, namely the Indonesian security forces, from West Papua and to provide the indigenous people with the opportunity to form their own self-defense forces, with the assistance of neutral international peacekeeping forces if necessary.
In this way, the people of West Papua can ensure a safe environment that allows them to voice their demands with the help of their own self-defense forces. Self-determination also means they are given the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of economic development without falling into the hands of capitalists.
Finally, we call on the international community and the Malaysian government to join in condemning the Indonesian government’s brutal actions against freedom fighters and the indigenous people of West Papua, and to hold the Indonesian government accountable for the ongoing human rights violations on this island.