[Kabar-indonesia] 1 of 3: ICG: Papua: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

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International Crisis Group Jakarta/Brussels
5 September 2006 

Update Briefing N°53 

Papua: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions   

I.  OVERVIEW 

No part of Indonesia generates as much distorted
reporting as Papua, the western half of New Guinea
that has been home to an independence movement since
the 1960s.  Some sources, mostly outside Indonesia,
paint a picture of a closed killing field where the
Indonesian army, backed by militia forces, perpetrates
genocide against a defenceless people struggling for
freedom. A variant has the army and multinational
companies joining forces to despoil Papua and rob it
of its own resources. Proponents of this view point to
restrictions on media access, increasing troop
strength in Papua of the Indonesian armed forces
(TNI), payments to the TNI from the giant U.S. copper
and gold mining company, Freeport, and reports by
human rights organisations as supporting evidence for
their views.

Others, mostly inside Indonesia, portray Papua as the
target of machinations by Western interests, bent on
bringing about an East Timor-style international
intervention that will further divide and weaken the
Indonesian nation. Specifically, according to this
view, Western interests are encouraging an
international campaign to review and reject a 1969
United Nations-sponsored plebiscite, called the Act of
Free Choice, that resulted in Papua's integration into
the Indonesian republic. Should that campaign be
successful, the international legal grounds for a
referendum on independence would be established. They
believe that the independence movement consists of a
small band of criminals who have no real support in
the population at large.

Neither portrayal of Papua is accurate, but both are
extraordinarily difficult to dislodge - particularly
because both contain kernels of truth that fuel false
assumptions. Papua is not a happy place, but neither
is it a killing field. Historical injustice and
chronic low-level abuse on the part of security forces
are facts. Solidarity groups concerned about Papua are
more active now than five years ago, and some
parliamentarians in Western countries have taken their
cause to heart; this has not, however, translated into
growing international support for Papuan independence.
 Failure to understand the complexities of the Papuan
problem not only produces bad policies in Jakarta, but
can also have severe international consequences, as
witnessed by the plummeting of Indonesian-Australian
relations in early 2006 over Australia's decision to
grant temporary asylum to a group of Papuan political
activists.  

This briefing will examine several questions that lie
behind the distortions:     

Who governs Papua and how? 

Are TNI numbers increasing, and if so, why? 

What substance is there to the claim of historical
injustice in Papua's integration into Indonesia? 

How strong is the independence movement in Papua? 

Who supports it?  

What substance is there to allegations of genocide? 

Are there Muslim militias in Papua? 

And a process of Islamicisation? 

How much of Papua is off-limits to outsiders? 

Why the restrictions? 

What can the international community do? 

II. WHO GOVERNS PAPUA? 

Implicit in the image of Papua as a place of
persecution and oppression is the idea that non-Papuan
Indonesians are in control. This is simply not true.
The directly elected governors of Papua and West Irian
Jaya, the two provinces within the broader territory
of Papua, are indigenous Papuans, as are the heads of
all 29 districts. Nor are these Papuan leaders puppets
of Jakarta - under Indonesia's decentralisation laws,
and even more under a 2001 law granting special
autonomy to Papua, these local government leaders have
significant political and fiscal authority. The
central government has devolved control over every
policy area but five to Papua: foreign affairs,
defence and security, fiscal and monetary policy,
religious affairs and justice.  However, in many ways,
Papua is as poorly governed under local leaders as it
was the under non-Papuan administrators sent by
Jakarta. The problems of corruption and neglect cannot
be explained away as only a legacy of the Soeharto
era. Indeed, one major problem in recent years has
been not too much attention from Jakarta, but too
little. Once the special autonomy legislation was
passed, it was as though officials of successive
post-Soeharto governments took it as license to ignore
poor performance by local Papuan officials, including
lengthy periods of absence in Jakarta or Jayapura. It
is only at the urging of the new governor, Barnabas
Suebu, that Papua's provincial budget is now being
scrutinised by the national anti-corruption
commission.  

Governance of Papua has been complicated by the
Megawati government's controversial (and illegal) 2003
decision to create the province of West Irian Jaya.
Before the legal status of the new province was
resolved, the Ministry of Home Affairs authorised
elections for governor there, and a 70 per cent
turnout last March gave legitimacy to a political fait
accompli. The problem was that the special autonomy
law and the body that was to be its centrepiece, the
Papuan People's Council (MRP), applied to a single
entity. The special autonomy law now needs to be
revised to take into account the second province. Many
Papuans see this as an opportunity to hold widespread
consultations on what else should be revised in the
interests of strengthening self-government.

A.  IS THE TNI THE REAL POWER? 

TNI officers continue to use their power to exploit
economic resources and have primary responsibility for
counterinsurgency actions against the small guerrilla
group known as the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi
Papua Merdeka, OPM), but they do not govern Papua. The
decision to divide Papua was a political, not military
decision, apparently initiated by the National
Intelligence Agency and the ministry of home affairs,
two institutions that do not always see eye-to-eye
with the armed forces, even though the heads are
almost always former military officers.

The commander of the TNI's Trikora division based in
Jayapura remains an important element of the local
power structure but cannot and does not make decisions
about local policies. Even most local security
problems are left to the police, not the military, and
police are gradually replacing the latter as the
designated protector of "vital national assets" such
as the Freeport mine. (This is not always an
improvement, however, given the abusive behaviour of
some police, especially Brimob, the paramilitary
police who have begun to replace the military at
Freeport since July 2006.) Outside the towns of
Jayapura, Timika, Wamena and Merauke, military
officers are often as notable by their absence as
civilian leaders.  

B.  IS THE TNI EXPANDING? 

The TNI has over 12,000 troops in Papua, and there are
between 2,000 and 2,500 police. Rumours
notwithstanding, there is no evidence that troops
pulled out of Aceh are being systematically redeployed
in Papua. But the numbers have increased over the last
two years, as the size of three infantry battalions
permanently stationed in Papua (751, 752 and 753) has
increased from 650 to 1,050 soldiers each. A similar
expansion is planned for three other battalions by the
end of 2007. The TNI's own statements suggest the
expansion is bigger than it actually is. In March
2005, for example, Army Spokesman Brig. Gen.
Hotmagaradja Pandjaitan announced plans for a new
Kostrad (strategic reserve command) division in Papua,
with an additional 15,000 troops to be deployed
between 2005 and 2009. This plan was shelved in
December 2005 but the rumours persist.
Misunderstandings are also caused by confusion over
routine annual troop rotations.  There are two ways in
which the overall troop level in Papua could be
affected in the future. The first is through the
administrative decentralisation process known as
pemekaran. Although it is not stipulated in any law,
there is an established convention of setting up new
military (and police) commands in each new district
and sometimes sub-districts as well. Since 1999, the
number of districts in Papua has grown from nine to
29, the number of sub-districts has increased from 173
to 220, and at least another nine districts are being
planned. Thus far, the new districts do not appear to
have spawned new military commands. A liaison
arrangement with the "mother" district is put in place
instead. New commands in the future, however, cannot
be ruled out.

The second reason for a possible troop build-up in
Papua is the TNI's effort to step up border security
nationally. The number of posts along the 760-km.
border with Papua New Guinea (PNG) will increase from
twenty to 94. As part of this effort, and to step up
patrols against illegal fishing, transport of
illegally logged timber (and probably Papuan asylum
seekers), the navy is talking about increasing its
presence in Papua. New naval bases are planned for
Merauke (2006), Kaimana and Teluk Bintuni (2007) and
Sorong (2008) but it is not clear when they will
actually be built.  

III.    WHAT SUBSTANCE IS THERE TO THE CLAIM OF
HISTORICAL INJUSTICE? 

Many Papuans feel they were cheated out of
independence promised to them by the Dutch colonial
administration. Before Papua was incorporated into
Indonesia in 1963, the government of Dutch New Guinea
had prepared Papuans for independence. It actively
encouraged Papuan nationalism and helped establish the
fledgling institutions of a national government
envisaged to take over in 1970. However, Dutch Papua
policy became entangled in Cold War politics. Under
intense international pressure, the Netherlands agreed
in 1962 to transfer sovereignty to Indonesia within a
year, via a temporary UN trusteeship. As a face saver
for the Dutch, the agreement brokered by the U.S.
stipulated that a plebiscite would be held by the end
of 1969 to determine whether Papuans wanted to remain
with Indonesia or to establish an independent state. 

The agreement further stipulated that every Papuan
adult man and woman was entitled to participate in the
plebiscite, "in accordance with international
practice". Papuans widely interpreted this to mean
"one person one vote", but Indonesian officials argued
that it would be more practical, given the logistical
challenges, to convene representative assemblies. The
UN and the Dutch government quickly agreed. Papuan
protests calling for a referendum were dispersed by
Indonesian troops. In April 1969 the Indonesian
government hand-picked 1,022 Papuan leaders to vote
through eight regional councils (on behalf of some
700,000 people) under Indonesian military supervision
- and in many cases intimidation - in the "Act of Free
Choice" on Papua's future. Unsurprisingly, they voted
unanimously in favour of integration with Indonesia.

Many Papuans question the legitimacy of that exercise,
as did many diplomatic observers at the time.  When
the special autonomy law was being prepared in 2000
and 2001, a consensus Papuan draft included a
provision calling for "historical rectification". The
phrase was removed by the Indonesian parliament.
Jakarta's worst fear is that an international campaign
to review and reject the Act of Free Choice will
gather momentum, eventually laying the legal basis for
internationalisation of the issue.  Some form of
"historical rectification" should occur, and the UN
should formally acknowledge the shortcomings of the
1969 vote. But Papuan leaders also need to understand
that the chances of any UN action to review the Act of
Free Choice, let alone to void it, are close to nil.

The government of Indonesia enjoys strong support in
the General Assembly and Security Council, and no UN
action on Papua is conceivable without Indonesian
acquiescence. But Jakarta's willingness to see the
historical record set straight, in a way that could be
reflected in Indonesian textbooks, might help lay a
better foundation for better relations with Papua.  

IV. HOW STRONG IS THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT? 

The answer to this question depends on how one defines
the movement. Pro-independence sentiment is
widespread, thanks to poor governance, a sense of
historical injustice, a feeling of cultural and racial
difference from the rest of Indonesia and chronic
low-level abuse, extortion and indignities on the part
of security forces. More serious human rights abuses
do occur, but with less frequency than in the past and
often in response to acts of violence that have caused
police or military casualties. Much, but not all, of
that pro-independence sentiment could probably be
addressed by a more benign government that provided
genuine services to the population.  Pro-independence
sentiment is less evident in the area that is now the
province of West Irian Jaya and along the southern
coast than along the northern coast or the central
highlands. Many moderate Papuans who believed that
their best hope lay with autonomy rather than
independence have been alienated by Jakarta's repeated
failures to deliver. But organised political activity
in support of independence is fractious, prone to
ethnic divisions and lacking in strong leadership.

A.  WHAT IS THE OPM?  

The OPM is a guerrilla movement with an armed wing,
the National Liberation Army (Tentara Pembebasan
Nasional), that has been fighting for an independent
state of West Papua since 1964, shortly after the
Netherlands ceded sovereignty to Indonesia. Estimates
of its strength range from less than 100 (according to
the TNI) to several thousand (the OPM's own figure),
but it controls no territory, has few modern weapons
and does not pose a serious security threat to
Indonesia. It has no social program, but fighters
generally enjoy some logistical support from local
populations in their areas of operation and are
assisted with communications and supplies by a network
of couriers.  The OPM is believed to consist of as
many as six commands that for the most part work
independently of each other, each organised around
local commanders with small but loyal followings. Only
three or four appear to be currently active, however. 
Mathias Wenda, the man widely acknowledged as the
commander in chief, is based in Baweni, Papua New
Guinea, and is responsible for the Arso area in Keerom
district, just over the border. Arso wa an early
transmigration site, and settlers from Sulawesi and
Java greatly outnumber indigenous Papuans there.
Wenda's men have periodically attacked non-Papuan
Indonesian settlers (transmigrants) in the area as
well as TNI posts.

The local TNI command announced that an attack on Post
509 of the army's elite strategic reserve (Kostrad) in
Wembi on 10 April 2006 was the work of Wenda's group.
Later, however, Lukas Tabuni, from another faction
active in the Bolakme area in the northern Baliem
valley, claimed responsibility in an interview
broadcast on Australian television.  

Kelly Kwalik is one of the OPM's most elusive
commanders. To many in Papua he is also one of the
"purest" in terms of devotion to the cause. He has
been leading a group of fighters in Mimika since 1977,
when he joined a local uprising there. Two of his
better known associates are Daniel Kogoya, who has
worked closely with him since 1977, and Titus Murib, a
fighter with his own following in Ilaga sub-district. 
Kwalik's efforts have focused on attacking the
Freeport mine and taking hostages to gain
international attention. His group kidnapped and
killed eight Javanese students who were hiking in the
highlands in 1986. In January 1996, he commanded the
kidnapping of twelve members of a scientific research
team, the Lorentz Expedition. The four Indonesian,
four British, two German and two Dutch biologists were
held hostage for four months, and two of the
Indonesians were killed during the military's rescue
operation.  In June 2001, Kogoya's men, under Kwalik's
orders, took two Belgian journalists hostage in Ilaga
and held them for two months until a team of
Indonesian journalists negotiated their release.  The
most notorious operation linked to Kwalik, however, is
the 31 August 2002 attack on a convoy of Freeport
vehicles at Mile 62-63 in Tembagapura in which one
Indonesian and two U.S. civilians employed by Freeport
were killed and another nine injured. The only suspect
to have confessed to involvement, Antonius Wamang,
admitted to receiving the order directly from Kwalik.
He insists, however, that he thought he was targeting
a military convoy. There are also persistent
allegations of TNI involvement in the incident,
including from Wamang, but as yet no hard evidence. 
Hans Yuweni is the TPN/OPM commander for Jayapura and
Sarmi districts, with reach as far west as Waropen
district, according to local military sources. There
are regular reports of defections from his unit, most
of which are hotly contested by independence
activists. Goliath Tabuni is based in Puncak Jaya, the
site of TNI operations for several months in 2005, but
operates throughout the central highlands. Tadius Yogi
has been active in Paniai since 1980 but reportedly
privately concedes that armed struggle is futile.
Bernard Mawen, the eldest of the field commanders,
leads a small group in Merauke but is not very active.
 The OPM relies on hit and run attacks like the one on
10 April 2006 in Wembi, using traditional spears and
bows and arrows more often than guns, but even these
attacks are infrequent and uncoordinated. Its main
targets are the TNI and police. It has never been
strong enough to threaten Indonesian territorial
control but its political efforts inside and outside
Papua, and its very existence as a symbol of
resistance, have helped to keep the ideal of an
independent West Papua alive.  

B.  WHAT OTHER GROUPS ARE INVOLVED? 

Several other groups actively support independence.
The asylum seekers who reached Australia in January
2006 were from a group called Bintang 14 (Fourteen
Stars) that emerged in the mid-1980s advocating the
independence of Papua as "West Melanesia". Its
founder, Thomas Wanggai, an ethnic Serui, was one of
Papua's most highly educated civil servants; he met
his Japanese wife while a student at Okayama
University. He was arrested after leading an
independence rally on 14 December 1988 and died (of
natural causes) in Cipinang Prison, Jakarta, in 1996.
His nephew, Herman Wanggai, was the leader of the
asylum seekers and has himself been twice arrested for
pro-independence activities.

The movement is now led by Edison Waromi in Abepura.
Waromi was arrested with Wanggai in 1989, served nine
years in prison and was convicted again on treason
charges in 2002 for raising the Bintang 14 flag, along
with Herman Wanggai. The majority of the remaining
Bintang 14 supporters in Papua are in Jayapura and in
Wanggai's native Serui and the north coast but there
are also small numbers in the central highlands. 
After Wanggai was jailed in 1988, many Bintang 14
supporters fled to Papua New Guinea, and some went on
to Australia. Jacob Rumbiak represents Bintang 14 in
Australia, and several of the 43 asylum seekers who
fled there in January 2006 are Bintang 14 members. 
Bintang 14 and the OPM have no particular history of
collaboration - Bintang 14 having always rejected
violence. In late 2005, however, some marginal OPM
commanders came together with Bintang 14 leaders and
church, student and community leaders in Papua New
Guinea to establish a broader coalition called the
West Papuan National Authority (Otoritas Nastional
Papua Barat), committed to struggling for Papuan
independence through peaceful means. There have been
several initiatives of this kind but neither Kelly
Kwalik nor Mathias Wenda has been involved.

Another important player is the radical student
movement. The principal organiser of the anti-Freeport
actions around the country in February and March 2006
was the Front Pepera Papua Barat (United Front for the
West Papuan People's Struggle) network, led by Hans
Gebze. It is the hard-line faction of the student
movement and has been at the forefront of student
activism in recent years.. Freeport remains its major
advocacy focus, partly due to the direct experiences
of some of its members and their families, but also
for ideological and pragmatic reasons. Freeport is a
powerful symbol of Papuan grievances ranging from
economic exploitation and environmental degradation to
human rights abuses by the military (which Freeport
pays to provide security at its mine site).  Front
Pepera organises demonstrations, press conferences and
petitions and regularly posts information on the
Internet, which is also used for fundraising. Student
activists are in regular contact with exiled
independence leaders, and some also maintain close
links with the TPN/OPM.  The Papuan independence
movement only enjoyed strong civilian leadership
between 1999 and 2001. In the period of political
openness after Soeharto fell, a broad civil
society-based movement emerged but as it gathered
strength and confidence, its repeated open demands for
independence precipitated a nationalist backlash that
critically weakened it.

In July 1998 church leaders, intellectuals and NGOs
established the Forum for Reconciliation for the
People of Irian Jaya (FORERI), which became Jakarta's
dialogue partner in a series of meetings leading to a
"National Dialogue" between 100 Papuan leaders and
President Habibie in February 1999.  Two important
meetings took place in 2000, the Papuan Mass
Consultation (Musyawarah Besar Papua, Mubes) in
February, and the second Papua Congress (Kongres Papua
II) in May, with thousands of participants
representing all of Papua's districts, including some
members of the TPN/OPM and delegates from Papuan
communities abroad. The 200-strong Council established
at the Mubes deliberately distanced itself from the
OPM, however, to emphasise its commitment to peaceful
means.  The Council set up a 22-member executive body,
the Presidium (Presidium Dewan Papua, PDP), with Tom
Beanal and Theys Eluay as chairmen. Throughout 2000
and 2001, pro-independence leaders, including
Presidium members, were rounded up and arrested on
charges of rebellion and "spreading hatred". They were
all released within a few months but the Presidium
began to lose momentum as a result of the constant
harassment and intimidation of its leaders. The height
of the crackdown was the assassination of the
Presidium chairman, Theys Eluay, in November 2001.
This dealt a major blow to the Presidium but there
were also internal political and financial problems. 

The Presidium has not been functioning effectively
since 2001 but most of its key leaders are now active
in two other institutions: the Dewan Adat Papua
(Papuan Customary Council) and the Majelis Rakyat
Papua (Papuan People's Council, MRP). The Dewan Adat
is a grouping of tribal elders that was established in
mid-2002 ostensibly in preparation for a conference on
conflict resolution in the U.S. but its function has
in effect been to provide a new forum for Presidium
members to come together without the political stigma
of that body.  The Dewan Adat does not advocate
independence, focusing instead on Papuans' basic
rights and welfare. It has formally rejected Special
Autonomy, but this was essentially as a protest at the
central government's lack of sincerity in implementing
the law's key provisions. With no clear political
program, the Dewan Adat is not able to muster the
support the Presidium once enjoyed but it has
significant province-wide influence through its
district and village-level membership. There were
signs at its last annual meeting that it is beginning
to concentrate on substantive issues such as improving
education, oversight of the provincial budget, police
reform and HIV/AIDS.  The Presidium's other successor
is the MRP, the institution mandated under the Special
Autonomy law to protect and defend Papuan values,
culture and basic rights. Its Chairman, Agus Alua, is
the deputy secretary general of the Presidium, and
there are several other Presidium leaders among its 42
members. The MRP was elected in a reasonably
democratic way and is broadly representative of
Papua's ethnic and cultural diversity. It is in the
very difficult position, however, of needing to
maintain legitimacy with Papuans and credibility with
the central government at the same time. It has
struggled on both counts in its first nine months.  

C.  HOW STRONG IS INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT? 

Papuan exiles, many of them OPM members, have
established representational offices in Vanuatu, Papua
New Guinea, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK
and the U.S. All purport to be legitimate
representatives of the Papuan people but seem to spend
as much energy criticising each other as the
Indonesian government. Their common cause is to lobby
foreign governments and international organisations
for a review of the Act of Free Choice and a new act
of self-determination, causes that are regarded with
great suspicion within Indonesia. The governments of
Vanuatu, Nauru and Tuvalu have officially supported a
new act of self-determination since mid-2000. No other
national government, and no international
organisation, advocates self-determination for Papuans
but the campaign has some support in civil society in
all the countries where it has established a presence,
and several others as well.  In Australia, neither the
federal government nor the opposition Labor Party
supports a new act of self-determination, but two
smaller opposition parties, the Greens and Australian
Democrats, do. The arrival of the 43 asylum seekers in
January 2006 has given a huge boost to the advocacy
efforts of the Australian West Papua campaign, already
strong on campuses and in churches.

In Ireland support among students and parliamentarians
is strong and growing. It has been a focus of advocacy
efforts in recent years, with Benny Wenda, John
Rumbiak, John Ondawame and Viktor Kaisepo making
visits. In March 2004, 88 members of the Dáil
(parliament) signed a letter to Secretary General Kofi
Annan criticising the UN for overseeing a "sham"
plebiscite.  In the U.S., 37 members of the
Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter in March 2005
to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Kofi Annan
asking them to support West Papua's right to
self-determination. A clause with the same request was
tacked on to House Appropriations Bill 2601 by Eni
Faleomavaega, American Samoa's non-voting
representative in the U.S. House of Representatives,
in June 2005 but was removed before the bill was
passed.

There is also some support in the UK, particularly in
Oxford around Benny Wenda's Demmak office, and the
British Free West Papua Campaign. A small number of
parliamentarians led by the member for East Oxford,
Andrew Smith, established a twenty-member all-party
parliamentary group on Papua in July 2006.  While UN
officials have unofficially acknowledged the
shortcomings of the Act of Free Choice - in November
2001, Chakravarthy Narasimhan, the Under Secretary
General involved in overseeing the work of the UN
mission in Papua at the time of the Act, called it "a
whitewash" - there is little interest in reopening the
issue.  Papuan activists were disappointed in their
hopes for a big boost from the release in November
2005 of an in-depth report on the Act commissioned by
the Dutch parliament. The independent study by Dutch
academic Pieter Drooglever unsurprisingly concluded
that the Act of Free Choice was far from free but this
had no impact on government policy, which regards
Papua as an integral part of the Republic of
Indonesia.

Overall, then, while the campaign has succeeded in
building support in national parliaments and among
civil society groups, it has failed to change the
policy of any government, save for the three small
Pacific island nations noted above.

V.  WHAT ABOUT ALLEGATIONS OF GENOCIDE? 

Two reports widely circulated in pro-independence
circles have suggested, without stating decisively,
that Indonesia might have been responsible for
genocide in Papua. If those charges could be proven,
they would at the very least undermine Indonesia's
moral right to govern Papua and boost the argument for
independence. But neither report - "Indonesian Human
Rights Abuses in West Papua: Application of the Law of
Genocide to the History of Indonesian Control",
authored by a group of students at Yale Law School,
nor "Genocide in West Papua? The role of the
Indonesian state apparatus and a current needs
assessment of the Papuan people", by Sydney
University's John Wing and Peter King - makes a strong
case, and the Yale report is marred by many factual
errors. That said, few would deny that the Indonesian
military has been responsible for severe human rights
violations in the past. The questions are whether
those abuses ever amounted to genocide and whether a
case can be made for genocide today.  A.    

HAS GENOCIDE OCCURRED? 

Genocide is defined in the 1948 International
Convention as a pattern of acts "committed with intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial, or religious group as such". Both the above
reports cite campaigns by the Indonesian military in
the 1970s that killed thousands of Papuan civilians.
These operations could conceivably fit the definition
of a war crime or crime against humanity, but not
genocide. Neither of the reports provides any evidence
of intent on the part of the Indonesian government or
military to destroy the ethnic Papuan population as
such in whole or in part. Nor have there been killings
of civilians on anything like that scale since the
1980s.

Both reports cite dozens of cases of torture and
killing over a 40-year period, demonstrating a pattern
of serious human rights abuse, but, again, falling far
short of anything that could be considered genocide. 
The Yale report argues that the influx of non-Papuan
Indonesian migrants is diluting the ethnic Papuan
population - and lists the government's transmigration
program as part of "the act element of genocide".
There is no doubt that the transmigration program
dramatically altered the demographic balance in Papua.
Non-ethnic Papuans made up 35 per cent of the
population in 2000, but that year the government of
Abdurrahman Wahid officially ended transmigration to
Papua in response to these concerns. "Spontaneous"
migrants - those who come without government
sponsorship for trade or business - account for the
majority of migrants in urban centres, and make up
over half of the population in Jayapura, Timika,
Merauke, Sorong and Fak Fak. Spontaneous migrants
continue to arrive in relatively large numbers but
there is no government program to increase the number
of non-ethnic Papuans in the region. 

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