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Secessionist tendencies in Indonesia’s province of West Papua have recently been attracting a great deal of attention from experts and human rights activists.
The main reason for the international criticism of the Indonesian authorities is human rights violations and the suppression of the fundamental freedoms of the indigenous people of West Papua. In 2018, the United Nations even sent to Jakarta a report on this subject filed by its Special Rapporteurs.
In 2019, the UN once again voiced its concern about the Indonesian authorities’ violent crackdown on the Papuans . Jakarta, however, insists that security forces act strictly in line with the law.
The province of West Papua is rich in mineral resources and precious metals. Extensive mining activity, coupled with the implementation of the government’s transmigration program of relocating landless people from densely populated areas of the country to less populous ones, and the infrastructure modernization program, has socially marginalized the rural Papuan population.
Roads built in the virgin forests to serve industrial projects and the influx of migrants from the overpopulated Java Island are destroying the Papuans’ way of life and changing the traditional ethnic balance. In large cities, Papuans are a minority and their numbers are declining.
For the rest of this article: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/07/06/indonesia-papua-new-guinea-and-australia-amid-the-rising-tide-of-secessionism-in-the-region/