Refugee Issue
WEST PAPUA: new on-line FILM: Forgotten in the Mountains: Displacement in the Highlands of Papua (Simon James, University of Oxford)
By Simon James
Apr 3, 2008, 15:02

Forgotten in the Mountains:
Displacement in the Highlands of Papua

A new on-line film by Simon James, University of Oxford
Introduction by Professor Peter King, University of Sydney
Filmed in West Papua, August 2007

www.forcedmigration.org/video/forgotten-in-the-mountains

Please forward this link as widely as possible and add a link to this page on your website.

Richard Samuelson
Free West Papua Campaign, Oxford, UK.
www.freewestpapua.org
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FMO: Forced Migration Online
A world of information on human displacement
Forgotten in the Mountains: Displacement in the Highlands of Papua
http://www.forcedmigration.org/video/forgotten-in-the-mountains/



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Running time: 30 minutes

Introduction:
Migration and Misery in West Papua


Professor Peter King, West Papua Project, University of Sydney

Papuan fears for their future have recently become focused on the issue of migration from the rest of Indonesia into their homeland.

Following the failure of special autonomy since 2001 to deliver health, education and infrastructure benefits to Papuan villagers, or even a small measure of indigenous autonomy in key security and political matters, Papuans have come to feel that divide and rule sums up Jakarta’s approach across the board.

Jakarta has been busily creating unwanted new regencies and provinces in Papua as well as pouring booming mineral revenues into the region. But this has merely succeeded in creating a few new elite Papuan beneficiaries of Indonesia’s endemic corruption and setting Papuans against Papuans for control of this corruption.

More seriously it has been the pretext and occasion for bringing even more potential settlers—both bureaucrats and soldiers--into Papua as new military commands as well as bureaucracies proliferate.

The new demographic balance in Papua pits a large minority of settlers—both “old”, officially sponsored transmigrasi ones and ongoing “spontaneous” ones (mostly traders and small bisnis people from eastern Indonesia)—against an almost dwindling Papuan one, beset by discriminatory birth control policies, an unchecked HIV-AIDS pandemic and 45 years of repression and displacement.

Recent research Dr Jim Elmslie, West Papua Project, University of Sydney, indicates that ‘by 2011 out of a total population of 3.7 million, Papuans would be a minority of 47.5% at 1.7 million and non-Papuans a majority at 1.98 million, or 53.5%.’

Professor Peter King

West Papua Project, University of Sydney

Credits
Producer / Director
Simon James
Interviews
Dr Chris Ballard, Australian National University
Francesca Lawe-Davies, International Crisis Group (Jakarta)
Charmain Mohamed, Human Rights Watch (London)
Frederika Korain, Office of Justice and Peace (SKP), Jayapura
Filmed: 2007

Further Web Resources
For more, search in the Web Catalogue

Human Rights Watch
International Crisis Group
Papua Web
West Papua Project
West Papua and Indonesia after Suharto, Peter King, University of New South Wales Press (2004)
The United Nations and the Indonesian take over of West Papua 1962 – 1969, Dr John Saltford, Routledge
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