A lasting solution to West Papua-Indonesian conflict

By Herman Wainggai and the ‘West Papuan Human Rights Center’

Introduction

It has been 54 years since the election of 1969, which gave Indonesia legal cover to occupy
West Papua in spite of the fact that 99.9% of the indigenous people did not vote in support of
the occupation of their lands and the removal of their resources and wealth.1 An absolute
majority were denied their rights to vote, and then rejected the outcome of the election
intentionally misnamed the ‘Act of Free Choice’. We submit this document to solicit a public
dialogue about the issues that we are facing in our homeland of West Papua – our right to
self-determination, and the Indonesian controversial claim of unmitigated “sovereign
authority” over our people and homeland. Our arguments are based on historical facts, and
what we believe were fabrications created to prevent our people from bringing these issues to
the international community and, in particular, to the United Nations (UN), and the
International Criminal Court. 2 Since the United States Government (USG) was the broker of
many agreements pertaining to our relationship with Indonesia,3 it is our hope that
Washington will resume its role in mediating our negotiation with the Indonesian government
in order to correct the errors of the past and grant us our right to self-determination. We frame
this document as the “Washington Solution” as an appeal to the USA to revisit the issues
facing the West Papuans, and the Indonesian government. It will be important for the USA
to help put in place a final resolution to this five-decade long dispute, which has taken the
lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Download the ‘Washington Solution’ in PDF format.