May 17, 2023

(Organisasi Papua Merdeka, Free Papua Movement, leader, Jeffrey Bomanak, calls for a proactive role from President Joe Biden in ending Indonesia’s unlawful military occupation and annexation of West Papua and America’s subsequent foreign policy failure in protecting six decades of crimes against humanity.

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To USA leader, President Joe Biden, from OPM leader, Jeffrey Bomanak

Dear President Biden:

I wish you and your partner, First Lady Dr Jill Biden, a warm welcome when you land on the island of New Guinea. Papua New Guinea is the eastern half; West Papua is the western half. One people – Melanesian. An island that has never been part of southeast Asia. An island that exists, in modern nation-state terms, as an anachronism of colonial conquest, both by past empires from the Middle Ages and from more recent times. This land of our ancestors, we used to call it our very own paradise before the Indonesian invasion and military occupation.

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The New York Agreement, written and sponsored by your government on August 15, 1962, without any inclusion or representation of a single West Papuan, paved the road for this slaughterhouse. My people call this agreement The Gateway to Hell.

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If somebody had told me our second world war allies, USA, Australia and New Zealand, would treat my people as collateral damage to foreign policies of Cold War geopolitical convenience with Indonesia, but also for economic exploitation to steal and plunder my country, and that these same nations would avert their gaze to the bloody rivers of hundreds of thousands of indigenous victims to Indonesia’s crimes against humanity, I would have found this impossible to believe. Unfortunately, this is the case – these democratic Christian governments, who we supported during the life-and-death cataclysm of the Second World War, abandoned both their duty to support international decolonization laws and their duty of care to stop Indonesia’s barbarism against indigenous West Papuans ‒ the rightful landowners of our ancestral lands.

Six decades of callous betrayal and abandonment – my people enslaved, imprisoned, assaulted, tortured, raped, murdered, massacred, poisoned, impoverished, starved, and forcefully relocated; villages bombed, even now as I address my concerns to you, and current victims, children, families ... every day of every week.

I want to make it very clear that while we were a part of the colonial empire of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for 500 hundred years, we were never abused and mistreated … we were never subjected to crimes against humanity. Under Indonesia’s colonial empire, as the illegitimate invader and military occupier, we have lived in a slaughterhouse with hundreds of thousands of victims – men, women, and children. The New York Agreement, written and sponsored by your government on August 15, 1962, without any inclusion or representation of a single West Papuan, paved the road for this slaughterhouse. My people call this agreement The Gateway to Hell.

Crimes Against Humanity

President Biden, with the deepest respect, I would like to introduce you to some of these crimes against humanity and some of our victims. I have restricted the prima facie photographic evidence to not visually include the worst of the worst, although, how this can be defined is a subjective detail beyond my assessment – they are all my suffering grandmothers and grandfathers, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. Every crime is personal. Every victim is family.

Mutilation and Dismemberment

Dismemberment is one of Indonesia’s defence and security forces specialties to instil terror and fear into village populations. This practice has been used from the beginning of the Indonesian military occupation and is still being used. I am amazed that any people who profess to worship any religious faith, as the people of Indonesia claim they do, can resort to such barbarity … continuously.

Furthermore, we can attach photos of unreasonable crimes against humanity along with our detailed statement in the PDF format below.

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See Also: Biden Cancels Part of Oceania Trip, West Papuans Still Seek Answers

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