West Papua and Indonesia Since Suharto: Independence, Autonomy or Chaos?

Description

The book is based on the author's extensive field research. It places the Papuan struggle in a context of failing reform within Indonesia and a politically reviving military: the feared and loathed TNI. More than ever, Indonesia needs West Papua's resource treasures - the giant Freeport copper mine, and BP's huge new natural gas field in Bintuni Bay - and the Indonesian army is ruthlessly 'defending' and exploiting these projects. However, the Papuans are equally determined to win independence. King argues passionately and persuasively that international intervention to resolve Papua's plight is essential: Australia, the US and other countries must act in concert through the UN once more, as they did in East Timor. Indonesians must be persuaded that their best interests lie not in a 'security approach' but in dialogue and negotiation with the Papuans and other disenchanted minorities.

Peter King is convener of the West Papua Project within University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS), of which he was the Foundation President in the late 1980s. In preparing this book, he travelled extensively throughout West Papua and Indonesia. King has held professorial appointments at the University of Papua New Guinea, the University of Wollongong and in Japan at the University of Tokyo and Kagoshima University. He has had a longstanding interest in the politics of ethnic conflict and its resolution, and his previous books include Australia's Vietnam, Ethnicity and Conflict in a Post Communist World and Pangu Returns to Power.