Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | West Papua, Indonesia (Irian Jaya)

New Guinea, the largest tropical island in the world, is divided roughly in half. To the east is Papua New Guinea (PNG), independent since 1975. To the west is Papua (163,000 square miles), which comprises approximately one-fourth of the total area of the Indonesian archipelago. Papua is often called West Papua (WP) to distinguish it from PNG. The two halves of the island are divided along a 500-mile north–south colonial boundary that, in places, runs directly through the middle of villages. Until 1962, WP was a colonial possession of the Dutch.

In 1961 WP was on the verge of independence, although both Indonesia and the Netherlands made claims of sovereignty to the territory. Cold war tensions had been injected into the WP sovereignty dispute and, in addition, between the Dutch colonial power and the oil companies in WP; rivalry over WP's rich oil and gold deposits further added to the complexity of the situation. UN...