A new report about British involvement in occupied West Papua was tabled on Tuesday in the UK parliament.
West Papua activists say the report, 'Bringing it All Back Home: the role of British companies in the destruction of West Papua', exposes the impact foreign corporations and investors continue to have facilitating Indonesian authorities in displacing millions of Indigenous Papuan peoples.
The report comes days after massive protests – outside of the West Papua region – erupted in Indonesia over alleged government corruption, economic hardship, and police brutality.
"I call on all of my people to get ready for another escalation back home," Benny Wenda, West Papua separatist leader and chairman of the United Liberation Movement, said from exile in the UK.
"West Papua is ready to depart from this dying empire."
The advocates that include academics, lawyers and British MPs, including one-time Labour leader, now independent alliance MP Jeremy Corbyn, exposed the role of British multinational corporations profiting from environmental destruction and human rights abuses in the West Papua territory.
Key findings from the report include the heavy British investment across deforestation, mining, oil and gas resources, and arms exportation for the Indonesian military in West Papua.
"I would like to see us move to a position where West Papua is discussed in the same way as we talk about West Bank and Gaza (Palestine)," International Lawyers for West Papua barrister Jen Robinson said.
"This is unlawfully occupied territory that there should be a massive reputational risk for British companies engaging in any kind of economic activity that benefits from Indonesia's unlawful occupation.
"It is extracting wealth in a way that's unlawful under international law and that should inform all of our advocacy here in the UK and in pursuing campaigns about where we invest our funds."
Major British corporations that include banking services providers, HSBC and Barclays, as well as investment and wealth management services company, Rathbones, hold shares in Freeport-McMoRan, a US company that operates in the Grasberg reserve, the world's largest gold mine.
The operation dumps an estimated 300,000 tonnes of untreated waste into rivers of the Indonesian-occupied province of Papua every day.
Many Papuan villagers often rely on the same river ecosystems for their own water supply.
The investors that benefit from the operation of Freeport-McMoRan, a Fortune 500 company, once paid an "effective federal tax rate of per cent or less", according to a media report from MNBC, as a result of of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that US president Donald Trump implemented in his first term.
Shareholders that includes HSBC, British multinational insurance company, Prudential, and financial and asset management company, Legal & General, were found to be directly linked to palm oil providers driving the world's largest ongoing deforestation project in the province of South Papua.
British Petroleum's (BP) Tangguh liquefied natural gas facility has also displaced a vast number of villages in the province of West Papua, damaging mangrove forests while generating up to 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon emissions.
"We need the forest to be protected for all of us – we actually need to be decarbonising for all of us," author of the report, Professor David Whyte said.
"So, we worked out, I mean, you can do this calculation just by looking at how much carbon will be produced over the long term, but we worked out that between 2015 and 2030 the net reduction of all European emissions will be wiped out by the Tangguh facility.
"That's the extent to which carbon has been produced through this.
"I think that's the key point for us: we need to see West Papua not as something that is over there and not just something which is coming back to London in this way, but something which affects the lives of every single one of us."
Britain has also reported to be supplying arms and training to Indonesia, supporting military operations that suppresses dissent throughout the voiceless West Papuan territory.
The motion of the report coincides with "civil society" advocates in West Papua calling on Pacific Islands Forum leaders in the Solomon Islands this week to address issues around Indonesia's ongoing human rights abuses.
An open letter that has been sent out to every Pacific delegation attending the forum, asking for a new approach to diplomatically handle the annexation of ancestral Papuan lands.
"It is timely to recall that for nearly two decades, Pacific communiqués have raised concerns for West Papua," a spokesperson for civil society organisations said.
"With the 2025 Pacific Islands Forum leaders' meeting on now, West Papuan and Pacific civil society organisations are now urging our leaders and Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific agencies to turn words into action."
The letter has highlighted escalating humanitarian and human-rights crisis, marked by widespread intimidation, service disruptions, and the displacement that exceeds 100,000 West Papuans.
The civil society organisations – that include the Pacific Conference of Churches, the Pacific Network on Globalisation, Papuan faith groups and media organisations – stressed this was not a distant issue, but a Pacific "responsibility".
Key recommendations in the letter to Pacific heads of state, including to the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, are independent scrutiny of West Papua, demands of a needs-based humanitarian response, and mediation under International Humanitarian Law.
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