The ULMWP urges world leaders to renew the outstanding demand for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, in the wake of the Dogiyai massacre of six West Papuans, including two minors, by the Indonesian police.
Since 2019, 111 UN member states – a clear majority of the UN General Assembly – have demanded a visit to West Papua by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The first of these demands was made in August 2019 by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), who labelled West Papua ‘the festering human rights sore’ of the Pacific region. Despite this pressure, Indonesia has consistently and deliberately blocked UN access to West Papua.
More than six years have passed since the initial state-level demand for a UN visit was made. To underscore the urgency of a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit, the ULMWP has provided a breakdown of how the human rights situation in West Papua has deteriorated since 2019.
- At least 107,039 West Papuans are currently displaced by Indonesian military operations – perhaps one in fifteen West Papuans has been a refugee since 2019;
- More than 20,000 West Papuans were displaced in 2025 alone;
- A minimum of 1110 West Papuans have died as a result of internal displacement, from disease, malnutrition, or as a result of inadequate medical facilities;
- Only localised or temporary returns home have been documented, such as 353 returnees in Maybrat in 2022;
- Some IDPs have been displaced more than once, such as 900+ in Intan Jaya who were forced to leave their homes a second time in mid-2025;
- Indonesia has at times bombed makeshift refugee camps in West Papua, including in Puncak in February 2026.
- It is impossible to verify the true number of West Papuans killed by Indonesian security forces, due to Indonesia’s strict media and NGO reporting ban, and routine misinformation spread by the Indonesian state in the wake of killings;
- However, it is likely that at least 653 West Papuans have been killed since December 2018 (the numbers below are minimum estimates);
- 2019: 278
- 2020-2021: 93
- 2022: 33
- 2023: 81
- 2024: 40
- 2025-2026: 128 so far
- Mass killings are common and accountability is effectively non-existent. Emblematic mass killings during this period include:
- Fifteen civilians massacred in Soanggama village, Intan Jaya, in October 2025;
- Up to fifteen civilians executed during a military raid in Intan Jaya in May 2025;
- ‘Bloody Wamena’: Ten Papuans murdered by security forces (pictured above) in Wamena in February 2023;
- Ten Papuan civilians massacred in Yahukimo and Fakfak in September 2023;
- Fifteen killed in Kiwirok in 2021.
Militarisation:
- As of December 2025, at least 83,177 security forces were stationed in West Papua, roughly one for every twenty-two Indigenous Papuans;
- This figure includes 56,517 soldiers and 26,660 police, but does not include forces temporarily deployed to West Papua from other regions of Indonesia, so the real number is likely to be higher;
- At least 40,000 additional troops have been deployed to West Papua since 2019;
- Hundreds of military posts have been established in West Papua during this time; while no hard figure is available for the entire territory, we know that 31 checkpoints were established between July and September 2025 in Intan Jaya alone;
- Indonesia is using a range of technologically advanced weaponry on West Papuans, including Brazilian‑made EMB‑314 Super Tucano fighter jets, Chinese blowfish drones, and UK-made sniper rifles.
Environmental destruction:
- Ecocide in occupied West Papua has increased dramatically since 2019, as Indonesia seeks to use West Papua to secure its future food and energy security;
- Indonesia launched the largest deforestation project in human history in West Papua in 2024 – a 3-million-hectare rice and sugarcane food estate in Merauke (pictured above), since expanded to the entire South Papua Province;
- The Merauke food estate – covering an area the size of Wales – is set to release an additional 780 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, more than doubling Indonesia’s existing emissions;
- Wabu Block, a 1.8-million-hectare gold mine in Intan Jaya, has been under construction since 2021, and continues to displace communities and militarise the Papuan highlands;
- In 2024, BP completed an expansion of its Tangguh gas field in West Papua, which will now supply 35% of Indonesia’s entire gas supply.
Secrecy is the key weapon Indonesia uses to maintain its genocidal and ecocidal rule over West Papua. By keeping its occupation hidden from the world, Indonesia is able to get away with its crimes with near total impunity, while continuing to expropriate West Papua’s huge mineral wealth. Only international intervention, beginning with a UN Human Rights visit, can stop this suffering. Indonesia must face serious diplomatic consequences until the UN High Commissioner access to West Papua is finally allowed to visit West Papua.
Members of the occupying Indonesian police went on a murderous rampage in the West Papuan village of Moanemani, located in Dogiyai Regency at around 10 am on 31 March 2026, which involved officers firing randomly into a local marketplace, prior to the police assault shifting to neighbouring Ikebo village, where officers started indiscriminately shooting upon Papuan houses.
The number of people injured is unknown, however, five West Papuans were shot dead. The Indonesian police commenced applying collective punishment to the villagers of Moanemani and Ikebo, after the body of a murdered police officer, who was an Indigenous West Papuan, was found in front of Ebenezer Church in Moanemani. And no one is sure who killed the officer.
This callous attack on villagers comes at a time when Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto has been cracking down on West Papuans within their own Melanesian homelands, particularly in the regencies of Yahukimo, Intan Jaya, Paniai, Maybrat, and now Dogiyai. This marks an escalation of attacks on villages that commenced in Nduga regency in 2018, under the former Jokowi government.
Indonesia commenced administering West Papua in 1963, following the former Netherlands colonisers exiting and the UN brokering a deal, which was to permit the West Papuans to hold a referendum on independence. But in seeking to maintain control of the resource rich region, Indonesia held a 1969 vote where 1,026 Papuans voted to remain with Jakarta at gun point.
The recent random shootings on the part of Indonesian police reveals the circumstances that West Papuans have lived under since the 1960s, and the escalation in violence against the locals is in keeping with a Prabowo presidency, as the former Suharto-era army general earnt himself a reputation for perpetrating war crimes against the East Timorese and West Papuans.
Escalating occupier aggression
Footage of the recent incident supplied by the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), shows armed and heavily uniformed Indonesian police emerging from a police van and chasing unarmed West Papuan civilians deeper into a residential area, shots can be heard and buildings can be seen ablaze in the distance.
Those gunned down and killed, included 19-year-old Siprianus Tibakoto, 20-year-old Yosep You, 60-year-old Ester Pigai, who suffered from paralysis, along with 14-year-old Martinus Yobee and 19-year-old Angkian Edowai. And on 1 April, 14-year-old Maikel Waine and 11-year-old Maikel Pekei continued to be in a critical condition, after being shot by Indonesian police.
“Indonesia’s actions in Dogiyai are both a crime against humanity – a grave act of colonial violence – and a breach of international law,” insisted West Papuan provisional government president Benny Wenda. “Shooting indiscriminately into homes and a public market is a form of collective punishment, while the intentional killing of civilians is a war crime.”
This latest incident comes after Jakarta had been dropping bombs upon a makeshift refugee camp in Puncak’s Kembru District, causing West Papuans, who were already displaced to have to relocate once more. And there are currently 105,000 West Papuan villagers displaced in the highlands, due to the ongoing attacks on these unarmed people living in the planet’s third largest rainforest.
“What the carnage in Dogiyai demonstrates is that Indonesia views all West Papuans as legitimate targets,” Wenda further set out. “Elders, women, and children: no one is safe from the murderous vengeance of the Indonesian security state. The massacre triggered a wave of internal displacement, as terrified civilians fled into the mountains and surrounding villages.”
EU priorities profit over rights
A key issue for West Papua achieving its independence is due to the reluctance of other nations to raise the issue of the occupied Melanesian peoples, so as to not rock the boat with Jakarta. And Wenda recently pointed to the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) analysis of the September 2025 established EU–Indonesia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) as an example.
IPWP considers that in signing off on the FTA, the European Union has effectively approved the ongoing environmental destruction and rights abuses caused by Indonesia in the Melanesian region. The West Papuan environment and its people’s rights were not considered during negotiations, yet a fair amount of LNG, palm oil and metals are sourced from West Papua by EU nations.
Prabowo first paid a visit to West Papau after becoming president in November 2024, with a key part of his tour being a visit to Merauke district, which is the site of the world’s largest deforestation project, with the clearing of an eventual 2 million hectares set to take place in order to facilitate giant sugarcane plantations.
In its assessment of the EU-Indonesia FTA, IPWP pointed out that the sustainability impact assessment of the free trade agreement with Indonesia made no mention of West Papua whatsoever, and this is while unprecedented deforestation and environmental destruction are being perpetrated in the Melanesian region.
The IPWP further charged the EU with failing to take the plight of the West Papuan people into any consideration when finalising the trade agreement. The parliamentarians pointed to the fraudulent 1969 UN-brokered referendum, which saw a little over 1,000 Papuans vote to stay with Indonesia, and they wondered why this was not an issue for European negotiators.
United in denial of self-determination
Wenda questioned in February, why, despite the fact that Indonesia has been carrying out attacks on unarmed West Papuan villages for coming on eight years now, Indonesia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro, was appointed to the position of president of the UN Human Rights Council in January.
The UN was further presented with a copy of the West Papuan People’s Petition back in 2019. This is a document that calls upon the UN to facilitate a new and legitimate vote on self-determination. The petition has been signed by 1.8 million West Papuans, or 70 percent of that Indigenous population. And yet, there has been no movement on this issue ever since.
“I reiterate our demand for Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua,” said Wenda, who has been exiled from his homeland for decades. “Over 110 countries – a clear majority of the UN member states – have now demanded this visit, but Indonesia continues to refuse.”
“Dogiyai is not an isolated incident: every day brings a new atrocity,” the president of the West Papuan provisional government in waiting made clear in ending.
PAUL GREGOIRE
Paul Gregoire is a Sydney-based journalist and writer. He's the winner of the 2021 NSW Council for Civil Liberties Award For Excellence In Civil Liberties Journalism. Prior to Sydney Criminal Lawyers®, Paul wrote for VICE and was the news editor at Sydney’s City Hub.
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