The struggle for West Papuan independence has entered one of its most significant and most dangerous phases. As 2025 begins, Benny Wenda — now President of the ULMWP Provisional Government following his election at the first ULMWP Congress held on West Papuan soil in November 2023 — continues to lead the movement from Oxford while the situation on the ground deteriorates sharply under Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto.
Prabowo’s election in 2024 has been met with alarm by independence advocates. The former Kopassus special forces commander — whose military unit was responsible for the disappearance and torture of pro-democracy activists in 1998 — has wasted no time in signalling his intentions toward West Papua. He has announced the revival of the transmigration settlement policy, a programme that has already transformed the demographic landscape of West Papua, reducing indigenous Papuans to a minority in their own land. Alongside transmigration, his government has committed to the largest deforestation programme in human history, with five million hectares of ancestral Papuan forest earmarked for sugarcane and rice plantations in Merauke. The destruction is being carried out with military protection and corporate investment, with the UK government signing a critical minerals deal with Indonesia even as these programmes intensify.
In December 2024, the Permanent People’s Tribunal — an independent international body that has adjudicated on human rights crises since 1979 — found Indonesia guilty on all four counts brought before it relating to West Papua: ecocide, genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass displacement. The tribunal concluded that ecological destruction in West Papua cannot be separated from the systematic destruction of the Papuan people themselves, describing the situation as a slow genocide. The judgment adds to findings from independent studies at Yale and Sydney universities. Indonesia continues to deny the UN Human Rights Commissioner access to the territory, despite over 110 countries demanding a visit.
In Intan Jaya, military operations have continued to cause civilian casualties. In January 2025, a rogue Indonesian military unit — Yonif Raider 509 Balawara Yudha — was reported to have killed at least four civilians, including three minors. Across West Papua, over 100,000 people remain internally displaced as a result of ongoing military operations and bombing campaigns. The Wabu Block Gold Mine project — a development the size of Jakarta, protected by thousands of soldiers — continues to advance into the mountains of Intan Jaya, where gold deposits beneath the forest floor are deemed more valuable than the people living above them.
Wenda, who received the Freedom of the City of Oxford in recognition of his decades of advocacy, remains unequivocal. Dialogue with Indonesia is not the answer, he has stated, unless self-determination is on the table. West Papua is a colonised nation, not a province of Indonesia. The ULMWP’s roadmap remains unchanged: full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, a UN Human Rights Commissioner visit to West Papua, and an internationally supervised self-determination referendum. These are not radical demands. They are the minimum that international law requires.
For those unfamiliar with Benny Wenda’s story, The Road to Home — made by Dancing Turtle Films with exclusive access to Wenda over a sustained period — remains the most complete portrait of the man and the movement available on film. It traces his journey from his childhood in the Baliem Valley, through his arrest and escape from Indonesian custody, to his life in Oxford. It is a film about what it means to carry an entire people’s hope across decades of exile, and it sits alongside Forgotten Bird of Paradise — filmed covertly inside West Papua without the knowledge of the Indonesian authorities — as part of Dancing Turtle’s long commitment to documenting a story the world has consistently failed to pay attention to.
That commitment has not diminished. Neither has the urgency of what Wenda and the ULMWP are asking for — not special treatment, not charity, but the basic right to determine their own future. More than sixty years after Indonesia’s occupation began, that right remains denied.
