President Wenda: Indonesia lying about plane attack in Boven Digoel

February 19, 2026

The Indonesian government is tricking the world about its practices in West Papua.

The Cessna plane the TPNPB fired upon in Boven Digoel was not a civilian plane, as the police spokesman misleadingly stated, but part of a security operation. Indonesia is again disguising their military activity as civil activity. They are also willfully breaching the no-fly zones established by the TPNPB. The occupied conflict areas in which the TNI are not permitted to fly have been very clearly marked out by the TPNPB. This is the same pattern Indonesia used in 1977, when Indonesia used a disguised civilian plane to bomb villages across the highlands and massacre thousands, including many members of my own family.

There is a clear strategy behind this: Indonesia wants to avoid the attention that would be drawn by a large scale military buildup, so they mask their introduction weapons and other military equipment and personnel. They are effectively using their own people as human shields.

The TPNPB attacks took place on the 11th of February, with the plane being downed and the pilot and co-pilot being killed. A second attack took place in Mimika, near the Grasberg gold and copper mine, which has been the cause of so much West Papuan death and over the past forty years.

Indonesia then immediately began operating their propaganda machine, claiming that the planes were simply engaged in civilian and medical supply distribution. The truth is that these aircraft were involved in intelligence and security operations. Indonesia is only able to spread these lies and mislead the international community because of their six-decades long media blackout in West Papua. No journalists or NGOs are allowed to operate in our land. West Papua is a closed society, just like North Korea. I thank God we have civilian journalists to document their lies.

By breaching these rules the military are inviting further attacks. We must always remember that the Indonesian military uses any armed action by West Papuans for their own gain, as a pretext for more militarisation, more displacement, and more deforestation and ecocide. Their aim is always to escalate the situation as a way of ethnically cleansing Papuans, forcing them to become refugees in their own land, and strengthening their colonial hold over West Papua.

It is not a coincidence that in the week since this incident we have seen an escalation in Yahukimo, as Indonesia occupied a community health centre and transformed it into a military post, displacing and traumatising local residents. Using hospitals and other health infrastructure for military means is a clear breach of international humanitarian law. 

But in West Papua such behaviour is normal for the military. In the same week in Puncak Regency, Indonesian military personnel seized a school, preventing students from learning and putting ordinary people at risk of harm. Soldiers are posted in classrooms with guns 

ON behalf of the ULMWP, I call on the Indonesian government to withdraw their troops from occupied West Papua, allow civilians to return home, cease using civilian vehicles as a cover for military action, and immediately facilitate a UN Human Rights visit to West Papua, as has been demanded by over 110 UN Member states. Ultimately, Indonesia must come to the table to discuss a referendum. This is the only path to a peaceful solution in West Papua.

Benny Wenda
President
ULMWP