Interim President: Indonesia bombing operations killing innocents in Puncak
May 7, 2025
Indonesia has committed a brutal bombing attack against a West Papuan village in Puncak Regency, killing at least one child and severely injuring others.
Deris Kogoya, only 18 years old, was executed by a rocket attack from a helicopter while riding his motorbike near Kelanungin Village. His friend Jemi Waker sustained severe violent injuries, including to both his legs. He is being treated in his village as he cannot go to hospital, due to fears he will be killed in further reprisal attacks. Both Kogoya and Waker are innocent young men – not TPNPB fighters, as Indonesia inevitably have claimed. This is what they said about Enius Tabuni, Tonda Wanimbo, Dominus Enumbi, and Pemerintah Murib. It is the same lie they tell over and over again to justify their murder of civilians.
This brutal attack reminds me of my childhood: the genocidal military operations in 1977-78, when Indonesian soldiers bombed, tortured and raped their way across the central highlands. Over 11,000 West Papuans were murdered then, including many members of my own family. I was forced to live in the bush for five years while soldiers occupied my village. When I see the image of Deris Kogoya’s mutilated body, it brings me back to those terrible years.
It is very clear that indiscriminate bombing, rocket, and drone attacks of this kind are increasing in both frequency and brutality under Prabowo’s Presidency. At the end of March, Indonesia launched numerous military operations in Intan Jaya, using fighter jets to drop bombs and fire rockets on defenceless villages. Indonesia’s war criminal President is reviving the authoritarian tactics of the Suharto dictatorship, from sending his cabinet to military boot camps, to re-establishing the ‘dual function’ that gives the military civilian functions.
Where is the attention of the media and the international community? How many children must be killed before they notice we are dying? We know that war has come to Europe in Ukraine, and that the world is also focused on the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. But West Papua has been under siege for six decades. Indonesia has banned the media for the entire period of occupation, in order to prevent journalists from telling the world what is really going on.
West Papuans are a forgotten, voiceless people suffering a hidden genocide. So I say this very clearly to the world: if states do not support our peaceful, diplomatic struggle for self-determination, we will be wiped out as a people. This is what all academic projections of Indonesia’s transmigration settlement programme and ethnic cleansing project predict: the end of West Papua as a distinct Melanesian nation.
On behalf of the ULMWP, the rightful representative of the West Papuan people, I issue the following demands of the Indonesian government: 1. Allow all journalists, foreign and domestic, media to report freely from West Papua 2) immediately allow the visit to West Papua by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, demanded by over 110 UN member states 3) withdraw your military from West Papua and allow the IDPs to return home.
Benny Wenda
Interim President
ULMWP
Injuries sustained by Mr Waker