For this episode, Kate spoke with Umar Werfete. Umar is a lecturer and a head of research at the State Islamic University of Jayapura in Papua, Indonesia. He also researches religious issues in Papua in his position within the Division for Research and Development, Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI) Papua and is responsible for peace...

Examines the aims, capacity, leadership and activities of both the armed units of the Free Papua Organisation (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM) and the various political groupings supporting independence in Papua and abroad. Executive summary Indonesia’s approach to the independence movement in Papua has been to try to crush it, repress it, persuade it, co-opt it...

Overview: There are probably no other people on earth to whom the image of the ‘stone-age’ is so persistently attached than the inhabitants of the island of New Guinea, which is divided into independent Papua New Guinea and the western part of the island, known today as Papua and West Papua. From ‘Stone-Age’ to ‘Real-Time’...

Introduction The new government of Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) could make a major contribution to better governance in Papua province by making an extra effort to actually count how many people live there and then to insist that all elections there be based on the one person, one vote system that applies in the...