July 1, 1971 was not West Papua Independence Day

West Papua Independence Day

Why a small group of West Papua separatist can not accept the reality in Papua and West Papua provinces? For example, Jeffrey Bomanak last night gave political speech with a simple grumbling about West Papua independence, which was never exist. So Mr. Bomanak accompanied by Lewis Prai Wellip were only campaigning empty thing. This campaign is incorrect and even manipulative.

Groups that want to break away and separate from Indonesia keep maintaining this “fake history” for their interest and massively sell their false and wrong history. What really happened on July 1, 1971 was Jacob Prai and Seth Rumkorem of the West Papua Army unilaterally proclaimed West Papua independence without recognition from even a single sovereign country in the world. Later, both Prai and Rumkorem left the region behind to stay happily in Sweden.

The celebration of of raising a cultural territorial flag (landsvlag) since 1 December 1961 was a scheme by the Dutch colonial government. It was raised together with the Dutch flag as if the Netherland prepared West Papua independence.

Based on the principle of International Law, Uti Possidetis Juris, West Papua should have been with Indonesia earlier, when the Indonesian founding fathers proclaimed the independence of Indonesia in 1945. This principle is used to determine the newly born state territory borders, state that just gains independence, that the territory of the state will inherit all the colonized area from the imperialist. In Indonesian context, automatically the territory of Indonesia should cover up all the territory occupied and colonized by Dutch East Indies, including West Papua, when Soekarno and Hatta proclaimed Indonesian Independence on August 17, 1945.

Unfortunately, the Dutch Authority, not willing to lose all of its occupied territory, didn’t agree to hand over every area to Indonesia, and created maneuvers to hold on one part of Indonesia, namely West Papua. One of maneuvers taken by Dutch Authority was to form New Guinea Council and inaugurated it on December 1, 1961 with the raising of Morning Star Flag. However, it didn’t mean that the Dutch Government has granted independence to West Papuan people, and indeed it didn’t mean that West Papua automatically became an independent entity of state.