Fred Dove (Presenter): In the far corner of South East Asia the island of New Guinea is divided into West Papua and Papua New Guinea. While the latter is independent, West Papua, a former Dutch colony, has been officially part of Indonesia since the so-called Act of Free Choice referendum in 1969. That result is still heavily disputed and there's been a long-running indigenous campaign for more autonomy for West Papua.

It's been reported that over the past year the Indonesian government has been sending more troops to the area and that thousands of indigenous villagers who fled their homes are hiding in the mountainous and heavily forested interior.

Two years ago Benny Wenda, a leading member of the Free West Papua campaign, was granted asylum in Britain. While on trial he'd escaped and fled into exile. According to Benny Wenda, a few days ago in West Papua his cousin Petto was badly injured by soldiers.

Benny Wenda: Indonesian military from Bogolame – 12 people went to the village and two people they shot, but all the women and children ran into the bush. After the operation Petto was walking in the main road there and they stopped him. They found some card [on him] about West Papua and then they asked 'Why have you got this card?' So they took it from him and said 'Oh, you are a rebel.'

Dove: So you are saying that he is not a member of the Free West Papua campaign but that he carried something on him...

Wenda: Yes

Dove: ... and so the military suspected that he belonged to the campaign?

Wenda: Yes, a rebel or a separatist or something. They beat him up until he fell over and they started to cut his body with a knife and then put some chilli [in the wounds]. And after that they put kerosene onto his head and then they put matches to it.

Dove: So they tortured him and then set him alight.

Wenda: Yes.

Dove: So do you know in what condition he is now?

Wenda: They rang up just last night from Papua and they say his condition is critical, they told me.

Dove: It has also been reported that more than 6,000 people in West Papua have fled from their villages and they are hiding in the bush. Do you know anything more about that?

Wenda: Yes. This is the same tribe but a different district. It is the same thing, now going on for one and a half years. There are something like 3,300 people still in the jungle because Indonesia creates violations [incidents] by Indonesian military to [blame the] Papuan people so now people are scared because they burned villages and burned churches.

Dove: You grew up in that area. Do you remember when trouble started? How far back do you remember that it was difficult there?

Wenda: I knew that the root problem is the Act of Free Choice – they call it the Act of Free Choice.

Dove: The Act of Free Choice, which was in...?

Wenda: 1969, when the Dutch left. [It was] between America and the Dutch and Indonesia... America was interested in our resources. That was the first start ... that brought suffering to my people in West Papua.

Dove: As you said, your cousin Petto is currently in a critical condition. I gather that your parents were also victims of this conflict in the past?

Wenda: Yes, all my family has gone – you know, all my family disappeared in 1977 – Indonesia was bombing my village and the whole area in the Highlands and they bombed by plane, like jets and helicopters.

Dove: This was in the '70s.

Wenda: Yes, in 1977. And that was when the Baliem River became red. Baliem River is a big river but why [did] it became red? [It] was because of the blood.

Dove: When did you finally leave West Papua? When did you feel you had to leave?

Wenda: I left in 2002, because I was arrested by the Indonesian military in 2002 because they suspected that I mobilised people to an active campaign for political independence for West Papua. I went to court. In front of the judge I said 'Where is my witness? Who has witnessed my involvement?' [The judge said that] the witnesses went to Java or went on holiday or something. How come?

Dove: So you were in court and you were shown witness accounts but the witnesses weren't there?

Wenda: No, only statements – they read them to me in front of my eyes. So that is why I made the decision – I had to escape. And then I escaped from the prison. I flew to Heathrow Airport and then it is amazing because at the time I didn't know how to speak English. They nearly wanted to send me back to Papua New Guinea or Indonesia. Then I just heard some other person say 'asylum' and then I picked up this word and I said 'asylum'...

Dove: So you learnt the word asylum just in time?

Wenda: Yes, and I feel like this helped me, saved me.

Dove (to close the interview): Benny Wenda of the Free West Papua Campaign.

With the exact legal status of West Papua unclear and with news of what's happening there hard to come by I've been talking to the BBC's Indonesia correspondent, Rachel Harvey.

Rachel Harvey: What we understand is that for at least the past few months, possibly the best part of a year, the Indonesian security forces have upped their military operation, particularly in an area called the Central Highlands. Now the security forces say that they are doing that because they are operating against a separatist movement called the Free Papua Movement. It is not a big separatist movement. It's been fighting a low-level, pretty ill-armed struggle over the last three decades or so, but the Indonesian security forces say they have been given the green light to go in there and try and sort out, as they would put it, 'pockets of resistance'.

Now we have heard very disturbing reports about abuses, about villagers that have been forced to flee into the Highlands to escape the brutality that they say is being inflicted upon them. But no-one can get in there to verify this independently because the government simply isn't letting anybody in. I have applied to go to Papua twice myself, in fact not even to that area but to a completely different part of the province, and I have been turned down.

Dove: What kind of area is this? You talk about the Central Highlands – this is pretty inaccessible terrain, isn't it?

Harvey: It's very remote, it's very high and it's very poorly developed. There are parts of Papua – and it's a vast province – that there is fairly decent infrastructure but it tends to be around the major towns and where there are big industrial complexes, mines, for instance. This area, though, the Central Highlands, is bang in the middle and very little has been done to develop that area so it is very difficult to get to.

Dove: How strategically or economically important is West Papua?

Harvey: It is a very, very resource rich province, yes. It has pretty much everything. It's got minerals, it's got oil and gas – there's a big BP project that's being developed there to produce liquid natural gas. It's got jungles so there's obviously natural wood. There's an awful lot that both has been and continues to be exploited and local Papuans would say that they have not benefited from those economic resources.

Dove: There was a referendum in 1969. The result of that is still very much in dispute. What is the actual legal status now of West Papua?

Harvey: Very, very confused. There was, as you say, what was called the Act of Free Choice in 1969 but only about a thousand of local tribal leaders were picked to represent the views of the people, but the population of Papua at the time was 800,000, so that's less than 1%. It went the way of Indonesia – it was a unanimous decision to stay as part of the sovereign state of Indonesia, but it's been disputed ever since, hence the development of the separatist movement. Most recently, in the last two governments, President Megawati, who preceded the current president, came up with the plan of dividing the province into three. But that was disputed because they said it ran counter to an earlier government decree which was offering special autonomy. But in the process of it being deemed unconstitutional, one of those provinces had already been established. So what we have now is two provinces in Papua, but those are disputed, a Special Autonomy Bill, which hasn't been implemented and all sides saying 'How are we going to administer this? Who is in charge of what?'