Justito Adiprasetio – As the world commemorates International Indigenous Peoples Day on 9 August and Indonesia prepares to celebrate its Independence Day on 17 August, a painful paradox emerges. Although the nation is proud of its liberation from colonial rule, it continues to reproduce colonial modes of domination within its own borders.
This contradiction is most obvious in the treatment of Indonesia's indigenous communities in West Papua. But the repression of indigenous Papuans through militarisation, land dispossession and marginalisation is no longer an exception. Rather, these strategies have become a model for governing other indigenous territories in Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Sulawesi, among others.
This reflects the dynamics of what Aime Cesaire termed the 'imperial boomerang', the return of colonial violence into the domestic sphere, where it is repurposed by postcolonial regimes to discipline their own citizens.
In Indonesia, the boomerang did not travel far. It quickly returned on itself, shaping how the largest Southeast Asian nation governs its most vulnerable populations.
Colonial legacies in a postcolonial state
Indonesia's independence was declared in 1945 and recognised by the Dutch in 1949, marking the formal end of Dutch rule but not the dismantling of the colonial state. Instead, the new republic inherited the territorial expanse, administrative infrastructure, and extractive logic of the Netherlands East Indies.
While the rhetoric of nationalism animated the early decades of independence, much of the colonial governing logic and many colonial institutions remained intact. This was particularly evident in matters of internal security, economic centralisation, and the regulation of cultural difference. These continuities are starkly visible in Indonesia's approach to West Papua.
Following its contested integration into Indonesia in the 1960s, West Papua has endured decades of militarisation, surveillance, and extractive development. Despite the immense wealth generated by Freeport McMoRan's Grasberg mine, one of the largest gold and copper operations in the world, indigenous Papuans have remained economically and politically marginalised. Widespread human rights abuses, suppression of cultural identity, and restrictions on civil liberties have reinforced a system of internal colonial rule, sustained by the deployment of state violence and the ideology of national unity.
Developmentalism and violence
Under Soeharto's New Order regime (1966 to 1998), state-building in Papua was framed through the lens of modernisation theory. This theory posited that economic growth, particularly through foreign investment, would naturally yield social and political development. This developmentalist paradigm served as both the foundation for the use of coercive force to facilitate extractive expansion and large-scale infrastructural transformation, and a justification for it.
Post-Soeharto, large-scale projects such as the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), launched in 2010, still exemplify this logic. Marketed as a national food security initiative, this project sought to convert 1.2 million hectares of Papuan land into agro-industrial estates producing rice, sugarcane, and corn. The program proceeded with minimal regard for indigenous land rights, leading to mass deforestation, ecological degradation, and cultural displacement. More recent expansions of food estate programs in Merauke, Mappi and Boven Digoel are projected to emit vast quantities of greenhouse gases, further linking indigenous dispossession to global environmental harm.
While couched in the language of national development, these projects have entrenched inequality and deepened alienation among Papuans. Development has not brought integration. Instead, it has intensified colonial-style hierarchies of power and access.
The 'imperial boomerang' returns across Indonesia
The strategies pioneered in West Papua, including militarisation, forced displacement, and suppression of dissent, have since been generalised across the archipelago. The boomerang effect is visible in the replication of Papua-style governance in Kalimantan, Sumatra, Sulawesi and other regions where indigenous land intersects with national strategic projects.
The fall of Soeharto in 1998 and the onset of Reformasi generated hope for a democratic reconfiguration of center – periphery relations. Special autonomy laws, such as Law No. 21 of 2001 on Papua, were introduced with the aim of empowering Indigenous communities.
But these legal frameworks have often proven hollow. In many cases, decentralisation enabled local elites to facilitate land grabs, bypass indigenous consent, and fast-track resource concessions to private investors. Reforms such as the 2020 Omnibus Law and amendments to the 2009 Mining Law have further entrenched corporate interests at the expense of customary landholders.
The NGO Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (AMAN, Nusantara Adat Community Alliance) reports that 301 cases of land grabbing affected 8.5 million hectares of indigenous territory between 2018 and 2023. In the same period, 672 Indigenous individuals faced trumped-up criminal charges (criminalisation), often for defending their ancestral land. These figures, which are likely conservative, underscore a nationwide pattern of state-enabled repression in which legal frameworks and coercive enforcement work in tandem to silence indigenous resistance.
Colonial repression, redux
Throughout these conflicts, the security forces have played an instrumental role. Police and the military frequently act as intermediaries for state-corporate partnerships, justifying their actions through appeals to legality and developmental necessity. These interventions are often framed as routine administrative enforcement, thereby masking the violence they entail.
The October 2023 shooting of a Bangkal villager in Seruyan, Central Kalimantan, during a protest against land appropriation by palm oil companies is a case in point. Despite denials from the police that live ammunition was used, the death reflects the militarised conditions under which many indigenous communities live. Such incidents are not anomalies. They are consistent with broader patterns of intimidation, forced evictions and state-backed impunity.
National Strategic Projects (Proyek Strategis Nasional, PSN), promoted as essential for economic growth, have become key sites of conflict. The Rempang Eco-City project, intended to attract foreign investment, involved the violent eviction of indigenous Malay communities from their ancestral lands on the pretext of national interest. These communities were promised compensation and integration into the new economy. Instead, they faced dispossession and criminalisation.
Similar patterns emerge in the palm oil sector, where land disputes have persisted for decades. In Boven Digoel, Papua, the Awyu people have resisted the Tanah Merah project, which began with large-scale land permits issued in 2007. These permits eroded their ancestral territories, sparking long-standing conflict.
Comparable disputes have occurred in Seruyan, Central Kalimantan, where plantation and land-use permits issued in the mid-2000s exacerbated tensions between Indigenous communities and private companies. The Kinipan conflict, which escalated between 2012 and 2018, further highlights the enduring struggle of indigenous peoples against land encroachment by palm oil companies. In Sumatra, the Tano Batak people have been resisting land seizures by pulp and paper companies since the late 1990s.
The nickel industry has also replicated these dynamics. In Halmahera, the Tobelo Dalam people have faced criminalisation and displacement linked to mining operations. The conviction of two community members in 2013 and 2014 for murder, amid ongoing disputes over land rights, illustrates how extractive capitalism uses criminalisation as a strategy to counter Indigenous resistance.
Rethinking independence
The violence, marginalisation, and dispossession faced by indigenous communities in Indonesia are not disconnected incidents. They are expressions of a deeper historical logic in which colonial methods of control have been repurposed by the postcolonial state. The imperial boomerang is not merely a metaphor. It is a mechanism of governance that continues to shape Indonesia's developmental trajectory.
Seventy-nine years after independence, the Indonesian state still governs through modes of coercion, surveillance, and dispossession that echo its colonial past. This is particularly stark when viewed through from the perspective of indigenous communities. The pursuit of national development has too often meant the systematic sacrifice of indigenous lands, culture, and autonomy.
To mark International Indigenous Peoples Day and Indonesia's Independence Day with integrity, Indonesia must move beyond ritualistic celebration and confront the structural injustices at the heart of the republic. This requires a radical rethinking of development – not as a justification for dispossession, but as a collective commitment to justice, plurality, and historical repair.
Until then, the imperial boomerang will keep coming back at us.