Samira Homerang Saunders and David Whyte – West Papua is home to one of the world's most important rainforests – third only to the Amazon and Congo basins. It is home to a plethora of species not found anywhere else on earth and its resource-rich lands, forests and mountains have been home to the Indigenous West Papuan people for more than 50,000 years.
Still, relatively few people are aware of the atrocities carried out under Indonesian occupation, including disappearances, torture and land theft. Our research reveals the extent of British involvement and how it is driving environmental destruction while undermining the rights of Indigenous Papuan communities.
As researchers at the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, we have produced the first ever audit of Britain's involvement in the decades-long conflict in West Papua.
Using information obtained from Freedom of Information requests and corporate financial records, we document how the British companies and shareholders are profiting from a conflict that involves torture, extrajudicial killings and mass displacement. We reveal how the government supports the Indonesian military in its occupation of West Papua through arms exports and training in jungle warfare.
Big name companies profit
Our exploration of corporate share ownership and the financial records of British household names, including BP and Unilever, reveals how profits from mining, gas extraction and palm oil plantations are poisoning water and food sources, tearing communities from their ancestral lands.
Take Grasberg – the largest gold mine and the second-largest copper mine in the world. For the Indigenous Amungme tribe, the mountain on which the mine is located is a sacred place. But every day an estimated 300,000 tons of toxic tailings, largely untreated, are deposited straight into the Ajkwa River's large and complex network of tributaries and the wider estuaries.
Grasberg's operations have also led to mass displacement of the Sempan and Komoro people and the destruction of the local ecosystem. The UN estimates that there are between 60,000 and 100,000 internally displaced people in West Papua – representing nearly two per cent of the population.
The mine is controlled by PT Freeport Indonesia, a company owned by US company Freeport McMoRan and the Indonesian government. We have found that British financial institutions such as Barclays and Rathbones hold shares in Freeport-McMoRan which pays for Indonesian security forces to protect its site and has regularly used violence against West Papuan workers.
In 2017, after Freeport initiated mass lay-offs without negotiating with the workers' union, a retaliatory strike was launched. Many workers were then evicted from company-owned homes or denied access to company-funded hospitals and schools. Striking workers were unlawfully arrested by Indonesian forces, subjecting them to torture and criminal prosecution.
Another site of violence is BP's Tangguh Bay liquefied natural gas processing facility, which occupies 3,200 hectares of land in the far west of the territory. Since production began in 2009, international and Indonesian rights groups have accused BP of colluding with Indonesian authorities in the repression of the West Papuan population.
Most of the land at the processing site is designated an environmental protected zone for its extensive mangrove forests. We estimate that Tangguh rakes in revenue to the tune of $5 billion every year (of which more than $2 billion goes to BP) while forcing the relocation of several villages, severing local people from their ancestral fishing grounds and threatening the survival of one of the world's largest continuous mangrove forests.
There is also a global impact. Over its lifetime, Tangguh Bay is estimated to produce over 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon – a volume we've calculated is equivalent to the net reduction of all European Union emissions projected between the years 2015 and 2030, thus reversing a significant step in climate action.
Military partnerships
Britain's complicity in the violence goes even further. As one of the world's biggest weapons importers, Indonesia enjoys a strong defence partnership with the UK that includes purchasing arms. As New Internationalist reported earlier this year the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) has called out Britain and Australia for providing financial and professional support to Indonesia's Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation (JCLEC), which trains a number of military units that are known to crackdown on human rights in West Papua and across Indonesia.
West Papua's struggle against repression is fundamentally connected to the popular demand for self-determination.
Indonesia's ability to commit such atrocities against West Papuans is reinforced by an extensive state surveillance network of state and corporate security forces that targets activists, clergy, students, local politicians and customary leaders through intensive military intelligence operations.
Pressure on West Papuan's land and cultural heritage has intensified under Indonesia's government, led by former military general Prabowo Subianto who came to power last year. Independent reporters and human rights workers are denied entry to the territory, meaning human rights abuses are rarely investigated.
West Papua's struggle against repression is fundamentally connected to the popular demand for self-determination. The movement for political independence explicitly rejects capitalist industrial development and capitalist forms of land ownership.
Under Indonesian rule, with the continued support of foreign powers like Britain, capitalist extractivism has been intimately connected to brutal political repression and has eroded the social and economic capacity for Papuans to survive. This must end. The people of West Papua must be given control over their own resources through a free and fair referendum for self-determination, and the international community must support it. Until then, the cycle of repression and destruction will continue.
Source: https://newint.org/indigenous-peoples/2025/britains-complicity-tragedy-west-papu