Review | The Road: new book shines a light on Indonesia’s 50-year forgotten war in West Papua as it flares again
- Australian journalist John Martinkus documents West Papuan indigenous tribes’ fight to recover ancestral lands annexed by Indonesia
- Construction of a controversial highway sparked an escalation last year with Indonesia deploying troops and chemical weapons
The Road: Uprising in West Papua
by John Martinkus
Black Inc
3.5/5 stars
Military operations intensified in the Central Highlands region of Nduga last year as the uprising spread. Another 16,000 troops were dispatched to protect the construction of a controversial Trans-Papua Highway. Helicopters dropped bombs and strafed villages. About 45,000 refugees fled across the border into Papua New Guinea.
“It is the helicopters that are the worst. They are used as platforms to shoot or drop white phosphorous grenades or bomblets that inflict horrible injuries on the populace,” John Martinkus writes in his new book, The Road: Uprising in West Papua.
Martinkus depicts a dirty little war far removed from the glittering shopping malls of Jakarta, in a distant outpost of the vast Indonesian archipelago, hidden from the world. The Indonesian military denies it uses white phosphorus, a banned agent of chemical warfare. But photos of the Papuan victims in the book display gruesome wounds consistent with this chemical.