Autonomy over Life: The Struggle against Capitalist Development in West Papua

Autonomy over Life: The Struggle against Capitalist Development in West Papua

Samira Homerang Saunders, Angela Sherwood and David Whyte examine how Papuans resist the rapidly expanding industrial development that is being imposed on them against their will. West Papua, home to the third-largest rainforest in the world, has become a site of aggressive gas extraction, metal mining and plantation agriculture. The authors show how extreme state violence and a political settlement imposed against the wishes of the Papuan people keep the conflict going.

They argue that the demand for self-determination cannot be separated from the struggle to keep basic control over the conditions of life in West Papua: growing food and protecting water and air. In their view, resistance to the Indonesian state is a struggle for autonomy in the widest sense, over the whole of social and economic life, and not only over political status.

Full article

Read the full article on State Crime (Pluto Journals)

Support our work