Fifty Years after the ‘Act of Free Choice’: The West Papua Issue in a Regional Context

Abstract

Since the early 1970s the author has followed the development of the West Papua issue, first as field director of ANU’s New Guinea Research Unit and director of the National Research Institute of Papua New Guinea, and later as senior fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change and emeritus fellow with the Department of Pacific Affairs at ANU. He has met with West Papuan emigres in the Netherlands, Sweden, Vanuatu and Australia and visited West Papuans in refugee camps in Papua New Guinea. He has published extensively on West Papua.