A global Papuan student body – International Alliance of Papuan Students Association Overseas (IAPSAO) is seeking a meeting with Indonesian president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to air their grievances over a new policy to cut 10 percent autonomous education funds allocated to the Melanesian provincial governments.
IAPSAO also does not want the transferring of administration of funds to other departments.
They have branded the disruption of autonomous local education grants supporting studies abroad as “assassinating” indigenous human resource development.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Photo: Photo / AFP
IAPSAO issued an open letter this week titled “Do not disturb and hinder [us] – leave us [to] study in peace” saying that funding changes created under the controversial new autonomy statute would have a crippling impact on education.
Student sources say that at least 125 Papuan students – 41 of them studying in New Zealand – had been ordered home under a new policy reallocating education funds.
Indonesia annexed West Papua in 1962 under the New York agreement which changed ironically to the ‘Act of Free Choice’ in 1969.
In response to that letter the Indonesian ambassador to New Zealand and the Pacific Fientje Maritje Suebu says that the repatriation of students was based on a “thorough assessment” begun in 2017 by the provincial government of Papua over their achievements at their respective educational institutions.
“On 5 January 2022, the provincial…
