The long-simmering conflict between Indonesia's military and Papuans seeking independence includes indigenous teenagers and boys who appear barely adolescent, stephenwrightAP writes.
In this photo taken in May 2019, and released by the West Papua Liberation Army-Free Papua Organization, men and boys from the West Papua Liberation Army pose with weapons in the Nduga region of the central highlands, Papua province, Indonesia.
Sebby Sambom, a Liberation Army spokesman who lives in neighboring Papua New Guinea, acknowledged that combatants include people under 18, describing it as part of West Papua’s history and struggle for independence. “West Papua needs urgent international intervention, because child soldiers are themselves victims. The Indonesian government’s security approach has created an intractable conflict by brutalizing generation after generation of West Papuans,” she said.
It is unclear how many teens are directly involved in the conflict or what specific roles they play, but with several hotspots it could be at least dozens. Groups campaigning to end the use of child soldiers say they are sometimes forcibly recruited but can also join militaries and armed groups because of cultural pressures, for protection or money to escape desperate poverty. Children in conflicts, whether as combatants or in other roles such as porters, face a high risk of being abused, killed or maimed and those that survive can suffer profound psychological and social problems.
Attempts to break up that jungled fortress with the construction of a trans-Papua highway have become a new flashpoint in the conflict. The highway looms as an existential threat for Papuans already reeling from the impact of high infant mortality, bouts of famine, the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS and an unknown number of deaths from Indonesian military campaigns since the 1960s.
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