About

The authors of this blog are Leefke, Jamie and Leonie. We met three years ago at Hamburg University where we are currently studying Languages and Cultures of Sourtheast Asia with a main focus on Indonesia. Our field of study encouraged us not only to gain general knowledge of the country's history and current events but to also question its political and social structures. Thanks to Marion Struck-Garbe, who is also an Interviewee on this blog, we enrolled in many courses concerning various topics related to West Papua. It is essential to keep in mind the following facts when reading this blog: we see that it is critical to state our opinion about the grievances in the country, because we are a: not West Papuans and therefore not able to recreate what it is like to live under those circumstances, and b: have to rely on second-hand information since none of us are actually on site. Therefore we also see this blog as a vessel of information to be sent to its receivers. We have provided links to relevant West Papuan activists, artists and authors below and are always happy to receive further information from our readers via the feedback form.

Special Thanks

We would like to express our thanks to the people who helped us make this blog possible.

That is first our lecturer JP Dr. Elsa Clavé, who encouraged us to create something accessible instead of writing a paper at the end of the semester. We are thankful for her approach to do things a little different than usual, since everything is changing in these times.

We want to thank our interviewees, Alexander Flor, Emanuel Goo, Andrei Maryen and especially Marion Struck-Gabe who besides taking the time to be interviewed, has triggered our interest in West Papua with her fabulous seminars that we happily attended in the last semesters.

Special thanks also goes out to Margareth Aritonang, an Indonesian friend, who has helped us getting in touch with Indonesians and Papuans for this blog.