Women Supporting women!
- Merdeka Secretariat
- 5 hours ago
- 2 min read
This International Women's Month, Sayang Mandabayan, Indigenous women of West Papua, extends solidarity with all women and Indigenous sisters resisting state militarization, land grabbing, and human rights violations!
Like our sisters, the struggle against gender-based violence, harassment, political repression, imprisonment, National Strategic Project and military brutality is inseparable from the global women’s fight for equality and the right to self-determination.
I am Sayang Mandabayan, Chair of the National Presidium of FNMPP, the National Front of Papuan Youth and Students. I speak from our homeland, West Papua, which remains under Indonesian occupation.
The Indonesian government is implementing PSN (National Strategic Projects) that are seizing millions of hectares of Indigenous Peoples’ lands. The conversion of forest lands for mining, palm oil concessions, and military bases has caused deforestation and the internal displacement of Indigenous communities. To facilitate these PSN crimes, the Indonesian government has changed military laws, allowing the military to operate and exercise power in the civilian sphere. These National Strategic Projects are carried out and enforced by the military, fully armed.
When Indigenous Peoples refuse to stay silent, refuse to give up their ancestral lands, and struggle for their political freedom, they are immediately arrested as political prisoners, and some are killed outright. Systematic and massive killings continue across the land of Papua. In reality, the political prisoners in Papua—both women and men—are Indigenous Peoples fighting to defend their ancestral lands.
On the celebration of International Women’s Day, March 8, 2026, we call on international women’s solidarity to support the women of West Papua to:
1. Urge the Indonesian government to stop the National Strategic Projects across West Papua
2. Urge the Indonesian government to end militarism throughout Papua
3. Urge the Indonesian government to release all West Papuan political prisoners
4. And urge the Indonesian government to grant the right to self-determination to the Papuan people.
Women united can never be defeated.
Long live solidarity.
Papua Merdeka. Free Papua.
Happy International Women’s Day, March 8, 2026.
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