Where in the World is Irian Jaya (West Papua)?
Irian Jaya (West Papua) (also known as Irian Djaya, Irian Barat, West New Guinea, and West Irian) is the western half of the island of New Guinea, which is located several hundred miles north of Australia. Irian Jaya (West Papua) is a province of the nation of Indonesia. New Guinea is said to be the second largest island in the world, after Greenland, at least by those who refuse to count Australia. To the west of Irian Jaya lies the Ceram Sea and the Banda Sea, to the south lies the Arafura Sea, and to the north is the Pacific. The politically correct currently use the phrase "West Papua", but never "Irian Jaya".
For the best introduction to Irian Jaya (West Papua) that I have yet seen, visit The West Papua Kit, Australian West Papua Association. This is an Internet version of a thirty page booklet, placed on-line by UT professor Alan Cline.
Nomenclature: In 1999, the Indonesian government planned to split Irian Jaya (West Papua) into three provinces, West, Central, and East Irian Jaya (West Papua). In very late 1999 the President of Indonesia renamed Irian Jaya to West Papua. It is not clear to me (rsb 3/3/2000) whether the tripartition or the renaming has been finally approved by the Indonesian government.
According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, "Irian" is the Indonesian word for New Guinea, "jaya" for glorious or victorious. However, see here for a Biak etymology. See also http://www.irja.org/eypij.htm for information about the etymology.
The capital city of Irian Jaya (West Papua) is Jayapura, latitude 3 degrees south and longitude 141 degrees east, several thousand miles of Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo. Jayapura is several thousand miles east of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, which is located on the island Java. Tembagapura, a center of Freeport's mining operation, is located at approximately 4 degrees south and 137 degrees east.
The eastern half of the island of New Guinea is the independent country Papua New Guinea.
The (sea) border beween Australia and Indonesia is 1,800 miles long.
"They (sc. the Indonesians) speak 580 different languages. Though the official language is Bahasa Indonesian, modified form of Malay, only some seven million speak it, compared to 70 million who speak Javanese, 25 million who speak Sundanese, 10 million who speak Malay and 9 million who speak Madurese." From: tali_hulaleng@joymail.com Antiwar.com, June 8, 2000, The Unraveling of Indonesia.
The Dutch asserted control of the western part of New Guinea in 1828, but didn't administer it until about 1898. As part of the decolonization of the area, independence was granted by the Dutch after WWII. However, Irian Jaya (West Papua) was tentatively "given" to Indonesia by the United Nations. Later, a farcical "act of free choice" was conducted by Indonesia, in which 1,000 native Irianese were intimidated to agree to the permanent incorporation of Irian into Indonesia. Indonesia named the province "Irian Jaya (West Papua)". Since then, for decades, various relatively minor resistance movements have occasionally caused the Indonesian military sporadic problems. So much of the territory seems inaccessible to this day that the question of who, if anyone, actually governs the territory seems rather moot. It has been estimated that Freeport's mining operation makes up about one half of the gross domestic product of the whole of Irian Jaya (West Papua), but the mining towns around the mine only make up about 3% of the population of Irian Jaya (West Papua).
The nation of Indonesia, which includes Irian Jaya (West Papua), has a population of over two hundred million, making it the world's fourth most populous country, after China, India, and the United States of America. Indonesia consists of over 13,000 islands. (I have also read that it's more like 17,000 islands, or 3,000 islands, or depends upon whether the tide is high or low.)
The population of Indonesia is extremely far from uniformly dispersed over its islands. Despite the huge size of Irian Jaya (West Papua), it has fewer than four million residents. Irian Jaya (West Papua) is much larger than Java, Indonesia's main island, which has 110 million people in an area the size of New York State. But Java is more than 82 times more densely populated than Irian Jaya (West Papua). The population density on Java is about 2,000 people per square mile. At that density, the population of Australia would be about 6 billion people!
It has been asserted that 80% of Indonesia's wealth is held by the 5% of the Indonesian population that is of Chinese ancestry.
The highest point in Irian Jaya (West Papua) is the 16,024 (4,884 m) ft peak Puncak Jaya, which has one of the three equatorial glaciers in the world, less than 20 kilometers from Freeport's mines. Sadly, it appears that this glacier will disappear in a century or so; some blame global warming. Puncak Jaya is said to be the highest point between the Andes and the Himalayas.
Irian Jaya (West Papua) is believed to contain the world's largest copper concentration and much of the world's remaining stone age civilization.
From Timika airport, the Japanese bombed Australia in WWII.
In 1988, Freeport discovered, in what is called Grasberg mine, the world's largest gold deposit.
The extremely steep terrain leading from the sea to the Freeport mine site at very high altitude not far inland has required Freeport to produce a most remarkable feat of engineering. Without modern technology, e.g., helicopters capable of lifting huge weights to very high altitudes, the construction of the mine would probably have been infeasible.
It has been estimated that there are over 250 living languages spoken in Irian Jaya (West Papua). I have also read an astounding estimate that approximately one quarter of the world's languages are spoken only in New Guinea. I presume it is the extreme difficulty of travel from almost any part of the island to any other that accounts for this amazing figure.
Some comparative sizes, in square miles:
2,355,784,206,046 -- The Sun 197,000,000 -- The Earth 63,800,000 -- The Pacific Ocean 3,849,674 -- Canada 3,300,171 -- Brazil 2,966,000 -- Australia (including Tasmania) 850,000 -- Greenland 591,004 -- Alaska 310,000 -- New Guinea (the whole island) 267,000 -- Texas 210,000 -- France 163,000 -- Irian Jaya (West Papua) (the western half of New Guinea) 158,706 -- California 145,883 -- Japan 116,000 -- Italy 51,000 -- Java 27,137 -- Republic of Ireland 10,500 -- Maryland 10,000 -- The Freeport-McMoRan mining concession on Irian Jaya (West Papua) 9,500 -- Sicily
How Irian Jaya (West Papua) became a part of Indonesia.
Rate of exchange. On July 26, 1996, the rate of exchange was USD $1 = 2,338 Indonesian Rupiahs. On Oct. 3, 1997, the rate of exchange was USD $1 = 3,420 Indonesian Rupiahs. On Dec. 24, 1997 it was USD $1 = 6,200. On Jan. 20, 1998 it was USD $1 = 12,000. On July 6, 2000 it was USD $1 = 9,000. On Mar. 12, 2001 it was USD $1 = 11,200. (These randomly chosen values are mentioned only to help a little in reading articles that mention rupiahs. The rupiah/dollar figure has been changing wildly, as one part of the Southeast Asian economic turmoil.)
What follows is a random collection of web pages about Irian Jaya (West Papua) and Indonesia. Please send suggestions for more pages to boyer@cs.utexas.edu. My experience is that urls to random web pages have a half life of something like 6 months, so you may find some of these links dead and gone. If so, please let me know: boyer@cs.utexas.edu.
Voices of the Rainforest, Steve Feld's CD about the sounds of New Guinea.
An open source travel guide to Irian Jaya (West Papua)
What the CIA says about Indonesia
What the U. S. State Department says about human rights in Indonesia for the year 1994
What the U. S. State Department says about human rights in Indonesia for the year 1995
What the U. S. State Department says about human rights in Indonesia for the year 1996
What the U. S. State Department says about human rights in Indonesia for the year 1997
1999 U. S. State Department Report on Indonesia.
What Amnesty International says about human rights in Indonesia. "Indonesia's rulers came to power in 1965 in the wake of one of the worst massacres in recent history; in less than a year up to one million people were killed and at least as many jailed. Indonesia's New Order Government has remained in power for almost three decades. It continues to murder, torture and jail people, often for nothing more than disagreeing with the state ideology, Pancasila."
A West Papua Home Page. Especially to be recommended is the subpage on a human rights abuses, which documents some of the hundreds of thousands of murders that have resulted from Indonesian occupation of Irian Jaya (West Papua).
The Syndney Morning Herald has been thoroughly covering the major stories about the Freeport mine.
News & Views INDONESIA, a monthly publication of the Indonesian embassy in Washington DC
IRJA. An unofficial Irian Jaya web site.
An Excellent Set of Indonesian Web Pages.
World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Indonesia
Indonesian meteorological service
Integrated Forest Fire Management Project
Smarinda, capital of East Kalimantan