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Explanation
The Indonesian island of Java is very overcrowded with a rapidly
increasing population. The Indonesian government sees its territory
of West New Guinea (West Irian) as empty land to settle Javans.
But the people there share a culture with Papua New Guinea which
has the eastern half of the island.
The original inhabitants speak languages with nothing in common
with modern Indonesian.
The Dutch tried to prevent the transfer but it was added to
Indonesia in 1969 by the UN Decolonisation Committee, after a
referendum, much criticised nowadays for its unrepresentative
nature.
There is a Papuan resistance at a rather low level. There
seems to be no international interest in this dispute, though
the circumstance in which West New Guinea was transferred to
Indonesia, on the grounds that both were once colonies of the
Dutch, is dubious and the inhabitants were not asked, except
in a referendum now considered flawed and unrepresentative by
many parties. It would have made sense to unite the island with
the state of Papua New Guinea.
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