West Papua Information Kit

Transmigration is a term Indonesia uses to describe its colonial policy of exporting its own population to a colony like West Papua in the Pacific to slowly eliminate the colonised cultures and people. How many hundreds of thousands of people have been killed by the Indonesian military is not known, but that the Melanesian population of Western Papua is now a quarter or less of the Eastern side of the island is certain.

In Indonesia, the transmigration project is also devastating the tropical forests and squandering millions of dollars. The project makes almost no economic sense and pointlessly destroys the environment. The World Bank estimates that the total cost per family of resettling on Irian Jaya is about $7,000, or roughly 10 times Indonesia's per capita income. A United Nations Development Program study found that only 1 in 10 transmigration sites was considered economically profitable. [110]
[110] Statement of Bruce Rich, cited in FY87 Appropriations for Multilateral Development Banks: Hearings before the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Foreiqn Operations, April 17, 1986, p. 7.