It's sheer bloody murder, right on our doorstep

Charlie Hill-Smith

Opinionby,Charlie Hill-Smith

What the Indonesian military is doing is criminal and barbaric, writes Charlie Hill-Smith.

THE highest mountains between the Himalayas and the Andes are the snow-topped crags of West Papua (4884 metres). A tropical glacier pokes out of the sweltering green of Asia's largest rain forests. This is the second largest island on earth, with 15 per cent of all the world's languages, an encyclopaedic biodiversity and a new El Dorado for our resource-hungry world.

Most of us know little about the shady goings-on inside the giant forested island just to our north. But a constant trickle of murders, disappearances, arrests, torture and a wave of mass civil actions have raised the international volume of this previously silent war.

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Indonesian Military Brutality in West Papua on FRANCE TV 24 Copy

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WEST PAPUA Unknown New Guinea

Birdquest's West Papua, Indonesia birding tour explores the western half of the island of New Guinea (a territory that used to be called Irian Jaya). Our West Papua tour concentrates on the endemic specialities of this part of New Guinea, including its offshore islands, where marvellous creatures can be found such as Macgregor's, Red and Wilson's Birds of Paradise, Western Parotia, Arfak Astrapia, Long-tailed Paradigalla, Western Crowned Pigeon and Numfor Paradise Kingfisher.

• WEST PAPUA June 2012 - July 2012
• WEST PAPUA June 2013 - July 2013

Tour Category: Easy occasionally, but mostly Moderate to Demanding

Feline Owlet-Nightjar is one of six members of this Australasian bird family to be found in New Guinea (Mark Van Beirs)

When, in the mid 19th century, Alfred Russel Wallace first approached the shores of western New Guinea he wrote that he could barely contain his excitement knowing that “those dark forests produced the most extraordinary and the most beautiful of the feathered inhabitants of the earth”.

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