3. CULTURAL GENECIDE Transmigration
"Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide, including prevention of and redress for: 

(a) Any action which has theaim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities; 

(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;  

(c) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;  

(d) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures." 

 This is how the author of a recent National Geographic report entitled "Irian Jaya: Indonesia's Wild Side" described a visit to a newly constructed Transmigration camp: "...thousands of trees have being felled in this place that not long ago had no name on the map. It is now Arse 12, one of the newest settlements. The remains of the forest are burning when I arrive. Everything looks raw-the ground gashed by bulldozer tracks and heaped with smoking tree trunks, rows of whitewashed cabins thrown together, as if from a kit, with wooden planks and sheets of zinc. A new Indonesian flag flaps to an anthem of rasping chainsaws and crackling flames". (February, 1996)West Papua, the least densely populated province in Indonesia, has become the most important destination for the Indonesian government's Transmigration program.
The Indonesian government has sought to alleviate the population pressure on Java with transmigration to other, so-called "outer" islands: such as West Papua.
There are approximately 1.6 million indigenous West Papuans, but now over three quarters of a million transmigrants have resettled in West Papua, making it the province with the highest net migration gain. It is projected that by the year 2010 the population of West Papua will have grown to between 2.6 and 3.9 million.
Transmigration is a serious threat to the survival of indigenous culture, as local people, in more and more areas of West Papua, are swamped by immigrants. It is also a threat to West Papuan self determination. Many West Papuans believe that it is part of a deliberate policy by the Indonesian regime to outnumber the indigenous population, thereby guaranteeing the outcome of any UN administered plebiscite on the province's future, should it eventuate.
The program has changed the religious balance in the province, which was 85% Christian before annexation.