Until the Act of Free Choice in 1969, the OPM was not centrally coordinated as a national organisation.  The  OPM  was more or less an aggregation of patriotic forces, pro-democracy and freedom movements in West Papuan society. On July 1, 1971, for the first time different organisations joined forces with the FKPPB (Front Command for the Liberation of West Papua) at the border with Papua New Guinea, where the results of the 1969 Act of Free Choice were denounced and a Revolutionary Provisional Government was proclaimed. A constitution and senate were created with a well prepared national liberation program.
The Republic of Senegal in West Africa and some other African countries were sympathetic  to  the  program  and offered to assist. To manage the relationship,  the  RPG  was allowed to open an Information Bureau  in  Dakar,  Senegal.However, Senegal withdrew its support in 1976, when the resistance movement split into two factions, and attempts to re-unite them failed.
The leaders of the two factions, Seth Rumkorem and Jacob Prai and his deputy, John Otto Ondowame, were arrested in PNG and exiled to Europe.
Despite the removal of the two principal OPM leaders from West Papua, the national struggle has continued, led by trained gu~rilla fighters. Occasionally news has broken through the shroud of silence when OPM guerillas attacked government establishments, raised the West Papuan national flag in front of government offices, or took hostages while demanding world attention to their cause.
During the 1960s and mid 1970s, a number of rebellions took place in Manokwari,  Enarotali and other regions, including the Baliem Valley.The Freeport mining installations were attacked by the OPM with the local Amungme people in 1977. The army exacted a heavy toll in response to these attacks, bombing and strafing villages and killing thousands of civilians. As ABRI troops were incapable of penetrating the jungle to discover guerrilla camps, they resorted to reprisals. To stamp out armed resistance, villages were attacked and suspected subversives were summarily executed.  Others were  forcibly resettled in low altitudes, where twenty per cent of infants died because of lack of resistance to malaria.
The army also conducted operations to undermine support for the resistance by persecuting the families of people believed to be fighting in the bush. The wives of guerrillas were assaulted, their parents arrested.Villages suspected of supporting the OPM were destroyed, people chased from their homes, livestock killed and property looted.
The partial implementation of the national program (1982-1985) resulted in  a  massive  retaliation  by  the Indonesian  armed  forces,  which forced thousands of refugees to flee across the border into Papua New Guinea. The OPM field commander responsible for the campaign, Eliezer Awom, an ex army deserter, was later captured and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1984 the ruling Vanuaaku Party of the Republic of Vanuatu, anticipating widespread and increased resistance in West Papua, recognised the OPM and the following year it united Mr. Prai and Mr. Rumkorem as the first part of its attempt to pursue the West Papuan cause at the United Nations. Both leaders signed a unity pact on July 11, 1985 known as the Port Vila Declaration. They agreed that while awaiting a national congress to be held one year later to resolve the whole organisational and leadership issue, Prai would take charge of the political  arm  of the  OPM,  while Rumkorem remained the national chairman responsible for the military arm of the movement. No national congress was held and the leadership issue remained.