West Papua is a tropical island with primeval rain forests, powerful rivers, beautiful beaches, lakes, and mountains. The highest mountain is Mount Jayawijaya, with snowcaps covering its 5,000-meter-high peaks. The area is also rich in natural resources, including fish, timber, and precious metals. These, however ever, have become a source of conflict between the central government and local peoples.
West Papua is a hot, humid island rising from the sea with some of the most impenetrable jungles in the world and yet also has snowcaps covering 5,000meter - High Mountain peaks, towering over glacier lakes. West Papua is Indonesia's largest and easternmost province and covers the western half of the world's second largest island. It is a land of exceptional natural grandeur, with beautiful scenic beaches, immense stretches of marshlands, cool grassy meadows and powerful rivers carving gorges and tunnels through dark and dense primeval forests. The most heavily populated and cultivated parts of the island are the Paniai Lakes district and the Baliem Valley to the east.
The people of the island can be divided into more than 250 subgroup, which are closely related to the islands along the southern rim of the Pacific and include among others, the Marindanim, Yah'ray, Asmat, Mandobo, Dani and Afyat. Those in the central highlands still maintain their customs and traditions and because of the terrain have virtually been untouched by outside influences. Communications hove always been difficult here and different tribes have lived, for the most part, in isolation even of each other, resulting in an incredibly diverse mixture of cultures.
Even after Indonesia's independence in 1949, Irian Jaya was retained by the Dutch for various reasons. However, Indonesia claimed all of the territory of the former Dutch East Indies, including the Dutch New Guinea holdings, so it invaded Irian Jaya in 1961. In 1969, the United Nations supervised the Act of Free Choice in which Papuan leaders decided in favour of joining Indonesia. This was however rejected by the Free Papua Organization (OPM). The OPM group then conducted guerrilla warfare against Indonesia.
West Papua was created from the western portion of Papua province in February 2003, initially under the name of Irian Jaya Barat; it was renamed Papua Barat (West Papua) on 7 February 2007.
In November 2004, an Indonesian court agreed that the split violated Papua's autonomy laws. However, the court ruled that because the new province had already been created, it should remain separate from Papua. The ruling also prohibited the creation of another proposed province, Central Irian Jaya, as that division had not yet been formalized.
The split is inline with the general trend of provincial splits that is occurring in all parts of Indonesia in the post-Suharto era. The new province has so far been widely supported by the province's inhabitants, as the new entity created more jobs and more government subsidies flowing into the province.
The province changed its name to West Papua on 7 February 2007. The new name applies from that date, but a plenary session of the provincial legislative council is required to legalize the change of name, and the government needs to then issue a regulation.
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