A man on a mission
By Jennifer Robinson
Benny was detained in Abepura prison during his trial in 2002
As a young child in the 1970s, Benny Wenda’s world was his village in the remote highlands of West Papua. Life consisted of tending gardens with his mother among the Lani people who, he says, ‘lived at peace with nature in the mountains’. In 1977 that life changed dramatically.
That year, the military appeared in his village. Now, every morning on the way to their gardens, Benny and his mother and aunties would be stopped and checked by Indonesian soldiers. Often the soldiers would force the women to wash themselves in the river before brutally raping them in front of their children. Many young women, including three of Benny’s aunties, died in the jungle from the trauma and injuries inflicted during these attacks, which often involved genital mutilation. Every day Papuan women had to report to the military post to provide food from their gardens, and to clean and cook for the soldiers. Violence, racism and enforced subservience became part of daily routine.
‘I asked myself ‘why?’ Who are these people? And why do they do this to us? Why do they kill my people? Why do they rape my aunties?’
Later that year, and in response to military violence towards Papuans, 15,000 Lani people rebelled. In retaliation, Indonesian military aircraft bombed many Lani villages in the highlands, including Benny’s village. Benny remembers an attack where their huts and crops were burned and many of his family were killed or injured. Benny too suffered in the attack: his leg was badly injured and left untreated because his family was forced to flee into hiding in the jungle, leaving him with one leg significantly shorter than the other and an awkward limp. More than twenty years later the scars, the pain and the difficulty in walking remain.
Childhood in the jungle
Benny and Maria Wenda with their young children regularly organise
and take part in protests at the Indonesian Embassy in London. Here at a protest in 2008 Dominic Brown
Between 1977 and 1983 Benny and his family, along with thousands of other highlanders, lived in hiding in the jungle. Life was hard. Food and shelter were scarce, and the weak struggled to survive the harsh conditions.
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