Indonesia wages war against tribe

Nona Kogoya was two years old when she died. She had been a normal, healthy young girl; but that was before the soldiers came. In February Nona’s village, in the highlands of New Guinea, was attacked by heavily armed Indonesian soldiers. The soldiers came without warning, running from home to home, firing their automatic rifles at random and dragging civilians, including Nona, from their thatched huts. Then they set fi re to the houses. Nothing was spared: even the church was burned to the ground. As the houses burned, the soldiers trampled the villagers’ crops – their only source of food for the coming year – and, to ensure that no hope was left, impounded their livestock.

Terrified, the villagers ran for their lives into the forest. They kept running for days, and they stayed there for weeks. They were safe from the soldiers, but they had no shelter, and had to survive on what food they could find in the forest. Nona, unsurprisingly, fell ill. The soldiers had the forest surrounded, and wouldn’t let anyone take food, supplies or medicines to the refugees. On 10 February Nona died and was buried in a shallow grave in the forest. She was not the first innocent child to die in West...

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