Willem Onde:"Diplomacy Won’t Work as Long as we Remain at War"
January 16, 2001
HALF a meter of tangled hair, twisted in several tufts, and thick whiskers have been his trademarks for many years. Willem Onde is popular in Papua, but certainly not because of his hair and whiskers. He commands Military Region III of the Free Papua Organization (better known by its Indonesian acronym of OPM) for the Merauke area. Carrying the rank of "Colonel", he claims to control some 6,000 troops split into 15 battalions. He steers the entire
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