Lawyers launch court action challenging Indonesia's annexation of West Papua

In a landmark case, lawyers in Indonesia have launched court action to challenge the country's fifty-year incorporation of West Papua into its territory.

Lawyers representing about 20 Papuans are seeking a judicial review at the country's highest court, arguing the UN supervised referendum in 1969 — known as the 'Act of Free Choice'— that effectively handed Papua to Indonesia was illegal because only 1,000 people could vote out of a population of 800,000.

The referendum has instead led to five decades of brutal control and hundreds of thousands of deaths.