Indonesia, explained.
A church and stilt houses in Kampung Ayapo, Lake Sentani, Papua, Indonesia (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The killing of an American pilot in Papua was not random – the rebels fear the Catholic Church is winning the population.
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Why the West Papua rebels are targeting the Catholic ChurchWhy the West Papua rebels are targeting the Catholic Church
On 2 July, the West Papua Liberation Army in the eastern province of Indonesia attacked a plane owned by PT AMA, an air service run by the Papua Catholic Church. Seven passengers survived. The pilot, US citizen Nicholas F. Goselin (Opens in new window), was executed. The rebel spokesperson, Sebby Sambom (Opens in new window), claimed the plane had been carrying military supplies into what he called a red-zone conflict area. The Bishop of Papua, Yanuarius Teofilus Matopai (Opens in new window), who also serves as a commissioner of PT AMA, rejected the claim. He said PT AMA and its crew serve people in remote areas and have never supplied weapons or ammunition to the military.
This was not the first attack on the Church and its workers. In March 2025, also in Yahukimo, the rebels struck schools (Opens in new window) run by Yayasan Serafim Care (Opens in new window), a Catholic organisation focused on education and health. A teacher from Nusa Tenggara Timur, a Catholic-majority province, Rosalina Rerek Sogen (Opens in new window), was killed.
These are not coincidences. The rebels are wary of (Opens in new window) the Catholic Church’s social activities and its cooperation with the state. Serafim Care (Opens in new window) works with the local government and the Ministry of Education to provide basic education in Yahukimo. PT AMA (Opens in new window) is widely known as the Church’s logistics arm in the region, delivering support to remote areas.
So what is driving these attacks? Two factors, closely linked. The first is the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Indonesian government. The second is the growing popularity of the Church’s programs among ordinary Papuans. These two factors have started to worry the rebels about how they could undermine their recruitment of new combatants and their agenda for independence.
In April 2026, a group of young Catholics protested (Opens in new window) against the bishops of Merauke and Jayapura for backing (Opens in new window) the central government’s National Strategic Projects. The protesters argue that these projects harm Papua’s environment and forests, and that the bishops’ support only makes things worse. Many also feel the Church treats economic development as the answer to Papua’s long-standing problems of human rights and inequality, a view they do not share.
The rebels draw their support from the state's failure to deliver these benefits, so any effort that succeeds is a threat to them.
The Catholic Church is seen as more willing to accommodate government projects than the Protestant church, which issued an open statement in February rejecting the National Strategic Projects in Papua (Opens in new window).
Many of these projects are poorly designed and dismissive of local custom. Two examples are the contested large-scale sugar (Opens in new window) and rice plantation projects (Opens in new window), which, without proper due diligence, bring environmental damage and the eviction of local communities (Opens in new window). Projects like this have become a source of conflict in Papua.
The more unhappy and unstable Papuans are, the easier it is for the rebels to exploit that discontent to recruit new members or build broader social and political support. So when the Church backs a National Strategic Project as a tool for economic stability (Opens in new window), it immediately concerns the rebels. The Church and PT AMA’s program to deliver daily supplies, from food to medicine, along with Serafim Care’s education work, are valued and respected across Yahukimo and beyond (Opens in new window). The rebels see the Church’s support for national projects, combined with its growing standing among Papuans, as a long-term threat to the independence movement.
The military, which once saw no value in the Church’s missions, now views it as a potential ally (Opens in new window). Yet the Church’s support for government projects does not mean it endorses how the military operates in Papua (Opens in new window), and it has tried to keep its distance from the armed forces. An official from Indonesia’s Ministry of Defence told me in an interview three days after the incident: “We do not have direct communication with the Church, but we are happy with the efforts the Catholic Church has made. The problem is that they do not inform us about their activities, and the latest incident is the example.” He was referring to Goselin’s death, and added that the killing was avoidable, since everyone knows how dangerous Yahukimo is.
Papuan students stage a demonstration demanding the right to independence for West Papua in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 1 December 2024 (Devi Rahman/AFP via Getty Images)
The West Papua Liberation Army will keep painting the Church as an arm of the military and attacking its missions to wear them down. The logic is simple: the more popular the Church becomes, the harder it gets for the rebels to recruit and win social support. This applies not just to the Church’s missions but to any neutral or pro-state effort, whether a social program or a supply line, that works and earns Papuan goodwill. The rebels draw their support from the state’s failure to deliver these benefits, so any effort that succeeds is a threat to them. That is why schools (Opens in new window), health centres and logistic planes (Opens in new window) are often the rebels’ target.
The military, for its part, will let the Church expand, and may even encourage it. The old approach, the transmigration program (Opens in new window) that brought Javanese Muslims to Papua, did little for stability and instead stirred up ethnic and religious tension (Opens in new window). Under the Church, that social tension is largely absent, but the conflict between the rebels and the Church’s missions is escalating.
About the author
Ahmad Syarif
Ahmad Syarif is a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.
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