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Is the strange part that they used the (politically designated) country name rather than the (geographically oriented) island name? This seems normal to me, as
by nickff 3y ago
Is the strange part that they used the (politically designated) country name rather than the (geographically oriented) island name? This seems normal to me, as journalists frequently describe locations by political names.
Who calls the area West Papua? The Indonesians seem to refer to it as "Western New Guinea", and "Papua" seems to be an antiquated term used to refer to some part(s) of the island of New Guinea.
- elemenopy 3y agoIt is a politically fraught issue because there is a long-running independence movement,[1] which the parent comment may have been obliquely referring to. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Papua_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Papua_Movement
- markdown 3y ago> Who calls the area West Papua? The natives of West Papua who are being genocided out of existence by their colonial overlords in Indonesia.
- stubish 3y agoGiven the geography of Indonesia, it seems necessary to use more specific place names, like we do for Borneo or Galapagos. The term 'Indonesian' becomes meaningless in many contexts because the scope is so vast.
- robobro 3y agoEveryone in my part of Kalimantan calls it Papua -- never heard a native refer to it as New Guinea
- Affric 3y agoWhen I was in Borneo (the only island in the region with three countries occupying parts of it), unless what we were doing was related to a national government, we said Borneo. When my colleagues who were working in Sulawesi referred to their work, I never once heard “Indonesia”. Yet, and I have seen this story a few times now, it has exclusively been with the term Indonesia. With a country as big and diverse as Indonesia the island/islands one is working on does matter. So it seems deliberate to avoid naming the geographic term. And it is controversial.