PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 26 (1) 2020 305 MEDIA FREEDOM IN MELANESIA DAVID ROBIE is editor of Pacifc Journalism Review. West Papua’s highway of blood and betrayal The Road: Uprising in West Papua, by John Martinkus. Carlton, Vic: Black Books Inc. 2020. 114 pages. 978-1-760-64242-6 T HE RUGGED mountainous high- lands of New Guinea stretch from the Owen Stanley range in the east of the independent state of Papua New Guinea through the Star mountains straddling the border with Indonesian- ruled West Papua westwards through the perpetually snow-capped Puncak Jaya, at 4884m the island's highest peak. Papua New Guinea is fairly unique in the world in that its capital, Port Moresby, is separated from the high- lands in the absence of a highway from the south. On the western side of the border, however, it has been the dream of the Indonesian colonialists for fve decades to one day ‘tame’ the highlands with a militarised road. That dream is rapidly coming to fruition, but at a savagely high cost. The 4300-km Trans-Papua High- way costing some US$1.4 billion was supposed to bring ‘wealth, develop- ment and prosperity’ to the isolated regions of West Papua. At least, that’s how the planners and politicians envisaged the highway tucked safely far away in their air-conditioned Ja- karta ofces. President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo is so enthusiastic about the project as a cornerstone for his national infrastruc- ture strategies that he had publicity photographs taken of him on his Ka- wasaki trail motorbike on the highway (Robie, 2017). However, that isn’t how West Papuans see ‘The Road’. In reality, writes Australian jour- nalist John Martinkus in his latest book The Road: Uprising in West Papua, the highway brings military occupa- tion by Indonesian troops, exploitation by foreign companies, environmental destruction and colonisation by Indo- nesian transmigrants.