Papuan rebel fights a war without weapons from a land without food

Papuan rebel commander and refugee Wiro Nongganop (right) with his deputy Yohanis Ovop (L) at a house in Yapsi in Papua New Guinea's Western Province.

YAPSI, Papua New Guinea (AFP): Wiro Nongganop says he commands a battalion of West Papua independence fighters, but he has no guns, only bows and arrows, and lives in exile in a bark hut, sometimes surviving on potato leaves.

Nongganop and a few members of his Muyu tribe fled their homeland in 2019, crossing the poorly marked Indonesian border for the relative safety of remote western Papua New Guinea.