Silas Papare

Silas Ayari Donrai Papare (18 December 1918 – 7 March 1978) was a Papuan–Indonesian politician and guerilla leader who is a National Hero of Indonesia. Originating from the Yapen Islands, Papare trained and worked as a nurse prior to the Second World War, during which he organized local resistance and gathered intelligence against occupying Japanese forces. While he initially held pro-Dutch views after the war, this shifted after he was involved in pro-Indonesian rebellion and resulted in not being delegated to the Malino Conference, later on he was influenced by Sam Ratulangi into founding the pro-Indonesian Indonesian Irian Independence Party. Following a failed uprising against the Dutch, he was imprisoned before he left Papua in 1949, only once returning in 1950. He became a legislator between 1954 and 1960 and had participated in the Round Table Conference and the New York Agreement. Papare then began criticizing the Indonesian government's actions in Papua throughout the 1960s and was briefly arrested, though he later returned to the legislative body. He died in 1979, and was made a National Hero in 1993.