Teachers, gold miners, a public-transport driver, agriculture office staff, a village head. From the record of 2018 to 2026, one accusation appears before they are killed: intelligence agent. Almost none of those accusations was ever proven.
In March 2025, six teachers and health workers were attacked at SD YPK Anggruk in Yahukimo. A spokesperson for the armed group said the victims were intelligence agents and claimed responsibility. The military denied it. After field monitoring from 27 April to 2 May 2025, Indonesia's national human rights commission concluded the attackers were the armed group because the victims were accused of being government intelligence agents, and urged the TPNPB-OPM leadership to stop violence against teachers and health workers.
In April 2025, the same accusation was used against traditional gold miners in Yahukimo. Human Rights Watch recorded that the armed group claimed responsibility for killing 17 people it described as miners, while calling on both sides to respect international humanitarian law. Human Rights Monitor reported around 15 migrant miners killed in a single attack.
The pattern continued through 2026. Three civilians were executed beside the Trans-Papua road in Seradala on 20 July 2026 — a married couple and a woman of the Unaukam people — and the act was filmed. The armed group called them military intelligence agents; the military denied it and the national human rights commission described the case as an extrajudicial killing. One victim's body was found at the base of a landslide, about 100 metres from the shooting site, ten days later.
On 9 September 2026, a convoy of Jayawijaya regency agriculture staff was intercepted on the way back to Wamena. Eight indigenous Papuans were released; three migrant employees from outside Papua were shot dead: a 49-year-old head of the livestock division, a 35-year-old veterinarian and a 24-year-old staff member. Six days later, a public-transport driver from Toraja was intercepted on the Trans Wamena–Nduga route, shot dead and his car burned. The armed group called him an undercover intelligence agent; the military said he was a civilian with decades behind the wheel.
The accusation is not new. In December 2018, nineteen workers on the Trans-Papua bridge project in Nduga were shot dead. The attackers said the victims were soldiers; the company and authorities confirmed they were civilian workers, eleven of them from Tana Toraja.
Independent datasets show the scale of the accusation. ACLED research cites around 100 miners killed in Papua since 2018 under the spy narrative, and in May 2026 recorded an attack on miners in Yahukimo that killed at least ten people and displaced hundreds. Its analysis flags something more disturbing: both sides, state forces and the armed group, no longer respect safe spaces such as churches and refugee camps.
What is missing from every one of these events is proof. Across the entire record we compiled, no official document shows any of the victims was a member of the security forces or working for intelligence. What exists are statements from the side that claimed the killing. For the victims' families, that sentence is the reason given for the death of someone who worked as a teacher, a driver or a farmer.