The violence in Indonesian West Papua continues to escalate as a new wave of arrests, killings and disappearances unfold. After Indonesian police were killed during a student protest in March the university and any young black people in it had become a target for Indonesian forces.
Hunted off the streets of Jayapura and now filmed for the first time hiding in the jungle, dozens of students have nowhere to turn.

STUDENTS, (Translation): We are afraid of being shot by the military so we need to hide in the forest.

A network of friends has arranged a boat for 22 of the students to flee to Australia. Just across the border in PNG Joshua, the refugees' contact man for the next part of the journey, waits for their boat to appear. We have been waiting all night but as dawn breaks Joshua knows something has gone very wrong. He drives to the border, searching the beaches as he goes.

REPORTER: We know that they left at 4 o’clock from Jayapura, which is just over the hill. Joshua is now extremely worried, he fears that they might have been captured.

Over an hour phone calls, it became clear what occurred.

REPORTER: What happened? What happened?

JOSHUA: Because the boat is overloaded, the boat sink and they are islanders and they can not swim.

As the students slipped out of Jayapura an Indonesian police patrol was waiting. They were chased, the boat swamped and sunk.

JOSHUA: One died, a student died and his body handed over to the police.

Many are still missing but Indonesian authorities confirm that one man has been captured and the body of another student has been recovered, apparently drowned. But according to these eyewitnesses - fellow travellers on the boat - Benedikyus Dimi didn't drown, he was murdered.

MARASULIS, (Translation): We tried to get around, we accelerated, then the boat sank.

According to the witnesses the final moments of Benedikyus Dimi's life were not those of a drowning man. His lungs were not full of water, there were full of life.

MARASULIS, (Translation): When we were swimming I heard the voice of my friend yelling, "Leave me! I want to swim." He was screaming this. We try to save ourselves and swam. Some were slow and were lagging behind, swimming too slowly. The police caught him, stabbed him, killed him on the spot.

REPORTER: Did you see this?

MARASULIS, (Translation): Yes, I saw the stabbing. He wasn't stabbed here, he was stabbed here.

REPORTER: He was in the water and they stabbed him?

MARASULIS, (Translation): Yeah.

GEORGE NEGUS: Mark Davis there with those disturbing claims from West Papua. And Mark's full report will be on the program next week.