Filep Karma was born in 1959 in Jayapura, Dutch New Guinea, to an upper-class family involved in local politics. Andreas Karma, his father, was a Dutch-educated civil servant who remained in the Indonesian government after independence, serving as regent of Wamena and Serui, and Constant Karma, one of Filep Karma’s cousins, served as deputy governor of Papua. When Filep Karma was a child, Indonesian soldiers raided his home at night and destroyed the family’s furniture after receiving a false tip that two of his relatives from Biak were actually his uncles Sam and Jan Pieter Karma, colonels for OPM. Fritz Karma, a relative who was a TNI informant and a member of the Polri, paid a visit the afternoon before the raid, so he had reason to believe that he was the informant.
On July 2, 1998, he led a ceremony in Biak to raise the West Papuan flag, after which activists clashed with police, injuring a dozen officers. Four days later, the Indonesian military occupied Biak Island and opened fire on the activists; Karma claimed that more than 100 protesters were killed and buried on nearby islands, though the exact death toll is unknown.
Filep Karma Net Worth
Filep Karma’s net worth is estimated to be $ USD 10 million.
