Regarding the Pig Feast Film, DPR Member: Criticism is Legitimate, but Ethical Responsibility is Needed

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - A member of Commission II of the House of Representatives from the Gerindra faction, Azis Subekti, has highlighted the debate surrounding the film ‘Pig Feast: Colonialism in Our Time’, which has been banned in several regions.

Azis stated that criticism of development in Papua is perfectly legitimate. However, in a democracy, there also needs to be ethical responsibility.

“We must honestly say that criticism of development in Papua is something legitimate. Democracy indeed requires voices that remind the state not to lose its conscience. No development should be immune from criticism,” Azis said in his statement on Thursday (14/5/2026).

“But democracy also requires ethical responsibility,” Azis added.

The ethical responsibility referred to by Azis concerns the balance in that criticism. If it is continuously carried out without balance, what happens is the herding of perceptions.

Azis explained that the film emerged from an advocacy documentary environment that inherently has a certain social struggle orientation from the outset.

According to him, ‘Pig Feast’ does not stand as a neutral journalistic report that maintains strict distance from all parties, but rather as a work that from the beginning chooses its own moral-political angle.

“That is the creative right of the filmmakers. But precisely because of that, the public needs to read films like this with a higher critical awareness. Because in many parts, the film builds a very strong emotional narrative about South Papua, about lost forests, changing customary lands, communities that feel displaced, and development portrayed as primarily a threat,” Azis stated.

Azis assessed that the problem is not the emergence of social wounds.

In fact, some of those concerns are indeed alive among the people of Papua.

“Yet the reality in Papua is far more complex than that. Papua is not a black-and-white space. There are indigenous communities there who are critical of development. But there are also native Papuans who hope their children can escape poverty,” he said.

Therefore, Azis said, Papua indeed needs serious development.

Moreover, Papua is highly strategic, making it very vulnerable to global perception wars.