WEST PAPUAN SELF-DETERMINATION
The time never was right for Indonesia to Colonise Papua New Guinea and certainly not within the last fifty years. Papua New Guinea belongs to its Indigenous Peoples.
When the Dutch found it necessary to depart from their Colonial holdings throughout South East Asia, Indonesia, Java or such, a power vacuum was apparent to the minds of the Indonesians. They acted deliberately and decisively to claim the Archipeligo and all adjacent island masses that they could lay their hands on.
For a while, we recall, there was some discussion of confrontation between Australia and Indonesia but this was resolved when Australia quickly sided with the UN and other parties who felt the injustice to Papua New Guinea could be swept under the carpet.
Face-saving deals were made, to partition New Guinea more firmly along colonial lines and the result was that West Papua was thrown to the Indonesian lion.
From the moment West Papua became an Indonesian possession, life became a burden for the Papuan natives. Deprived of self-determination, freedom, rights and privileges, West Papuan natives became serfs to an obnoxious overlord.
In the passing years, Indoneasia has become a more, rather than a less burdensome Overlord. Strict Martial Law is now applied with cruelty and racial discrimination.
The West has turned a conspicuously blind eye to the sufferings of the West Papuan natives. Conspicuous because, in the region, Australia has a puny population to resist Indonesian attempts at hegemony and other South East Asian nations, post-WWII, had sufficient to do to consolidate their own affairs.
Would the City-State of Singapore intervene in Indonesian affairs? China? China has a policy of rigidly applying its internal policies globally…”China does China and Indonesia does Indonesia”. It seems fair in a purely pragmatic sense but no, it has been clear to all free thinkers everywhere, “I am my brother’s keeper”.
Now these cowardly chicken are coming home to roost. With the blazing light of global communications falling upon the disgraceful acts of Indonesia in West Papua, Social Media now ensure the whole world participates in the Native’s struggle.
The morality of the equation is no longer International Politics, fought out tactfully and with banal contempt at Den Hague, but now is the instantaneous gut-feel of millions reacting to video-clips of Indonesian Army soldiers holding guns to the heads and private parts of scantilly clad natives in the forests of West Papua.
Indigenous West Papuans are themselves endeavouring to rally support and resources at home and on the international scene. Peaceful demonstrations in Port Numbay, West Papua, supported a Conference in the UK. The conference took place on 2nd August 2011, from 2pm to 5pm. The venue was the East School of the Examination Schools, High Street, Oxford, England.
Additionally, a group entitled International Lawyers for West Papua (ILWP) now campaign for the peaceful independence of West Papua from Indonesia and for the right of self-determination for its people. They maintain a site to coordinate their campaigns at: http://www.ilwp.org/ (see also Links Column at right)
We cannot begin to express our disgust at Indonesia, for its motives and for its tactics. We know the reasons devolve more around ‘natural resources’ than simple National Sovereignty. We realise there is the matter of Pride but we are equally sure the corrupt corporate heads of Industry, so closely associated with the Indonesian Military, care less for their own country than they do for their personal wealth.
West Papua is held hostage by corrupt men who use the Indonesian Military to exercise personal dominion with cruelty. These are no better than the disgusting Warlords who enact such horrible crimes elsewhere, such as in African Sudan, Darfor…and for that matter, in a whole raft of countries where Islam holds sway.
We doubt Indonesia will shed its Islam for the sake of West Papua but we feel the entire world should express its deep disgust for the way Indonesia “rules” West Papua.
We feel Indonesian rule of West Papua comprises a Crime Against Humanity.
We feel the whole world should rise up and say so.
We doubt the whole world will but I am willing to do so.
Guran