Maybe the question he should be asking is, why is it that after 46 years of administration of West Papua by Indonesia, the West Papuan people are still struggling for justice?

Maybe it’s because the West Papuan people can see with their own eyes the human rights abuses they suffer, how they live in one of the most resource-rich areas of the world but are one of the poorest people in it, including having some of the lowest health standards.

Although the UN might have accepted the Act of Free Choice in 1969, to say the UN accepted it as a legitimate expression of the will of people of Irian is a bit of a stretch.

Only 1,022 handpicked voters, one representative for every 700 West Papuans, were allowed vote; and under coercion, voted to remain with Indonesia.

A UN official, a retired under-secretary-general, who handled the takeover said a few years ago, “Nobody gave a thought to the fact that there were a million people who had their fundamental human rights trampled,” and “It was just a whitewash. The mood at the United Nations was to get rid of this problem as quickly as possible.”

B.J.K. Cramer does not mention the exploitation of West Papua’s resources – the threat to one of the great tracts of undisturbed rainforest in the Asia-Pacific region by illegal logging and palm oil plantations.

He does not mention the numerous reports that documents human rights abuses in West Papua, including the one by the special representative of the UN secretary-general on the situation of human rights defenders, Hina Jilani, who said in her report, “A climate of fear undeniably prevails in West Papua.”

Jilani conducted an official mission to Indonesia from June 5-12, 2007.

He does not mention the West Papuan political prisoners thrown in jail for raising their national flag, or the fact that several books on the issue of West Papua were recently banned.

Is Indonesia’s democracy so fragile that it cannot allow the raising of the West Papuan flag and books on the issue of West Papua? The banning of freedom of expression is contrary to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). It’s time to listen to what the West Papuans are asking for, and that is simply for dialogue with Jakarta to try and solve the many concerns they have.

Joe Collins
Sydney

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