In a pre-recorded statement at the General Assembly over the weekend, Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Bob Loughman said there was a “selective approach” in addressing human rights violations in the region, claiming that the people of West Papua continued to suffer from human rights abuses.

Loughman said the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum had made a call last year for the Indonesian government to allow the UN Office of the Human Rights Commissioner to visit Papua and West Papua provinces.

“To date there has been little progress on this front. I therefore called on the Indonesian government to please hear the previous call of Pacific leaders,” he said on Saturday, according to a recording on the UN website.

Leaders of countries grouped under the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) had raised concerns last year over the handling of alleged human rights abuses in Papua, a move Indonesia immediately objected to.

In a communiqué from a PIF summit in Tuvalu last August, the leaders “strongly encouraged” Indonesia to finalize the timing of a visit by the UN human rights commissioner to investigate alleged human rights abuses and allow the commissioner to create an “evidence-based, informed report” on the situation in Papua.

In exercising Indonesia’s first right of reply to Loughman’s speech on Saturday, second secretary at the Indonesian mission to the UN, Silvany Austin Pasaribu, accused Vanuatu of having an “excessive and unhealthy obsession” about how Indonesia should govern itself.

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