Following our Papuan-Chef’s lunch, this Open Day features a panel of young West Papuans, each presenting for 7-minutes, about what is going on now in West Papua, how Indonesia and Indonesians are responding (differently), and what the international actors are doing to free the indigenous people of their colonial overlord.
THE SPEAKERS
Wilhelmina Waromi was born in Timika, the port town that serves PT Freeport Indonesia, the massive gold and copper mine. Both her father’s and her mother’s clan are long-standing political and religious activists, and Wilhelmina is patiently waiting for the Australian government to grant her asylum. She is the generation of young Melanesian-Indigenous, who feel responsible for maintaining the Pacific as a heavenly realm of safety and peace.
Ms Waromi’s biological uncle, Matheus Adadikam, is a Protestant Pastor, and former Synod Secretary of the Evangelical Christian Church/GKI in The Land of Papua, a church that serves more than half of West Papua’s indigenous population. As Director of the Institute for Studies, Advocacy and Human Rights (ELSHAM) and editor of its reports, he is constantly threatened and humiliated by the Indonesian government’s military and intelligence agencies.
Miss Waromi often helps her uncle compile and translate reports of the Indonesian state’s crimes that ELSHAM collects and collates and distributes to the UN Human Rights Council and other international human rights organisations.
