The West Papua Office in Docklands adapted quickly to COVID-19 restrictions, and the Open Day on Sunday 19 April was an online forum. It featured informed perspectives on the life of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, and how his assassination in September 1961 enabled UN members to bring about Indonesia’s occupation of a UN Non-Self-Governing Territory.
Since the publication of Greg Poulgrain’s ground-breaking ‘The Incubus of Intervention: conflicting Indonesia strategies of John F. Kennedy and Allen Dulles’ we have known that UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld was about to introduce a Decolonisation Program in Netherlands New Guinea whereby the West Papuan people would be recognised as the sovereign owners of their land, and that UN officers would assist an independent West Papuan government for five years.
Hammarskjöld developed the program in consultation with President Kennedy and the Economic Council of New York; and had discussed it with General MacArthur (who in 1944, with Dutch resident Jan van Eechoud, laid the infrastructural foundations of what both believed would eventually become an independent state). Hammarskjöld had overseen decolonisation programs in numerous colonies, and intended to present the one he’d developed for the Non-Self-Governing Territory of Netherlands New Guinea to the 1961 General Assembly. However, his assassination three days before the opening of the Assembly, meant the motion was introduced by the Netherlands UN Representative without Hammarskjöld’s authoritative and influential presence. Debate in the General Assembly was confused, and confusing, and the motion didn’t garner the necessary two-thirds majority support.
The UN failure of its founding principle, by an Assembly wracked with Cold War tension and intrigue, opened the way for an American diplomat—appointed by Acting Sec-General U Thant—to mediate the drafting of an agreement that facilitated Indonesia’s incorporation of West Papua and over-rode the Netherlands principled, well-organised, and well-funded self-determination project.
VIDEO RECORDINGS OF THE SIX SPEECHES ON 19 APRIL 2020
Jacob Rumbiak, ULMWP Spokesperson, FRWP Minister of Foreign Affairs (5 mins)
https://youtu.be/QSFNHen0hKI
Includes an account, and historical photos, of the Spanish Flu in West Papua after World War One, which killed one in five of the Marind tribe on the south coast of West Papua near the PNG border. Also includes Acknowledgement of Country by Babuan Mirino, President of the West Papua Womens Office in Docklands.
Louise Byrne, FRWP West Papua Womens Office, Docklands (5 mins)
https://youtu.be/sJzu9JPv3eU
Overview of the development, and the demise, of Secretary-General Hammarskjöld’s decolonisation program for West Papua. Includes a rare recording of Akai Bipa Mare by Arnold Ap and his 1980s cultural performance group Mambesak.
[written version] Louise Byrne, FRWP Webinar, 19 April 2020, Introduction
Mr Clovis Mwamba from Democratic Republic of Congo (11 mins) The ill-fated voyage of Secretary-General Hammarskjöld’s voyage to The Congo in 1961
https://youtu.be/zYmR_swgPdE
[written version] Clovis Mwamba, The ill-fated voyage of Secretary-General Hammarskjöld’s voyage to The Congo in 1961, West Papua Webinar, 19 April 2020
For more on Clovis extraordinary life: born in the gold-rich province of Katanga, then school teacher, national politician, political prisoner, refugee in Australia Clovis Mwamba My Story, 2020, a six-minute video produced by the Western Digital Storytelling Project Team in Melbourne, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYOVJwgIaEw
Roger Kalla (17 mins) Dag Hammarskjöld: Poet & Photographer
https://youtu.be/GOm2hbb3jbw
[written version] Introduction to Dr Roger Kalla, West Papua (FRWP) Webinar, 19 April 2020
Jacob Rumbiak, Foreign Affairs, United Liberation Movement for West Papua (7 mins) What’s happening behind COVID-19 in West Papua?
https://youtu.be/YTH_SDLYD5A
[written version] Jacob Rumbiak, Behind COVID-19 in West Papua, 19 April 2020
Dr Joe Toscano (11 mins) The West Papua Rent Collective
https://youtu.be/R4Kkz1xTmoQ
[written version] WP Rent Collective, Webinar, 19 April 2020
