A comprehensive biography of Edison Waromi, Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of West Papua (2011--) that can be equally viewed as the biography of a Melanesian nation-state, prepared by Louise Byrne for the 2013 Australian Anthropological Society Conference at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Department of Foreign Affairs Immigration and Trade
WP Open Day, 31 Aug 2025: launching ‘The Stowaway’
Includes documents associated with 'The Stowaway, From Sorong to Rotterdam', the biography of Eddy Korwa, a young Melanesian West Papuan who escaped from West Papua on the last Dutch ship in 1964. The biography was put together by Endie van Binsbergen, a popular Dutch activist from Utrecht, who is known for her activism with working women in Indonesia and human rights in West Papua and East Timor, and as an official observer of East Timor's historic referendum in 1999. The Stowaway is especially important because Eddy Korwa was a protegee of the political and social development in his homeland between 1950 and 1961 when West Papua was a United Nations Non-Self-Governing Territory administered by the Netherlands (1950—1961). West Papua's status and ongoing development should therefore have been in accord with international law, not the real politik that dominated the discourse after UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was murdered in 1961.
Ruby Eyed Coucal – In conversation with the author, Bruce Pascoe
Author, Bruce Pascoe attended Sampari Exhibition on Saturday 5 December 2015, 2 - 4 pm to discuss his political thriller Ruby-eyed Coucal and the long-standing cultural relations between the indigenous peoples of Australia and West Papua.
WP Open Day, Sun 30 March 2025
Documents and research associated with David Sornig's 2018 'Blue Lake, Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp', launched by West Papua Women's Office during Open Day on 30 March 2025.
Goodbye Mark Stevens, Thanks
Louise Byrne
Posted in Australian Politics, Campaigns, Culture, Documentaries, Events, Featured, History, Memorial, Music
Mark Stevens passed away quietly in Monash Hospital on 24 December 2024. Between 2000 and 2010 Mark was the West Papua Consul in Melbourne and his two-story Georgian home in the grounds of All Saints Anglican Church in East St Kilda was the West Papua Consulate. Mark first learned about West Papua—the cultures, the music, the politics, the war zone—via a young pig called Yabon owned by Jacob Rumbiak who lived around the corner in Wellington Street. From the six Papuan students who arrived in 2003, he learned more and became a very good friend and sensitive listener. The forty-three West Papuans who landed in 2006 also loved meeting up and relaxing at the Consulate, watching the soccer on Mark’s huge televsion, learning how to construct new computers out of old ones, and generally revelling in what Mark let them believe was their own space.
West Papua: Pilgrimage to Canberra, March 2024
A delegation from the West Papua Office in Docklands (Victoria) visited Canberra for Greens Senator Janet Rice's Valedictory (farewell) Speech in Parliament House on 26 March 2024, and to host a Remembrance Ceremony at the Netherlands Australian War Memorial on 27 March 2024 for Dutch, West Papuans and Australians who worked together in West Papua during World War Two. In the post is a link to Senator Janet Rice's full valedictory speech (22') and also to the debate 'Is Australia doing enough for West Papua' (Janet was the 3rd speaker on the 'no' team) in the Melbourne City Council's prestigious Yarra Room in October 2023.
WP Open Day, 7 April 2024, UNGA accepts USB, MSG rejects its kin
Louise Byrne
Posted in Events, Featured, International Relations, Memorial, Open Days, United Nations, West Papuan Government
Tribute to Kevin Buzzacott from West Papua
Kevin Buzzacott (b 1947), Aboriginal elder of the Arabunna nation and a highly valued supporter of West Papua's independence, died on 29 November 2023, and was buried in Alice Springs on 22nd December 2023. This entry (8 slides) is a record of his moral support and activism for what he insisted was Australia's 'responsibility to care for our brothers and sisters from across the water.'
Book Launch: Clovis Mwamba’s ‘The Meteorite Memos’
Launch of Clovis Mwamba's book of poems and essays 'The Meteorite Memos' during the West Papua Open Day in Docklands on 26 November 2023. Clovis, a teacher, activist, and politician in the Democratic Republic of Congo, wrote the poems on flattened cigarette packets while he was a political prisoner in a secret military camp in Kinshasa in 1998-1999. The Meteorite Memos opens an archive of atrocity and is therefore a human rights document; but also points to a profoundly influential African initiate knowledge system. The post also includes video-excerpts of a Cabaret Burlesque 'West Papua & The Congo' performed to highlight the forces that create war and genocide in West Papua and The Congo. These two nations share the roots of most decolonizing struggles, but are also bound by the catastrophic effect of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarksjöld's death in the Congo on the unholy and illegal denial of West Papua's registration as a UN Non-Self-Governing Territory in 1961.
Cuba and Fiji for West Papua
This post contains biography of the two speakers at the West Papua Open Day on 17 September 2023: Laura Canet Mulén, from the Higher Institute of International Relations in Cuba, and Dr Robert Wolfgramm from Fiji, with a link to twenty articles about West Papua in the Fiji Daily Post between 2005 and 2006 when he was Editor-in-Chief. The post also includes documentation pertaining to our Memorial to Dag Hammarskjöld (1961), the Nieuw Guinea RAAD (1962), and Helena Grunfeld (2023). Hammarskjöld was the UN Secretary-General (1953-1961), the New Guinea RAAD was the parliament of West Papua's Non-Self-Governing Territory before the Indonesian occupation, and Helena Grunfeld was a Swedish-Australian activist who worked at the West Papua Womens Office in Docklands. The post also features photos of the beautiful works donated to Dr Toscano's Auction for the West Papua Rent Collective by Queensland visual artist Susan Zela Bissett and Victorian wood sculptor David McKenzie.
The Hammarskjöld-West Papua Files, 26 March 2023
During the first Open Day in 2023 in the Docklands office, Anglican Bishop Philip Huggins was presented with the Hammarskjöld-West Papua Living Memorial files, including sixty (two-minute) videos of the tree-planting ceremonies around the world. Bishop Huggins, the first Australian to plant a memorial, promised that the Anglican Communion Permanent Representative to the United Nations would personally present the files to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, UN Assistant-Director Gillian Triggs, and the UN 75 Committee. The documentation is designed to remind UN executives, bureaucrats and member-states of the mistake they made in 1961-1962 in transferring the administration of West Papua (then Nederlands Nieuw Guinea) to Indonesia. The entry includes videos of the presentations by Bishop Huggins and Jacob Rumbiak, descriptions and links to the papers in the package for UN Sec-General Guterres, and a link to all the 2-min videos of tree-planting ceremonies from around the world.
- Live Blog: 2023 December 1 West Papua Independence Day protests and commemorations
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- HRD Analysis on Oksibil-West Papua Armed Conflict
- HRD Report: Information on Internally Displaced People in West Papua – Oksibil
- Extension of Special Autonomy Law Number 21 of 2001 for West Papua by Indonesian Parliament: A One-sided Policy implementation
- Permintaan mendesak kepada saksi garis depan dan sumber dari WestPapuaMedia untuk memaksimalkan liputan internasional tentang Darurat Kemanusiaan di Ilaga, Intan Jaya dan Nduga
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