Speaker: Laura Canet Mulén from Cuba, 20-min video
Video recording https://youtu.be/_uJeRb_uDLc
Laura regards addressing the West Papua Open Day in Docklands on 17 September 2023 as “an honour and an opportunity to exchange knowledge and experiences on the close ties of cooperation and friendship between Cuba and the Pacific islands”.
Laura is from the Raúl Roa García Higher Institute of International Relations in Cuba. She was born in Havana on 6 September 1999; her father a military retiree and her mother a doctor. She has represented Cuba twice in international swimming competitions, enjoys good music, dancing, and the theatre. She is grateful for the support of Dr. Abel Perdomo and Msc. Juan Miguel González Peña who are supervising her research of Cuba’s relations with South Pacific Islands. “The South Pacific island-states have not been studied as centres of geostrategic importance since World War Two, and deserve special attention in terms of multilateralism and resilience”.
Cuba is a member of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), which in 2019 passed a substantial motion on West Papua (below). The OACPS is a group of 79 nations (48 African, 16 Caribbean, 15 Pacific). Its Secretariat is in Brussels, and it has close relations with the Parliament of the European Union.
OACPS motion on West Papua, 7 December 2019
Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS)
Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), Cook Islands, Cte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Republic of Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Tanzania, Timor Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Fiji’s Dr Robert Wolfgramm
Robert was born in Fiji of German, Tongan, Jewish, Australian and Fijian ancestry; after arriving in Sydney in 1963, he moved to Melbourne in 1968. He is the nephew of the iconic Tongan pedal steel guitarist Bill Wolfgramm, and the father of the popular Wolfgramm Sisters. In the 1970s he was a pioneer songwriter and record producer of contemporary Christian music in Melbourne when that genre was still produced in other countries by other people.”Bob brought it home, and gave it depth” claimed a reviewer of his Galilee album.
Robert is a true Renaissance man. Currently he is Editor-in-Chief of a new translation of the Fiji Bible (Nai Vola Tabu). He lectured at Monash University for twenty-four years where he earned the respect and loyalty of sociology and political science students. He and wife Lupe co-founded AFL Fiji with the Australian Football League’s Andrew Cadzow and footy stars David Rodan and Alipate Carlile (Richmond, Port Adelaide), training thousands of kids around the island-nation, and in 2011 bringing the first ever Fijian team to the AFL International Cup. (The young team, which had never played in football boots, dominated France in the Grand Final and took home the 2nd Division prize. In 2014, under Lupe’s inspiration and with training and coaching from sons Max and Dylan, the first Fijian AFL Women’s team participated in the AFL International Cup.
Robert was also Editor-in-Chief of the Fiji Daily Post newspaper during 2006 when after years of threats, Naval Commander Frank Bainimarama ousted the government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and led a brutal authoritarian regime for the next sixteen years. Suffering the combined effects of life threats, bullying, falling staff morale, shrinking circulation, censorship demands, and weighty unresolved court cases, the Fiji Daily Post was forced to suspend publication in 2010. Robert and his family returned to Australia in 2014.
Robert’s informed writings and presentations have jolted many Australians into remembering that West Papua is still the western border of Melanesia-Pacific, despite the UN General Assembly vote in 1969 that relegated it a far-flung colony of the Indonesian Republic.
Dr Robert Wolfgramm, 2016 Sampari Art Festival at the Australian Catholic University, Organised by the West Papua Women’s Office in Docklands.
20 Fiji Daily Post articles about West Papua between 2005 and 2006 (PDF)
Fiji Daily Post articles about West Papua, 2005-2006
3CR Radio interview with Robert Wolfgramm, 6 Sept 2023 (60-min audio)
https://www.3cr.org.au/radicalaustralia/episode/robert-wolfgramm
1978 recording of Robert Wolfgramm’s Refugee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOdhp4rsd4Y
MEMORIALS
Dag Hammarskjöld, Nieuw Guinea RAAD, Helena Grunfeld
The memorials, led by Rev. Dr Robert Stringer, honoured the work of Dag Hammarskjöld (1961), the New Guinea RAAD (1962), and Helena Grunsfeld (2023). Mr Hammarskjöld was the UN Secretary-General who was murdered by the CIA on 18 September 1961, three days before the UN General Assembly where he planned to introduce the Decolonisation program he had drafted for West Papua. The Nieuw Guinea RAAD was the elected parliament of the West Papuans’ Non-Self-Governing Territory, which opened in Hollandia on 5 April 1961 and was abolished after the United Nations transferred the administration of the territory to Indonesia in 1963. Helena Grunsfeld, a Swedish-Australian academic and holocaust survivor, worked in the Docklands office. The candle for Helena was lit by Ms Ruth Leonards from the Melbourne City Synagogue, for Dag Hammarskjöld by Mr Clovis Mwamba from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and for the Nieuw Guinea RAAD by Mrs Nely Baransano from West Papua.
The memorial concluded with a reading of ‘Death of a Herdsman’ by Yvette Ripplinger, a young French bureaucrat who wrote the poem in her office on the 27th floor of the UN Building in New York after the murder of her boss UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld on 18 September 1961. The poem was read by Monique Westmore from Holy Trinity Church in Port Melbourne, and introduced by Muhammad Alsomalia, whose father’s brother was, during his term as Somalia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, President of the UN Security Council in 1972.
Death of a Herdsman, Yvette Ripplinger, 18 September 1961 (poem)
Death of a Herdsman, Yvette Ripplinger, 18 Sept 1961
Yvette Ripplinger, UN Secretariat Christmas, 24 Dec 1947 (UN Media photo)
American hosts and French guests enjoyed traditional turkey dinner in the home of Reverend Wilbur Kerr. Clockwise from centre are: Stephen Kerr, Yvette Ripplinger of France, Gilbert Kerr, Mrs. Marion Kerr, Mrs. Luana Brewer, Mr. Wilbur Brewer, Suzanne Bourgois of France, and host Reverend Kerr (https://media.un.org/photo/en/asset/oun7/oun7445697)
‘West Papua & Dag Hammarskjöld’ (9-min film)
The short film ‘West Papua & Dag Hammarskjöld’, with a gloriously contemplative jazz score by Galliano Sommavilla recorded by Nick Huggins, was produced by the West Papua Womens Office in 2023. The film begins at Dag Hammarskjöld’s tombstone in Sweden and the chapel in Uppsala Cathedral dedicated to him; and ends with the West Papuans Green State mission announced at the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. The ‘cast’ includes Napoléon, Jacob Rumbiak, Bishop Huggins, Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Sec-General Guterres, Dr Greg Poulgrain, Sweden’s Princess Victoria, Professor Henning Melber, Ned Byrne, General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (Napoléon’s general who became the Swedish King Karl XIV Johan), and the Aramaic-speaking Özel family from the Turi Abdin (Holy Mountain) region of southern Turkey who live in exile in Sweden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnRkfcj-7xM
West Papua Rent Collective
Every WP Open Day, Dr Joe Toscanoe, the convenor of the Rent Collective that financially supports the Docklands office, hosts an auction to raise funds. For the Open Day on 15 September 2023 two artists, Susan Zela Bissett and David McKenzie, donated works. Susan, a visual artist from Queensland redefines the meaning of botanical art with her unique work composed of plant fibre and fragments and inks brewed from bark, berries and fruit. More about this amazing artist at https://zela.com.au 
David McKenzie sculptures works from pieces of timber that he finds in the bush around his home in the hills outside Melbourne. 
PHOTO CREDITS
The Trogan, Cuba’s national bird (www.glennbartley.com);
The Kuli, Fiji’s national bird (www.animal.photos/bird6/lory-sol.htm);
The Victoria Crowned Pigeon, West Papua’s national bird (www.wecareaboutbirds.weebly.com)
