The Federal Republic of West Papua in Docklands (Victoria) is urging Australia to vote for a motion in the 2019 General Assembly to register West Papua with the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation.
The motion drafted by the United Liberation Movement for West Papua is being raised by Vanuatu and is supported by the ACP States (African, Caribbean Pacific Group). It requires the support of 129 of the 193 UN member-states so the votes of Australia and New Zealand are critical. At stake for these two countries are the security implications of their continuing refusal to recognise the West Papuans’ right of self-determination.
NADINE RUTTER from Christchurch, New Zealand, is co-ordinating a petition to generate Australian support for the vote. For the past twelve months she has been working in Vanuatu, where the fate of West Papuans is a top domestic issue for the people and a top foreign affairs issue for the Vanuatu government. She was guest speaker at the FRWP Open Day in Docklands (Victoria) on 7 April 2019.
“I find it difficult to accept that Australia and New Zealand care so little about West Papua, and that trading with Indonesia cannot co-exist with supporting West Papuans’ self-determination” (3CR Radio, Radical Australia, 3 April 2019).
The goal of the campaign is to match the 1.8 million West Papuan signatures presented to the President of the UN Decolonisation Committee Rafael Carreño in New York 2017, and to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Blachelet in Geneva in January 2019. In August 2019, the West Papua Womens Office in Docklands is boxing the signatures and transporting them to Canberra to be tabled in the Senate. On 17 September, before the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York, the signatures are being presented to Herman Wainggai (ULMWP Special Representative to the UN).
To sign the petition, visit decolonizewestpapa.com. Alternatively, you can download and print a hard copy from the Activist’s Kit at https://dfait.federalrepublicofwestpapua.net/decolonize-west-papua-activist-kit/. Please send hard copy petitions to FRWP Office by 31 July 2019: Federal Republic of West Papua, Attn: Nadine Rutter, Suite 211, 838 Collins Street, Docklands VIC 3008
Please contact us at frwpwomensoffice@gmail.com if you have any questions.
Some Background Information
West Papuan signatures leaving Jayapura.
ULMWP Chair Benny Wenda with petition for UN Decolonization C’ttee, New York, 30 Sept 2017
Benny Wenda with petition for UN Human Rights Commissioner, Geneva, 25 Jan 2019.
The New York Agreement (1962-1969) transferred the administration of West Papua from the Netherlands to Indonesia via the United Nations. Australia voted for the agreement, even though UN Representative and Attorney-General Garfield Barwick believed Indonesia’s claim of sovereignty should have been lodged with the International Court of Justice. He warned “the long-term interests of stability and progress will be served by a bonafide performance of the Agreement’s self-determination provisions” (UNGA 1127th Plenary, 21 Sept 1962). Predictably, the Agreement’s concluding act-of-free-choice in 1969 was not an act of self-determination but an involuntary response by 0.1% of the population to a script written by the Indonesian government.
Special Autonomy (2001-2021) was peddled as ‘development’ but designed to eliminate the independence program (by trebling the number of regencies, from 14 to 41, each with a pre-scribed level of military personnel and hardware). In December 2018 Jakarta’s frustration with its inability to Indonesianize the Papuans escalated: the Indonesian Parliament declared war on West Papua’s Liberation Army; the Airforce dropped bombs of the banned chemical white phosphorous on a number of villages; the government banned local churches and NGOs from helping the villages with emergency food, water and medicine.
Since 2014 the United Liberation Movement for West Papua has coordinated the nation’s independence program. The ULMWP was elected from and is accountable to the nation’s key political identities—West Papua National Parliament, West Papua National Coalition for Liberation, Federal Republic of West Papua. Since its formation, West Papua’s case has been actively prosecuted by a coalition of Pacific states led by Vanuatu and the motion to register West Papua on the UN Decolonization List is supported by an increasing number of African, Caribbean, and Pacific states.
Briefing Paper, Jacob Rumbiak (2019) Reflecting on 1st December 1961, West Papua’s self-determination as a Non-Self-Governing Territory https://dfait.federalrepublicofwestpapua.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/1-Dec-1961-West-Papuas-self-determination-as-a-Non-Self-Governing-Territory.pdf
3CR Radio Interview with Campaign Director Nadine Rutter and Louise Byrne, 3CR Tuesday Hometime, 23 April 2019
With thanks to Polish photographer Magda Zelewska for her wonderful image (MagdaZelewska.com)
