Who wouldn’t want to spend a few hours on a sunny almost-spring sunday in melbourne eating and learning with a bunch of really good people? Our Open Days are a mini festival of ideas, knowledge, and information, spiced with a bit of excellent food and acoustic music. But if you don’t like critical thinking and enlightenment, and meaningful engagement with our nearest neighbours, it’s probably better not to come.
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 the Indonesian State and the Indonesian people are responding differently, and what the international actors are doing to free the indigenous people of their colonial overlord.
Dr Joe’s Auction for West Papua Rent Collective (which pays the office rent)
Top item at this Open Day Auction is a serving of spoons honed from beautiful sweet-smelling Mahogany trees illegally logged in the Ituri Forest in the Democratic Repbulic of Congo, then smuggled across a couple of land borders, then shipped to a port in Italy where the containers were re-branded and on-shipped to Port Melbourne.
How do we know all this? In Melbourne, a member of the West Papua Rent Collective working on the dock heard the story. He knew Clovis Mwamba from the DRC worked in the West Papua Office, so he quietly removed some of the wood from the container, and passed it to Dr Toscano, who then passed it to Master Carver David McKenzie, who offered to sculpt some carvings for the Open Day Auction.
3. All-Papuan Young Speakers Panel
The speakers at this August Open Day are three West Papuan students, each presenting for seven minutes, on the the current progress of the liberation struggle in West Papua, and how Indonesia and the International community are doing about it.
Wilhelmina Waromi is from Timika, port town for the massive Freeport gold-and-copper mine. (In 2018 Indonesia bought 51% of the mine for $3.85 billion which it borrowed from China). Both Wilhelmina’s father’s clan, from Serui, and her mother’s clan, from Biak, are long-standing political and religious activists, and Wilhelmina is patiently waiting for the Australian government to grant her asylum. Before flying to Australia to study, she helped her uncle, a prominent Protestant pastor, compile and translate ELSHAM’s respected and influential human rights reports.
Willem Walilo is a modern Hubula tribeman and an outstanding spokesperson for ‘the people of the Baliem Valley’ in the Central Highlands, where the freedom-fighters have been fighting Indonesia’s brutal attempts to bulldoze Papuans from their land around the Wabu Blok Gold Reserve. Historically, you might recall that the Highlanders’ farming and irrigation techniques date back to the end of the last ice cycle (6-10 thousand years ago) when glacial ice-melt formed Torres Strait (also Bass Strait) above a low-lying plain.
Aprilia Seseray’s traditional home is Meukisi village in Tanahmera Bay (from where, in April 1944, the Australian destroyer ‘Arunta’ led the Allies’ bombing campaign against the Japanese). Her grandfather, Zacharias Seseray, worked for the Dutch Administration from 1955 until the United Nations transferred the administration to Indonesia in 1963. After that, Indonesian soldiers tortured her grandfather and torched the family home; indeed publicly bombfired anything ‘Dutch’, except the white goods they wanted (fridges, radios, washing machines) which they immediately stole and shipped home..
Memorial for the Martyrs and Heroes
Our Memorial for the Martyrs and Heroes is led by Ribka Ovide, an Aeronautical Engineering student at RMIT University. Ribka was brought up in Timika, but her tribal homeland is Depapre (another coastal village in Tanahmera Bay bombed by the Allies).
Our memorial remembers and honours three women murdered in the Central Highlands by the Indonesian Military between March and July this year as part of its ongoing attempt to forge space around the new Wabu Blok gold reserve just 35 kms north-west of the Freeport mine (with an estimated worth $us 33.2billion).
YULITA PIGAI. A seventy-one year old Mee woman from Ikebo Village west of Lake Paniai, who was shot inside her home by BRIMOB, the elite paramilitary of the Indonesian Police. Yulita was one of six civilians, including a child shot in the chest, who were murdered in their villages between 31 March and 2 April 2026.
MELKIANA DUWITAU AND HER UNBORN BABY. Melkiana was a thirty-one year old pregnant Moni woman from Wandoga Village east of Lake Paniai. On 2 July 2026, whe and her unborn baby were killed inside her parents’ home by six to eight bullets fired from an Indonesian Army Post on a hill 250 metres away.
MALINCE WAMANG, 17 year-old daughter of Rev. Anton Wamang, shot on 7 May 2026 by the Rajawali Habema Task Force. The high school graduate, born into the Amungme tribe (whose traditional homeland has long been occupied by Freeport) was shot as she and her mother were having coffee in the Panners Camp after sifting through Freeport tailings in the Kabur River looking for residual gold to sell and pay for her university course. (The Kabur is a tributary of the Aikwa River which empties into the Arafura Sea). Four other Papuans were also shot, and six more wounded, including a child.
Map showing the villages where Yulita, Melkiana, and Malince were killed.
