WHAT’S ON?
* Lunch 1-2pm Amazing Papuan food cooked by Ivone Bukorpioper
* Memorials for Yohana Ovide and Warinus Kogoya, led by Ribka Ovide
* Speaker Jacob Rumbiak Foreign Affairs Minister, WP Transitional Government
* Bishop Philip Huggins (with his incredible news)
* Dr Toscano’s World Famous Auction (for the West Papua Rent Collective)
Welcome to Country, Marice Henare Gleeson
The West Papua Office in Docklands and the West Papua community in Melbourne felt particularly honoured by the presence of Bunnerong Elder Marice Henare Gleeson.
Memorials: Yohana Ovide and Warinus Kogoya (8-min video)
Video recording, 8-min https://youtu.be/ZgQU9EOu1Kk
RIBKA OVIDE: Today we are remembering two West Papuans. The first is my beloved older sister Yohana Ovide. Yohana was caring, a good listener, careful in her work, with quality in every task. She died of Tuberculosis in 2018. I also had TB at the same time but I survived. My sister and I were very close. We did everything together, and we dreamed of getting a scholarship to study overseas, where there is no corruption, and the standard of education is higher than in Indonesia. Unfortunately, Yohana did not make it, and I am here alone. But my family is online with us today and I thank God for that.
Our second hero is Warinus Kogoya, who died last week after being tortured by the Indonesia military. This painting is of Delfianus Kogoya who was also tortured but survived. The art and this poem, by Benny Wenda’s son Wene, is for both of them.
“Our black bodies have become playgrounds for torture. Our indigenous land is a hunting ground for murder. Our brothers have become trophies. Our sisters are treated like toys. How many more blood baths must we endure before the world recognizes our suffering? You tied our hands, you sliced our backs, you beat our faces, you mock our race. For now we sit in blood. Tomorrow we stand in victory”
Jacob Rumbiak with Rev. Dr Robert Stringer (15-min video)
Video recording (15-min) https://youtu.be/iZnYe7jOynw
Rev. Stringer is Chaplain of the West Papua Women’s Office, and has visited West Papua several times. Jacob is the Foreign Affairs Minister of the West Papua Transitional Government. He talks about how West Papua’s resistance and nation-making might, or might not, be affected by the Melanesian Spearhead Group’s rejection of its kin’s application for membership, and the election of Suharto-era general and war criminal, Prabowo Subianto, as the next Indonesian president. (As Defence Minister during President Jokowi’s term, Prabowo told the Indonesian Parliament “the strong will do what they can and the weak will suffer what they must”). The recent coup in Vanuatu by some leaders of the West Papuan independence movement is addressed, as well as the short-comings of the Palestinian self-determination movement (which West Papua’s movement is often, inappropriately, compared with).
As Minister of Defence in 2019, Prabowo oversaw legislation that integrated ISIS returnees from the Middle East into the Indonesian Military. Violent jihadi groups have since used churches in West Papua as training and torture centres. According to Muslim scholar Lailstul Fitrivah “We have normalized religious discrimination with our TV programs, the preachers we listen to, and the arrogance of Muslim vigilante groups. This strain of religious violence is in our political campaigns, our commercial products and our consumerist activities. In a nutshell, we devour violence” (The Jakarta Post, 15 May 2018).
Bishop Huggins returns West Papua to UN (12-min video)
Video recording (12-min) https://youtu.be/TCu1mSNDqOQ
Bishop Huggins said he was relieved after fulfilling his promise to deliver a USB of documents from the West Papua Women’s Office to the United Nations General Assembly in New York (where the nation’s problems began in November 1961). The delivery succeeded, on 10 April 2024, via a healthy dose of commitment, intelligence, and spiritual intervention. The tiny USB contained political documents, and videos of the 61 Hammarskjöld-West Papua Living Memorials.
Gayatri Naraine presented the documentation to His Excellency Dennis Francis for Bishop Philip Huggins who had been entrusted with the package by Jacob Rumbiak, Foreign Affairs Minister of West Papua’s Transitional Government on 26 March 2023. (Gayatri Naraine has been the Brahma Kumaris’ representative to the United Nations since 1980; Mr Francis is an experienced politician from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago).
As conveyed at a celebratory event in Melbourne on 14 April 2024, the President of the UNGA promised to read what he has received, which also includes a request to meet thereafter. Meanwhile, as Jacob and Bishop Huggins both affirmed, “Under God, we seek to be peacemakers towards everyone, and pray for grace to be the reconciliation that we seek for all.”
The package included West Papua 1942-2022: the politics, the legals, and the only way forward, a fully referenced study guide covering the West Papuans promising experience as a UN Non-Self-Governing Territory (1950-1962); the UN member-states denial of the West Papuans self-determination in November 1961; and the violation of international law by Indonesia, the United States and United Nations in transferring the administration of West Papua to Indonesia in 1962. (West Papua is still a colony of the Indonesian Republic).
Ned Byrne praying at Dag Hammarksjöld’s tomb for West Papua’s independence, and in the Peace Chapel dedicated to him in Uppsala Cathedral (Sweden) on 20 June 2023; Gayatri Naraine presenting the West Papuan documents to HE Dennis Francis, President of the UN General Assembly, on 10 April 2024; Bishop Huggins at the West Papua Office in Docklands on 26 March 2023 promising Jacob Rumbiak he will deliver the USB to the United Nations in New York; A ten-minute education of meaning-filled coincidences across time and space, with glorious contemplative jazz by Galliano Sommavilla (piano) and Nick Huggins (guitar) at https://youtu.be/gc00GSzjMzE
Can’t remember Dag Hammarksjöld-West Papua project?
Sixty-one Hammarskjöld-West Papua Living Memorials were planted around the world to promote healing and renewal in the Congo, and the justice denied West Papuans after UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld was killed on the Congo-Zambia border on 18 September 1961. The project was initiated by Faye Gregson to build awareness of the decolonisation program the Sec-General had prepared for West Papua and planned to present to the 1961 UN General Assembly. His assassination three days before the opening of the Assembly enabled the UN member-states to (illegally) whitewash the Papuans decolonisation process, and create a duplicitous treaty (New York Agreement) that gifted Indonesia with 412,215 km² of Melanesian land.
All the tree-planting ceremonies are different. A woman in Gippsland set hers to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Solomon Islanders did theirs at midnight, the time of Hammarskjold’s death. East Timorese did theirs in their Tetum language. The Mwamba family in the Congo planted theirs during a school assembly. Sudanese sent a photo of a small shrub they’d planted on a bare patch of earth. We put the videos of the ceremonies on a USB for the current UN Secretary-General António Guterres, but then couldn’t find a courier until Bishop Huggins put his hand up.
All the tree-planting ceremonies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEY-DS7HW6Q
Dr Toscano’s Auction for West Papua Rent Collective
