This webinar on 13 September 2020, is a memorial for UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and the Decolonisation Program that he prepared for West Papua in 1961. It also explores the UN peace mission in the newly formed Democratic Republic of Congo during the same year. The program for West Papua was designed to deliver the West Papuans their right of self-determination, and prevent Indonesia from taking over the Non-Self-Governing Territory. The mission in the Congo was designed to de-escalate the brutal bloody conflict over the new state’s mineral resources. Both were overwhelmed by the extraordinary tension between capitalism and communism led by the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
What was the outcome of these two UN missions? First, the Secretary-General was killed. Second, the new state of Congo nose-dived into an authoritarian state. Third, West Papua, a Melanesian nation and a UN Non-Self-Governing Territory, was illegally transferred to Indonesia, a state on the verge of political and economic collapse with no capacity, or will, to uphold the international laws governing the administration of a Non-Self-Governing Territory. Indeed, the Republic of Indonesia did not then, and still doesn’t, recognise the principle of self-determination, which is mentioned eleven times in the New York Agreement that Indonesia and the Netherlands signed in the UN’s New York Headquarters on 15 August 1962.
“It is important to note that the UN General Assembly took note of the New York Agreement, and as it had a facilitatory role under its terms, passed a Resolution authorising the Secretary General to carry out that role on 26 September 1962. The General Assembly at no time adopted the Agreement or adopted or validated its outcome” (George Lambert, ICJ, 2001).
Below are the speakers presentations to the West Papua Womens Office webinar ‘West Papua’s return to UN: fulfilling Hammarskjöld’s legacy’ on 13 September 2020, as well as the Hammarskjold-West Papua exhibition prepared by the office, and an extraordinary poem by the young French bureaucrat Yvette Ripplinger that she wrote in her office overlooking the General Assembly building in New York after hearing her boss, Dag Hammarskjöld, had been killed.
Media Release: West Papua’s return to UN: fulfilling Hammarskjöld’s legacy
MEDIA RELEASE, West Papua’s return to the UN, fulfilling Dag Hammarskjold’s legacy
Speakers Presentations
1. Babuan Mirino, President, FRWP West Papua Womens Office-Docklands (1min)
https://youtu.be/8cXdqDJYLdI
2. Edison Waromi, Chair of the Legislative, United Liberation Movement for West Papua (2min)
Pastor Waromi was a political prisoner and still endures the indignity of house arrest. In his short moving address from Jayapura he pleaded for the Australian government to abandon its Lombok Treaty with Indonesia, and to support West Papua’s independence struggle … “our land is in a state of emergency with the recent deployment of thousands of highly trained Indonesian troops.”
https://youtu.be/AIsj82W2R4w
3. Herman Wainggai, ULMWP Special Mission to UN (8min)
https://youtu.be/AB35MDPl6Tk
4. Introduction to Professor Henning Melber (2min)
https://youtu.be/8O30GxGJQTA
4. Professor Henning Melber (14min)
https://youtu.be/QgYTsDnl388
5. Litiana Kalsrep, ‘Why Vanuatu is sponsoring West Papua at the UN’ (7min)
6. Francine Ngoya, Association of Women Teachers in Catholic Schools, DR Congo (7min)
‘Replanting Dag Hammarskjöld in the Congo’, https://youtu.be/0F1UotKH8ko
7. Mr Clovis Mwamba, ‘Dag Hammarskjöld, Hero of peace in the Congo’ (15min)
https://youtu.be/kMxRv32ks74
Mr Clovis Mwamba’s presentation (PDF)
Clovis Mwamba’s speech, 17 September 2020
DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD-WEST PAPUA EXHIBITION
This video-exhibition, prepared by the FRWP Womens Office in Docklands, documents UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s 1961 Decolonisation Program for West Papua (then the Non-Self-Governing-Territory of Netherlands-New Guinea). Hammarskjöld’s death, which is still being investigated, precluded him from presenting his motion to the 1961 UN General Assembly. Without his influential and authoritative presence, the motion did not attract the necessary two-thirds majority of members votes in November 1961. The UN’s denial of self-determination, its founding principle, in the context of West Papua, paved passage for an American-led agreement that, ultimately, facilitated a Melanesian nation involuntarily becoming an Indonesian colony. (Contrary to popular opinion there has never been an act of self-determination in West Papua).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBq8zZHJt7k
DEATH OF A HERDSMAN Yvette Rippplinger, a young French UN staffer, wrote this extraordinary poem on 18 September 1961, the day that her boss, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, was killed. Death of a Herdsman, Yvette Ripplinger, 18 Sept 1961
