This post contains documents, images, and recordings relevant to the two speakers at the West Papua Open Day on 17 September 2023: Laura Canet Mulén from the Higher Institute of International Relations in Cuba, and Dr Robert Wolfgramm from Fiji (including a link to 20 Fiji Daily Post articles about West Papua between 2005 and 2006 when Robert was Editor-in-Chief). There are also documents relevant the Memorials to Dag Hammarskjöld, Nieuw Guinea RAAD, and Helena Grunfeld. Hammarskjöld was the UN Secretary-General (1953-1961), the New Guinea RAAD was the national parliament of West Papua's Non-Self-Governing Territory (1950-1962), Helena Grunfeld was a Swedish-Australian activist who worked at the West Papua Womens Office in Docklands. The post also features photos of the beautiful works donated to Dr Toscano's Auction for the West Papua Rent Collective by Queensland visual artist Susan Zela Bissett and Victorian wood sculptor David McKenzie.
During the first Open Day in 2023 in the Docklands office, Anglican Bishop Philip Huggins was presented with the Hammarskjöld-West Papua Living Memorial files, including sixty (two-minute) videos of the tree-planting ceremonies around the world. Bishop Huggins, the first Australian to plant a memorial, promised that the Anglican Communion Permanent Representative to the United Nations would personally present the files to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, UN Assistant-Director Gillian Triggs, and the UN 75 Committee. The documentation is designed to remind UN executives, bureaucrats and member-states of the mistake they made in 1961-1962 in transferring the administration of West Papua (then Nederlands Nieuw Guinea) to Indonesia. The entry includes videos of the presentations by Bishop Huggins and Jacob Rumbiak, descriptions and links to the papers in the package for UN Sec-General Guterres, and a link to all the 2-min videos of tree-planting ceremonies from around the world.
Photos, slides, videos, speeches and documents associated with the launch of Paul Stewart's book 'All the Rage' (Melbourne Books, 2022) during the West Papua Open Day in Docklands (Victoria) on 11 December 2022, including Paul being interviewed by his publisher David Tenenbaum from Melbourne books, and a pictorial summary of Paul's battles with Prime Minister Howard over Indonesia's occupation of East Timor and West Papua. The day also included Jacob Rumbiak updating about the current conditions in West Papua, and Australia and America's unprecedented criticisms of Indonesia's behaviour in West Papua (UN Periodic Review, 9 November 2022). This Memorial for Martyrs were West Papua's Filep Karma, and two Australians, Bishop Hilton Deakin (Patron of the West Papua Office in Docklands) and John Lawrance who was instrumental in the opening of the office in 2014.
IS AUSTRALIA DOING ENOUGH TO SUPPORT WEST PAPUA? A public debate sponsored by the Melbourne City Council in its glorious Yarra Room on 30 October 2022; convened by Fiji-Australian author Bernie Goulding, and summarised by Monash University’s China specialist Dr Jonathan Benney. West Papua is Australia's nearest neighbour, yet we have maintained a national silence on the atrocities endured by the Indigenous Melanesians of West Papua since 1962 when the United Nations illegally passed on the administration of its Non-Self-Governing Territory to Indonesia. Despite the republic's systematic racist policies and crimes-against-humanity, the West Papuan people have maintained extraordinary and inspiring resistance-and-nation-making, which was recognised in 2019 by the Pacific Islands Forum (including Australia and New Zealand), the Africa Caribbean Pacific Group and the parliaments of the United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, the European Union.
This entry recants the extraordinary development for West Papua facilitated by Solomon Islands Prime Minister's intervention at the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) in Honiara in 2015, which as the West Papuans say 'brought us out of the darkness, into the light'. A 62-page photo-and-text essay demonstrates the intense lobbying by the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) before the Summit; the pride of Pacific Island activists and politicians in pursuing their Melanesian kin's liberation project; the extraordinary courage of men, women and children in West Papua who chose to demonstrate their unity and support; prayers in churches around the world; Australian unions galvanising behind UN Principles to support the ULMWP application to join the MSG. The entry concludes with a summary of Australia and New Zealand's continuing support of Indonesia's colonisation of West Papua. the entry concludes with Australia and New Zealand's legal obligations vis-s-viz West Papua.
This report outlines Dr Joe Toscano's policies (with costings) as an independent candidate for the Victorian Senate in Australia's 2020 Federal elections. Dr Toscano has been a political activist for as long as he has been practicing medicine, and is also a well known public broadcaster. He developed his suite of freshingly progressive policies, and how much they will cost, during years of thinking about the world and being politically active within it. His policies include an Independent Foreign Policy that would, of course, support West Papua's self-determination and independence.
Two West Papuans from the WP Transitional Government, Prime Minister Edison Waromi and Parliamentary Chair Buchtar Tabuni, were awarded 2021 Eureka Australia Medals during a moving ceremony on 3 December 2021 at the historic site of Bakery Hill in Ballarat (Victoria, Australia) where the Eureka Oath was sworn and a flag modelled on the Southern Cross-the best known constellation in the Southern Hemisphere-was raised on 3 December 1854.
Record of the presentations about West Papuans' Green State at the FRWP Open Day in Docklands (Victoria, AUS) on the 5 December 2021. Includes videos of the speeches by Raki Ap (the ULMWP Representative for Europe) and Jacob Rumbiak (Minister for Foreign Affairs, West Papua Transitional Government). The entry also has the link to the video-recording of the launch of West Papua's Green State Vision on 4 November 2021 during the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow.
Two guest speakers at the West Papua Open Day in Docklands on 19 September 2021: Dr Greg Poulgrain talking about his 2020 publication 'JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia', and Pastor Edison Waromi (Prime Minister, West Papua Transitional Government) updating the current situation in his war-torn nation. The most monstrous of Dulles' machinations were the murders of UN Sec-General Hammarskjöld and Congo Prime Minister Lumumba (in 1961) and US President Kennedy (in 1963); Indonesia’s usurpation of West Papua (in 1962); the replacement of Indonesian President Sukarno with the CIA-approved General Suharto (1965-66); the subsequent massacre of a million Indonesian ‘communist’ rice-farmers and consequent split of the Communist rivals China and the USSR. Students of West Papua need to ask (i) How the murder of UN Sec-General Dag Hammarskjöld was pivotal to Indonesia’s takeover of West Papua; and (ii) How a secret coup in Jakarta in 1965 and the subsequent ma
On 14 August 2021, the City of Moreland joined the Yarra Council and the Ballarat Council in recognising the principle of self-determination for West Papua. Mayor Mark Riley plants a Hammarskjöld Memorial Tree for West Papua in Balfe Park in Brunswick East (Victoria, Australia). In September 2021 a video-recording of the ceremony will be presented to UN Sec-General Guterres along with the videos of the sixty other Hammarskjöld-WestPapua memorial plantings in 2020-21.
This entry has a lot of information, with references, about the film, Land of the Morning Star, its director Mark Worth, and the political and cultural aspects of the Morning Star on the West Papuans' independence flag.
In 2020 the West Papua Womens' Office in Docklands coordinated the planting of sixty living memorial (trees) around the world to honour the work of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld on West Papua, and to increase awareness of the facts and the fictions behind Indonesia's claim of sovereignty. Plantings in 2021 include George Ivan Smith (so the 'Hammarskjöld-WestPapua-Ivan Smith Living Memorial'). George Ivan Smith was a remarkable Australian who was a trusted associate and close confident of the Sec-General. In 1982 he revealed to the veteran academic, Greg Poulgrain, the Decolonisation Program which the Sec-General had prepared for West Papua and planned to raise in the 1961 General Assembly. This post includes a 14-page photo-essay about the program and Greg Poulgrain's ground-breaking book ('JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia') where this important development, which may have precluded the Indonesian occupation, is documented.
The FRWP Open Day on 14 March 2021 featured journalist John Algate talking about writing 'Jessie's House of Needles', Jessie being a missionary-nurse from Melbourne who worked in the highlands of West Papua for thirty-five years, from 1966 to 2001. The event also included Jacob Rumbiak's introduction of West Papua's Green State; Fiji-Australian author Bernie Goldstein's campaign for one of the contributors to her book (Children of the 12 Tribes) to be released from prison in Jakarta; and Dr Joe Toscano explaining how the West Papua Rent Collective is vital for the ongoing work of the office in Docklands.
An engaging photograph, a short story, and two fascinating ABC-Radio interviews about the importance of pigs in the religious and social life of the highlanders of West Papua.
FRWP Open Day on 6 December 2020 featured interviews with the President and the Prime Minister of the new West Papua Transitional Government, with Australian federal Greens Senator Janet Rice, and with Dr Joe Toscano (West Papua Rent Collective). It included a candle ceremony for Natalie Adadikam (founding member of WP Womens Office in Docklands) and a memorial for recent political martyrs in West Papua; conducted by Rev. Robert Stringer, with presentations by ULMWP Executive Jacob Rumbiak, Catholic Bishop Hilton Deakin, and Mr Clovis Mwamba from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The day concluded with the planting of a Kurrajong Bottle Tree on Melbourne City Council land at 838 Collins Street in remembrance of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (1953-61) and his 1961 Decolonisation Program for West Papua.
