1) Melanesian Spearhead Group Communique
4) Could West Papua be Abbott's East Timor?
5)
Freeport to Increase Open-Pit Mining After Restart
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1) Melanesian Spearhead Group Communique
In relation to West Papua. Full Communique at
http://www.msgsec.info/images/PDF/leaders%20communique%20-%20retreat%20final.pdf
Political Issues
18. Leaders considered the FMM Report on Political Issues and adopted the following key decisions.
Decisions
19. Leaders:
Application for Membership
20. Leaders noted that a roadmap in relation to the application by West Papua National Council for Liberation (WPNCL) for membership should be based on clear and achievable timelines. Leaders acknowledged that the human rights violations need to be highlighted and noted that to progress the WPNCL’s application, it was important to continually engage with Indonesia. Leaders agreed to establish a process of dialogue and consultation with Indonesia. Leaders noted and welcomed the invitation from Indonesia to invite a Foreign Ministers’ Mission to be led by Fiji and that confirmation on the timing of the Mission was being awaited. The outcomes of the WPNCL’s application would be subject to the report of the FMM mission.
Decisions
21. Leaders:
- (i) endorsed that the MSG fully supports the inalienable rights of the people of West Papua towards self-determination as provided for under the preamble of the MSG constitution;
- (ii) endorsed that the concerns of the MSG regarding the human rights violations and other forms of atrocities relating to the West Papuan people be raised with the Government of Indonesia bilaterally and as a Group;
- (iii) noted the application received from the WPNCL to be a member of the MSG and that the application will be reviewed after the submission of the Ministerial Mission’s report; and
- (iv) approved the Roadmap as recommended by the FMM which included:
- a) that the MSG send a Ministerial Mission at the FMM level to be led by Fiji’s Foreign Minister to Jakarta and then to West Papua in 2013 and accept the
invitation of the Government of Indonesia;
- b) the Ministerial Mission to present its report to the Leaders at the earliest
opportunity within the next six months;
- c) the WPNCL to be officially informed of the MSG Leaders’ decision regarding
its application; and
- d) the Mission would be part of a process in determining WPNCL’s membership
application.
Posted at 08:08 on 24 June, 2013 UTC
The vice-chairman of the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation has defended the level of support for his group’s bid to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group.
The coalition’s formal membership application was deferred at last week’s MSG leaders summit in Noumea.
While leaders have approved a roadmap on which the application can be considered at a later point, some MSG figures have questioned how representative the WPNCL is of the indigenous people of Indonesia’s Papua region.
Dr John Ondawame has signed statements of support from around 70 West Papuan representative groups.
“We’e got enormous support for all layers of society in West Papua, (including) from the bush, even solidarity groups around the world. However certain elements within groups in West Papua and some other countries, they don’t have any clues about how much support we have in the West Papuan community.”
Dr John Ondawame
-----------------------------------------------------------
Posted at 16:49 on 24 June, 2013 UTC
The vice-chairman of the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation says it is a legitimate organisation which represents the aspirations of the indigenous people of Indonesia’s Papua region.
The coalition’s formal Melanesian Spearhead Group membership application was deferred following at last week’s MSG Leaders Summit in Noumea.
Fiji’s Foreign Minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola is among those to have questioned whether the coalition, which is led by mainly exiled West Papuans, is truly representative.
But Dr John Ondawame says Ratu Inoke is confused.
“He is ignorant about the whole situation of what we are doing. The West Papua National Coalition for Liberation is representing 29 organisations: resistance movement, social movement and traditional organisations. So we fully get support from the wider community inside West Papua, inside the jungle and abroad.”
1) Melanesian Spearhead Group Communique
Political Issues
18. Leaders considered the FMM Report on Political Issues and adopted the following key decisions.
Decisions
19. Leaders:
In relation to West Papua. Full Communique at
http://www.msgsec.info/images/PDF/leaders%20communique%20-%20retreat%20final.pdfPolitical Issues
18. Leaders considered the FMM Report on Political Issues and adopted the following key decisions.
Decisions
19. Leaders:
Application for Membership
20. Leaders noted that a roadmap in relation to the application by West Papua National Council for Liberation (WPNCL) for membership should be based on clear and achievable timelines. Leaders acknowledged that the human rights violations need to be highlighted and noted that to progress the WPNCL’s application, it was important to continually engage with Indonesia. Leaders agreed to establish a process of dialogue and consultation with Indonesia. Leaders noted and welcomed the invitation from Indonesia to invite a Foreign Ministers’ Mission to be led by Fiji and that confirmation on the timing of the Mission was being awaited. The outcomes of the WPNCL’s application would be subject to the report of the FMM mission.
Decisions
21. Leaders:
- (i) endorsed that the MSG fully supports the inalienable rights of the people of West Papua towards self-determination as provided for under the preamble of the MSG constitution;
- (ii) endorsed that the concerns of the MSG regarding the human rights violations and other forms of atrocities relating to the West Papuan people be raised with the Government of Indonesia bilaterally and as a Group;
- (iii) noted the application received from the WPNCL to be a member of the MSG and that the application will be reviewed after the submission of the Ministerial Mission’s report; and
- (iv) approved the Roadmap as recommended by the FMM which included:
- a) that the MSG send a Ministerial Mission at the FMM level to be led by Fiji’s Foreign Minister to Jakarta and then to West Papua in 2013 and accept the
invitation of the Government of Indonesia; - b) the Ministerial Mission to present its report to the Leaders at the earliest
opportunity within the next six months; - c) the WPNCL to be officially informed of the MSG Leaders’ decision regarding
its application; and - d) the Mission would be part of a process in determining WPNCL’s membership
application.
- a) that the MSG send a Ministerial Mission at the FMM level to be led by Fiji’s Foreign Minister to Jakarta and then to West Papua in 2013 and accept the
Posted at 08:08 on 24 June, 2013 UTC
The vice-chairman of the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation has defended the level of support for his group’s bid to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group.
The coalition’s formal membership application was deferred at last week’s MSG leaders summit in Noumea.
While leaders have approved a roadmap on which the application can be considered at a later point, some MSG figures have questioned how representative the WPNCL is of the indigenous people of Indonesia’s Papua region.
Dr John Ondawame has signed statements of support from around 70 West Papuan representative groups.
“We’e got enormous support for all layers of society in West Papua, (including) from the bush, even solidarity groups around the world. However certain elements within groups in West Papua and some other countries, they don’t have any clues about how much support we have in the West Papuan community.”
Dr John Ondawame
Posted at 16:49 on 24 June, 2013 UTC
The vice-chairman of the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation says it is a legitimate organisation which represents the aspirations of the indigenous people of Indonesia’s Papua region.
The coalition’s formal Melanesian Spearhead Group membership application was deferred following at last week’s MSG Leaders Summit in Noumea.
Fiji’s Foreign Minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola is among those to have questioned whether the coalition, which is led by mainly exiled West Papuans, is truly representative.
But Dr John Ondawame says Ratu Inoke is confused.
“He is ignorant about the whole situation of what we are doing. The West Papua National Coalition for Liberation is representing 29 organisations: resistance movement, social movement and traditional organisations. So we fully get support from the wider community inside West Papua, inside the jungle and abroad.”
---------------------------------------------------------
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-24/hutchison-west-papua-independence/4774836
4) Could West Papua be Abbott's East Timor?
Posted
Australia was instrumental in supporting East Timor's fight for independence in the 1990s. What role would an Australian Coalition government have in the move towards West Papuan independence, asks Tracee Hutchison.
When former prime minister John Howard and then foreign minister Alexander Downer began working toward East Timor's independence in 1999, history now tells us that they did so, initially, without letting on to the Indonesian government.
As the Australian government continued to publically support Jakarta's territorial claim over the resource-rich Indonesian province, privately the actions of Howard and Downer set in motion the makings of a new nation.
John Howard's leadership overseeing the UN-sponsored independence referendum and Australia's peacekeeping role in the fledgling nation remains, as he wrote in his biography Lazarus Rising, one of his proudest achievements and won him international acclaim. (Perhaps everywhere except Indonesia, where the issue of Timor Leste remains contentious).
But Australia's spiritual investment in East Timor was already considerable by the time the country voted overwhelmingly to break free from Indonesian rule. The killing of five Australian newsmen at Balibo in 1975 and the wave of Timorese refugees who made Australia home in the wake of the Indonesian occupation meant many Australians knew Timor's story well.
And it helped that the country had a Mandela-like leader who led Fretilin's resistance from his jail cell, one who also happened to fall in love with his Australian go-between in the process - and another who traversed the world stage as leader-in-exile, a Nobel peace laureate in the making.
Fast-forward 11 years after Xanana Gusmao was sworn in as the country's first president and the prospect of another Timor-like territorial tug of war with Indonesia at its epicentre is getting some tentative traction in the region. This time it is the Indonesian restive province of West Papua that is creating tension beyond its borders.
While Australian political leaders spent another week focused on a power struggle over who would lead the country, heads of state from Pacific island nations were grappling with a power struggle over a West Papuan application for membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, an intergovernmental organisation made up of the four Melanesian states; Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The West Papuan National Coalition for Liberation had proposed that, as ethnic Melanesians, Papuans had a right to representation.
At first blush it's not the stuff of headlines and in Australia it didn't make any. After all, the MSG's core business of promoting regional trade and political consultation within a 'Melanesian framework' isn't going to be of much consequence to too many people in Australia.
But the mere fact the MSG made Papua's application for inclusion in the group an agenda item is significant in itself. And one that won't have gone unnoticed in Jakarta. Nor would the group's joint communiqué - released without any fanfare late on Friday night - that alleged human rights abuse in the Indonesian province need to be addressed as part of ongoing engagement and dialogue with Indonesia.
These may well prove to be benign manoeuvrings, but at least one Melanesian leader has warned that history would judge them poorly if the bloc displayed a lack of leadership on the West Papua issue. Vanuatu's prime minister Moana Carcasses - a strong supporter of Papuan independence - told fellow MSG leaders that the group's "failure to take decisive action" on Papua would be "exposed by future generations".
While the application is still being considered, the prospect of West Papuan membership in the Melanesian Spearhead Group poses a vexing dilemma for regional geopolitics. In the lead-up to last week's meeting of the MSG PNG prime minister Peter O'Neill slipped up to Jakarta for a meeting with Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono vowing to raise human rights abuses in West Papua in their discussions. Publically, SBY and O'Neill issued a joint statement on those talks that the two nations would "work together" on their shared border issues. Again, the mere fact the issue was raised at this level is not insignificant.
Australia supports Indonesia's territorial governance over West Papua and neither side of politics would meet with high-profile West Papuan independence campaigner Benny Wenda when he undertook his self-described 'Freedom Tour' through Australia, New Zealand, PNG and Vanuatu earlier this year. Benda lives in exile in London and counts Julian Assange's Australian lawyer Jennifer Robinson among his supporters.
But while Australia currently keeps the Papuan cause at arms-length, it hasn't always been that way. Australia, somewhat controversially, accepted a group of West Papuan asylum seekers as genuine refugees back in 2006. The group of 43 - community leaders and their families among them - had fled in fear after violence broke out when the West Papuan flag, the Morning Star, was raised in direct defiance of Indonesian law in the province. The incident caused a bitter diplomatic spat between Jakarta and Canberra. Australia, by acknowledging the group would face persecution if they returned home, had directly challenged Indonesia's sovereignty and governing policy in West Papua. John Howard was Australian prime minister and SBY was Indonesia's president.
In more recent years, the Liberal/National Coalition has mirrored the Rudd/Gillard position on Papua. Both sides of Australian politics understand Jakarta's influence and strategic importance as a regional powerhouse and both have been massaging the relationship through the prism of regional security and economic development.
Despite a steady flow of allegations of human rights abuses in West Papua since the country's 'Act of Free Choice' elections in 1969, the issue of West Papuan independence remains firmly off the Australian-Indonesian bilateral political agenda. It is a curious twist of history and fate that Australia fell in love with East Timor's quest for independence from Indonesian but West Papua, with its not dissimilar circumstance, has been something of a silent witness.
In three months time, if the polls are accurate, Australia will have a new prime minister and a new foreign minister. Tony Abbott is a proud protégé of John Howard and Julie Bishop, should she stay in the foreign affairs portfolio, has invested a great deal travelling and talking to regional leaders in the Pacific. Bishop, in particular, would understand the acute sensitivities of the Papua question in the Melanesian context.
When John Howard was elected prime minister in 1996 an independent East Timor was unthinkable but it proved to be his greatest, and most unlikely, foreign policy triumph. Could an equally unthinkable destiny await West Papua under the stewardship of an Abbott-led Australian Government?
The momentum for change may well be starting to rumble across the Pacific.
Tracee Hutchison broadcasts across Australia/Asia/Pacific for ABC News Radio and Radio Australia. View her full profile here.
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http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/freeport-to-increase-open-pit-mining-after-restart/
5) Freeport to Increase Open-Pit Mining After Restart
Freeport-McMoran may scale up open-pit mining at the Grasberg mine in Indonesia to normal levels this week after restarting operations following a tunnel collapse that forced a shutdown.
Freeport Indonesia began production at the world’s second-biggest copper mine on June 22 after the government approved milling and open-pit operations, Daisy Primayanti, the company’s spokeswoman, saidon Monday. Output from the open-pit mine may reach normal levels in three to four days, Rozik Soetjipto, president director at the company, said in a phone interview. Resumption of underground operation is pending a decision by the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, Soetjipto said.
Freeport declared force majeure on shipments on June 12, a clause that allows it to miss obligations due to situations beyond its control. Production from Grasberg stopped following the tunnel collapse on May 14 that killed 28 people. The company has not yet lifted the force majeure, Soetjipto said.
Output from the open-pit section of Grasberg accounts for 70 percent to 80 percent of the total mine production, according to Gayle Berry, Nicholas Snowdon and Sijin Cheng, analysts at Barclays. “If the open-pit section is re-opened this week, this would certainly limit the disruptions, versus initial expectations for as long as 2-3 month closure,” they wrote in a research note on June 21.
Copper extended a third weekly loss as London Metal Exchange inventories climbed to a 10-year high and operations resumed at the Grasberg mine in Indonesia. The metal for delivery in three months dropped as much as 1.4 percent to $6,723.50 a metric ton and was last at $6,726.
Bloomberg
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