Media release -West Papuan flag raising in Sydney

Media release -West Papuan flag raising in Sydney

 

Australia West Papua Association (Sydney) 

Media release 1 Dec

 

West Papuan flag raising at Inner West Council

The Australia West Papua Association thanks the Inner West Council in Sydney for supporting the raising of the West Papuan National Flag on its Leichhardt Town Hall today, 1st December (to commemorate the first   official flying of the Morning Star flag on the 1st December in 1961). 

 

In a media statement  (30 November 2020) the UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani on Papua and West Papua, Indonesia said  

“We are disturbed by escalating violence over the past weeks and months in the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua and the increased risk of renewed tension and violence.”

and

“Military and security forces have been reinforced in the region and there have been repeated reports of extra-judicial killings, excessive use of force, arrest and continuous harassment and intimidation of protesters and human rights defenders.”

 

In a Jubi report (30 November) it was reported that the police arrested six residents of Merauke “because they were found to have kept the Morning Star flag and documents regarding the referendum on Papuan sovereignty in Merauke."

 

The head of the Merauke police said  

"that the police arrested and detained them because they were considered against the state. He also claimed that the arrest of the six residents was carried out properly and according to procedure.”

 

Joe Collins of AWPA said “Fifty-nine years after the Morning Star flag was flown for the first time officially beside the Dutch Tricolor West Papuans are still being arrested because they have symbols of the Morning Star flag or are simply involved in discussions about their political future. 

 

Joe Collins said as “the human rights situation in West Papua deteriorates with ongoing human rights abuses,  “ its time our Foreign Affairs Minister  Marise Payne followed the example of the UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani and also made a public statement of concern on the human rights situation in the territory, one of our nearest neighbours.

------------