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1) President Wenda: ULMWP welcomes MSG call for UN visit and continues fight for full membership
August 28, 2023 in Statement
On behalf of the ULMWP, I welcome the call from the MSG Leaders’ Summit for Indonesia to allow the long-awaited visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to West Papua. I hope that the MSG Chair will honour the commitment to write to Indonesia as a matter of urgency, as every day that international intervention is delayed sees more West Papuans suffer and more Melanesian blood spilt.
Even in the run up to the MSG summit, with the eyes of the Pacific region on human rights in West Papua, Indonesia brutally cracked down on peaceful rallies in favour of ULMWP full membership, arresting dozensand killing innocent civilians. As an Associate Member of the MSG, Indonesia must respect the Chair’s demand. If they continue to deny the UN access, they will be in violation of the unified will of the Melanesian region. As the Leaders’ Communique stated, the UN visit must occur this year, in order for the Commissioner’s report to be put before the next MSG summit in 2024.
I also welcome the MSG’s commitment that they will write to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Chair to ensure that the UN visit is undertaken. PIF must honour this call and do all they can to guarantee a UN visit. We must remember that the UN visit has already been demanded by over 85 states, including all Melanesian states as members of PIF, and the 79 members of the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States.
Four years ago, Pacific leaders described West Papua as a ‘festering human rights sore‘ and called for UN intervention as soon as possible. Since then, we have seen 100,000 West Papuans displaced by Indonesian military operations, villages depopulated and burned, and massacres in Wamena, Timika and elsewhere. And yet Indonesia has come no closer to allowing the United Nations access. Mere words are clearly not enough: the MSG Leaders’ Summit must be the trigger for international pressure of such overwhelming force that Indonesia has no choice but to allow a UN visit.
Though we are disappointed to have been denied full membership on this occasion, our spirit is strong and our commitment to returning home to our Melanesian family is undiminished. We are not safe with Indonesia, and will only find security by standing together with our Pacific brothers and sisters. Full membership is our birthright: culturally, linguistically, ethnically, and in our values, we are undeniably and proudly Melanesian.
Papua Merdeka. God bless our people and our struggle.
Benny Wenda
President
ULMWP
PM Albanese, understandably, has continued Australia’s military contribution to Ukraine’s independence, currently totalling $655 million.
Contrast this with Albanese’s current acquiescence to Indonesia’s continuing brutal takeover of West Papua, with thousands of Papuans killed. Indonesia has no geographical, ethnical, or traditional/cultural ties with West Papua – Jakarta is 4,024 km away. Media and UN Human Rights investigators have been denied access there.
Weeks ago, Australia’s Navy participated in naval exercises with Indonesia – the moral equivalent of Australia participating in naval exercises with Russia.
An astonishing new book
This history is uncovered in an astonishing new book, JFK vs Alan Dulles – Battleground Indonesia, written by academic historian, Dr Greg Poulgrain. The book covers West Papua and Indonesia from 1916 to today using extensive archival research and countless interviews including with JFK’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk and former NATO Secretary-General, Joseph Luns.
Enter a brilliant, ambitious, young Allen Dulles graduating from Princeton in 1916, born to wealth and power. He starts working in Europe cultivating complex global friendships, alliances, and dependencies, essential in progressing his meteoric career.
First, he negotiates a buy-in of Russia’s Baku oil fields for the world’s richest oil magnate, John D Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, today branded Exxon-Mobil.
Gold Mountain
When Dulles forms an oil exploration company for John D in 1935 in West New Guinea, he strikes gold. Dulles’ geologist friend, JJ Dozy, secretly discovers the world’s largest gold/copper deposit there, calling it ‘gold mountain’. But with Papua’s dense jungles rising to snow-covered mountains, mine construction must wait.
Dulles’ career culminates in 1953 becoming US President Eisenhower’s CIA director, specialising in staging coups in mineral or agriculture-rich countries, like Iran and Guatemala.
Dulles, reappointed by President Kennedy, keeps the ‘gold mountain’ a secret, from Kennedy and Indonesia’s President Sukarno.
The political backdrop Poulgrain paints shows how ‘oil/gold’ for Rockefeller has brought tragedy to West Papua and its Melanesian people. Colonised by the Dutch and recognised as being different to Indonesia, West Papuans almost attained independence at the end of 1961 when they raised their new flag, the Morning Star, and declared ‘unrecognised’ independence.
Kennedy was overpowered in solving the international crisis over sovereignty of West New Guinea which Dulles, as CIA director, had prepared for the new president. This – and the Cuban crisis – were on President Kennedy’s desk from day one.
Poulgrain relates the extraordinary complexities of Dulles and his daring ambitions. Following the Cuban Missile crises, Kennedy realises USA/USSR conflicts were forcing ‘emerging countries’ to take sides, instead of their own. Hence Kennedy quickly becomes an important supporter of Indonesia’s President Sukarno, a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement at the United Nations, similar to today’s TEAL cross-benchers in parliament.
Access to gold
Poulgrain’s book describes the conflict between Kennedy’s policies and ‘CIA Director Allen Dulles plan for regime change in Indonesia… [just as] JFK became involved by planning a Jakarta visit in early 1964. Kennedy argued his visit would have secured Sukarno’s position as Indonesian president.’
While Rockefeller secretly supported the Indonesian army to oust the colonial Dutch from New Guinea/West Papua, Poulgrain reveals through interviewing two former Indonesian foreign ministers that multi-national access to the gold will come only after Sukarno falls.
Dr Poulgrain provides evidence of the extraordinary complexities of Dulles’ daring treachery, accusing Dulles of being ‘behind the assassination of Kennedy in late 1963 as well as the [related] death of UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash in 1961.’ This latter evidence before the UN has contributed to their decision to hold a new investigation which started in January 2023.
Senior member of the Warren Commission
Poulgrain describes how Dulles successfully lobbied President Johnson to appoint him as the senior member of the Warren Commission into Kennedy’s assassination. Dulles kept secret that he had appointed his old European friend, George Mohrenschildt, then working for the CIA as controller of Lee Harvey Oswald, who posted Oswald for a position working in the Texas book depository just days before Oswald (as the Warren Commission found) assassinated Kennedy.
Dulles, retired by Kennedy in late 1961, was still active with the CIA in 1965, and supported a violent internal Indonesian military coup killing six army generals.
False claims
Suharto and his group falsely claimed the generals were tortured and sexually mutilated by young communist women before being killed. In the space of a few weeks, the military propaganda machine unfolded a story that Sukarno’s supporters were complicit in a massive conspiracy. Suharto took the top position in the Indonesian army, and after around one million Indonesian Sukarno supporters were massacred, Suharto became acting President, then President.
Suharto held a sham referendum in 1969 called the ‘Act of Free Choice’, declaring that the Papuans were too ‘primitive’ for democracy. Indonesia’s military hand-picked 1,026 ‘representative people’, who unanimously voted ‘Yes’ to becoming part of Indonesia.
Freeport is now the world’s largest, most profitable gold and copper mine, owned by American mining giant, Freeport-McMoRan. It generates most of the company’s US$20 billion revenue. The Indonesian government will soon have a 60/40 share of the mine.
In spite of again being denied full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) has welcomed the call from the MSG Leaders’ Summit in Port Vila last week for Indonesia to allow the long-awaited visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to West Papua.
“I hope that the MSG chair will honour the commitment to write to Indonesia as a matter of urgency, as every day that international intervention is delayed sees more West Papuans suffer and more Melanesian blood spilt,” ULMWP president Benny Wenda declared.
“Even in the run up to the MSG summit, with the eyes of the Pacific region on human rights in West Papua, Indonesia brutally cracked down on peaceful rallies in favour of ULMWP full membership, arresting dozens and killing innocent civilians,” he said in a statement.
- READ MORE: OPM accuses Melanesian group of taking Jakarta’s ‘blood money’ at expense of West Papuan justice
- Wenda calls on MSG for urgent action to back pledge over human rights
- MSG throws away golden chance to reset peace and justice for West Papua
- MSG leaders defer Papua membership decision to Pacific Islands Forum
- Flashback: Fiji, PNG lead betrayal, but still West Papuans triumph (in 2015)
- Other MSG reports
As an associate member of the MSG, Indonesia must respect the chair’s demand, Wenda said.
“If they continue to deny the UN access, they will be in violation of the unified will of the Melanesian region.
“As the leaders’ communique stated, the UN visit must occur this year in order for the commissioner’s report to be put before the next MSG summit in 2024.”
Wenda said he also welcomed the MSG’s commitment that it would write to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) chair to ensure that the UN visit was undertaken.
‘Guarantee UN visit’
“The PIF must honour this call and do all they can to guarantee a UN visit,” he said.
We must remember that the UN visit has already been demanded by over 85 states, including all Melanesian states as members of PIF, and the 79 members of the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States.”
Wenda said that in 2019, Pacific leaders described West Papua as a “festering human rights sore” and called for UN intervention as soon as possible.
“Since then, we have seen 100,000 West Papuans displaced by Indonesian military operations, villages depopulated and burned, and massacres in Wamena, Timika and elsewhere.
“And yet Indonesia has come no closer to allowing the United Nations access. Mere words are clearly not enough: the MSG Leaders’ Summit must be the trigger for international pressure of such overwhelming force that Indonesia has no choice, but to allow a UN visit.
“Although we are disappointed to have been denied full membership on this occasion, our spirit is strong and our commitment to returning home to our Melanesian family is undiminished.
“We are not safe with Indonesia, and will only find security by standing together with our Pacific brothers and sisters.
“Full membership is our birthright: culturally, linguistically, ethnically, and in our values, we are undeniably and proudly Melanesian.”
Youngsolwara Pacific criticises MSG
Meanwhile, the Youngsolwara Pacific movement has made a series of critical statements about the MSG communique, including deploring the fact that the leaders’ summit was not the place to discuss human rights violations and reminded the leaders of the “founding vision”.
They called on the MSG Secretariat to “set terms, that should Indonesia fail to allow and respect the visits of an independent fact-finding mission by PIF, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, then Indonesia must be BANNED from the MSG.”
They also demanded “clarity on the criteria for associate members and their respective engagement”.
Indonesia is the only associate member of the MSG while the ULMWP has observer status.
The movement to promote fish consumption among children is a strategic step to support stunting reduction in those areas, advisor to the governor, George Yarangga, informed here on Tuesday.
"We have a lot of fish in the sea that contain high protein. Fish is beneficial for a child's growth and nutrition, and to reduce stunting," Yarangga said.
According to him, the movement is a national program that was launched in 2004 by the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (KKP) to promote the benefits of fish consumption.
"Therefore, the Southwest Papua provincial government welcomes and realizes (the program) through this fish-eating movement that involves children," he added.
He said he hopes that the campaign will be rolled out in all regions in the province so that it can contribute to optimal child growth and development, and thereby, help prevent stunting.
Southwest Papua province ranked fourth in terms of stunting prevalence at 19.9 percent, according to the Community-Based Nutritional Reporting App (E-PPGBM) on July 20, 2023.
According to head of the province's Agriculture, Food, Marine, and Fisheries Office, Absalom Solossa, the fish-based meals prepared for the activity range from grilled fish, fish satay, fish soup, and fish meatballs.
"We prepared a lot of fish and it could be for 500 children," he said.
Fish is a source of protein that contains fatty acids, such as omega 3 and 6, and can be beneficial for children's brain growth when consumed properly and optimally, he added.
"We will carry out this activity continuously as an effort to reduce stunting rates," he affirmed.
Related news: Southwest Papua Governor urges support to reduce stunting cases
Related news: West Papua evaluates stunting, extreme poverty interventions
Related news: West Papua forms task force to tackle extreme poverty, stunting
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