Campeace Letter to the UN Secretary-General

Dear friends,

Acting on the Resolution of the First West Papua
Solidarity Conference held in Denekamp, Holland, CamPeace
sent on the 19th of October (International Day of Action
for West Papua) the following letter to Kofi Annan.

In solidarity,

Nick Angelopoulos
CamPeace
www.campeace.org
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19 November 2000
His Excellency, the Secretary-General of the United
Nations
Kofi Annan
United Nations Secretary-General
Room S-3800 United Nations
New York, NY 10017 USA

Your Excellency,

I am writing to you on the occasion of the anniversary of
the day when the UNGA accepted Resolution 2504 and the
associated report of Ortiz Sanz in November 1969. The
United Nations "took note" with Resolution 2504 that an
act of free choice had taken place in West Irian, the
country now known as West Papua or Irian Jaya, but not
according to international practice, only according to
Indonesian practice. Ortiz Sanz's report stated that: "an
act of free choice has taken place in West Irian in
accordance with Indonesian practice, in which the
representatives of the population have expressed their
wish to remain with Indonesia." Ghana, and several other
African countries at the November meeting, condemned the
exercise for being undemocratic.

The Indonesian government undertook in 1962 with the New
York Agreement to carry out an act of self-determination
in West Papua. Article 18 of the Agreement guaranteed the
rights of all adult Papuans to participate in an act of
self-determination to be carried out in accordance with
international practice. The Indonesian government has
still an obligation to carry out that act of
self-determination. It is simply dishonourable and an
affront to the principles on which the United Nations was
established to consider the blackmail of a few Papuans by
former dictator Suharto as an act of self-determination.
It is hardly surprising that by Papuan accounts those few
men who took part in the 1969 "Act of Free Choice", later
rescinded their so-called votes. One of them was Theys
Eluay, the present Chairman of the Papuan Presidium
Council, leading the non-violent independence movement in
West Papua today. That cold war pressures caused the UN to
turn a blind eye to this injustice, to deliver an entire
people to one of the most repressive
regimes of our times, has been a stigma in the history of
the organisation.

Surely the time has come for the United Nations to
honestly examine what happened in West Papua in 1969,
first for the people whose rights have been denied for 38
years and secondly for the international community as a
whole, bound by international law to respect such rights.
The right of self-determination has been accorded to West
Papuans by an international treaty to which the UN was a
co-signatory. Thirty-eight years is a long enough time for
a people to wait for a true and just act of
self-determination as had been promised to them.