KOFI ANNAN URGED TO EXAMINE UN’S MISCONDUCT IN WEST PAPUA

March 27, 2002 - Human rights activists from around the world, including representatives of West Papua’s leading human rights organization, ELSHAM, submitted a petition to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan this week urging him to conduct an investigation into the United Nations' endorsement of a sham referendum held over 30 years ago endorsing Indonesia's take over of West Papua. After the so-called "Act of ‘Free’ Choice, the UN General Assembly removed West Papua from its agenda, consigning the people of West Papua to decades of brutality and mass murder under Indonesian rule. 

Military repression in West Papua has intensified in the past year in many parts of the territory, culminating last November in the assassination of pro-independence leader, Theys Hiyo Eluay. Human rights organizations in West Papua are convinced that the assassination was perpetrated by elements within the Indonesian military. 

Under an agreement brokered by the UN in 1962, the international body assumed responsibility for supervising the Act which should have been conducted in accordance with international practice, requiring all adults to participate. In fact only 1,022 persons, handpicked by the Indonesian 
military, voted without a dissenting voice to accept integration into the Indonesian Republic. 

West Papua is extremely rich in minerals, which have been exploited for four decades by foreign companies, in particular the New Orleans-based mining multinational, Freeport-McMoRan, inflicting untold hardship on local communities. 

Investigations undertaken by researchers in the past two years have revealed that the UN mission turned a blind eye to manipulations by the Indonesian military to ensure that the vote would secure the territory as Indonesia’s 26th province. 

The Act, which West Papuans contemptuously call the "Act of NO Choice," took place under conditions of violent repression, under the very noses of the UN mission. UN documents reveal that the mission stood by as the faked vote was held. 

In November 2002, the former UN deputy Secretary General, Chakravarthy Narasimhan, who was in charge of the UN mission’s work throughout, admitted that the Act was a ‘whitewash’. 

The petitioners lobbied several important institutions in New York concerned with the situation in Indonesia and met representatives of some South Pacific missions at the UN. 

Carmel Budiardjo of the London-based Indonesia Human Rights Campaign, TAPOL, who is currently in New York to present the petition, said: "The UN is responsible for a grave betrayal of the West Papuan people’s right to self-determination. Its failure to ensure a proper referendum has resulted in decades of suffering. The UN should re-open the question and rectify one of the worst breaches its commitment and duty to uphold the right of peoples to determine their own future." 

Issued in New York by the West Papua Association ­ UK, on behalf of the International Solidarity Movement for West Papua.