http://www.pacificislands.cc/pm42002/pinadefault.cfm?pinaid=4098 

WEST PAPUA: International campaign for review of West Papua 'vote' launched

Dublin (PINA Nius Online, 1 April 2002)

An international campaign for a United Nations review of Indonesia's 39-year rule of West Papua has been launched in Dublin and New York, the Irish Times reported.

It calls on the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan "to act on the suffering of the West Papuan people" and review a disputed "Act of Free Choice."

In New York, a Papuan delegation will present a submission to the United Nations Secretariat.

In Dublin ceremonies, veteran Papuan independence campaigner Fred Korwa, called for a rethink of the United Nations' 1969 "Act of Free Choice" by 1022 elders, the Irish Times said.

This was taken as validating Indonesian rule in the resource rich former Dutch colony bordering Papua New Guinea.

The 1969 act is now widely acknowledged as an undemocratic sham, the Irish Times reported.

Mr Korwa (63), a veteran exile of the fight to end Indonesian rule, told a large audience of being in New York in 1969 and protesting at the UN's conduct over the "Act of Free Choice."

He sang the Papuan anthem, Hai Tan ahku Papua, to open the Dublin ceremonies, the Irish Times reported.

Desmond O'Malley, chairman of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee, said 1022 tribal elders were taken as representing a population of one million. Many were threatened with being shot by the Indonesian military if they did not opt for Indonesian rule, he said.

The elders "were hand-picked and forced to declare their loyalty to Indonesia under the brutal dictator Suharto," according to the West Papua Action solidarity group.

The Irish Times said the campaign launch was attended by the former Irish foreign affairs minister, David Andrews; Senator David Norris; and Dublin's Lord Mayor, Michael Mulcahy.

The West Papua Action group is calling on the Irish Government to "work actively" in pressing Mr Annan to review the United Nations role in 1969.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen has told the Irish Parliament of his concern "about reports that the rights and freedoms of the West Papuan people were restricted" in 1969.

He has also said he is concerned at reports of ongoing human rights abuses, the Irish Times reported.

West Papua Action's coordinator, Mark Doris, said 100,000 people or 10 percent of the population had been killed since 1963.

Demands for independence have been mounting in West Papua. Human rights activists accuse Indonesian security forces of abuses and say thousands of people have died in years of fighting.

The territory was a Dutch colony. But in the 1960s the Indonesians, who had won their own independence from Dutch colonial rule, began fighting to take control of West Papua from the Dutch.

The province was officially taken over by the Indonesians following the controversial 1969 referendum after the departure of the Dutch following American pressure.

Indonesia has since encouraged the transmigration east of mainly Muslim Asian migrants from its crowded main islands to West Papua. West Papuans are mainly Melanesian and Christian.

PINA Nius Online.