It’s ironical the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, has labelled the flying of the West Papuan Morning Star flag on the roof of the Indonesian Consulate in Melbourne as “a criminal act that is completely intolerable” – The Age 28th January.
What’s a criminal act and completely intolerable is the Indonesian takeover of West Papua and the resultant deaths of over 500,000 West Papuans over the past 60 years as a direct consequence of the Indonesian annexation of the country.
It’s a criminal act to shoot dead scores of people every year who have the audacity to raise the Morning Star, the West Papuan Independence flag, in West Papua. It’s a criminal act to jail people for a decade for raising the West Papuan flag. It’s a criminal act for the Indonesian military with the full support of successive United States governments to use West Papuan’s resources to enrich themselves and major United States based corporations. It’s a criminal act to set up a transmigration program that has made West Papuans a minority in their own country. It’s a criminal act to torture, imprison, kidnap and kill West Papuans who want to regain their independence. It’s a criminal act for the Indonesian secret police to monitor, photograph and threaten West Papuan refugees living in Australia who have become Australian citizens.
The Indonesian government’s sensitivity to an individual raising a West Papuan flag on the Indonesian consulate in Melbourne is driven by their fear the West Papuan Independence Movement is gaining so much international attention the question of West Papuan independence will soon be brought up in the United Nations.
Concerned Australians have banded together and have formed the West Papuan Independence Rent Collective to pay the rent over the past 3 years for a West Papuan Independence office at Docklands, Melbourne. Unlike the Australian government and Opposition who pander to the Indonesian government’s sensitivity about West Papuan independence, we are proud to be members of a collective that has given West Papuans the ability to take their struggle for independence to the United Nations.
Dr. Joseph Toscano / Convenor West Papuan Independence Movement Rent Collective