Department of Foreign Affairs Immigration and Trade
Tribute to Kevin Buzzacott from West Papua
Kevin Buzzacott (b 1947), Aboriginal elder of the Arabunna nation and a highly valued supporter of West Papua's independence, died on 29 November 2023, and was buried in Alice Springs on 22nd December 2023. This entry (8 slides) is a record of his moral support and activism for what he insisted was Australia's 'responsibility to care for our brothers and sisters from across the water.'
Book Launch: Clovis Mwamba’s ‘The Meteorite Memos’
Launch of Clovis Mwamba's book of poems and essays 'The Meteorite Memos' during the West Papua Open Day in Docklands on 26 November 2023. Clovis, a teacher, activist, and politician in the Democratic Republic of Congo, wrote the poems on flattened cigarette packets while he was a political prisoner in a secret military camp in Kinshasa in 1998-1999. The Meteorite Memos opens an archive of atrocity and is therefore a human rights document; but also points to a profoundly influential African initiate knowledge system. The post also includes video-excerpts of a Cabaret Burlesque 'West Papua & The Congo' performed to highlight the forces that create war and genocide in West Papua and The Congo. These two nations share the roots of most decolonizing struggles, but are also bound by the catastrophic effect of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarksjöld's death in the Congo on the unholy and illegal denial of West Papua's registration as a UN Non-Self-Governing Territory in 1961.
Cuba and Fiji for West Papua
This post contains biography of the two speakers at the West Papua Open Day on 17 September 2023: Laura Canet Mulén, from the Higher Institute of International Relations in Cuba, and Dr Robert Wolfgramm from Fiji, with a link to twenty articles about West Papua in the Fiji Daily Post between 2005 and 2006 when he was Editor-in-Chief. The post also includes documentation pertaining to our Memorial to Dag Hammarskjöld (1961), the Nieuw Guinea RAAD (1962), and Helena Grunfeld (2023). Hammarskjöld was the UN Secretary-General (1953-1961), the New Guinea RAAD was the parliament of West Papua's Non-Self-Governing Territory before the Indonesian occupation, and Helena Grunfeld was a Swedish-Australian activist who worked at the West Papua Womens Office in Docklands. The post also features photos of the beautiful works donated to Dr Toscano's Auction for the West Papua Rent Collective by Queensland visual artist Susan Zela Bissett and Victorian wood sculptor David McKenzie.
The Hammarskjöld-West Papua Files, 26 March 2023
During the first Open Day in 2023 in the Docklands office, Anglican Bishop Philip Huggins was presented with the Hammarskjöld-West Papua Living Memorial files, including sixty (two-minute) videos of the tree-planting ceremonies around the world. Bishop Huggins, the first Australian to plant a memorial, promised that the Anglican Communion Permanent Representative to the United Nations would personally present the files to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, UN Assistant-Director Gillian Triggs, and the UN 75 Committee. The documentation is designed to remind UN executives, bureaucrats and member-states of the mistake they made in 1961-1962 in transferring the administration of West Papua (then Nederlands Nieuw Guinea) to Indonesia. The entry includes videos of the presentations by Bishop Huggins and Jacob Rumbiak, descriptions and links to the papers in the package for UN Sec-General Guterres, and a link to all the 2-min videos of tree-planting ceremonies from around the world.
WP Open Day, 11 Dec 2022, Paul Stewart’s ‘All the Rage’
Photos, slides, videos, speeches and documents associated with the launch of Paul Stewart's book 'All the Rage' (Melbourne Books, 2022) at the West Papua Open Day in Docklands (Victoria) on 11 December 2022. Includes Paul's interview with publisher David Tenenbaum, and Jacob Rumbiak talking about Australia and America's unprecedented criticisms of Indonesia in West Papua on 9 November 2022 in the United Nations. Also links to historical media articles and other relevant documents.
Debate: Is Australia doing enough to help West Papua?
IS AUSTRALIA DOING ENOUGH TO SUPPORT WEST PAPUA? A public debate sponsored by the Melbourne City Council in its glorious Yarra Room on 30 October 2022; convened by Fiji-Australian author Bernie Goulding, and summarised by Monash University’s China specialist Dr Jonathan Benney. West Papua is Australia's nearest neighbour, yet we have maintained a national silence on the atrocities endured by the Indigenous Melanesians of West Papua since 1962 when the United Nations illegally passed on the administration of its Non-Self-Governing Territory to Indonesia. Despite the republic's systematic racist policies and crimes-against-humanity, the West Papuan people have maintained extraordinary and inspiring resistance-and-nation-making, which was recognised in 2019 by the Pacific Islands Forum (including Australia and New Zealand), the Africa Caribbean Pacific Group and the parliaments of the United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, the European Union.
2015 MSG in Honiara: West Papua out of the dark into the light, and what’s happened since
This entry recants the extraordinary development for West Papua facilitated by Solomon Islands Prime Minister's intervention at the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) in Honiara in 2015, which as the West Papuans say 'brought us out of the darkness, into the light'. A 62-page photo-and-text essay demonstrates the intense lobbying by the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) before the Summit; the pride of Pacific Island activists and politicians in pursuing their Melanesian kin's liberation project; the extraordinary courage of men, women and children in West Papua who chose to demonstrate their unity and support; prayers in churches around the world; Australian unions galvanising behind UN Principles to support the ULMWP application to join the MSG. The entry concludes with a summary of Australia and New Zealand's continuing support of Indonesia's colonisation of West Papua.
One Small Step for Australia; One Big Leap for West Papua
This report outlines Dr Joe Toscano's policies (with costings) as an independent candidate for the Victorian Senate in Australia's 2020 Federal elections. Dr Toscano has been a political activist for as long as he has been practicing medicine, and is also a well known public broadcaster. He developed his suite of freshingly progressive policies during years of thinking about the world and being politically active within it. His policies include a commitment to pursuing an Independent Foreign Policy so that the Australian Government can support West Papua's self-determination and independence.
Two West Papuans awarded 2021 Eureka Australia Medal
Two West Papuans from the WP Transitional Government, Prime Minister Edison Waromi and Parliamentary Chair Buchtar Tabuni, were awarded 2021 Eureka Australia Medals during a moving ceremony on 3 December 2021 at the historic site of Bakery Hill in Ballarat (Victoria, Australia) where the Eureka Oath was sworn and a flag modelled on the Southern Cross-the best known constellation in the Southern Hemisphere-was raised on 3 December 1854.
West Papua’s Green State
Record of the presentations about West Papuans' Green State at the FRWP Open Day in Docklands (Victoria, AUS) on the 5 December 2021. Includes videos of the speeches by Raki Ap (the ULMWP Representative for Europe) and by Jacob Rumbiak (Minister for Foreign Affairs, West Papua Transitional Government). The entry also has the link to the video-recording of the launch of West Papua's Green State Vision on 4 November 2021 during the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow.
Poulgrain’s ‘JFK vs Allen Dulles, Battleground Indonesia’ changes our historical perspective
It took Greg Poulgrain decades of research and interviews to unravel CIA Director Allen Dulles' horrendous ‘Indonesia strategy’ of the Cold War. The most monstrous of Dulles' machinations were the murders of UN Sec-General Hammarskjöld and Congo Prime Minister Lumumba (in 1961) and US President Kennedy (in 1963); Indonesia’s usurpation of West Papua (in 1962); the replacement of Indonesian President Sukarno with the CIA-approved General Suharto (1965-66); the subsequent massacre of a million Indonesian ‘communist’ rice-farmers and consequent split of the Communist rivals China and the USSR. Students of West Papua need to ask (i) How the murder of UN Sec-General Dag Hammarskjöld was pivotal to Indonesia’s takeover of West Papua; and (ii) How a secret coup in Jakarta in 1965 and the subsequent massacre of a million Indonesian rice-farmers was pivotal to Freeport getting a licence to mine the gold in West Papua.
City of Moreland joins Yarra and Ballarat Councils on West Papua’s self-determination
On 14 August 2021, the City of Moreland joined the Yarra Council and the Ballarat Council in recognising the principle of self-determination for West Papua. Mayor Mark Riley plants a Hammarskjöld Memorial Tree for West Papua in Balfe Park in Brunswick East (Victoria, Australia). In September 2021 a video-recording of the ceremony will be presented to UN Sec-General Guterres along with the videos of the sixty other Hammarskjöld-WestPapua memorial plantings in 2020-21.
Land of the Morning Star, a documentary by Mark Worth
This entry has a lot of information, with references, about the film, Land of the Morning Star, its director Mark Worth, and the political and cultural aspects of the Morning Star on the West Papuans' independence flag.
George Ivan Smith and what he did for West Papua
In 2020 the West Papua Womens' Office in Docklands coordinated the planting of sixty living memorial (trees) around the world to honour the work of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld on West Papua, and to increase awareness of the facts and the fictions behind Indonesia's claim of sovereignty. Plantings in 2021 include George Ivan Smith (so the 'Hammarskjöld-WestPapua-Ivan Smith Living Memorial'). George Ivan Smith was a remarkable Australian who was a trusted associate and close confident of the Sec-General. In 1982 he revealed to the veteran academic, Greg Poulgrain, the Decolonisation Program which the Sec-General had prepared for West Papua and planned to raise in the 1961 General Assembly. This post includes a 14-page photo-essay about the program and Greg Poulgrain's ground-breaking book ('JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia') where this important development, which may have precluded the Indonesian occupation, is documented.
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