Call for Western powers to intervene and save West Papua

WEST Papua is the western half of the island of New Guinea, just 200km north of Australia.
The indigenous Melanesians of the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya are Melanesians – the same as Papua New Guineans and equally diverse in their local identities.
Papua New Guinea is crucial for West Papua as the people share the same culture, heritage and history.
West Papua shares its borders and cultural ethnicity with PNG, but while PNG was colonised by the British, prior to German and Australian administration, West Papua was colonised by the Dutch, setting it on a different course.
But increasingly the population of the Indonesian province west of the border is made up of formerly landless Javanese and other Indonesian racial groups who have shifted there on their own or under the Indonesian government’s transmigration programme. Indonesia claimed that Irian Jaya rightfully belonged to it under the successor State principle, a principle strongly supported in the United Nations as the post-war world decolonised.
The Act of Free Choice was held between July and August of 1969.
This was conducted with all the familiar instruments of Indonesian political persuasion and intimidation.
The Indonesian repression continues in West Irian.
The UN failed to actively intervene on behalf of the indigenous people to ensure that the act of free choice truthfully reflected the wishes of the people.
The United Nations made the greatest mistake in history, allowing indigenous Melanesians of a different ethnicity to be ruled by a totally different ethnic group of people.
This has opened the door for the 60 years of political struggle by the Melanesians.
Since then, the Indonesian security forces have committed gross human rights abuses against the indigenous Papuans, with over 500,000 civilians killed to date.
The crimes committed against the people of West Papua are some of the most shameful acts in the history of civilised man and should never be forgiven.
Western powers have much to answer for and, at the very least, should use their ample means to bring about the withdrawal of the occupying Indonesian army and termination of the shameful exploitation of resources and destruction of the environment and the lives and societies of the people of West Papua, who have suffered far too much.
I join the race of greater New Guinea West Papua freedom campaign in calling Western powers to intervene and save the forgotten paradise from perishing.

Bid Ambassi
Muli City, Enga