Now for a free Papua for Melanesia

 PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill has made a bold and courageous stand by speaking out on the West Papua issue.

At the 2015 Leaders’ Summit in Port Moresby yesterday, O’Neill became the first Papua New Guinean Prime Minister to break the National Government’s silence on this sensitive issue since independence.

PNG had become a respected regional leader but had not spoken on the West Papua issue, O’Neill said during his keynote address to leaders.

His statement on the issue was brief but touching: “We are in a good position to lead mature discussions on issues affecting our people in the region. Our leading role in encouraging Fiji to return to a democratically-elected government, and voicing of the plight of our people in New Caledonia, are examples of our growing influence. 

“We have participated in the restoration of democracy and law-and-order in countries like Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. But sometimes, we forget our own families, our own brothers, especially those in West Papua. I think, as a country, the time has come for us to speak about the oppression of our people there. Pictures of brutality of our people appear daily on social media, and yet, we take no notice. We have the moral obligation to speak for those who are not allowed to talk. We must be the eyes for those who are blindfolded.”

We commend O’Neill for his bold stance on the West Papua issue, which all his predecessors had ignored for fear of upsetting our giant neighbour, Indonesia.

Our citizens can rest assured we now have a Prime Minister who will not shirk his moral obligation to our Melanesian brothers and sisters across the border.

Undoubtedly, O’Neill’s remarks will be welcomed by local and international supporters and sympathisers of West Papuan freedom, including outspoken human rights lawyer cum National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop.

For the younger generation of Papua New Guineans who are not familiar with the “Papua Conflict”, it is an ongoing low-level conflict between the Indonesian Government and portions of the indigenous population of West Papua. 

Since the withdrawal of the Dutch colonial administration from the Netherlands New Guinea in 1962, the implementation of Indonesian governance in 1963 and the formal absorption of West Papua into Indonesia in 1969, the Free Papua Movement (OPM), a militant Papuan independence organisation, has conducted a low-level guerrilla war against the Indonesian state, targeting the Indonesian military and police, as well as engaging in the kidnapping of non-Papuan Indonesian settlers and foreigners. 

West Papuans have conducted protests and flag-raising ceremonies for independence or federation with Papua New Guinea, and accuse the Indonesian Government of indiscriminate violence and of suppressing their freedom of expression. 

Many West Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian military since 1969 and the Indonesian governance style has been compared to that of a police state, suppressing freedom of political association and political expression. 

The Indonesian Government restricts foreign access to West Papua due to sensitivities regarding its suppression of Papuan nationalism. The Indonesian Government is accused of human rights abuses, such as attacks on OPM-sympathetic civilians and jailing people who raise the West Papuan national flag, the Morning Star, for treason. 

As of 2010, 13,500 Papuan refugees live in exile in PNG and occasionally the fighting spills over the border. 

As a result, the PNG Defence Force has set up patrols along the western border to prevent infiltration by the OPM. Additionally, the PNG Government has been expelling resident “border crossers” and making a pledge of no anti-Indonesian activity a condition for migrants’ stay in PNG. 

Since the late 1970s, the OPM have made retaliatory “threats against PNG business projects and politicians for the PNGDF’s operations against the OPM”. The PNGDF has performed joint border patrols with Indonesia since the 1980s, although its operations against the OPM are “parallel”.