West Papua: the forgotten story of discrimination and oppression

by ray(O) , Toowong, Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 09:33 (3 days ago) @ TonyR

Tony,

Thank you for your post.

Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and the Middle East are always in the main news media, and rightly so.

But there is another story of an equally appalling genocide and human rights abuse.

It happens just across the Australian border. That country is West Papua (colonised now by Indonesia).

On 17th January 2006 a boatload of 43 asylum seekers from West Papua landed on the West coast of Cape York. Sumber/Source

How did our illustrious Government respond? The only way to get to the spot where they landed was by air, so the Government declared a “no-fly zone” around the area. This meant NO ONE apart from Government officials could even enter the area.

It has been suggested that what the Government was going to do was to burn the boat that the refugees arrived in (which they did by the way) and then quietly take them back across the border into West Papua.

No one would be the wiser. Those refugees would have been killed by the Indonesians on their return but that was of no concern to our Government.

It also appears that other asylum seekers who had arrived from West Papua had been repatriated a similar way. They were GENUINE asylum seekers but were forcibly returned by our Government.

This was the Government’s plan for these 43 asylum seekers. By the way, they were ALL given protection visas. It took the Government only two months to process them all. So there was no question as to their refugee status!!

Unfortunately for our Government, a news reporter on Thursday Island had been tipped off that a boat load of West Papuans had landed on Cape York.

He and a couple of others in a helicopter were able to take photos of the asylum seekers and their boat standing (and sitting!!) on Australian soil. You have no idea how this upset our Government’s plans!!!!

The rest is history. Forgotten history.

The atrocities are still happening in West Papua. Random torture, rape, imprisonment etc are being used by the Indonesian Army to subjugate the indigenous West Papuans into submission.

The Indonesian army has learnt its lesson from East Timor. The problem there was that they killed too many at one time. That makes headlines in the world’s newspapers.

So now they kill a few less. By making it RANDOM, they can instil fear and subjugation into the West Papuans and not have the World press reporting their atrocities.

Since the world press is no longer interested in this struggle as there are not enough deaths, I am spreading awareness of the plight of our nearest neighbours, the West Papuans.

What better time than in World Refugee Week.

For anyone interested in learning a little more of their plight here is one website:-

http://www.safecom.org.au/merdeka.htm

This site has links to other sites as well.

Even if you are not interested, I am politely asking you all to have a read.

This is happening now, on Australia’s border. The only place they can escape to by boat is Australia.

The boat these asylum seekers came in were built by themselves; a traditional outrigger canoe. There were no “people smugglers” involved, even though that was to be another “plan” concocted by our Government. That was another reason for burning their canoe.

So much for the rights of refugees.

So when we talk about our “lucky country” we should also talk about how “lucky” we are to have such a wonderful Government.

together in the Faith of Christ

Ray