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An Australian author and human rights advocate for West Papuan self-determination today sent an open letter to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the federal parliament calling for act of “decency” to correct years of alleged failure in foreign policy.
Jim Aubrey, author of the 1998 book Free East Timor and editor of a pro-independence for West Papua website, claimed in his statement that Australia had supported “impunity for Indonesia’s litany of every universally known classification for crimes against humanity”.
He also called for a Royal Commission to “investigate the roles of consecutive Australian governments as accessories to Indonesia’s unlawful military occupation and annexation of West Papua” and Indonesia’s “six decades of crimes against humanity”.
Unlike Timor-Leste, which gained its full independence in 2002 after 24 years of brutal Indonesian occupation, the Melanesian region of West Papua was annexed by Jakarta after a paratrooper invasion and then a contested “Act of Free Choice” plebiscite in 1969.
The consensus vote for Indonesian rule by 1250 handpicked Papuan elders purportedly under UN supervision has been challenged ever since by both peaceful Papuan activists and a war of liberation fought by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB-OPM) as not a genuine expression of self-determination by the Indigenous Papuans.
Aubrey’s open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the federal parliamentarians was attached to an image of two child victims of an atrocity in West Papua.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
APR editor | Radio Free (2023-05-01T05:43:12+00:00) Open letter: Canberra must call on UN to ‘rectify breaches’ over West Papuan decolonisation. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/01/open-letter-canberra-must-call-on-un-to-rectify-breaches-over-west-papuan-decolonisation/
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