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Update
Terakhir: Sep 18th, 2005 - 09:17:35
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 Dukungan Dunia
In October, it will be Pacific Islands Forum summit time in Papua New Guinea. What won't be on the agenda? Surely not such distractions as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan or other far away distractions that have been introduced from time to time by certain members who feel a need to add a Forum blessing to their portfolio of approvals for things done in democracy's handy name in places far away from the Pacific. The Australian prime minister, John Howard, has raised the name of Zimbabwe and its ghastly dictator, the murderous Robert Mugabe, at the Forum in his capacity as member of a Commonwealth action, or perhaps inaction, group on Zimbabwe. What else won't be on the Papua New Guinea meeting's agenda? West Papua? Why not? It's right next door to Papua New Guinea, which has a border with it, and Australia. Curiously, the Forum recognises East Timor, formerly occupied by an invader, Indonesia, and where Australia became deeply involved, much to its credit. But even more curiously, Australians and Papua New Guineans do their best to convince other Forum members that West Papua isn't their business, except for recognising the propriety of Indonesia's bogus claim to the place. Their motives are obvious. They wish to placate Indonesia, a country now hypersensitive to awkward questions about how it rules West Papua after its loss of East Timor and its partial capitulation in August to demands for self-government by another of its provinces, Aceh. Unlike Aceh, and perhaps even East Timor, Indonesia's claim to West Papua, which it invaded when the former Dutch colonial government departed, is historically preposterous. For years it has been busy suppressing the indigenous independence movement there, ruthlessly so, and confiscating land for occupation by migrants from overcrowded parts of the Indonesian archipelago. There have been consistent reports of massacres, assassinations, intimidation and persecution, some of these events happening just across the border from Papua New Guinea. Why the reign of terror there escapes the notice, officially, of the Forum, isn't a mystery, as we explain above. Only one Forum country, Vanuatu, supports the West Papua independence cause. It took a West Papuan representative to the Melanesian Spearhead Group meeting in Papua New Guinea in August. PNG blocked the representative's presence. Now the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney has published an account of four years of research on what goes on in West Papua. The book called 'Genocide in West Papua' described murders, the forced displacement of indigenous people, the burning of villages and the deliberate spread of AIDS as a weapon for killing off the locals. About 100,000 of them have allegedly been killed since the Indonesians took over 40 years ago. The book deals specifically with the killings of thousands in the last few years, an activity conducted by the Kopassus, the Indonesian army's special killer force command that has training links with Australia. What a travesty. No wonder the Forum doesn't want to really know about West Papua. It doesn't have the time to, not with distractions like Zimbabwe on its books. The book's authors say Australia has a moral obligation to raise its findings at an international level. The Forum, luckily for Mr Howard, is a mere regional level event. © Copyright 2003-2005 by watchPAPUA
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