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An 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”.
Aubrey called on Canberra to press the United Nations to “rectify breaches” over West Papuan decolonisation.
READ MORE: Other West Papua reports
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”.
Aubrey claimed there were deliberate acts of geopolitical convenience and economic exploitation “while a slaughterhouse of decades of crimes against humanity in both West Papua and East Timor were international public knowledge”.
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 – attached to an image of two child victims of an atrocity in West Papua — states:
Dear Prime Minister and Parliament,
I cannot confirm for you if these young children are sleeping in exhaustion or sleeping in eternal peace after falling prey to your mates in Indonesia’s defence and security forces.
What I can confirm is that you, with your multiple predecessors, are responsible for failing in decency as a human being … the type of decency that is effortlessly evident in people who do not forsake principle for geopolitical convenience and economic exploitation of a vulnerable people who have the same right to freedom and nation-state sovereignty that we have.
What I can confirm is that your, and your predecessors, multiple acts of dissembling and wholesale lies over six decades of foreign policy treachery and deceit are the reason the average citizen despises politicians. Who can blame them – certainly not I!
What I can confirm is that one West Papuan warrior in their war of liberation has an understanding of elemental and existential values and spiritual belief and ancestral land that is genuine — whereby yours … all of yours, the poison of your can of worms … your delusional superiority … your identity crisis of ambitious self-importance … your inability to support the victims of Indonesia’s illegitimate landgrab and the subsequent six decades of multiple crimes against humanity … must be seen as a testimony of cowardice and deceit and treachery in governance that is anathema to what is stated every year on April 25 to be the noble Anzac tradition.
What I can confirm is that West Papua’s war of liberation will have the same conclusion as East Timor’s war of liberation and that you will be held accountable for upholding a foreign policy that protected Indonesia’s slaughterhouse in West Papua and that this protection provided an environment of impunity for Indonesia’s litany of every universally known classification for crimes against humanity … and that this heinous failure in leadership and duty of care is why Indonesia has got away with it, until now.
What I can confirm is that you and your predecessors have been wilful accessories to these crimes against humanity … wilful accessories to infanticide … by slaughter or by impoverishment where West Papua’s spectacular natural resources and mineral reserves have been plundered by the criminal occupiers and their collaborating governments – ours and many others.
This message is not to simply admonish you. It is to advise you that there are several actions you can undertake before you are overtaken by the events of liberation in West Papua that you and your predecessors have wilfully denied and even sabotaged. We do not need another pathetic fool so besotted with a mass murderer that he embraced him as his long-lost father (Keating to Suharto).
Of course, you can continue to be advised by DFAT’s morally and ethically bankrupt Indonesia desk, or you can straighten your spine and cross the Rubicon with the following meaningful measures:
- Call upon the United Nations to rectify the many breaches of the UN Charter in regard to West Papua’s decolonisation process. This includes tabling whatever is required at the United Nations General Assembly to implement this process. There are several distinguished West Papuans and other distinguished academics who can advise you on this.
- Reject out-of-hand any Indonesian claim to the western half of the island of New Guinea.
- Declare Indonesia’s military occupation and annexation of West Papua unlawful.
- Recognise West Papua’s nation-state sovereignty as declared by declaration of independence on 1st July, 1971, at the Victoria Headquarters in Jayapura where the OPM raised the Morning Star flag and unilaterally proclaimed West Papua as an independent democratic republic.
- Suspend all bilateral defence and trade agreements with Indonesia until Indonesia has left West Papua and has coughed up a financial compensation package for the victims of its six decades of crimes against humanity and its unlawful military occupation and annexation of West Papua, and for the destruction and devastation of West Papua’s once pristine environment, and for the theft of the mineral and forestry and agricultural resources. (NOTE: A similar financial compensation package should be forthcoming from the Australian Government, and every armaments exporter to Indonesia, and every multinational corporation that put plunder before principle.)
- Send a letter to your Indonesian counterpart stating that unless all the above measures are accepted by Indonesia, you will expel the Indonesian ambassador and close all Indonesian embassies and consulates within the Commonwealth of Australia.
- Initiate 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 as accessories to Indonesia’s six decades of crimes against humanity in West Papua.
- Initiate a Royal Commission to investigate measures to complete the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia i.e., by providing chapters on governance of transparency and accountability and judicial measures where the expectations of honesty and integrity are befouled with deliberate acts of geopolitical convenience and economic exploitation while a slaughterhouse of decades of crimes against humanity in both West Papua and East Timor were international public knowledge. (I am happy to act in an advisory capacity for these “missing chapters” to the constitution.) (NOTE: The federal government workplace should have the same workplace standards of employment that exists across every other workplace in our so-called democracy. It should be remembered that you are employed by the Australian people and that the Australian people, as your employers, want transparency and accountability in governance.
- Clean sweep all positions within DFAT that have contributed to the legally challengeable advice of protecting Indonesia’s criminal military occupation and annexation of West Papua.
- Establish parliamentary governance based on constitutional accountability i.e., a constitution that will never allow the protection of crimes against humanity for geopolitical convenience and economic exploitation.
Prime Minister, I am sure I have missed some of the prerequisite mechanics for democratic and ethical governance, and for all matters on West Papua. Please don’t kid yourself that you can sidestep your political party’s perpetual failure on West Papua.
Innocent civilians, including children, are victims of Indonesia’s air and ground combat operations, systemic racism and apartheid, every week. Six decades of infanticide!
West Papua’s war of liberation is one of the longest ongoing wars of liberation since the end of the Second World War, a war where the Papuan people were our reliable and courageous allies. It is also, without any exaggeration, a miscarriage of justice unlike any other. High time to set things right and to be on the side of truth and justice.
Yours sincerely,
Jim Aubrey
‘Callous betrayal’ of West Papuans
Later today, the TPNPB-OPM issued a statement supporting author Jim Aubrey’s call for a Royal Commission into Australian policy over West Papua and the consecutive Australian government’s alleged roles in Indonesia’s illegal military occupation and annexation of the region.
OPM leader Jeffrey Bomanak said the West Papuan people had suffered “callous betrayal and abandonment” by the Australian government and he also criticised New Zealand.
“If somebody had told me our Second World War allies, Australia and New Zealand, would treat us as collateral damage to Canberra and Wellington’s criminal defence and trade collaboration with Indonesia to steal and plunder my country, and to avert their gaze to the rivers of our blood and guts, I would have found this impossible to believe.
“Unfortunately, the Australian and New Zealand governments are well versed in their own appalling history of crimes against indigenous First Nations people.”
Jim Aubrey is the editor-author of Free East Timor: Australia’s Culpability in East Timor’s Genocide (Random House, 1998). He campaigned in person on East Timor, West Papua, and Tibet in Washington, DC, in 1998 and 2003, as well as touring with an international photographic exhibition displaying the atrocities in East Timor in 1998. This exhibition was endorsed by the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.
