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PAPUAN FREEDOM CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED IN OXFORD

Free West Papua Campaign | 15.03.2005 12:02 | Ecology | Repression | Social Struggles | Oxford

A new campaign for West Papua Freedom is launched this week in Oxford.

Benny Wenda is lucky to be alive. Benny is a tribal leader from the forgotten land of West Papua. For speaking out against the oppression which his people suffer every day at the hands of one of Britain’s allies, Indonesia, Benny Wenda was arrested, tortured and threatened with death.

Benny managed to escape his captors and flee to Britain. He will shortly be moving to Oxford with his family. Now he wants the world to hear what is happening to his people. On Friday 18th March, Benny Wenda will launch the Free West Papua Campaign in Oxford Town Hall, with the support of local MPs Andrew Smith and Evan Harris, and local MEP Caroline Lucas and the Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries.

West Papua is the western half of the island of New Guinea. Swathed in rainforest and still partly unexplored, it is home to 500over 250 tribes. Formerly part of the Dutch empire, West Papua was invaded by Indonesia in 1962. Seven years later, with the blessing of the UN, the Indonesians staged a sham ‘referendum’ in which they handpicked 1000 Papuan leaders and forced them at gunpoint to vote for integration into their state.

Since then, at least 1000,000 100,000 Papuans have been murdered by the Indonesian military. Papuan culture has been banned. The price for speaking out is torture, rape, disappearance or death. And the Indonesian policy of banning journalists, human rights observers and even tourists from most of West Papua has ensured that most of the world has no idea this is even happening.

The Free West Papua Campaign – a new organisation based in Oxford – has been set up to make the world listen.

Benny Wenda will be at Oxford Town Hall this Friday, with local and national politicians, to launch the campaign.

For more information: contact Paul Kingsnorth of the Free West Papua Campaign. Email:  media@freewestpapua.org

Read more about West Papua on our website: www.freewestpapua.org

Free West Papua Campaign
- e-mail: media@freewestpapua.org
- Homepage: http://www.freewestpapua.org

Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

Please check your statistics

15.03.2005 18:06

How many people are estimated to have been killed by the military since integration into the Indonesian state? One million or one hundred thousand?

eileen


dodgy platform

15.03.2005 22:21

Without taking away from Benny's cause, which I fully support, I do have to question his choice of MPs - only some of the more fascist politicans in Parliament, who if they were in Indonesia would be classed as among the oppressors Benny is fighting. The hypocrisy of Mssrs Harris & Smith is astounding. Please Benny and the rest of the campaign, find someone else.

FtP


Wanted: a sense of perspective

16.03.2005 12:01

FtP: Whatever you may think of Evan Harris and Andrew Smith, and their pro-war parties, it's ridiculous to call them 'fascist' - especially Harris, who's not been in a cabinet responsible for an illegal war, and has a good record of speaking out for asylum seekers. Andrew Smith is of a course a hypocrite, being a warmonger amd a recent member of the government that arms Indonesia. But getting MPs on board is a good way of getting publicity and public interest for a new campaign. The lazy myopic media which thinks the state-sponsored murder of West Papuans isn't a story might just get their arses down to the meeting if they know to MPs are there, with an election coming up.

Mike

Mike


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