Press Release: Federal Republic of West Papua
Melbourne Women Sickened by PNG and Fiji’s Betrayal of West Papua
5 June 2015
CANDLELIGHT VIGIL
City Square, Melbourne (Cnr Swanston and Collins St)
FRIDAY 5 JUNE 2015: 5.30-7.30pm
“It will be cold in Melbourne tonight, but the PNG Prime Minister’s betrayal of West Papua deserves a response” said Natalie Adadikam from the FRWP Women’s Office in Docklands. “We are praying, singing, lighting candles, hoping for a miracle, because PNG should be welcoming West Papuans into the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), not rejecting them”.
PNG Prime Minister O’Neill and Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama have both declared that they are not supporting West Papua’s application to join the MSG, Peter O’Neill from the Lowy Institute of International Policy in Sydney on 14 May 2015. Instead the two men are supporting an Indonesian-government endeavour for five of its governors, including its two Papuan governors, to join the MSG as an Associate Member.
Matt Gale, from the Solomon Islands, which is hosting this year’s MSG Summit, said:
‘West Papuans are our kin, estranged through no fault of their own in 1962, and we want them to return to the Melanesian family. When we talk about indigenous cosmologies, ontologies and epistemologies, this is what it’s all about. It begs our humanity to support their application to join our unique organization.”
The MSG is a modern international organization of the Melanesian nation-states (Vanuatu, Solomons Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea) and the Kanaky independence movement. In December 2014, Vanuatu and Kanaky declared they would vote for West Papua’s application at the MSG Summit in Honiara (18-26 June 2015) because it is an expression of their Melanesian kins’ inalienable right to determine their own future.
Two weeks ago, the Australian trade union movement signed a Memorandum of Understanding which supports West Papua’s application to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group, and which recognizes West Papua’s right to self-determination in line with United Nations Principles.
A favorable vote by the MSG will be the first concrete step by an international organization to implement the restorative justice principles of remorse, reform, and transformation for West Papuans, and a living monument to the 500,000 who have died fighting to overturn the New York Agreement (by which Indonesia, The Netherlands, and the United Nations rendered Melanesian West Papuans an Indonesia colony in 1962).
Jacob Rumbiak, Foreign Affairs Ministers of the Federal Republic of West Papua, believes the Melanesian Leadership will accept West Papua’s application for full membership of the MSG in June 2015.
“Melanesian politicians understand indigenous people’s relationship with their land. When they open their arms and formally acknowledge West Papuans as a long-lost family and political kin, they will be demonstrating their leadership, their dignity, and their sovereignty.”