POLITICS
WEST PAPUAN STRUGGLE GATHERS GROUND AND — CLOUT

The struggle for freedom and self-determination by the people of West Papua has gained significant clout with the opening of the West Papuan People's Representative Office in Vanuatu.

By DEBBIE SINGH in Suva

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THE STRUGGLE for freedom and self-determination by the people of West Papua gained significant clout last week when another page of history was written following the opening of the West Papuan People's Representative Office in Port Vila, Vanuatu.

"The establishment of the office is an open declaration of diplomatic war on (West Papuan coloniser) Indonesia", West Papuan Representative to the United Nations lobby and spokesman Rex Rumakiek said in an interview before the traditional opening ceremony staged at the chief’s nakamal in Port Vila last week.

Promising that Indonesia would face "a lot of challenges" through the establishment of the office, Rumakiek said the office would network and lobby intensively with supporters, friends, NGOs, regional governments and the international community for widespread support to stop the abuse of human rights in West Papua and further place the concerns of the people of West Papua on the global agenda.

"The support shown to the people of West Papua by Vanuatu as a regional government is a cause for celebration, particularly in light of Indonesia’s intensive lobbying against the establishment of this office," Rumakiek said.

He commended Vanuatu’s unwavering stance to act as host country for the West Papuan Office despite Indonesian pressure and disappointment, saying that independence struggles were a commonality between West Papuans, ni-Vanuatu and Kanaks, thus solidarity from Vanuatu for the West Papuan struggle is not seen as unusual.

"Vanuatu was also instrumental in getting Kanaky re-enlisted for decolonisation and promised that West Papua would be next," Rumakiek said.

In 2002, Vanuatu Deputy Prime Minister Serge Rialuth Vohor, in his address to the United Nations General Assembly requested the re-instatement of West Papua to the UN Decolonisation Committee.

Pacific Island governments have also continued to lobby and support the struggle of West Papua, with the issue even finding its way into official Pacific Island Forum Communiques via calls for the granting of special autonomy status to the resource-rich colonised nation.

In launching the office, Vohor said Vanuatu’s hosting and support for West Papua would not affect his country’s relations with Indonesia as Vanuatu had already established diplomatic relations with the West Papuan coloniser.

Vohor is due to officially visit Indonesia this year but said that he was unsure if Indonesia would discuss his country’s support of West Papua during his visit as the 1969 Act of Free Choice which delivered West Papua to Indonesia made the issue a United Nations problem, and not an Indonesian one.

Vohor said he intended to discuss the West Papua case with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at the UN later this year.

Debbie Singh is a freelance journalist based in the Fiji Islands.