War in West Papua?

[Magda Hassan]

I just watched a rather disturbing report on West Papua tonight. WP is in the western part of the island with Papua and New Guinea just north of Australia. It was part of the Dutch empire and when the Dutch left the Dutch East Indies Indonesia militarily took over WP. There is no linguistic, cultural or ethnic connection with the two countries other than the Dutch were both their colonial rulers. Now Indonesia is the colonial power there and the WP want independence. Indonesia's claim was upheld in the UN at the time in a very questionable vote. Since then there has been an independence movement which has been violently repressed some say a slow motion genocide. The Indonesian military did kill 1/3rd of the East Timor population when they were there too. It seems to be invisible to the rest of the world but it is truly gruesome beyond words. I saw footage tonight showing a WP man on the ground with his entrails beside him, still alive and conscious, while the US and Australian trained Indonesian soldiers who had presumably done this to him were drinking and eating and smoking, filming him and taunting him "Do you still want freedom?" :puke:Needless to say there are huge mineral riches there and timber is also a very valuable resource. None of which belong to the locals. The Indonesian military have many companies involved throughout the country (and Indonesia in general) in logging and mineral extraction. It was the same in East Timor and was perhaps the main reason why they didn't want to go and when they did they did the burnt earth retreat so no one else could benefit.

The 'President' of WP was interviewed in Vanuatu. He stated that they were organising to bring the war of resistance to Papua and New Guinea, drag them into it, to bring their plight to the international community. This is in part to the failure of any one to take their situation seriously including most recently at the South Pacific Forum. They are hoping for a Julia Gillard win as her faction is a supporter of WP independence and they hope and expect to have her support in this coming war. I can only wonder that some arms dealer, or their commissionaire, hasn't been talking in his ear suggesting such crap hoping to sell him some hardware to get the ball rolling and even more hard ware to the Indonesian to stop the ball rolling. Indonesia has certainly been busy doing the rounds paying leaders off in the Pacific and PNG.
Some info here:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/west-papua-w...11ojd.html
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/45145