The Guardian 17 May, 2006
International Court action
needed for West Papua
Peter Mac
The United Nations and Peoples Association (UNPA) has petitioned the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation to challenge in the International Court of Justice the legality of the Indonesian occupation of West Papua. In particular they are challenging the legitimacy of the so-called "Act of Free Choice" of 1962, in which about a thousand Papuan elders voted unanimously, but under both covert and overt duress, to accept Indonesian sovereignty. They note that prior to this, West Papuan citizens had defeated two attempts by Indonesian military forces to invade West Papuan territory.
The UNPA is also challenging whether Indonesia has complied with its obligations regarding the welfare and progress towards self-governance of the West Papuan people, since implementation of the "Act of Free Choice".
In its submission, the UNPA makes pointed reference to the existence of the West Papuan Freeport and Oost Borneo mines, as a pointer to the Indonesian takeover of the territory in 1961. These are now the world’s largest gold and copper mines, and their combined profits have yielded Indonesia’s biggest tax payments since 1936.
The UNPA also claims that negotiations leading to the 1961 agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesia regarding the "Act of Free Choice" were conducted between UN members, the Netherlands and Indonesia in secret and without the knowledge of the West Papuan people.
Significantly, as part of their claim for distinctive national and cultural characteristics, they cite close links with people from the Australian geographical land mass, as well as cultural differences between Javanese and Melanesian peoples.
In this connection they note "…given that West New Guinea is part of continental Australia and both New Guinea and the connecting Arafura Sea are upon the Australian continental shelf, that the indigenous and endemic fauna include kangaroo, echidna, and cassowary, and that the predominant flora is Australian rainforest, there can be no legitimate dispute that West New Guinea is geographically part of the Australian continent, and not part of Asia where the island of Java is located and where the Indonesian military forces and government come from …"
"… given that the West Papuan people like other Australian Pacific peoples are Melanesian, there can be no legitimate dispute that West New Guinea is ethnically distinctive from Java…"
They finally state that the fifty thousand Indonesian troops occupying West Papua, combined with the transmigration program (which has the clear objective of numerically overwhelming West Papuan native people with Indonesian settlers), and exploitation of the nation by Indonesian-owned military businesses "constitute an alien domination indicative of subordination of the territory".