Day of the Broken Promise

Ben­ny Wen­da, West Papuan inde­pen­dence leader and chair­man of the Kote­ka Trib­al Assem­bly, and most of the rest of the small hand­ful of West Papuans liv­ing in Britain demon­strat­ed oppo­site the Nether­lands Embassy in Lon­don on Fri 14 Aug, to mark the anniver­sary of the ‘Day of the Bro­ken Promise’, 15 August 1962.

The west­ern half of New Guinea became a Dutch colony in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, but by the 1950s they were mov­ing towards giv­ing it inde­pen­dence. How­ev­er the Indone­sian gov­er­ment claimed the coun­try and threat­ened inva­sion after then Dutch set up an elect­ed gov­ern­ment of West Papua in 1961.

Indone­sia was backed by mil­i­tary aid from the Sovi­et Union, and the Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion in the USA want­ed to pre­vent fur­ther move­ment of the coun­try towards the Sovi­et bloc, so pres­sured the Nether­lands into sign­ing the ‘New York Agree­ment’ with Indone­sia in August 1962. This allowed Indone­sia to take over the admin­is­tra­tion of the coun­try but pro­vid­ed for all the adult pop­u­la­tion of West Papua to vote at a lat­er date on whether they wished to become inde­pen­dent.

The Indone­sian army moved in on 1 May 1963 and began a pro­gramme of repres­sion and human rights abuse against the peo­ple. In 1969 they round­ed up and detained just over a thou­sand West Papuans as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple and enusured that they vot­ed for rule by Indone­sia by threats, includ­ing at least in some cas­es that they and their fam­i­lies would be killed unless they did so.

The Indone­sian gov­ern­ment made it impos­si­ble for the UN rep­re­se­n­ata­tive who was sup­posed to over­see the elec­tion to oper­ate prop­er­ly, and banned most for­eign reporters. Although it was clear that the vote did not reflect the will of the West Papuan peo­ple — and had failed to meet the terms of the agree­ment — which had been rat­i­fied by the UN — it was approved by the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly.

Since then there have been many reports of repres­sion by Indone­sia in the coun­try, includ­ing mur­der, polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, tor­ture, rapes, dis­s­a­pear­ances and bomb­ing. The gov­ern­ment also had a pro­gramme of reset­tling migrants from Indone­sia in the coun­try, appar­ent­ly aimed at pro­duc­ing an Indone­sian major­i­ty pop­u­la­tion.

West Papuans have engaged in both civ­il dis­obe­di­ence — par­tic­u­lar­ly around cer­mo­ni­al rais­ing of the West Papua flag (the Morn­ing Star) as well as armed resis­tance.

Wen­da was jailed for dis­play­ing the West Papuan flag (on his chest and at top right of pic­ture) but man­aged to escape and gain asy­lum in the UK. Esti­mates of the num­ber of West Papuans killed by Indone­sian repres­sion are in the hun­dreds of thou­sands (400,000 accord­ing to the Free West Papua Cam­paign), and in 2006, 43 refugees land­ed in a tra­di­tion­al canoe in Aus­tralia, claim­ing the Indone­sian mil­i­tary was car­ry­ing out a pro­gramme of geno­cide.

Despite a wide­spread recog­ni­tion of what has been hap­pen­ing, there is lit­tle inter­na­tion­al sup­port for West Papua. The coun­try has the world’s largest cop­per and gold mines, large­ly owned by US Comp­nay Freeport-McMoRan with UK based Rio Tin­to Group also involved.

Today’s demon­stra­tion was peace­ful and tune­ful, with Ben­ny and Maria Wen­da and oth­ers play­ing instru­ments and singing tra­di­tion­al West Papuan songs oppo­site the embassy.

A Dutch diplo­mat came across the road to talk to the demon­stra­tors and receive a let­ter demand­ing that the Nether­lands and oth­er gov­ern­ments insist on the prop­er imple­men­ta­tion of the 1962 agree­ment, with a free and fair inde­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum involv­ing all West Papuans over­seen by the UN. Papuans feel they were let down by every­one involved, but par­tic­u­lar­ly by the Dutch; “We trust­ed you and we believed in you. But you betrayed us.”

The diplo­mat spoke for a few min­utes with the demon­stra­tors and was inter­est­ed to see a fea­ture on the rebel army there which appeared in today’s Inde­pen­dent on dis­play.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/bows-arrows-and-a-dream-of-liberation-1771884.html

After the demon­stra­tion at the Nether­lands Embassy the protest was mov­ing to the Indone­sian Embassy in Grosvenor Square, where the West Papuans hold reg­u­lar protests.