PENGAKUAN MI : WAJAR SAJA JIKA PAPUA MINTA MERDEKA

MI, Mengakui Papua Telah Merdeka

WAJAR SAJA JIKA PAPUA MINTA MERDEKA Jika kita melihat luka atau “sejarah Papua” yang sedang di sembunyikan oleh negara Indonesia ini, maka Wajar saja jika Papua mintah Merdeka lepas dari negara Indonesia, itulah kata Ricko Mahasiswa asal Ambon yang kuliah di Stimik Akakom Yogyakarta. Walaupun saya hanya mahasiswa biasa, bukan putra Papua saya kecewa sekali dengan apa yang di lakukan oleh bangsa Indonesia terhadap saudara-saudara dipapua.

Ketika saya membaca sejarah saudara-saudara dipapua, saya baru tahu kenapa rakyat Papua mintah Merdeka atau melepaskan diri dari negara Indonesia. jujur saja kalau saya yang jadi presiden saya bisa membebaskan rakyat bangsa Papua yang sebelumnya telah merdeka pada 1 Desember 1961 kata Ricko. Indonesia juga harus tahu jangan karena kepentingan pribadi sehingga Indonesia menahan Papua bagian dari Indonesia, dan Indonesia juga harus sadar jangan karena alam kekayaan hingga membuat rakyat Papua yang dideritakan di atas tanah dan alam kekayaan mereka sendiri, Indonesia juga seharusnya membuka diri dan membuka ruang untuk menentukan nasip sendiri sebagai sebagai solusi demokratis bagi bangsa Papua, seperti yang pernah di usulkan oleh Aliansi Mahasiswa Papua sejawa dan bali baru-baru ini. Tutur ricko. (M/DEGOO)

MELANESIA

 MELANESIA

Melanesia United Nations Islands

Melanesia ( from Greek " black island " ) is a territory that extends from the western Pacific to the Arafura Sea , north and northeast of Australia . The term was first used by French explorer Jules Dumont d' Urville in 1832 to refer to an ethnic group and the grouping of islands distinct from Polynesia and Micronesia . Nowadays , the classification of " racial " Dumont d' Urville is considered inappropriate because he covered the cultural diversity , linguistic , and genetic Melanesia and now it is only used for geographical naming .Countries that belong to the Melanesian namely :

• Fiji
• Papua New Guinea
• Solomon Islands
• Vanuatu
• New Caledonia
• Maluku, Indonesia
• North Maluku, Indonesia
• East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia
• Papua, Indonesia
• West Papua, Indonesia 
• Sebagai tambahan, negara Fiji, Papua Nugini, Kepulauan Solomon, Vanuatu, dan Kaledonia Baru (yang merupakan dependensi Perancis) menggunakan istilah ini untuk menggambarkan diri mereka sendiri karena mencerminkan sejarah kolonial dan situasi regional umum yang serupa.

The Melanesian delegation

While West Papuan independence groups appeal for international recognition, Jakarta is fighting to retain control of the region

Melanesian politics are rarely a concern for the world’s emerging powers. For the Indonesian government, however, they have become a matter of grave importance.

Strength in numbers:
Some 2,000 Papuans march to demand a referendum on self-determination in 2010

The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) – an intergovernmental organisation composed of Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the FLNKS, an alliance of political parties in New Caledonia – has promised to send a mission to West Papua, Indonesia’s resource-rich, easternmost region. On the agenda will be assessing whether the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation (WPNCL) should be allowed to join the MSG – something Jakarta would prefer to avoid.

West Papua is a part of Indonesia, but the WPNCL, an umbrella group of dozens of West Papuan organisations, campaigns for the region’s independence. Indonesia’s history is littered with separatist plays, and Jakarta fears nothing more than the breakup of the republic. MSG membership could serve as a stepping stone for West Papua’s addition to the United Nations’ list of countries yet to be decolonised, an unprecedented acknowledgement by the international community that its people have been deprived of their right to self-determination. The 1969 Act of Free Choice, a UN-sponsored referendum in which West Papuans were supposedly able to choose whether to join Indonesia or form their own country, is widely regarded as a sham.

The MSG already considered the coalition’s bid, but its foreign ministers elected, at Jakarta’s behest, to defer a decision until they could see for themselves the situation in West Papua. At the 19th MSG Leaders’ Summit, held in mid-June in Noumea, New Caledonia, they announced they would form a delegation to visit Jakarta and then West Papua before the end of the year. The stated aim was to investigate whether West Papuans really are victims of human rights abuses and economic marginalisation. There is a long history in Indonesia of vicious acts committed by the security forces and of wealth flowing inordinately from the archipelago’s peripheries to Java and Jakarta in the centre.

Jakarta was relieved by the deferral. It now has the chance to state its case on its own turf. “[Jakarta] was likely aiming to create a situation where they could control what data was provided to the MSG regarding [West] Papua,” Selpius Bobii, a Papuan political prisoner, wrote in Scoop Media. “It’s going to be absolutely critical that the [delegation] in their visit… show extreme caution and a highly selective process in their acceptance of data and information.”

The interim might also give Indonesia time to influence the course of events in other ways. Jakarta will probably use it to try to buy off Melanesian political leaders, according to Jason MacLeod, a University of Queensland professor and a research fellow with the West Papua Project at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. “I think we are likely to see financial inducements offered to MSG nations in the form of bilateral agreements and aid,” he said.

Up in arms: The prime minister of Fiji, Voreqe Bainimarama, has close military ties with Indonesia

The MSG members seem divided in their stances. Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama enjoys close military ties with the Indonesian government, and recently there have been high-level visits, MacLeod said. In Papua New Guinea, there is a split between Peter O’Neill, the current prime minister, and Michael Somare, the previous one. While Somare, a guest of honour at the June summit, said that he backed West Papuan membership, O’Neill did not even attend. Instead, he visited Jakarta, concluding the trip by telling reporters that West Papua was an integral part of Indonesia.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Gordon Lilo said at the summit that “the West Papuan case is an incomplete decolonisation issue… it must be resolved now”, according to a WPNCL statement. But in August, Lilo told journalists after a meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta that he was “quite impressed with the [ongoing] progress in Papua”. He also visited West Papua but, to MacLeod’s knowledge, did not meet with any political prisoners or resistance leaders. Last month it came to light that Jakarta had paid for the trip, giving Lilo’s government $171,000.

There is a chance Jakarta will try to head off the MSG delegation by inviting the ministers on a series of individual, bilateral visits, according to MacLeod. “After several visits by single foreign ministers, the Indonesian government could claim a multilateral visit is not necessary,” he said. “The danger is that the MSG foreign ministers could write their report advising on the decision of West Papuan membership to the MSG without any genuine input from Papuan civil society.”

The other two MSG members seem less vulnerable to such overtures. The FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist Nationalist Liberation Front, a political coalition from New Caledonia, whose multi-party government is divided over whether the territory should push for independence from France) is seeking support for its own decolonisation campaign. Indeed, it was the FLNKS that invited the WPNCL to attend the summit.
In Vanuatu, the issue of Papuan decolonisation has risen further up the national agenda than in any other country. In 2010 its parliament passed a unanimous motion to take the matter up with the UN. At the June summit, Vanuatu’s prime minister, Moanna Carcassas, said that the country would not be free until all of Melanesia was free: “I say that we as brothers must stand for [West Papua]. The epicentre of support for the advocacy for West Papuan self-determination must begin in this region – Melanesia – and from here it could spread to other foreign lands.”

That is exactly what Jakarta does not want to happen. The lengths it will go to to prevent it remain to be seen. Already, foreign journalists are effectively banned from West Papua. Reporters will undoubtedly seek to accompany the MSG mission, but the rules are justified by a supposed threat to their safety. Leaked military documents, however, show that Jakarta is more worried about international opinion toward West Papua than about militants. Secret files that surfaced in 2010 said that the “separatist political movement” which had “reached the outside world” was “much more dangerous” than armed groups that “hardly do anything”.

This is not the first time Jakarta has had to decide how to handle journalists reporting on a foreign delegation it would rather not accommodate. In 1991, Portugal planned a fact-finding mission to East Timor, its former colony, to determine whether the people there were content with Indonesian rule. The delegation was cancelled after Jakarta objected to the inclusion of Jill Jolliffe, an Australian reporter who it regarded as pro-independence. “They said the journalist was not serving the purpose of the visit,” said Andreas Harsono, a Jakarta-based researcher with Human Rights Watch. “The purpose of the visit was for the Portuguese delegation to see things getting better in East Timor.”

The East Timorese went ahead with a massive demonstration anyway; more than 200 protesters were killed. But an English reporter filmed the carnage, and the video he smuggled out was broadcast across the world. That was when the international movement for East Timor really took off.
A similar incident in West Papua, known as the Biak massacre, produced a different result. In 1998 soldiers opened fire on Papuans as they demonstrated in Biak, killing dozens. “There were no outsiders there to witness it,” MacLeod said. “West Papua is a secret story.”

Jakarta is already selling the MSG ministers its own version of the West Papuan story. The WPNCL may never get to tell its side.

Papuan cultural rallies held across West Papua and Indonesia

August 16, 2013

On 15th August 2013, in rejection of the so called “New York Agreement”, in support of West Papua joining the Melanesian Spearhead Group and in support of the new Free West Papua Campaign office opening in the Netherlands, mass Cultural Parade rallies were held all over West Papua and throughout Indonesia.

Despite the police ban on the demonstrations and heavy police presence, including tanks, demonstrations went ahead peacefully in Nabire, Timika, Jayapura, Biak and Jakarta.

In an interview with Radion New Zealand (RNZI) the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation’s Paula Makabory told Johnny Blades the demonstrations appear to have proceeded harmoniously.

PAULA MAKABORY: And in fact even though eight people were arrested on the preparations for the rally yesterday before on the 13th August but yesterday they keep doing the rally and also some students from AMP organisations and KNPB were together they did the rally as well in the city of Java.

JOHNNY BLADES: So it sounds like there wasn’t an excessive response from the security forces?

PM: Yeah I think there is no shooting and they didn’t stop the rally even though the police banned it so the main point is you can see how strong the West Papuan would like to stand up to spread the message out here and their rights, especially the right to self-determination. They all stand up also for the same message to support the opening office of the Free West Papuan movement in the Hague, in the Netherlands.

JB: And do you think that the Indonesian security forces are becoming a bit more reasonable in their approach, in their response to these sorts of occasions?

PM: I think after Indonesia being criticised at the UN critical reviews of the Human Rights Committee this is like a positive attitude, while really on the ground, you cannot control them. So for me you cannot say yes or no to these situations because they can do anything anywhere anytime to the West Papuan.

JB: There’s a cultural element to a lot of these demonstrations in that they are displaying their Melanesia roots.

PM: Yeah I think the message is quite strong and especially it was done yesterday in memory of that New York Agreement back in the 15th of August 1962 where I think the claims of the West Papuan there is really strong which is they would like to know the legality of this agreement. Then the legality of the Act Of Free Choice back in 1969 and the legality of the Freeport McMoRan deal even before the Act Of Free Choice took place. And here on this ground in West Papua with all the cultural rallies yesterday with the strong support and calling for the right to self-determination of the West Papuan they would like to show the whole region of Pacific Islands or Melanesian countries and the world that they still don’t think that they belong under Indonesian rule.