West Papuans Open Office in Melbourne

University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers Faculty of Social Sciences 2014 West Papuans open office in Melbourne Camellia B. Webb-Gannon University of Wollongong, [email protected] Ronny Kareni Matt Gale Publication Details Webb-Gannon, C., Kareni, R. & Gale, M. (2014). West Papuans open office in Melbourne. Green Left Weekly, 1015 10. Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] West Papuans open office in Melbourne Abstract How was a government department of the self-declared Federal Republic of West Papua, whose president and prime minister have been imprisoned in West Papua for "treason" since 2011, able to set up office at Melbourne's prime business real estate address? Keywords office, open, west, papuans, melbourne Disciplines Education | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details Webb-Gannon, C., Kareni, R. & Gale, M. (2014). West Papuans open office in Melbourne. Green Left Weekly, 1015 10. This journal article is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/sspapers/4057 | 10 | COMMENT & ANALYSIS JULY 9, 2014 GREENLEFT.ORG.AU Fresh outrage as Tamils sent to Sri Lanka STUART MUNCKTON “THE AUSTRALIAN government has reached a frightening new low as a human rights’ denier and perpetrator,” the Tamil Refugee Council said on July 3. The council was responding to “credible media reports” about immigration minister Scott Morrison’s “abhorrent act of secretly sending back a boatload of Tamil asylum-seekers to the certainty of a Sri Lankan jail and the probability of rape and torture”. On July 5, the council said at least 11 of the asylum seekers reportedly handed over had been tortured by Sri Lanka’s intelligence services before. The July 4 Sydney Morning Herald said Tamil asylum seekers were intercepted by the Australian navy on boats near the Cocos Islands: “For the first time, the Sri Lankan government confirmed that failed asylum seekers would be switched straight onto its navy ships at sea, even as the Australian government dug in on its hardline refusal to provide any information.” The United Nations expressed “profound concern” over the reports. In what the SMH described as “a rare statement”, the UN High Commission for Refugees stressed that “requests for international protection should be considered within the territory of the intercepting state, consistent with fundamental refugee-protection principles”. SMH said: “Fairfax Media can reveal that the number of questions being asked of the Sri Lankans to establish whether they are genuine refugees has Would-be asylum seekers to Australia leave a Sri Lankan naval craft at the Sri Lankan port of Trincomalee on July 31 last year, after their boat was intercepted at sea. been slashed fivefold — from 19 to just four — a move that has drawn heavy fire from international-law experts.” Don Rothwell, a professor of international law at the Australian National University, branded the development “unprecedented”, the article said. Professor Jane McAdam, from the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of NSW, said the move did not comply with international law. The UNHCR insisted asylum seekers should be “properly and individually screened for protection needs ... through a substantive and fair refugee status determination procedure”. Despite the refusal of his government to discuss details of the new boat arrivals, Prime Minister Tony Abbott insisted on July 3: “I would be very happy to give the Australian people an assurance that we are absolutely confident that no harm would come to anyone who has been in our charge”. Abbott described Sri Lanka as “a society at peace”. While Sri Lanka was not “everyone’s idea of the ideal society”, Abbott claimed much progress had been made on human rights. However, the Australian Tamil Congress (ATC) said in a July 2 statement: “Sri Lanka is a dangerous country for asylum seekers to be returned to. “Credible international agencies and eminent persons have documented abduction, arbitrary detention, torture, rape and sexual violence against persons returned to Sri Lanka, who had sought humanitarian protection in other countries. “Earlier this year, the UN Human Rights Council approved an international war crimes inquiry into alleged war crimes committed in Sri Lanka.” ATC executive officer for refugee affairs, Dr Bala Vigneswaran, said: “Nonrefoulement is a key element of refugee law which concerns the protection of refugees from being returned to places where they are fleeing from prosecution, and where their lives and freedoms are threatened. “Returning people seeking humanitarian protection to their native country without providing a genuine opportunity to present their claims and processing such claims is a flagrant violation of the norms of the Refugee Convention and the international law.” Tamil Refugee Council spokesperson Trevor Grant said: “Australia’s moral, ethical and legal compass has been lost at sea.” Grant called Abbott’s claims on the situation in Sri Lanka “a deliberate lie, cynically presented to the Australian public for one reason; to support his indefensible, illegal policy of sending back Tamil asylum-seekers to Sri Lanka.” He said reports asylum seekers “have had their refugee claims assessed in brief teleconference calls on a boat that was involved in sending them back … not only breach Australia’s legal responsibilities under international law but put our nation into the category of gross violators of human rights.” Grant pointed to Abbott’s infamous comments at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo last November about evidence of torture by Sri Lankan authorities. Abbott responded by stating: “Difficult things happen in difficult circumstances.” Grant said: “Now, in the face of damning evidence that Sri Lanka is on a genocidal path against Tamils, Abbott declares the country is at peace simply to support his ‘whatever-it-takes’ intention to stop asylum-seekers from reaching our shores. “Australia’s appalling alignment with the brutal Rajapaksa regime, which includes the supply of boats to stop asylum-seekers from fleeing persecution, is trashing our international reputation. We are now seen as a country not just ignoring massive human rights’ abuses but also as an active, eager facilitator of those abuses.” ■ West Papuans open office in Melbourne CAMELLIA WEBB-GANNON, RONNY KARENI & MATT GALE SUNRAYS PIERCED THE cold rain to make a sudden halo around the Blackbird as it approached the Collins Landing wharf in Melbourne on June 21, docking across from the Republic of West Papua’s new state of the art Department of Foreign Affairs, Immigration and Trade office. People in suits, high heels, dreadlocks and traditional Melanesian headdresses sang, danced and waved West Papua’s outlawed Morning Star flag as they gathered to greet the boat of West Papuan Foreign Affairs staff arriving to formally open their new office. In 2006, following the arrival in Australia of more than 40 West Papuan refugees, an irate Indonesian government pressed Australia to sign the “Lombok Treaty” committing the Australian government to suppress any form of support for Indonesian separatism on Australian territory. So how was a government department of the self-declared Federal Republic of West Papua, whose president and prime minister have been imprisoned in West Papua for “treason” since 2011, able to set up office at Melbourne’s prime business real estate address amid such fanfare? The success of this bold new chapter in West Papua’s independence struggle can only be attributed to the indomitable spirit of resilience shown by West Papua’s diaspora. Yarra City Councilor Amanda Stone, who was tasked with cutting the ribbon at the office opening, recalled welcoming the refugees who had fled persecution in West Papua via canoe during the monsoon season in 2006. Finding their feet rapidly, those same refugees collaborated with Melbourne’s West Papuan community to turn Australia’s historical racism on its head on Monday. In an ironic twist, West Papuan dignitaries chose a boat named the Blackbird in which to arrive at the opening ceremony, conveying the message that while Melanesians may once have been brought as slaves to Australia, a history of discrimination has not defeated them. Uncle Larry Walsh, represent- ing the Kulin nation, who are the legitimate right-holders to the land the office is built upon, welcomed the West Papuan government to Melbourne, shattering any relevance of the realpolitik Lombok Treaty to first nation Pacific politics. Music has held Melbourne’s West Papuan community together, providing its identity, sustaining its culture, and forging the unity within a traumatised group necessary for operating a fledgling government office. WEST PAPUANS ARE ALREADY SOVEREIGN AS A NATION AND HAVE DECLARED INDEPENDENCE AS A STATE. WEST PAPUA CANNOT WAIT INDEFINITELY FOR THE UNITED NATIONS TO RECOGNISE THEIR LEGITIMACY. Singing is a Papuan way of life: West Papuans’ song leads their struggle and their struggle is in their song. Songs in Papuan dialect punctuated the ceremonies of the day, recharging and connecting the West Papuans at the event, while also creating a bridge for non-Papuans to join in the celebrations. Captain Cees Faas, who had served in Biak with the Netherlands Royal Airforce in 1960, danced through the day dressed in full vintage airforce regalia. In the pauses between musical items he reminisced about the injustices inflicted on West Papuans and the helplessness he experienced when the United Nations handed West Papua over to Indonesia with no regard for the Papuans or their Dutch supporters in 1962. Melanesian solidarity at the government level has to date been underwhelming. The Solomon Islands has traditionally been the least vocally supportive of all the Melanesian states of West Papua’s independence struggle. Yet support amongst Solomon Islander civil society for West Papua has burgeoned in the past year with the formation of a Solomon Islands Free West Papua movement. This was carried through at the Melbourne office opening, with Victoria’s Solomon Islands diaspora joining in the festivities to help forge a united Melanesian front against Indonesian repression and Australian suppression. Young West Papuans in Melbourne have reached out to non-Papuan activists building grassroots awareness of their issue in Australia and around the Pacific. The fruit of their initiative is evident in the “West Papua Rent Collective”, an Australian movement of activists pledging money to pay the rent for the office. The Federal Republic of West Papua’s government, declared at the Third Papuan People’s Congress in Jayapura, West Papua, in October 2011, is primarily driven by young West Papuans in Melbourne who liaise internationally on behalf of the government and follow the motto of “learning by doing”. This motto is the strength of the movement: as Foreign Minister Jacob Rumbiak explained in his opening address, West Papuans are already sovereign as a nation and have declared independence as a state. West Papua cannot wait indefinitely for the United Nations to recognise their legitimacy and so have decided to forge ahead regardless, hoping to gain recognition of their selfdeclared status as they govern. ■