Press Release
August 11, 2020
This week is incredibly important for the people of West Papua’s collective memory. At the end of the week, we will commemorate the 58th anniversary of our country being signed away to Indonesia, and mark a year since the West Papua Uprising, sparked by racist attacks from Indonesian security services. Instead of celebrating Indonesian Independence Day, August 15-17 must be days of mourning and reflection for all West Papuans.
On August 15, 1962, secret negotiations between Indonesia, the Netherlands and the United States governments decided the fate of my people. No West Papuans were consulted, and the referendum promised to us in the 1962 New York Agreement never took place. To us West Papuans, the New York Agreement is an agreement of broken promises.
This is the root cause of our suffering, the root cause of 500,000 of us losing our lives at hand of Indonesia. The entire population of West Papua is united to reject the New York Agreement and Indonesia’s illegal occupation and colonisation of our land.
We will express that rejection by refusing to participate in Indonesia’s Independence Day celebration on August 17. We don’t recognise Indonesian Independence Day in West Papua – our land is not Indonesia, and this is not our independence day. We still await our true independence day when we finally regain our right to freely determine our own political future.
Instead, we will stay at home and mourn the first anniversary of the 2019 West Papua Uprising. On August 17-18 last year, West Papuan students in the city of Surabaya were barricaded in their dorms by Indonesian security forces and nationalist gangs. The students were subjected to brutal racial abuse, called ‘monkeys’ and ‘dogs’ and told to ‘go home to Papua’. In response, the people of West Papua launched their biggest uprising in twenty years. Hundreds of thousands came out to reject racism and discrimination and to demand a referendum on independence.
As we celebrated World Indigenous Day this month, 30-year-old Indigenous West Papuan Sius Ayemi was arrested by Indonesia for leading Indigenous rallies. This is how Indonesia respects World Indigenous Day – by arresting Indigenous people for celebrating own identity and culture. We demand the immediate release of Sius Ayemi.
We are focused on the continued killing we face at the hands of the Indonesian State. In Nduga and elsewhere, Indonesian military build-ups continue. Killings, torture and discrimination is intensifying: just this month, soldiers from a new military base in Tambrauw village beat local villages for no reason other than the colour of their skin. Indonesia is also diverting Covid-19 funds into military operations.
We are focused on rejecting Jakarta’s new attempts to impose ‘Special Autonomy Volume II’ on us. All of West Papuan civil society has rejected Special Autonomy and any attempt to renew it: the churches, political organisations, ordinary people, even the bodies set up by Jakarta under the Special Autonomy provisions – all reject it. We do not want more fake ‘autonomy’ and we will only intensify our struggle for genuine self-determination, achieved through an internationally-supervised referendum on independence.
Benny Wenda
Chairman
ULMWP
