From infoPAPUA.org
Fransz Yoku “Don’t sell our People to the enemy for just a plate of rice today!
By Freee West Papua Campaign
Feb 27, 2008, 03:01
FREE WEST PAPUA CAMPAIGN
www.freewestpapua.org
P.O. Box 656, Oxford, OX3 3AP England, U.K. Tel: +44(0)7766 875009
office@freewestpapua.org
====================================================
15th March 2007 page 1 of 5
PRESS RELEASE
An urgent message from LONDON to all Melanesians!from West Papuan independence
leader BENNY WENDA
in response to the article in The Nation, PNG, 12th March 2007
“West Papuans urged to rebuild homeland”.
“Don’t sell our People to the enemy
for just a plate of rice today!
NO, we must be thinking about
tomorrow & FREEDOM!”
The Nation, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
Monday March 12th 2007
West Papuans urged to rebuild homeland
By HARLYNE JOKU
WEST Papuans living in Papua New Guinea and abroad for the past 40 years can now return to rebuild their homeland, Logohu award winner and PNG journalist Franz-Albert Joku said in Port Moresby at the weekend.
1.How can West Papuans return to rebuild our homeland when Indonesia is still destroying our homeland, killing, torturing, raping and intimidating our People, polluting our environment, damaging our way of live, damaging our identity, damaging our culture, damaging our customs and damaging our homeland itself? Yes, we Papuans want to rebuild our homeland and of course we know we are able to rebuild our homeland but we cannot do it until our People and our Land are FREE!
Mr Joku appealed to the West Papuans fighting for independence in the bush and in the mountains to reach a compromise and work together under the new special autonomy process. Mr Joku was speaking at a West Papuan community gathering at the Erima Parish, Gordon, last Saturday. He had just returned last week to Port Moresby after negotiating with Indonesia's Jakarta and Papua province government officials on the special autonomy and how West Papuans in PNG and abroad could participate.
2. We West Papuans in the jungles, in the towns, in the villages and overseas are not in a struggle for Autonomy, development, infrastructure or for billions of Rupias.
The West Papuan People fighting for more than four decades and sacrificing hundreds of thousands of their lives are fighting for their country, their identity, and their fundamental rights.
He said under the special autonomy, West Papuans would be have 85% freedom to empower themselves on their own land. He said now, a positive pace had been set and the special autonomy process passed by the Indonesian government in October 2001 was beginning to work.
3. We Papuans know that life under Special Autonomy is not safer or better than before Autonomy. In fact, Special Autonomy has brought great disaster to our People. Why? Because, from 2001 until today, under Special Autonomy, thousand of Papuans are being killed, tortured, intimidated and forced to flee into hiding in the jungles of Puncak Jaya or across the border into Papua New Guinea.
Indonesia is using money from the Special Autonomy fund to pay the Indonesian military to kill us. Under Special Autonomy there is no guarantee for the Papuans to live freely in our own homeland. With so much intimidation and killing, how can we Papuans return safely to our homeland?
Under Special Autonomy Law, Indonesia is even trying to wipe our homeland, West Papua, off the map! Jakarta knows we Papuans are stronger as one People, so they have tried to split one Papuan brother from another brother by dividing us into three provinces. But Indonesia will never win. We Papuans know who we are. It doesn’t matter what Indonesia puts on a map. We are West Papuans! “One People, One Soul!”
Leaders were being elected in a democratic process, he
said. Mr Joku said the PNG Government supported the new autonomy process and officials would be liaising with the Indonesian government and the Papua province government to register West Papuans who fled Indonesia in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s who agree to return home.
4. All the Papuans who are now are in exile overseas or refugees in PNG will indeed return to our homeland, but only when the time comes for our dreams to become reality. The returning exiles will be a symbol that the time for a Free West Papua has arrived!
The “leaders” who are elected under Special Autonomy are not part of a democratic process. This is simply money politics. The elections are just meaningless formalities because they take place under a frame work set up by the Indonesian government and overseen by the Indonesian military. Do you think there can be any surprises under this system? No, the people who become so-called “leaders” are chosen and paid for by Indonesia. They are simply the long hand of the Indonesian government and military, of that I have no doubt.
All those Papuans who have become “leaders” under Special Autonomy don’t have any real power. They are just puppets of Jakarta. But because they are Papuan, even though they are working for the Indonesian government, the Indonesians don’t trust them with real power. I am not angry with these Papuans. I’m just very sorry for them.
Indonesia knows that if they ever gave us Papuans real power and real democracy we will straight away vote for full independence. That’s why Indonesia just puts puppet Papuans in their colonial government in West Papua.
What does it mean that the Papua New Guinea government supports Special Autonomy? Frans Albert Joku and his friends in the Indonesia military are asking the PNG government to support Indonesia killing the West Papuan people and using the Special Autonomy fund to do it. So that means he is asking PNG indirectly or directly to support the GENOCIDE OF THE MELANESIAN RACE in WEST PAPUA.
He said although their (West Papuan) fathers had demanded political independence, the Indonesian government had given special autonomy. He appealed to educated West Papuans not be spectators of the autonomy process but make it work, adding there was freedom of speech, movement and elections. "Not like before when people were ruled under the barrel of a gun.
5. In West Papua today under Special Autonomy, the West Papuans are becoming a minority in our own Land, because of killing, starvation and intimidation.
In West Papua there is no freedom of assembly, no freedom of speech, no freedom to hold political opinions, no freedom to form Papuan political parties. If you speak out against Indonesian military terror or in favour of independence, you can expect 20 to 30 years in prison.
The Indonesian occupiers have never treated us Papuans as human beings. Indonesian racism thinks of us as animals. Mr
Joku is wrong. Indonesia is still ruling us “under the barrel of a gun”!
If all goes as expected under special autonomy, between seven and nine years time, Tanah Papua will be more advanced in development than PNG," he said. The meeting was a first of a series of meetings in Port Moresby for the West Papuan community to discuss the special autonomy process. The next meeting is set for next month.
6. My deep worry is that in 10-30 years time, we West Papuan Melanesian race will be facing EXTINCTION in own homeland. The Indonesian military is now everywhere in West Papua. The military is searching for and killing Papuans even in the most remote highland, jungle or swamp areas
My fear is that we West Papuans will be wiped under Special Autonomy! Please know that NOW, at this very time, the Indonesian military is systematically killing Papuans, village by village; by poisoning, by strangling, by shooting, by beating, by kicking, by stabbing, in the towns, in the villages, in the jungles, in the highlands, by the coast, in the jails, in hospitals, in churches and in their own homes. There are lots of methods and lots of places where Indonesians are killing Papuans.
And do any of the perpetrators of all this violence against Papuans ever face trial and punishment in the Indonesian courts? NO! All over West Papua, there are Indonesian murderers walking free, whilst Papuan victims suffer in prison. And these killers are called “heroes” by Indonesia! Does Mr Joku really believe there is justice for Papuans under Special Autonomy?
How can we West Papuans ever trust the Indonesian government? The root problem is still there today: Indonesia doesn’t care about the West Papuan people. Indonesia only cares about our natural resources.
I, Benny Wenda, as a West Papuan independence leader & Chair of the Koteka Tribal Assembly am urging you, Frans Albert Joku, not to sell my People like slaves into the hands of the Indonesian military.
Their lives are very important to me and to all Papuans, more important than the money you got from the Indonesia military to deliver this message from Jakarta to our People in PNG. That money is red with West Papuan blood!
I am telling you, Mr Joku, that we West Papuans will stay in the jungles, in the refugee camps and in exile overseas, working day and night for our People, until we return to our homeland on West Papua’s Day of Liberation from Indonesian colonial rule!
God Bless Papua New Guinea!
God Bless West Papua!
God Bless Melanesia!
ENDS
Editors’ note: West Papua, just 150 miles north of Australia, is the western half of the island of New Guinea and borders the independent state of Papua New Guinea. Following the 1962 Indonesian invasion, Indonesia staged a sham “referendum” (the 1969 “Act of Free Choice”) in which a mere 1,026 Papuans, out of a then population of 800,000, were forced at gun-point to vote 100% in favour of annexation by Indonesia.
Benny Wenda is available for interview on +44(0)7766 875009
The FREE WEST PAPUA CAMPAIGN is a UK based group working alongside Benny Wenda for West Papuan independence from Indonesia.
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