December 1 is West Papuan Independence Day.
Around Australia people raised the Morningstar flag to mark the day in 1961 when the tiny new nation was given independence by its former colonial ruler, the Netherlands.
Indonesia invaded almost immediately and has colonised West Papua ever since, in a violent and intolerant occupation. The flag is banned in Indonesia.
In Sydney, West Papua supporter Anthony Craig, 61, of Lithgow, organised permission for flag raising outside the Indonesian consulate with NSW Police from 10am to 1pm.
But when he got there with his Morningstar, about 10 Indonesians rushed out of the consulate with an amplifier and blasted out the Indonesian anthem at high volume.
They had come in a taxi, and were treated to pizza and coffee.
Anthony stood alone in the hot sun for two hours surrounded by hostile Indonesians until more West Papuan supporters came to help him at noon, eventually outnumbering the Indonesians.
“I have to admit if the AFP hadn’t been there I would have been concerned,” Anthony said.
“I reckon they would have tried something.”
The Indonesians remained there the entire time, holding up their national flags of ‘red and white iron”, dancing around and goading the protesters with taunts: “How much did they pay you? Only $100 to protest today”.
The Indonesians themselves were taxied in and treated to pizza, the Papuan protesters said.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge’s chief of staff Kym Chapple kindly came to the Indonesian consulate to support the West Papuans as they waved their flags.
The Papuans tried to play Papuan music, and give a speech with a loudhailer, but every time they tried, they were drowned out by the aggressive Indonesians who cranked up their boombox, ignoring Federal Police requests to turn it down.
The Indonesians didn’t have a permit to protest on the public street, which is a NSW requirement, they just did whatever they wanted and ignored the police.
Communist Party of Australia protesters then turned up at 1pm with their flag and were asked by Letters From Australia to put it away since it’s a West Papuan flag raising, not a communist party flag raising.
Morningstars were raised all around Australia to support the West Papuans.
NSW: the Australia West Papua Association raised the Morningstar at 9.30am at Leichhardt Town Hall, Sydney, thanks to the Inner West Council.
They then went to Prime Minister Anthony Albenese’s office in Marrickville and tried to raise the issue.
South Australia: Adelaide, the Morningstar was scheduled to fly at MJ McInerney Reserve, Sackville St, West Croydon from 12 to 3pm. Event page on Facebook here.
Victoria: Federation Square, main square, 4pm to 6.45pm
Queensland: Brisbane, 5.30pm in front of Brisbane sign, Stanley St, South Bank.
Northern Territory: Darwin Workers’ Club
The one place it won’t be raised (at least without great risk) is in West Papua.
That’s because Indonesia invaded West Papua in 1962 and brutally suppresses anyone campaigning for independence.
Jakarta has colonised West Papua with a million migrants, mostly Javanese Muslims, outnumbering the native melanesians, who were Christians and animists.
Indonesia locks up those who raise the Morningstar in West Papua with long prison sentences.
Benny Wenda, the exiled President of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), was himself jailed.
Wenda, known as the Nelson Mandela of the Pacific, was arrested in 2002 for allegedly inciting an attack on a police station. He faced 25 years in jail, but says his only crime was raising the banned Morningstar.
Australian human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson, famous for defending Julian Assange, was in West Papua as a young graduate volunteering for an NGO at the time, and worked on Wenda’s trial.
“I found it so compelling because it was so unbelievably unjust,” she told Letters From Australia in 2013.
Robinson said the charges were politically motivated and Wenda was accused of a crime he didn’t commit.
Letters From Australia spoke to Benny Wenda in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 2013, and heard how he had to crawl through prison ventilation to run for his life before making it to safety in Britain where he was accepted as a refugee.
As a West Papuan independence leader, Benny Wenda had a short life expectancy in his homeland. His name was circulated on a police list just before the assassination of another leader, Theys Eluay.
In jail during his court battle, Wenda was watching inmates play football when a large man with a huge bush knife jumped him, intending to hack him to death.
Wenda has a slight frame and looks like a mild-mannered maths teacher. He had no chance to defend himself.
Luckily, another prisoner came to his rescue - and was badly cut.
“They tried to kill me three times,” Wenda said.
“I think: if I stay I will be killed like a pig.”
One night he managed to break the ventilation in his cell to escape, jumping down a large wall, injuring himself then managing to make it through miles of bush to safety.
He couldn’t come to Australia - Australia bows to Indonesia. He had to obtain asylum in the UK.
Indonesia pursued him even there. In 2011 Jakarta put a red notice on Wenda, seeking his arrest and extradition, flagging him as a terrorist.
Interpol investigated and found the allegations were a politically motivated abuse of the system and took the red notice off.
Wenda’s wife Maria said Indonesian agents then pursued them all the way to their new home in Oxford, UK.
An Indonesian accosted her in the street and asked if she knew Benny Wenda. She was terrified.
“No, I’ve never met him,” she said.
“He said: ‘I’ve been watching you over two months’. He was a scary man.”
That’s the reality of the violent, brutal Indonesian colonisation.
This year, West Papua was sadly once again rejected for membership to the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), which represents the aspirations of Melanesians in the Pacific region to decolonise.
Unfortunately Indonesia pushed its way into associate status at the MSG in 2015, as The Diplomat reports.
Jakarta claimed that Indonesia, a country of 274 million people, more than 146 million of which are Javanese Muslims, is a Melanesian state because it rules roughly 11 million Melanesians in colonised lands, and therefore had a right to be in the MSG.
Since then, West Papua has had no real chance at full membership with the brotherhood of support from their Melanesian brothers and sisters in the Pacific that this would provide.
Most people in Australia have never heard of West Papua, or of its determined struggle to throw off a violent and bloody Indonesian colonisation.
That’s because in 2006, Australia signed the Lombok Treaty guaranteeing Australia would not allow anyone to encourage Papuan “separatism”.
In 2018, instead of scrapping it, Australia reaffirmed it in the Joint Declaration on a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Australia and the Republic of Indonesia, which states:
“We shall not in any manner support or participate in activities by any person or entity which constitutes a threat to the stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of the other”.
West Papuan refugees fleeing Indonesia to Australia get deported and dumped in Port Moresby, PNG, instead of having their claims assessed.
For a comprehensive summary of the magic and richness of West Papua, and its terrible history, see the story linked below.
Morning Star rises in the Amazon of the Pacific as West Papuans mark Independence Day
Decent Indonesians have no idea what their government is doing in West Papua New Trans-Papua highway exposes rainforest to logging, mining, plantations Indonesia, global corporations, stole a mountain of gold, destroying wilderness Up to a million migrants made West Papuans a minority in just 60 years
Australia’s two major parties do not send press releases to journalists about West Papua or mention the issue. The Greens as a minor third party at least acknowledge the issue even if they have run after other causes with more gusto recently.
The Greens did at least show up at the Indonesian consulate today.
Despite the injustice and refusal of Australia’s government, there will always be people of good conscience both here and around the world who will stand up for the West Papuans, who won’t forget them.
The West Papuans will always find support and the Morningstar will fly every December 1.
hope you are reporting those Indonesians in Australia with a crime, noise pollution and causing serious racist crime in Australia and they should all be deported back to Jakarta where they come from..
Thanks for writing that and (hopefully) bringing this more people's attention.