Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (Senator Coonan) to a question without notice asked by Senator Nettle today relating to asylum seekers from West Papua.

It was a question about a genocide that is occurring in our backyard. The recent arrival of 43 West Papuan asylum seekers in Queensland should be a wake-up call for Australians and the government about what is happening in the land of our nearest neighbour.

West Papua is at a crisis point. Two recent reports, one by the University of Sydney Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies entitled Genocide in West Papua? and another by Yale University Law School, document the systemic destruction of the West Papuan people and their society. The report by the Yale University Law School says that since the so-called Act of Free Choice:

... the West Papuan people have suffered persistent and horrible abuses at the hands of the government. The Indonesian military and security forces have engaged in widespread violence and extrajudicial killings in West Papua. They have subjected Papuan men and women to acts of torture, disappearance, rape, and sexual violence, thus causing serious bodily and mental harm. Systematic resource exploitation, the destruction of Papuan resources and crops, compulsory (and often uncompensated) labor, transmigration schemes, and forced relocation have caused pervasive environmental harm to the region, undermined traditional subsistence practices, and led to widespread disease, malnutrition, and death among West Papuans. Such acts, taken as a whole, appear to constitute the imposition of conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the West Papuans.

The paper concludes:

The historical and contemporary evidence set out above strongly suggests that the Indonesian government has committed proscribed acts with the intent to destroy the West Papuans as such, in violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

In the last fortnight, the special adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, Juan Mendez, commented that the indigenous people of West Papua were at risk of extinction.

Forty-three West Papuans bravely came to Australia on a traditional boat just over two weeks ago, and I flew to Christmas Island last week to meet with them. They are an incredibly generous, beautiful and healthy group of people, many of whom have come across the seas with their children. They are activists and students from the independence movement in West Papua, and they have come to Australia to seek protection. They told me about the way in which they are targets of the Indonesian military and about how every time they organise a peaceful protest they are up against the might of the Indonesian military—the tanks, the helicopters and the aeroplanes that they say are designed to make West Papuans afraid.

Herman Wainggai, who is a spokesperson for the West Papuan asylum seekers, has twice been imprisoned by the Indonesian military for being involved in peaceful protest. He has two beautiful young girls—his twins, who are just three years old—who were born whilst he was imprisoned for the second time by the Indonesian military for being involved in peaceful protest. Herman told me about the gradual genocide that is taking place in his country. He said:

If the international community is slow in giving support, then, every day, every week, someone else will be shot ... and that is genocide, gradual genocide.

He introduced me to the asylum seekers. He introduced me to a young man whose father had been imprisoned for 20 years for raising the West Papuan flag and then poisoned whilst in prison. He introduced me to a young man whose family member had been shot just two weeks ago—a 14-year-old boy walking through a marketplace in the northern highlands of West Papua—by the Indonesian military, who admitted firing on unarmed civilians. Herman told me:

If the issue of West Papua is not resolved, human rights violations will continue to occur.

These people are fearful of the Indonesian military, and rightly so. They have first-hand experience of having been repressed by the Indonesian military. They have been imprisoned. Their family members and relatives have been shot, beaten, killed and jailed by the Indonesian military for being involved in the independence movement.

When I showed Herman a copy of the newspaper articles with the comments by the spokesperson for the President of Indonesia that they would be safe if they returned home, he laughed. He said they had heard this many times before. When the comments continued to be made, he got angry and called the Indonesian government a lying government and a devil government. He talked about militia groups and jihadists operating in West Papua. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.