ICJ Australia held a forum on West Papua in Sydney on Thursday 1 June 2006 (details below).

Mr John Dowd AO QC, President of ICJ Australia, today said:  “The recent acceptance by Australia that 43 refugees from West Papua have a well-founded fear of persecution has placed the plight of West Papuans under Indonesian rule well and truly back into the public eye. The situation has languished in obscurity for too long.”

ICJ Australia has been monitoring the flight of West Papuan refugees for over 20 years.  ICJ Australia has visited the neglected refugee camps across the border in Papua New Guinea .  In recent years, ICJ Australia was denied access to West Papua to monitor the humanitarian crisis there.

Mr Dowd said: “The Australian government’s recent promise to Indonesia to block West Papuan refugees from securing protection in  Australia illustrates the recent surge in attention to this long-festering humanitarian crisis on our doorstep. Australia's gun boats are now patrolling our northern waters, to turn back refugees.  It's an outrage. It is as egregious a violation of international law as it would have been for West Germany to post snipers on the Berlin Wall.”

The eminent legal and academic speakers at ICJ’s forum placed the current crisis into its proper historical context, examining Indonesia ’s acquisition of West Papua in the 1960s, the UN’s sorry role in that process, broken promises on autonomy and self-determination, and the persecution West Papuan civilians face every day.  The forum examined the Australian government’s recent policy announcements regarding asylum seekers designed to placate Indonesia following recent Australian findings about persecution in the province.

The forum also heard moving speeches from two of the 43 West Papuan refugees recently recognised as such by the Australian government.  One of those speakers was Herman Wainggai, an independence activist who has been imprisoned twice for his political activities.  The conditions of oppression and human rights abuses described, at the hands of Indonesian security forces and militias under their control, were harrowing. 

Forum Details:

SPEAKERS:

• The Act of Free Choice and its legacy
  Justice Elizabeth Evatt AC, ICJ Commissioner
•  
• The Special Autonomy Law
  Dr G Peter King, Convener West Papua Project,
  Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and Research
  Associate Discipline of Government and International
  Relations University of Sydney
•  
• West Papuan asylum seekers & Australian refugee law
  Dr Mary Crock, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law
  University of Sydney
•  
• Human rights abuses in West Papua
  Two of the 43 refugees recently recognised from
  West Papua

CHAIR:              The Hon John Dowd AO QC, 
                           President, ICJ Australia

VENUE:             Theatrette, New South Wales Parliament,
                           Macquarie St, Sydney

DATE & TIME:   Thursday 1 June 2006 at 5.15 pm