Rize for West Papua

To your:

Parliamentary Representatives Subject: Rise forWest Papua Declaration

Dear ……,

I am writing to you as my M.P. about WEST PAPUA which has been illegally occupied by the Indonesian military since it was handed over, against the will of the indigenous population, by the Netherlands to Indonesia in 1963.

For the past 50 years, successive Indonesian regimes have used extreme violence against the people of West Papua as the only possible way of terrorising them into submitting to rule by Indonesia. Since 1963, an estimated 500,000 West Papuans have died at the hands of the Indonesian occupying forces; countless others have been tortured, raped, intimidated and imprisoned.

The evidence has been indisputable that genocide has been committed against the native peoples of the region, a paper prepared by the Yale Law School for the Indonesian Human Rights Campaign in 2004 stated “[There is]in the available evidence a strong indication that the Indonesian government has committed genocide against the West Papuans”. A further study carried out by the University of Sydney claims that the continuation of current practices in West Papua “may pose serious threats to the survival of the indigenous people of the Indonesian province of Papua.”

In 2008, Juan Mendez, the UN special advisor on the prevention on genocide and special rapporteur on torture, wrote to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, expressing his “deep and growing concern regarding rising reports of human rights violations in West Papua”, and classified “West Papua as being among those countries whose populations were 'at risk of extinction’ ”.

The Indonesian occupation was justified under the ironically named “Act of Free Choice”, in which the Indonesian military hand-picked 1,026 Papuan elders to ‘represent’ the then population of 800,000. They forced them at gun point to vote for Indonesia. If this had been a legitimate referendum, allowing a ‘one person-one vote’, as required under international law, West Papuans would have voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence.

In a landmark breakthrough, after over 30 years of silence on the matter, the UK Government formally admitted in 2004 that in the 1969 ‘Act of Free Choice’, “1,000 handpicked representatives … were largely coerced into declaring for inclusion in Indonesia”.

The West Papuans to this day are calling for SELF DETERMINATION where a new vote is held, which meets recognised international standards, in the form of a new UN-monitored independence referendum.

As my M.P., I am calling on you to acknowledge the West Papuans by signing the Rize for West Papua declaration that is available at the following web link http://www.epsrenditions.com/petitionpetition-become-an-ambassador-for-peace.

I look forward to receiving your reply and/or meeting with you to discuss the matter further.

Yours sincerely,

[Your Name] [Your Contact Details]

v