Peta Papua

FWPC : ACTION! ACTION! ACTION!: E-mail/write to UK Government NOW about 1969 Act of NO Choice

FWPC : ACTION! ACTION! ACTION!: E-mail/write to UK Government NOW about 1969 Act of NO Choice

FREE WEST PAPUA CAMPAIGN (UK)

www.freewestpapua.org

Oxford, England, Tuesday 5 February 2008

Dear friends of West Papua,

ACTION! ACTION! ACTION!: E-mail/write to UK Government NOW about 1969 Act of NO Choice

During every single year of the 45 years of Indonesia's brutal occupation of West Papua, successive UK Governments from Harold Macmillan to Gordon Brown have supported and conspired with the Indonesian Generals who rule from Jakarta ...from Sukarno, via Suharto to Yudhoyono.

We all know the reasons behind this .... and they don't have much to do with either human rights or the rule of international law. (BP, Rio Tinto, BAE Systems etc spring to mind.)

The latest incarnation of Britain's collusion with the Indonesian Government has appeared in the form of a letter about the 1969 "Act of Free Choice" (known by Papuans as the Act of NO Choice) from the current UK Foreign Office Minister with responsibility for the UK's relations with Indonesia, Meg Munn MP. It's copied below and I must warn you that it's not pleasant reading.

If you would like to read what actually happened in West Papua in 1968/69, please see the article "The UN & the Act of Free Choice" by British historian, Dr John Saltford at: http://www.angelfire.com/journal/issues/saltford.html

We now need you to play your part in letting the British Government know that ordinary people in the UK and around the World have simply had enough of the outrage which is Britain's continuing apology and support for the 1969 Act of NO Choice.

Below is a letter to the UK Minister, Meg Munn MP. Wherever you are in the World, please read it carefully and if you agree, SEND IT BY E-MAIL &/OR POST to these addresses: (However strongly you feel, please do not include any personal abuse)

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E-MAIL Meg Munn MP NOW on msu.publicin@fco.gov.uk

copied to me at samoxen@dsl.pipex.com

WRITE TO MEG MUNN MP NOW at:

MEG MUNN MP,

PO BOX 4333,
SHEFFIELD, S8 2EY

&/or

MEG MUNN MP,

2nd Floor, Barkers Pool House,

Burgess Street,

SHEFFIELD, S1 2HF

&/or

MEG MUNN MP,

House of Commons,

LONDON SW1A 0AA

Another World is possible! A World in which people and the truth are both respected.

Papua Merdeka!

Free West Papua!

Richard

Richard Samuelson

Free West Papua Campaign, Oxford, UK.

www.freewestpapua.org

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To MEGG MUNN MP,

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office

& Member of Parliament (Labour & Co-operative Party) for Sheffield Heeley since June 2001

February 2008

Dear Ms Munn,

On 14 January 2008 you put your name & reputation to a letter about the illegal Indonesian annexation of WEST PAPUA (copied below).

INDONESIA’S BIG WEST PAPUA LIE is that in 1969 the West Papuans ‘freely chose to become part of Indonesia’ in a ‘democratic vote’ cruelly called the “Act of Free Choice”.

In August 1969, Brigadier-General Ali Murtopo, special envoy of the Indonesian dictator Suharto, speaking to West Papuans selected to take part in the “Act of Free Choice”, made this brutal threat:

“This is what will happen to anyone who votes against Indonesia. Their accursed tongues will be torn out. Their full mouths will be wrenched open. Upon them will fall the vengeance of the Indonesian people. I will myself shoot them on the spot.”

And at the same time, Suharto sent this clear order to his military forces in West Papua:

"See that the [act] on West Irian's [Papua’s] future status will yield a clear pronouncement in favour of Indonesia."

Your letter seeks to support INDONESIA’S BIG WEST PAPUA LIE even though your Foreign Office advisers know full well that it is a blatant, bare-faced lie. Their predecessors knew it was a lie in 1969 (just look through the British telegrams from that time sent from your Embassy in Jakarta) and they know it is a lie now. Two of your Government colleagues have already admitted as much:

“[In the Act of Free Choice a] 1,000 handpicked representatives … were largely coerced into declaring for inclusion in Indonesia”. (Foreign Office Minister Baroness Symons, House of Lords, 13 December 2004.)

“We recognise that it [the Act of Free Choice] was extremely flawed”. (UK Government spokesperson, Baroness Royall, House of Lords, 8 January 2007

Are you aware that had either of these two statements been made by a West Papuan man or woman rather than by British Government Ministers, he or she would now be serving a 10 or 15 year sentence in some God-forsaken Indonesian prison … or worse. Daring to disagree with the Soviet-style “official version of history” in Indonesian-occupied West Papua is to put your – and most likely also your family’s- life in danger. You are now officially a “separatist”, and in the blindness of Indonesian nationalism, torturing and preferably killing “separatists” is every good Indonesian’s patriotic duty.

During the past 39 years, thousands of West Papuans who bravely stood up for the truth of how they know their country has been stolen from them by Indonesia in the “Act of Free Choice” have had their teeth kicked out, their hair and penises burnt, their breasts hacked off, their vaginas slit, their babies ripped from their wombs and their still breathing bodies tossed like rubbish into mass graves.

I wonder if you knew all this when you put your name & reputation to that letter on 14 January? One thing I can say for sure is that your Foreign Office advisers do. Look into this now. I urge you to find out for yourself. And when you have, I call on you to say what you honestly believe to be true about the “Act of Free Choice” face to face to Benny Wenda, leader of the West Papuan independence movement in the UK, whose own father, Kulog Wenda, was one of the Papuans forced, compelled, coerced to vote for Indonesia in 1969 - with an Indonesian gun to his head.

This is not a matter of mere historical or academic interest. The truth about the “Act of Free Choice” is paramount to whether a new nation – West Papua – can be born out of the blood of 45 years of Indonesian occupation & oppression. Once you’ve found out the facts for yourself, you will then have a free choice: to continue supporting INDONESIA’S BIG WEST PAPUA LIE or to give to an entire people the CHANCE to CHOOSE FREEDOM?

Yours sincerely,

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14^th January 2008

Our reference: 53976

Foreign & Commonwealth Office

London SW1A 2AH

From the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State

Robert Wilson Esq. MP

House of Commons

London SW1A 0AA

Dear Robert,

Thank you for your letter of 12 December on behalf of your constituent … about Papua.

The Act of Free Choice took place in Papua in 1969. A group of 1,000 Papuan representatives, who were given the responsibility to make the choice on behalf of the Papuan people, voted to remain part of Indonesia.

The British Government of the day supported the Act of Free Choice, as did the United Nations and almost all members of the international community.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative at the time reported that “in accordance with Indonesian practice” the population had “expressed their wish to remain with Indonesia”.

Thus Papua became an integral part of the territory of Indonesia.

We do not support a re-visitation of the 1969 Act of Free Choice.

As I have set out in my previous replies to your letters on behalf of Dr O’Leary, and as stated in Parliament most recently by Lord Malloch-Brown on 13 November[2007], the UK respects the territorial integrity of Indonesia and does not support independence for Papua.

We believe that full implementation of existing Special Autonomy legislation is the best way to proceed towards a sustainable resolution to the internal differences and the long-term stability of Papua.

Yours sincerely,