petition – Papua Merdeka News

A petition with the signatures of 1.8 million West Papuans in Indonesia has been presented to the United Nations in New York demanding an internationally supervised vote on independence.

The exiled West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda presented the document to the C24, the special committee on decolonisation on Tuesday.

Dr Jason MacLeod from the University of Sydney is a West Papua expert who has just returned from the Indonesian territory to verify the petition.

He said it was fair and accurate representation of the West Papuan people’s will and the UN needed to pay due attention.

“They’ve got two choices before them. They can either re-list West Papua on the UN Committee for Decolonisation or they can put pressure on the Indonesian government to hold a referendum. One of those two things really need to happen.”

The Free West Papua movement said the 1.8 million people who signed the petition account for more than 70 percent of the region’s population.

Ballot box in a Vanuatu election. — Calls persist to revisit the 1969 vote which passed the former Dutch colony into Indonesian possession Photo: RNZ / Johnny Blades

Source: http://www.radionz.co.nz/

Siteri Sauvakacolo, Fiji Times Online, Saturday, March 14, 2015

SUPPORT for the indigenous people of West Papua continues to gather momentum.

On Thursday, about 50 Methodist Church heads of divisions signed the solidarity movement for West Papua petition forms at Suva’s Centenary Church in support of the call for the freedom of the natives of West Papua.

This petition drive headed by the Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education and Advocacy would be handed to Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama at the end of April.

“There is a united umbrella body now, the Fiji’s Solidarity Movement for West Papua, and the church does not enter into anything lightly. We have been moving to this for a number of years now, this was back in 2013 when our relationship with West Papua started,”

church secretary for communications Reverend James Bhagwan said.

“It is not just lip service we are doing. We are committed to the West Papua issue and we kindly requested our church leaders to show their support to the issue.

“We took them through a presentation before they signed the petitions. We will hope to send it out to the divisions if possible and in issues like this, we make sure the church moves together and we do everything together.”