Treaty a real Downer for West Papua

Fishnet-stocking wearing Adelaide private schoolboy and Australian League of Rights alumnus turned Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has taken the courageous step of securing Australia’s territorial integrity by signing a treaty with the Indonesian Government.

So much for the People’s Republic of Brunswick.

*sigh*

But wait, there’s more!

According to Mark Forbes (‘Security pact to aid Indons with nuclear power’, The Age, November 8, 2006):

AUSTRALIA will help Indonesia to develop a nuclear program, conduct joint border-protection patrols, expand military and intelligence ties and agree to suppress Papuan independence supporters under a historic security treaty to be signed on Monday [November 13].

The Australian Government’s gross hypocrisy in signing “The Indonesia and Australia Framework for Security Cooperation” is perhaps rivalled only by the notorious act of bastardry committed by former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans (“Professor Genocide”) in signing a treaty in 1989, dividing up the spoils of East Timor‘s oil reserves with the then Indonesian Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas. In 2004, reflecting on the making of his documentary film Death Of A Nation (1994), John Pilger commented that:

For me, the most telling and shocking sequence in Death of a Nation had been filmed five years earlier on board an Australian air force plane. A party was in progress; champagne corks popped and there was much false laughter as two fawning men in suits toasted each other. One was Gareth Evans, then Australia’s foreign minister. The other was Ali Alatas, his Indonesian equivalent and Suharto’s mouthpiece. “This is an historically unique moment,” waffled Evans, “that is truly, uniquely historical.” Flying over the Timor Sea, they had just signed the Timor Gap Treaty, which allowed Australian and other foreign companies to exploit the seabed belonging to the land of black crosses and to their victims. The ultimate prize, as Evans put it, could be “zillions” of dollars.

In a denial that’s as good as an admission, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has stated (The Age, November 12, 2006) that the treaty will not result in the Australian Government being in any way, shape or form complicit in the routine acts of political repression that take place within Indonesia’s claimed boundaries. Sources close to the Tory Party, however, suggest that even teenaged neo-conservatives are sceptical, but remain rock-solid in their support for their political master’s latest attempts to reassure Indonesian elites that 43 is simply 43 too many, and that the people of West Papua can go fuck themselves.

    New Internationalist (April, 2002) provides some background information on the struggle for West Papuan autonomy here; FREE WEST PAPUA provides ongoing accounts; the Australian section of The International Commission of Jurists are Not Happy, John!; while The Age (October 26, 2006) carries a report on the fate of those who disobey HoWARd and question his Divine Right to determine who comes to this country, and the manner in which they are subsequently tortured.

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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