West Papua Film Evening Raises Funds and Awareness
Thousands more are detained in a region where raising a flag of independence – The Morning Star - can earn a 15-year prison sentence.
Brian Turner, coordinator of West Papua Action Canterbury, worked in PNG when refugees from West Papua were coming over the border into PNG in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He is strongly committed to their struggle and recently arranged a film evening at Aldersgate Centre, Christchurch to draw attention to the ongoing struggle and to raise funds for the Papuan Medical Association, an organisation that provides free medical services throughout West Papua.
The event attracted 40 people keen to learn more about the oppressive situation in West Papua following six decades of Indonesian rule and raised over $700.
West Papua occupies the western half of the island of New Guinea; independent Papua New Guinea (PNG) the eastern half.
At the fundraising event on 12 July, two films depicted the struggle for women to survive in Indonesia occupied West Papua and the country’s struggle to retain control of land and resources in the face of Indonesian approved multinational exploitation.
West Papua has been occupied by Indonesia for over 60 years after the United Nations - pressured by the USA - granted Indonesia a temporay trusteeship of West Papua pending a shonky Indonesian controlled referendum in 1969. Prior to this agreement, the Netherlands was preparing West Papua for independence.
Since the the early 1960s over 100,000 West Papuans have died in the struggle for self-determination and independence from Indonesia. Cantabrian pilot Phillip Mehrtens is presently being held hostage by the main liberation movement in West Papua.
West Papua Action Canterbury is part of a national West Papua Action Aotearoa movement of which ex-MP Catherine Delahunty is the national spokesperson.
Donations to support the free services of the Papuan Medical Association can be made to the ‘West Papua Action Canterbury’ account 38-9016-0314953-01. Please record your name and a reference to the Papua Medical Association.