Thanks from West Papua!
We just received a belated thank you from the Free West Papua Campaign for our coverage of The Pacific Youth Festival in Tahiti last year, so thought we’d pass it on!
Dear brothers and sisters in the Pacific!
Warm greetings from West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda and all of us here in the Free West Papua Campaign, Oxford, UK!
Sorry we’re over a year late (!), but we just found your report about the Pacific Youth Festival in Tahiti (2006). We really want to thank you from our hearts for the strong expressions of support which came from the Festival for the cause of West Papuan Freedom. Benny Wenda and all of us here in the UK would be really grateful if there’s some way you can pass on our sincere thanks to all our Pacific brothers and sisters in your group.
Below is an extract from the report on your website which we have just distributed amongst international Free West Papua activists. It’s especially shocking for us to see that delegates from Papua New Guinea were expressly told by their government not to mention West Papua.
Please keep up your support for Free West Papua. Tragically, the situation now is if anything worse than a year ago, with increased levels of violence and terror against West Papuans from the Indonesian military, police and militias… and under heavy Australian pressure, the recent Pacific Islands Forum communique almost completely silent about West Papua.
(But as US campaigning journalist Amy Goodman says “Go to where the SILENCE is… and say something!”)
And please pass on our web address www.freewestpapua.org and my email address samoxen@dsl.pipex.com for anyone who’d like to get in touch with us… and join the West Papuan independence movement!
Solidarity!
Richard Samuelson
Free West Papua Campaign, Oxford, UK
www.freewestpapua.org
To see the Just Focus article they posted out to their networks, click here.
