Oxford, UK – The international campaign calling on Kofi Annan to set up an official United Nations review of the UN's conduct in the 1969 Act of "Free" Choice received a huge boost today when a recent UK Government Minister pledged his support to the campaign.
The Rt Hon. Michael Meacher MP, who was Secretary of State for the Environment in Prime Minister Tony Blair's Cabinet from May 1997 to June 2003, wrote to Richard Samuelson of the Oxford Papuan Rights Campaign: "I commend your campaign ... and I share your concerns which I have taken up with the Foreign Office".
A growing list of UK Parliamentarians has already given their support to the campaign, including Lord Avebury, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Mark Oaten MP, Robert Walter MP, Julie Morgan MP and Anne Clywd MP. Just last week, three more MP's joined the campiagn: Lynne Jones MP and Roger Berry MP of the governing Labour Party and Mike Hancock MP of the opposition Liberal Democrats.
West Papuans (together with the Government of Vanuatu) are seeking international support for their call for the establishment of a Special Commission of Enquiry to review the UN's conduct in relation to the now discredited Act of "Free" Choice under which the former Dutch colony was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969.
Under a 1962 Netherlands/Indonesia treaty, the UN was given the role of guarantor of a one person-one vote act of self-determination under which all adult Papuans could decide between joining Indonesia or full independence.
However, in breach of the treaty and of the UN Charter itself, Suahato's Indonesia hand picked a mere 1,025 Papuans out of a then population of 800,000, who were then forced at gun-point to vote 100% for Indonesia.
The UN Secretariat sent only 16 observers (to a territory the size of Poland) to monitor the Act and shamefully recommended that the result be accepted by the UN General Assembly, knowing full well that it had failed to reach the international standards which are obligatory for any act of self-determination under international law.