Transcript
MAIRE LEADBETTER: So this petition doesn't ask for the moon. It asks the New Zealand government to take note of the severe and serious abuses of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly in West Papua, and to take a strong stand on that. And we've suggested specific things, like calling for the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression to go to West Papua, and we've suggested that they take this up at the Pacific Islands Forum, and get them to support this, and also at the United Nations. We obviously put this petition forward in the context of serious concerns about grave and ongoing rights abuses. But we have to go step by step. An important first step would be to make it possible for there to be much freer access to West Papua, and for the Indonesians to have to take note of the fact that the rest of the world won't accept that they just go on arresting people who do nothing more than peacefully protest.
JOHNNY BLADES: But are things moving in the right direction from this Indonesian government? They've open it up a little bit...
ML: Unfortunately not. I'd like to think that that was the case, but I can't be at all confident about that. Just in the last few days, there's been two French journalists who were deported, I believe, and as far as I can see they weren't even on any sort of political mission. They went there with the sponsorship of Indonesia's main airline. So why were they turned back? I find that very troubling indeed.
JB: From New Zealand's point of view, what do you say to Jakarta who it considers a friend, when Jakarta says this (Papua) is our sovereign territory, don't interfere, what do you say?
ML: I'm going to borrow Jim Elmslie's words, because I think they;re really great. he's an Australian scholar who has looked into the marginalisation of the West Papuan people, and also looked into the question of genocide. And he and his colleague have come to the conclusion that the situation in West Papua is so serious that it meets the very stringent conditions of the genocide convention. That's a strong thing to say but his academic research backs that up carefully.So he says this is genocide, and as far as he is concerned nothing trumps genocide, not even territorial integrity. And I think we have to make that loud and clear. It's all very well saying sovereignty and territorial integrity, but not in the face of genocide - that's absurd.
