The Indonesian Government has developed strategies for avoiding international criticism over its appalling human rights record in West Papua. One strategy is to keep the outside world out and ensure that approved visitors such as journalists and diplomats are carefully guided and get to meet with the ‘right’ people. With variations this technique has served Indonesia well since it took over the territory back in 1963.

However, this strategy is not working out so well just now. It is the digital age and you can’t arrest thousands of people; a record –breaking two thousand in May and over one thousand in June- and hope the word won’t get out. In May the arrested demonstrators were videoed as they were herded into a police compound, stripped to the waist and forced to stay for hours under the burning sun. What was their offence? The peaceful demonstrators were simply carrying placards supporting international initiatives such as the drive to have the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) recognised as a full member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). That would be an important step-up from the current ULMWP status as an MSG observer.

The Solomon Islands envoy in Geneva, Barrett Salato, gave a moving address recently to the United Nations Human Rights Council in which he drew attention to the arrests. He also backed the call (endorsed by the International Parliamentarians for West Papua and others) for an internationally supervised referendum so that the people could choose whether or not they want to stay with Indonesia. The Vanuatu delegate joined Mr Salato in calling for Indonesia to allow both the UN Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and a Pacific Islands Forum fact finding mission to visit.

Indonesia has also perfected a distraction strategy – ‘nothing to see there – look here instead’. The Minister for Political and, Security Affairs, Luhut Pandjaitan, is on this tack. He has appointed a new team to investigate historic human rights abuses. The move is controversial and a number of Church and human rights leaders are opposed to Pandjaitan’s initiative because, as one pointed out, ‘the state can’t judge the state’. Indonesia’s Human Rights Commission (Komnas Ham) has turned down the invitation to take part, saying it prefers to maintain its independence. Undeterred, Minister Pandjaitan took a small group of regional Ambassadors, including the New Zealand Ambassador, Trevor Matheson, on his latest visit to West Papua to promote his plan.

Thus far we don’t know what our Ambassador made it of it all. Luhut Pandjaitan has been careful to emphasise that these Ambassadors were not on a ‘fact-finding mission’, so it is unlikely that the Ambassadors saw any sign of dissent or met any activists.

In the early 1960s the people of West Papua were looking forward to eventual independence and the Dutch colonial administration was working on training administrators and handing over some legislative control. Many hoped for eventual union with the other half of New Guinea Island, today’s Papua New Guinea. New Zealand supported these plans until 1962 when the US brokered an Agreement between the Dutch and Indonesia which handed control of the territory to Indonesia. It was effectively a western-sanctioned land grab and the West Papuans were not consulted. There was a ‘safety valve’ in the form of a so-called Act of Free Choice to be held in 1969.

The 1969 exercise was an absolute shocker and everybody involved, including the tiny UN team present at the time, knew it. There were a series of stage-managed ‘consultative assemblies’ or ‘musjawarah’. Just over a thousand people took part in the final ‘vote’ and they were isolated under armed guard beforehand and threatened with torture and death should they ‘vote’ for any choice other than staying with Indonesia. None did.

The New Zealand Ambassador of the time attended a couple of the assemblies and reported on ‘the questionable morality’ of the whole exercise. New Zealand and other western nations voted at the UN to endorse a process they knew was wrong because they wanted to stay on side with anti-communist Indonesia.

The New Zealand public had to wait for documents to be declassified to know what our Ambassador thought of this exercise. But journalists and editorial writers did not hang back. After the first two assemblies had been held the Melbourne paper The Herald was moved to comment ‘even Hitler was satisfied with less than one hundred per cent in plebiscites.’

It is time that New Zealand recognised the obvious – Indonesia’s repressive rule has not extinguished West Papuan aspirations for freedom. We turned our backs on the people fifty years ago, but we have the chance to do better now. We could start by backing the call for a Pacific fact-finding mission and urging Indonesia to stop arresting peaceful demonstrators.

Maire Leadbeater – West Papua Action Auckland

On the back of the NZ Council of Christian Social Services 22nd Vulnerability Report we, as a country, should be seriously questioning how we have allowed food insecurity to become normalised. So many recent media reports have been focussed on the strain families are facing with the cost of housing, but the flow on effect of this is a detrimental impact on a family’s ability to put food on the table.

On one hand, we have an increasing number of kiwis who have the means to dine in many fabulous restaurants on a regular basis, and on the other, we have so many families wondering how they are going to be able to afford their next meal. It hasn’t escaped me that I fall in to the first category of kiwis. No one wants to deny New Zealanders the privilege of enjoying eating out but the inequality that exists within our country can so easily be seen in just this one measure – food – what we eat, where we eat, how often we eat.

On reflection of my own working class upbringing, even during part of the 90’s when both my parents were out of work, there was never a time where as a child I would be concerned that there wouldn’t be food in the cupboard. How different is it now? The anxiety that these parents must feel not knowing whether what they have will cover every meal, and that same anxiety must surely be felt by their kids. My three year old goes to his ECE centre everyday with his ice cream container lunch box containing fruit, a sandwich and usually raisins, and can spend his day focussed on things that should be important to kids – learning, playing and building relationships. How many kids are distracted from the important things because their primary focus is how hungry they are?
Kids showing up at school without having had breakfast and without lunch in hand isn’t a new phenomenon. We’ve been publically talking about this for a number of years now. How shameful is it that we have a Prime Minister and Government who would rather spend their energy focussed on the judging and shaming the parents, rather than ascertaining and addressing the reasons for the food deficit and just ensuring that OUR children are fed.

On a regular basis I have families coming to my West Auckland office for help – mostly housing and WINZ related. A while back I met a single mother who was so intent on making sure that her daughter had all that she needed – food, school resources, fees for extracurricular activities, that the mother herself had become dangerously thin. She was literally denying herself of food to make sure her daughter had all she needed.

On the 22nd of June 2016, a mother of 6 was interviewed as part of a TV ONE piece on the Vulnerability Report. She clearly stated that she would rather go to her local social service for support than to WINZ where she is made to feel like an outcast. I see it all the time with the constituents that come to me for help – discomfort with having to go to WINZ for help. And of course you’d hate it – you are made to feel like a criminal and judged for having too many children, not having a job, having too much debt, not being able to keep up with rent payments, not being able to afford food for your kids, not being able to afford the car repair payment. And when people are already feeling like absolute crap because they just can’t seem to keep their head above water, WINZ- the frontline for exercising Government policy- put the boot in.

Common sense has to prevail at some point for us as a country. The image I get in my head when I think of the current state of our welfare system is of this: A person is lying on the ground down and out, wounded and needing a hand up. The current government rhetoric dictates that they are kicked while they are down and screamed at to get to their feet. Clearly that approach is not going to work. The Government’s current approach is far more stick than carrot. WINZ has reduced their support in the form of things like food grants but that hasn’t made the problem go away. Instead under resourced NGO’s are forced to pick up the slack and fill the growing gaps that the Government is refusing to acknowledge, let alone do anything about.

Food insecurity, a housing crisis and a welfare system that now has so many gaps in it that it resembles more of a giant hula hoop than a safety net are three of the many gifts that eight years of a National Government have given us. Here’s hoping more New Zealanders will say enough is enough in the lead up to the 2017 election.

Carmel Sepuloni
MP for Kelston | Junior Whip | Labour Spokesperson for Social Development