More聽than 500 people were arrested in West Papua on December 18 during self-determination protests that were demanding the 聽聽be granted full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group.
Indonesia
Three Australian unionists, visiting Indonesia as part of a delegation to a South-East Asian asbestos conference, had their passports seized and were deported from Indonesia after visiting a picket line organised by transport workers in Jakarta.
The unionists, including Jackie Kriz, a member of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and President of Geelong Trades and Labour Council, have been barred from re-entering Indonesia for six months. They were told by the Indonesian department of immigration they could apply to have the ban lifted after that time.
There is a very sinister, hellish thing behind the tepid concern that rears its head when a country like Haiti suffers a tragedy.
As 800 people died and 90% of parts of southern Haiti were destroyed by Hurricane Matthew earlier this month, leaving whole towns flattened, and people homeless and without basic infrastructure, the trending hashtag was #PrayForFlorida.
Papua New Guinea marked its independence from Australia 鈥 achieved in 1975 鈥 on September 16. But West Papua, a province on the same island, continues its struggle for self-determination in one of the world鈥檚 least publicised and longest-running independence struggles.
West Papuans won their independence from Dutch colonialism in 1963, but the country was invaded by Indonesia and officially annexed in 1969 after a controversial referendum in which just over 1000 people voted.
Suspected leftists held by the military during the mass killings that followed the Western-backed 1965 Indonesian military coup.
East Timor鈥檚 decision to take Australia to the Hague over Australia鈥檚 refusal to obey international law 鈥 and grant East Timor its legitimate share of oil and gas resources 鈥 comes just weeks after a tribunal at the Hague found Australia was complicit in the murders in Indonesia in 1965.
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn publicly criticised human rights abuses in Indonesian-occupied West Papua and backed Papuan demands for self-determination, in a May 3 meeting at Britain鈥檚 House of Commons.
The meeting was a 鈥渉istoric step on the road to freedom for West Papua鈥, International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) said. At the meeting, a new declaration was signed calling for an internationally supervised vote on the independence of West Papua.
The first time I visited my family in Indonesia, I was 13 and I was told by an uncle that my skin was considered 鈥渢raditional鈥. This was meant as an insult. In my family's house, whitening products sat tellingly on nearly every surface and I struggled to find products that did not contain chemical-filled, carcinogenic bleach.
Secret documents found in the Australian National Archives provide a glimpse of how one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century was executed and covered up. They also help us understand how and for whom the world is run.
The documents refer to East Timor, now known as Timor-Leste, and were written by diplomats in the Australian embassy in Jakarta. The date was November 1976, less than a year after the Indonesian dictator General Suharto seized the then-Portuguese colony on the island of Timor.
October marked 50 years since the start of the campaign of mass killing of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members and sympathisers in Indonesia. It is estimated as many as 1 million people were killed or jailed during 1965-1966, carried out as part of Suharto's Western-backed military coup.
The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated in 2011 that carbon dioxide emissions had to be limited to 1000 gigatons to have a two-thirds chance of keeping global warming below 2掳C.
By mid-October, there were more than 100,000 fires raging in the Indonesian provinces of Sumatra and Kalimantan that had released an estimated 995 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past four months. This is just short of 1 gigaton.
The following statement was issued in Jakarta, Indonesia, on October 24, 2015):
Indonesia's freedom of expression and critical thinking are under attack. Series of repressive and violent acts by the authorities against attempts to critically revisit and review the 1965 communist purge for the betterment of the nation and its people are a strong proof that the totalitarian legacy from the New Order Regime is still alive and kicking.
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