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NZ ministers asked to meet with visiting West Papuan journalist
Pacific Media Centre - July 29, 2014
Victor Mambor, 39, editor of the Jayapura-based newspaper and website Tabloid Jubi, and chairperson of West Papua's Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) is in New Zealand this week and visited the Pacific Media Centre yesterday. He will also address a seminar on "West Papua: The Pacific's secret shame" in Auckland at the weekend.
West Papua Action Auckland spokesperson Maire Leadbeater said: "New Zealand has for years provided military training to Indonesian officers and recently ran police training, as a pilot programme, in the territory. In 2011 an officer from the notorious Kopassus special forces attended a military training course here, despite the sad record of Kopassus murdering Papuan independence leaders."
Mambor told independent journalist Paul Bensemann earlier this year that New Zealand's police training of Indonesians was nothing more than "aid that kills". The programme is currently on hold.
Mambor has campaigned internationally for greater press freedom in West Papua, including early this year at the European Parliament. He has written about police raids on local media offices, "fake journalists" who work for the police and military, and the disappearances and deaths of Papuan activists.
His organisation AJI documented 20 threats or attacks against journalists in 2013.
The Australian West Papuan Association said today that the 45th Pacific Islands Forum meeting this week in the Republic of Palau must discuss the human rights situation in West Papua and make a public statement of concern regarding the human rights situation in the territory in its official communique as did the Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders did in their official communique in Noumea in 2013.
The PIF must also urge the new Indonesian President to release all West Papuan political prisoners unconditionally as a sign of good faith to the West Papuan people.
Meanwhile, American CBS TV reports that a group of surfers who set out to film West Papuan's undiscovered surf spots have instead made a documentary that sheds light on genocide and an unethical mining corporation. The surfers were appalled by the human rights atrocities they encountered in West Papua and made the film Isolated.
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