November 09, 2015
Maori past seen in West Papua struggle
A Wellington woman want Maori to push for the Government to speak up on the Indonesian colonization of West Papua.
Tere Harrison says the region’s Melanesian population is being brutally suppressed by the Indonesian army as thousands of settlers from Indonesia flood into their lands.
She says New Zealand puts trade with Indonesia ahead of the rights of indigenous people.
"An indigenous people who are overrun by a colonial force, who were removed from their land, who were extinguished in their culture, this is what happened to us and if some had stood up for Maori in the 1800s, maybe we wouldn’t be filling the prisons or dying so early now, so our relationship to West Papua is similar to what we suffered as Maori," Ms Harrison says.
She says a good place to start understanding what is happening in West Papua is to look at films like Run It Straight or The Road Home or websites like Freewestpapua.org.
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