An international campaign for a United Nations review of Indonesia's 39-year occupation of West Papua will be launched tomorrow in Dublin and in New York.
The campaign, calling on the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, "to act on the suffering of the West Papuan people", will be launched at the Mansion House. In New York, a Papuan delegation will present a submission to the UN Secretariat.
A veteran Papuan leader from the mineral-rich eldorado, Mr Fred Korwa, will call for a rethink of the UN's 1969 "Act of Free Choice" by 1,022 elders, which was taken as validating Indonesian rule after the Netherlands ceded control in 1963.
The elders "were hand-picked and forced to declare their loyalty to Indonesia under the brutal dictator Suharto", according to the West Papua Action solidarity group.
The group's launch is to be attended by the former minister for foreign affairs, Mr David Andrews; Senator David Norris; Mr Desmond O'Malley, chairman of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Lord Mayor, Mr Michael Mulcahy.
West Papua Action is calling on the Government to "work actively" in pressing Mr Annan to review the UN's role in 1969.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, has told the Dáil of his concern "about reports that the rights and freedoms of the West Papuan people were restricted" in 1969 and at reports of ongoing human rights abuses.
West Papua Action's co-ordinator, Mr Mark Doris, said 100,000 people or 10 per cent of the population had been killed since 1963.