PNG Supporting West Papua's Indepencence
Melanesian support for a free West Papua has always been high. Travel throughout Papua New Guinea and you will often hear people say that West Papua and Papua New Guinea is ‘wanpela graun’ – one land – and that West Papuans on the other side of the border are family and kin. In the Solomon Islands, Kanaky, Fiji and especially Vanuatu, people will tell you that “Melanesia is not free until West Papua is free”. This was the promise that the late Father Walter Lini, Vanuatu’s first prime minister made. Ordinary people in this part of the Pacific are painfully aware that the West Papuan people continue to live under the gun. It is the politicians in Melanesia who have been slow to take up the cause. But that may be changing. Earlier this month, Powes Parkop, Governor of the Papua New Guinea’s National Capital District, nailed his colours firmly to the mast. In front of a crowd of 3000 people, Governor Parkop insisted that “there is no historical, legal, religious, or moral justification fo