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| Jeffrey Bomay (right) at the workshop (Jubi) |
Jayapura, 23/3 (Jubi) – Geneva for Human Rights (GHR) has regularly conducted an expert meeting in each session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in order to promote the adoption of international standards of human rights.
The current theme of the Expert Meeting in 2014 was Indigenous
Peoples: Towards the World Conference. The Expert Meeting was held to
review some actions taken by the United Nations on the Indigenous People
issue and the preparation of the World Conference on Indigenous
Peoples, while its special goal was to alert some members of the UN
Human Rights Council about the mechanism and standards of the
international rights on indigenous peoples.
It is also aimed to share the expertise and experiences of the latest trends
on the protection of indigenous peoples and to warn the participants
about the main challenge in the preparation process of the word
conference.
In the meeting, the Papuan indigenous people
became a topic. A Papuan representative at the Expert Meeting held on
19 March 2014, Jeffrey Bomay, told Jubi many parties have supported the
meeting including the UN Human Rights Council, the World Council of Churches
(WCC) as well as representatives from Switzerland, Norway and Mexico.
Among those participating in the meeting were Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit, SG
(WCC), Amb. Luis Alfonso de Alba (Mexico), John Henriksen (Norway),
Penny Parker (Advocates for Human Rights), the representatives of UN
Human Rights Council, David Matthey-Doret (DOCIP), Suhas Chakma, ACHR
(India) dan Ngawang Drakmargyapon (UNPO).
Bomay said he got 18 questions related to the Papuan indigenous
people. The representative of Norway asked about the history of West
Papua, in particular about the Referendum of 1969 (Pepera). “I said
Pepera should be examined by the international law
because at that time Papua has been occupied by Indonesia. Pepera was
held in 1969 while the mining contract with PT Freeport has been done
since 1967, two years before it was conducted.
The Referendum has turned to be the root of the problem among Papuans
who until today are rejecting its result because it wasn’t executed by
the international procedure of ‘one person, one vote’, instead Indonesia
conducted military repression over the Papuan people so the number of
voters was only 1025,” said Bomay on Saturday.
He said Sri Lanka and
Norway asked questions about the Special Autonomy in Papua, especially
the Papuan people’s struggle to end discrimination. “I gave them a
description that the Special Autonomy has produced 60 regencies in Papua
and if approved by the National parliament the number will increase by
12. It does not make sense for Papua since its population is only 3.6 million compared with 1.2 million of Papuan indigenous people,” Bomay said.
He further said it has provided the opportunity to the population of
Indonesia to come to Papua due to the region extension will require a
lot of human resources while the Papuan indigenous people have not yet
ready for it.
About the Expert Meeting, Geneva for Human Right said in an email to
Jubi that the process of consultation with NGOs and Human Rights
defenders who work under difficult conditions. They highlighted a
priority towards the humanitarian law, macro-economic issues, and the
fight against impunity to the protection of Human Rights defenders.
“Even it raises a new concern in the collaboration with the GHR
partners: the indigenous people rights and the violence against women.
Those are priority specific issues in every GHR program,” GHR said. (Jubi/Victor Mambor)