West Papua a regional issue - Octo Mote

Transcript

As the region's leaders gather this week in Papua New Guinea for the Pacific Island Forum leaders meeting West Papuan Leader and freedom campaigner, Octo Mote, says the support for West Papua has never been stronger.

This is despite his being thrown out of the Pacific Island Development Forum in Fiji just last week.

Mr Mote says thanks to social media, West Papua's cry for freedom is now being heard across the region and Pacific leaders are finding it harder and harder to ignore the growing support for West Papua, from their own citizens.

He says this is what he told the Fijian Foreign Minister, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, when he asked Octo Mote to leave the Pacific Island  Development Forum in Suva.

OCTO MOTE: By not allowing me to be here is chasing my nation out of this area. And I said to him that, that nation that you try to block me is the nation that is about to die. And this colonial Indonesia already killed 500 thousand people and we know for sure in only five years from now we will be only 25 percent. So I said, honorable with respect I will leave from here but I would like to inform you two things. One is that, that nation that your government try to stop us will be free. Secondly no nation or no leader can stop us fighting for our freedom.

KOROI HAWKINS: Now you are heading to Papua New Guinea what is the agenda for the Forum?

OM: In the agenda, we under the leadership of Prime Minister Sogavare, who already appointed a special envoy on West Papua, honorable Matthew Wale, we will push three main agenda. One is our membership at the PIF. Secondly we will calling the forum leaders, we are asking forum leaders to call on UN Secretary General to appoint UN special envoy and conduct a human rights assessment, besides the human rights assessment by the forum leaders themselves. And then the third agenda we will push in the table, is re-listing West Papua back to the decolonisation committee.

KH: For 53 years as you say, this has been a struggle and up against the might of Indonesia and the economic bargaining power that it has. It seems almost at every turn there is something trying to weigh you down, a stumbling block placed in your way. What keeps you going, what is the drive and what is the end game?

OM: You know that, we will never, you will never ever allow any colonial countries to come to your village and slaughter you and take everything. This is the human beings nature to resist and we will fight until all of us are killed in our land. And so I am pretty sure that it is, it is our responsibility together, to protect our identity. Identities not only Melanesian, Polynesian, Micronesian but our identity as Christians. I think that that is why we are confident that we, our people, all islands will be behind us.