December 1st will mark the 63rd anniversary of West Papuan Independence Day and the inaugural raising of our national flag, the Morning Star. On behalf of the ULMWP and the West Papuan people, I call on our supporters everywhere to show your support for our struggle by raising the Morning Star. Whether in your house, your workplace, the beach, the mountains or anywhere else, please raise our flag and and send a picture to [email protected]. By doing so, you give West Papuans strength and courage and show us we are not alone.
The situation in occupied West Papua is on a knife edge. Indonesia’s new President, the war criminal Prabowo Subianto, has announced the return of the genocidal transmigration settlement policy. From the 1970s, transmigration brought hundreds of thousands of Javanese settlers into West Papua, ultimately making the Indigenous people a minority in our own land. At the same time, Prabowo sends thousands of soldiers to Merauke to safeguard the destruction of our ancestral forest for a set of gigantic ecocidal developments. Five million hectares of Papuan forest are set to be ripped down for sugarcane and rice plantations.
West Papuans are resisting Prabowo’s plan to wipe us out, but we need all our supporters to stand beside us as we battle this terrifying new threat.
The Morning Star is illegal in West Papua. If we raise it, paint it on our faces, draw it on a banner, or even wear its colours on a bracelet, we can face up to fifteen or twenty years in prison. This is why we need people to fly the flag for us. As ever, we will be proudly flying the Morning Star above Oxford Town Hall. But we want to see our supporters hold flag raisings everywhere, on every continent. Whenever you raise the flag, you are inhabiting the spirit of our struggle.
To everyone in West Papua, whether you are in the cities, the villages, or living as a refugee or fighter in the bush, it is important to take December 1st as a day of prayer and reflection on our struggle. We remember our ancestors and those who have been killed by the Indonesian coloniser, and strengthen our resolve to carry on fighting for Merdeka.
Our peaceful struggle is making great strides forward. We now have a constitution, a cabinet operating on the ground, and a provisional government with a people’s mandate. We know that one day soon the Morning Star will fly freely in our West Papuan homeland.
But for now, West Papuans risk arrest and imprisonment if we wave our national flag. We need our supporters around the world to fly it for us, as we look forward to a Free West Papua.
Benny Wenda
Interim President
ULMWP Provisional Government
