The International League of Peoples Struggles Commission on Indigenous Peoples, National Minorities, and Oppressed Nations and Nationalities (ILPS Commission 10) joins the peoples of Palestine and West Papua on this significant day of July 1, 2020.
On this day in 1971, the Free Papua Movement proclaimed the independent Republic of West Papua two years following the notorious referendum inaccurately called the “Act of Free Choice”. This UN-supervised referendum sold off West Papua and its rich resources to Indonesia right after a short-lived independence from the Netherlands.
This year, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network declared the 1st of July as a day of rage to reject Israel’s first de jure annexation in Palestine since 1967. Now, Israel is moving to annex large portions of the West Bank leaving only to Palestinians portions already covered by Jewish-only roads, checkpoints, and border walls. For more than 70 years, the ongoing Zionist occupation and the denial of the Palestinian’s right of return continues.
Imperialist powers, led by the United States, have collaborated in the violent occupation of West Papua and Palestine. On one hand, US collusion with the Indonesian state had put in the hands of American mining giant Freeport the world’s largest gold and copper mine in West Papua. On the other hand, the US has found an ally in Israel in its aggression against oil-rich nations in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region.
Both Indonesia and Israel receive official military support from imperialist powers such as the US, UK, and Australia in the form of joint exercises, training, and even supplying the ammunition used in the massacres of Indigenous communities, including women and children, who were already marginalized in their own land. These deadly occupations which have resulted to the genocide of the peoples of West Papua and Palestine have taken on “legal” forms through policies that justify the displacement of Papuans/Palestinians, their criminalization, the killings of those tagged as insurgents or separatists, and so on.
Yet these decades-long occupied nations remain resolved in fighting for their homeland. The cry for self-determination is growing louder than ever. The ILPS Commission 10 stands with West Papuans and Palestinians around the world in their struggle for genuine liberation and self-determination.
Free Palestine! Free West Papua!
No to Annexation! Papua Merdeka!
Down with imperialism!
Long live the struggle for self-determination of all occupied and oppressed nations!
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