“They will not stop until our ancestral lands are one infertile wasteland" - Indigenous leader calls for communities to abandon "corrupt" UN
“G20 conquerors never put down their swords”
An indigenous leader has called for indigenous people around the world to abandon the United Nations and create the United Indigenous Nations.
Jeffrey Bomanak, leader of the Free Papua Movement, slammed the UN as “beholden to the G20’s vested interests” and urged indigenous populations to create their own international democratic forum in response.
Bomanak referenced West Papua’s treatment within the UN over the past six decades, condemning the intergovernmental organisation as supporting Western interests to control resources and money around the globe.
As International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples came and went with no resolution to the conflict in West Papua, TPNPB (West Papua National Liberation Army) militant Jeffrey Bomanak called upon all indigenous peoples around the world to abandon the United Nations and create their own international organisation. In his press release, Bomanak tore apart the UN for its corruption and crimes against humanity, and proposed a new forum that would unite all indigenous people.
“G20 conquerors and colonizers have never put down their swords and guns. They have never stopped conquering and colonizing, either by military invasion or economic imperialism.”
The press release came after no recognition from the UN of the violence in West Papua at the hands of the Indonesian government. This little-known conflict has been branded a “genocide” of the Papuan people, but receives no international attention from governments or organisations alike. Bomanak claims the G20 manipulated the “illegal annexation of West Papua” in 1963 to gain access to the nations’ rich resources.
“The hundreds of thousands of indigenous victims, and the living who are dispossessed and impoverished, are collateral damage to the vested interests of the G20 and the unapologetic national interests of USA, Australia, Chain, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, et al.”
Bomanak claims that the UN is unable to address the climate crisis and “global melting” due to the conflict of interest between desired economic growth of G20 countries and the exploitation said growth is built upon.
“They will not stop until all our ancestral lands are one infertile wasteland.”
Stressing that indigenous people have faced centuries of marginalisation which ensure they still do not have access to “basic things” such as education, health or digital communications, Bomanak proposes a new forum for indigenous peoples to take sovereignty over their future. The United Indigenous Nations would become a world-first international institution that would “favour a guardianship of creation and not the predatory destruction of the world caused by the economic multinational imperialists and their unsustainable greed”. The proposed manifesto includes:
The United Indigenous Nations (UIN) will be international relations with indigenous governance for indigenous people.
Integrity will be at the heart of the union and cannot be a “commodity bought and sold for geopolitical and economic plunder”.
The UIN will have a “Charter of Human Rights and Accountability that cannot be only for some and not for all”.
The UIN will not have “self-entitled elitist Security Council of dysfunctional permanent members operating on self-interest”.
The UIN will “never operate with conspiracy and complicity in aiding and abetting crimes against humanity”.
Bomanak has said the UIN will be built in West Papua once the nation wins its independence from Indonesia: “The United Indigenous Nations will lead international governance as an international forum representing, for the first time, the principled values and ideals of indigenous and First Nation peoples who are the true guardians of our ancestral motherlands and the only custodians of this earth who favour a guardianship of creation and not the predatory destruction of the world caused by the economic multinational imperialists and their unsustainable greed.”
The call comes six months after after the TPNPB OPM took New Zealand pilot Phillip Mark Mehrtens hostage. The TPNPB have said they will release him once Indonesia agrees to negotiate the new terms of West Papua’s independence. Bomanak insists the TPNPB is not a terrorist or criminal organisation, but the “last defence of West Papua”.
 | A guest post by
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I support the UIN vision in principle having followed the Silence, Complicity and direct Collaboration of the Investor Nations in the rape and plunder of West Papua since 1971. In 1971 I worked as a junior geologist for P.T.Kennecott Indonesia based at Kobakma airstrip in the high country of West Papua. My impression in 1971 was of many new shiny white U.N. Toyota on the road around the capital alongside other new settlers mainly Javanese military or administrative people from the Suharto dictatorship. The U.N. has been fatally flawed in practice around its purpose of disarmament and human rights. West Papua indigenous people has indeed suffered extremely since their then-US dominated, U.N.-sanctioned, incorporation into the Suharto dictatorship. The dynamics of the "resource curse" give West Papua much in common with Tibet. Reference: The Political Ecology of Resource Appropriation and Landscape Consumotion , 2007 PhD thesis by Daniel Franks (Australia). This paper is a meta-study of the resource curse literature, a thesis on the consequent "detachment" of government from the native peoples, with two case studies: West Papua and Chile.
It is a paradox that the Indonesian settler state has forged an indigenous nation by giving both a common language (Bahasa Indonesia) and the common experience of "kinetic" state terrorism response to West Papuan nationalists.
There is already a "charter of human rights and accountability", the Earth Charter. This "soft law" needs you be the Charter for the reform of the U.N. championed by Helen Clarke, former New Zealand head of state and contender for the role of U.N. Secretary General.
Meanwhile, more strength to the UIN movement in which West Papua is center, not the invisible periphery.