The Uluru Statement Process

The Referendum Council’s goal was to come up with a solution for Australia to decolonise according to the UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. As part of this, a political solution must be put forward having due regard to the freely expressed will of the peoples concerned. How well does the solution meet this criteria of having due regard?

Let’s look at the process behind the Dialogues. They involved a series of invite-only meetings across Australia. There were roughly 13 regional meetings, each capped at 100 participants. From these meeting attendees, some were then chosen to go to the final convention at Uluru/Yulara. So at most – there were 1300 participants in total who had a say in this process.

If we roughly estimate the total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population – it is about 800,000 people as of 2016. 1300 participants from 800,000 is a very small proportion.

The western Papua “Act of Free Choice”

Now let’s look in comparison at the Act of Free Choice which was a process run in western Papua in 1969. This was a UN supervised decolonial process in which the people of western Papua expressed their will and their right to self-determination. The people of western Papua needed to be treated separately in the process because as a peoples, they are culturally and ethnically distinct from the rest of Indonesia.

In the Act of Free Choice, a “referendum” was held to allow the people of western Papua to express their will. The total population of western Papua was at the time, about 800,000. This makes comparisons with the Uluru Statement process easy – as it is coincidentally about the same as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population in Australia as of 2016.

The Indonesian military hand-picked 1024 Melanesian people from western Papua who voted unanimously on a proposal to join western Papua with Indonesia. This is how western Papua decolonised and became part of Indonesia.

There were widespread allegations of death threats and blackmail associated with the vote. It is also very suspicious that the vote was unanimous. Despite this, the UN and international community seems to support this so-called Act of Free Choice.

Comparison of processes

In western Papua, 1024 hand-picked persons chose the fate for 800,000 colonised peoples of western Papua. The United Nations and the International community stood by this, even though a very small proportion of people actually expressed their will. If this very small vote is accepted – it sets an extremely low bar for any future decolonisation processes in other parts of the world.

This may the low bar that the Referendum Council was intending to meet. A maximum of 1300 out of a population of 800,000 is proportionally very similar.

Why did Australia support East Timor independence, but has not supported western Papua?

Perhaps the reason why Australia has not stepped up against supporting the people of western Papua is because they want to avoid being seen as hypocrites later on. Australia can hardly complain about Indonesia/the UN with their support of the dodgy “Act of Free Choice”, when Australia themselves are planning to stoop just as low in the future.

Australia – while initially late to the party – in the end supported East Timor’s independence. However, East Timor was historically a Portuguese colony, and was separate to the Dutch East Indies which surrounded it. Under the principle of Uti possidetus juris as applied in a decolonial context, East Timor is it’s own, separate case, standing on it’s own. Uti possidetus juris means (very rough oversimplification here – but anyways..) an old colony becomes one, single new independent nation upon decolonising. It was, in some respects, in Australia’s interest to support East Timor – as it helps uphold Uti possidetus juris as a decolonisation principle. Upholding this principle may help Australia to decolonise itself in a unified way – without being split territorially. To be consistent with upholding the Uti possidetus juris principle, Australia should also support Indonesia’s claim over western Papua, as it is part of the Dutch East Indies historically.

Why is western Papua part of Indonesia anyway?

The reason western Papua is seen as part of the Dutch East Indies – ironically may be to do with the actions of Queensland. Going back historically, before Cooks 1770 voyage, at least some parts of western Papua island were on the territorial fringe of the Dutch East Indies due to treaties conducted by the Dutch with the Sultanate of Tidore.

But the big line on the map – the border that divides western Papua/Indonesia from Papua New Guinea at 141 degrees East, was drawn on the map during Queensland’s annexation of Papua in 1883.

The annexation by Queensland was in response to some propaganda, fabricated, fear-fantasy pumped up by Australian newspapers about Germans annexing it if the British did not annex it first. A German geographer named Emil Deckert did a talk in Dresden for the Verein fuer Erdkunde (Geography special-interest club). The talk was about what a good idea it would be for Germany to colonise New Guinea. This was not an official government position – it was a personal opinion, in a special interest club – something which happens every day (Germans are kind of big on “Vereins”, I see posters for them everywhere here, although not so many since COVID). The Sydney Morning Herald translated and published his talk as if it were an official German government position – which led to Queensland pre-emptively annexing half of New Guinea. I can vouch that the translation of the talk itself was accurate, but it was presented out of context. Many decades later on, western Papua was scooped-up by Indonesia from the other side of that 141 degrees east line.

Conclusion

Main point of this post is to show that – as gammon as such a tiny representative sample (less than 1%) the Referendum Council actually asked is – there is already precedent for it to be accepted by the International community, because a gammon process HAS been accepted in the case of western Papua.

The colony has planned this scheme out in a LOT of intricate detail. It wouldn’t surprise be if they were actually using the Act of Free Choice as their “bar” to meet, given how closely the numbers line up. We are talking 1024 delegates for western Papua process vs. an unknown, but maximum of 1300 for the Referendum Council – from similar ballpark number of total population of 800,000. The Referendum Council used funding as an excuse to limit participation and hosting dialogues – yet they had all the money in the world to spend on ‘experts’ and ‘consultants’ at the big end of town, and had enough to fly everyone to Yulara – which is probably not the most economical place if the goal is including as many people as possible for a set amount of $$’s.

But being such a low bar, is not a completely bad thing. Because it means you only need to get 2000-odd Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people together to put together a competing alternative on the table. Note – you can’t just have 2000 of your buddies from your own circle, it needs to be geographically and situationally diverse. By situationally diverse – I mean you would need to include old-skool Traditional Owners, people from Stolen Generations, people from the Missions, etc. The time is golden right now to start thinking about alternatives and putting them out to the people.