Topic: Dead Birds: Never race - The Failure of the Melanesian Region to address the West Papuan Tragedy. Ewa Tasiu! exclaimed the once feared mountain tribe deep in the hinterlands of the cascading Owen Stanley Ranges leisurely sloping lazily towards Alotau..the old magician Kulinito says something to one piece of log lying idly and it begins to burn by itself. A flicker of fire in the darkness emerges and dances rythmically to the sound of the Dim-dims foot-steps approaching...oblivious all these, the magician Kulinito begins to tell his story: ...there was once an ancient fable told by our ancestors and now I am telling you also that you may know and be protector of it all or so it may seem....the fable was about a race between a snake and a bird. It tells of a contest which decided whether men will be like birds and die, or be like snakes which shed their skins and have eternal life. The bird won, and from that time, all men like birds, must die. The death of those birds echos still - today in West Papua and the reasons for these are complex both from a variaty of angles - be it political, diplomatic, historical, racial, migration and cultural. Did all our failures contribute to those deaths? Papua New Guineas foreign policy approach to the West Papuan Issue has largely being advanced through the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). However, even the MSG has largely been a symbol of a region all too often engaged in Democracy Persistence or was I being unduly cynical? Foreign Policy is a notoriously elusive concept. A number of factors combine to blur the distinction between foreign and domestic policies. Among the factors of particular contemporary relevance, both in the present and generally, are: the domestic requirements and effects of globalization; the growing spread and depth of international cooperation and the increasing domestic acceptance and application of International law, which together affects almost all areas of public policy in Papua New Guinea, and which imposes tight limits on the internal direction and activities of government across more and more; aid dependency, the more so when general so when general budgetary support in the 2015 Development Budget gives way to programs and projects requiring joint approval between donor and recipient, and the conditions attached to loans from Monetary Fund (IMF), the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Specifically in Papua New Guinea since the late 1980s, they include the Bougainville Crisis and the peace process, especially as those that have required the work or involvement of the United Nations Human Rights Commission during the 1990s; the negiotation and management of relations with the South Pacific Peace Keeping Force (SPRPKF) in 1994, and the neutral regional Truce and Peace Monitoring Groups (TMG and PMG), the Bougainville Transition Team, and the United Nations Observer Mission Bougainville. Perhaps, a sharpening here might do the trick - Is Papua New Guineas Policy Failures towards the West Papuan tragedy meant we are more - idealist than Realist? How should the West Papuan Tragedy be resolved? Papua New Guinea is unusual and naturally its foreign policy stance towards West Papua reflects that unusualness. Papua New Guinea foreign policy approach to Indonesia has largely rested on the need to deal with its largest neighbour within a national-security framework than a political-human rights one..and this should raise alarm because its largely based on fear. Do we need fresh thinking on foreign policy in relation to Indonesia and the especially the West Papuan tragedy? The is obviously yes but nurturing and cultivating the next generation of Foreign Service Officers to one day address those answers is our best chance to address the possible implications of dealing with a very sensitive matter between our two countries within the contect of our diplomatic relations we have between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. importantly, is Papua New Guineas foreign policy failures contributing to the death of our fellow Melanesians in West Papua by not lobbying or pressuring Jakarta hard enough to stop persecuitng West Papuans in West Papua? What do you think? (Coughed) Kulinito, the feared magician of Suau Island in the Milne Bay Province, delicately re-traced his steps as bid us good bye!
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 18:28:00 +0000
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