Radical Australia

This week we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the West Papua Office in Docklands - the only office in the world housing members of the West Papuan transitional government. There you will find its Foreign Affairs minister, Jacob Rumbiak, who has been in the struggle for his land's liberation since he was a young boy and who spent 10 years in prison for his threat to colonial Indonesia as an academic. Jacob came to Australia in 1999. There in the office you will also find Louise Byrne: general dogsbody and veteran of the Free West Timor movement. Louise says that one of the biggest advocacy purposes of the office is to encourage Australia to support the United Nations to conduct a fact-finding mission to West Papua. Close to 100 sovereign nations have so far pledged support for this effort. The West Papuan freedom movement claims colonial Indonesia carries out cultural genocide against its people and exploits its rich resources (have you ever heard of Grasberg mine?..). Indonesia claims West Papua to be