<p>Summary:<br /> WPAT's annual "John Rumbiak Human Rights Defender's Award for 2009 has been awarded to the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) and its National Coordinator John M. Miller. Despite the remoteness of the area and Indonesian restrictions on access, reports are emerging of a new "sweep" operation in Puncak Jaya which has already led to mass civilian displacement and some civilian deaths. U.S. Representative Eni Faleomavaega has at the last minute pulled language from a key House of Representatives Bill. The language would have required State Department reporting to Congress about West Papua. Human Rights Watch in June issued two compelling reports: one on continued human rights violations in West Papua by Indonesia's "Special Forces' (KOPASSUS) and one on prisoner abuse in West Papua.Freeport shareholders fail in a vote to get an Environmentalist on the Freeport board but collect a significant percentage of shareholder votes. A new report implicates President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and U.S. officials in a miscarriage of justice concerning the 2002 murder and wounding of U.S. and Indonesian citizens at Timika in West Papua. An academic reviews the historic-diplomatic connection between West Papua and Africa. Indonesian academics have echoed calls by Papuans for several years for a Jakarta-Papuan dialogue.</p>

In 1993, I and four others travelled clandestinely across East Timor to gather evidence of the genocide committed by the Indonesian dictatorship. Such was the depth of silence about this tiny country that the only map I could find before I set out was one with blank spaces stamped "Relief Data Incomplete." Yet few places had been as defiled and abused by murderous forces. Not even Pol Pot had succeeded in dispatching, proportionally, as many people as the Indonesian tyrant Suharto had done in collusion with the "international community."