fPcN interCultural:

friends of Peoples close to Nature

The Lani Singers interview and music that went out on BBC Radio 3, in September 2008

This is the 54th in a series of monthly reports that focus on developments affecting Papuans This series is produced by the non-profit West Papua Advocacy Team (WPAT) drawing on media accounts, other NGO assessments and analysis and reporting from sources within West Papua. This report is co-published by the East Timor and Indonesian Action Network (ETAN) Back issues are posted online at http://etan.org/issues/wpapua/default.htm Questions regarding this report can be addressed to Edmund McWilliams at edmcw@msn.com.

Summary:
* International Parliamentarian Group (IPWP) Concerned about West Papua Convenes in London
* Peaceful Papuans Beaten, Detained for Welcoming Launch of IPWP; Indonesian Parliamentarians Protest Launch
* Papuan Religious Leaders Call for Dialogue between Papuans and Jakarta over Fraudulent 1969 "Act of Free Choice"
* Greenpeace Calls for Moratorium on Logging in West Papua*
* The Failure of TNI "Reform"
* U.S. Academic Testimony to US Congress Regarding Impact of Freeport Operations on The Papuan People

The Indigenous Portal is an outcome of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS . WSIS was a two-phase series, United Nations (UN) sponsored summit about information and communication. The Geneva Summit in December 2003 laid the foundations with a Declaration of Principles and a plan of action. The Tunis Summit aimed to monitor and evaluate progress on the action plan and devise an agenda that will target goals for achievement by 2015. From these events came the WSIS Declaration and Plan of Action, as well as the Declaration and Plan of Action of the Global Forum of Indigenous Peoples and the Information Society.

The ongoing logging of the state forests in northern Finland for years has reached now the potential to wipe out very soon the Saami reindeer herding economy. The film describes the deforestation in Finland and the extinction of the Saami culture. Interviews with Pekka Aikio, former president of the Saami council and Kalevi Padaar, Saami activist.

This documentary reveals Canada's darkest secret - the deliberate extermination of indigenous (Native American) peoples and the theft of their land under the guise of religion. This never before told history as seen through the eyes of this former minister (Kevin Annett) who blew the whistle on his own church, after he learned of thousands of murders in its Indian Residential Schools

Indonesia's renowned military show again and again how brutally oppressive they are on the small island of Biak, just off the coast of West Papua. In the 1998 Massacre.

ress Release: for immediate release & circulation
INTERNATIONAL PARLIAMENTARIANS FOR WEST PAPUA

At the Houses of Commons, London on 15th October 2008 at 3pm, will be the launch event for a historical international gathering of Parliamentarians, in support of self determination for the native people of West Papua.

Exiled West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda will be joined by Melanesians & Parliamentarians from across the world for the launch of 'International Parliamentarians for West Papua'.

Please assemble in Parliament Square for 2pm.

Two hundred and ninety one Papuan tribal people have died from cholera since April this year in West Papua, Indonesia, according to local church officials, sparking fears of a major epidemic.

In 1961, a global cholera pandemic began in Indonesia. It spread rapidly to other countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and finally, in 1991, to Latin America. There were nearly 400,000 cases and over 4,000 deaths from cholera in the Americas that year.

Indigenist Intelligence Review from Angry Indian.

IIR Editorial Policy:
"We called for the creation of a network of independent media, a network of information.... We need this network not only as a tool for our social movements but for our lives: this is a project of life, humanity -- humanity which has a right to critical and truthful information.."

A month-long blockade of logging roads by indigenous people in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia set to protest illegal logging on their communal lands is about to be broken up by police.

More than 100 indigenous Kenyah people gathered at the blockade site on the upper Moh River on the island of Borneo claim that the blockade is their only way of calling on representatives of the Samling Timber Company and government authorities to have a consultation and meet with them to listen to their problems and demands.