From the Free West Papua mailing list, via Heathlander:

The 20th century conquest and colonisation of West Papua by the Indonesians has been bloody, and long underreported.  From the word go, British, Dutch and American interests were far too interested in Indonesia and Papua’s vast glittering resources to kick up a fuss over the eradication of a handful of savages, and it was these eager-to-please colonial powers that helped subdue West Papua.

While movie stars are lined up to weep on John Bolton’s shoulder over the politically-convenient bloodshed in Darfur, the West has always been silent on Papua’s genocide.  The Cold War saw a U.S.A. so paranoid about Indonesia siding with the Communist Bloc that it did better than turn a blind eye, and as the predatory mining corporations moved in appeasing Indonesia became an integral part of Britain’s economic strategy.  In 1997, as Robin Cook inaugured New Labour’s new “ethical foreign policy”, we were selling arms to the fascist security forces of Indonesia, and we still do.  We’re all too willing to fight for human rights to save the Empire from collapsing, but we’ll pay good money to see them violated elsewhere

Meanwhile, the companies that fund (and lobby our government to further fund) the genocide, do so for access to West Papua’s oilfields, gasfields, and metal deposits.  East Papua (that is, Papua New Guinea) has similar riches, and in the past companies have brutalised a lot of people to get their wicked way with the land.  In the end, though, the New Guinea Papuans have asserted their rights and, eager both to avoid a public relations disaster and to preempt new environmental laws, the corporations cleaned up their act.  Chevron get up to some nasty stuff, but Jared Diamond describes their Kutubu oil field [which he inspected four times as consultant for the WWF] as effectively ”by far the largest and rigourously controlled national park in Papua New Guinea.”

It would obviously be naive to think of one amoral oil company as good and another as bad.  Rather, we must recognise that while killing Papuans and despoiling their home (with government support) has become unprofitable in independent Papua New Guinea, it remains pretty profitable under Indonesian-controlled West Papua.  As long as people don’t know what’s going on, it’s likely to stay that way.  We need to wake up to what BP is doing – and to let them know that we’re waking up.

BP isn’t alone, incidentally, in screwing West Papua over.  For example, the above flyer mentions Rio Tinto’s appalling gold and copper mines which do, if anything, even more damage, and without the help of the pseudodemocratic British government neither would be as dangerous as they are.  But the oil companies are the weakest link in the rapacious chain.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Rio Tinto (at least, not as a consumer), or of any gold or copper company for that matter, because most of the metals you consume are in wiring, computers, cars and jewellry.  Next time you get a plumber in, it hardly seems worth asking him about the conditions of the mine from which the copper that makes the replacement pipe came from – somewhere among the plumbers, the suppliers, the pipemakers, the metals exchange, someone might have cared, but there’s no way you can really apply any pressure.  Oil is different.  From the West Papuan seabed to a Woking petrol station, it’s branded BP.

We can and we must give them a hard time for supporting the genocide.  Protest, boycott, piss all over their marketing strategy, until they have little choice but to at least try and play nice – because unlike (say) Rio Tinto, BP bring their bloodshed all the way to their consumer with their logo on it.  Once this vulnerable giant starts to fall, it will change everything; once BP starts having to look friendly with the Papuans, the government may hesitate about selling so much arms.  More importantly, once BP has to play fair, it won’t be happy letting its competitors continue with their profitable rapacity, and may even lobby the government to change its policy and make them all play fair.

Having said that, I can’t make the protest on Tuesday.  But there’s nothing to stop me putting this flyer up at my local BP station.  Or from lobbying my MP.