Music RIZES against tryranny: GET UP, STAND UP IN WEST PAPUA INDONESIA

Posted: Thursday, March 7, 2013 4:10 pm | Updated: 10:23 pm, Thu Mar 7, 2013.

Kāfakafa Tāsoni, Associate Web Editor

Songs of protest have been common throughout human history.  Definitive modern artists have created and performed classic songs that have spanned generations.  Such compositions include the likes of Bob Marley - Get Up, Stand Up; Bob Dylan - Blowin’ In The Wind; Marvin Gaye - What’s Goin’ On; The Beatles -Revolution; and Billie Holiday’s - Strange Fruit, were all composed to act as a form of protest in one form or another.  Natives of West Papua are now added to that historical list with the new compilation album Free West Papua - Rize of the Morning Star Vol. 1.  An official album launch concert has been scheduled in Australia March 16^th but for those not able to attend, the album is available for download on iTunes now.

Rize of the Morning Star is an entity campaigning to educate the global community on the atrocities occurring in West Papua and believes that music, film, social media and the entertainment industry in general, plays a key role in the future of West Papua.  Rizeoperates out of Australia, as the government of Indonesia has been effective in shutting down journalism and NGO’s in West Papua.  ABC Australia recently reported that an Indonesian counter-terrorism unit violated human rights in West Papua.  Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr asked Jakarta to investigate the killing of the West Papuan activist Mako Tabuni. Jennifer Robinson, an Australian lawyer, has been providing legal assistance to West Papuan activists for more than a decade and responds to the death of Mako Tabuni with ABC.

Robinson also worked on the case of Benny Wenda who is currently living in exile after being granted to do so by the UK.  Benny Wenda, a West Papuan independence leader and the chairman of the Koteka Tribal Assembly, notes on his website the issues affecting West Papua, “My village was bombed by Indonesia when I was a child and many of my family were killed. Later, I began to campaign peacefully to free my people. For this ʻcrime’ I was arrested, tortured and threatened with death. I managed to escape to Britain, where I now live in exile. Many of my people are still suffering. They have been killed, raped and tortured. Life is hard for them. All we are asking for is the freedoms that you enjoy every day - the freedom to speak your mind, to live without fear and to choose your own government.”  James Stiefvater, Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science department of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, stated in a previousarticle by Ka Leo that, “the current regime of Indonesia colonialism has killed an untold number of West Papuans (probably at least 100,000).”

The United Nations, in their Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that, “all doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust.”

Rize of the Morning Star wants your support to help free West Papua with their compilation album.  The sounds of the album include Papua New Guinea’s biggest selling artist O-Shen, and includes Grilla Step, Airleke and Blue King Brown.