Crusade for independence given new hope Plea: West Papuan refugees Papuana Mote and Amos Wainggai have called on the Australian government for help. Photo: Luis Enrique Ascui Australia's West Papuan refugees are celebrating new hope after a convergence of events has put the push for their homeland's independence on the international stage. Even seasoned observers now say a "slender hope" on the part of West Papuans is justified after Vanuatu Prime Minister Moana Carcasses Kalosil questioned Indonesian sovereignty in the territory in a "historic" United Nations General Assembly speech. "Everybody understands that West Papua is next," Rex Rumakiek, the general secretary of the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation, tells Fairfax Media from his Canberra base. Sydney University West Papua expert Jim Elmslie says that even if the hope Mr Carcasses' speech has given West Papuans is a "pretty slender one ... it's more than they had before." On September 28 Mr Carcasses took a step beyond previous statements made at the UN about human rights abuses in West Papua and called for the UN to investigate West Papua's "political status," which Dr Elmslie says was a "historic" development and among the most significant events since Indonesia incorporated the territory in 1969. Sunday's events in Bali and Mr Carcasses' speech closely follow a row over the Abbott government's swift deportation to Papua New Guinea of a group of West Papuan activists who fled alleged search operations by Indonesian forces to north Queensland late last month. Among those asylum-seekers were independence activists who had participated in a pro-independence "cultural ceremony" with Australian sailor-activist members of the self-styled "Freedom Flotilla" venture. The flotilla activists, in a highly publicised sea journey during September, had left Cairns in three yachts after announcing they would sail to West Papua without permission to draw attention to human rights abuses in the disputed territory. Tony Abbott subsequently assured Indonesia his government would attempt to prevent Australia being used as a platform for "grandstanding" against Indonesia and criticised the asylum-seekers themselves. For Melbourne brother-and-sister refugees Amos Wainggai and Papuana Mote, whose uncle Thomas Wainggai died in Indonesian custody while listed as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, the recent events put hope in front of fear. "I'm fearful for my people back home, but I am hoping the Australian government and the UN will do something about what's happening in West Papua," says Ms Mote, who with 41 others made headlines when she and her brother fled to Australia by canoe in 2006. In halting English, Mr Wainggai says that he will not be silenced by Mr Abbott, commenting of the Prime Minister: "He didn't think about human beings, he just think about himself." Meanwhile Dr Elmslie warns the West Papuan issue looms as the "storm clouds on the horizon" for Indonesia. West Papua, he says, represents for Indonesia the risk that it will be seen not as a democratic Muslim country "but as having a military that's out there chopping people up." West Papuans have been fighting - both peacefully and with arms - for independence from Indonesia since their powerful neighbour took over the country after a 1969 UN-brokered ballot widely regarded as a sham. Observers estimate killings in the thousands or tens of thousands and have documented widespread torture.