The Bloodwood Tree

Boat people are people fleeing their country because they have no other option. Think of the Papuans back in 2006; Indonesia took over their country in 1969 by forcing about 1000 people to vote at gunpoint. Since then they’ve gone through with helicopters machine gun strafing swathes of jungle and towns, the army and Police torture […]

The US Supreme Court ruled last week that there should be no limits to how much money a corporation is allowed to give in “donations” to politicians. When something controversial is being decided (eg climate change legislation, rules around whether the US should sell weapons to a country that tortures people etc), companies are now […]

The article below comes from an American campaign. The US stopped training the Kopassus (Indonesia’s Special Forces) because they have a law that stops them from giving support to human rights abusers, but Bush started talks about restarting the training. Notice however that Australia never stopped training them despite strong public opinion. Indonesia does not […]

Isn’t it timely that now the new Balibo movie is hitting the screens, John Howard and Alexander Downer have suddenly revealed that they were on East Timor’s side the whole time? They ask us to take them at their word, but to do so we need to throw away a few other pieces of the […]

Melbourne father Drew Grant and security guard Markus Rattealo were both shot by snipers over the weekend at West Papua’s Freeport Mines. As questions are raised about “separatist” activity, the only piece of evidence to come to light so far is the fact that the bullets that killed the men were Indonesian military issue. Unfortunately, […]

Once again, the word “illegal” has illegally been brought back into the media when discussing the plight of people fleeing often unimaginable horrors to escape to Australia. Asylum seekers are not illegal, they are protected by international law. If Australia was to pass a law that made them illegal we ourselves would be in breach […]

British-born Muslim Moazzam spent about 2 years in Guantanamo Bay for running a Muslim girl’s school in Afghanistan. He was never tried, and in 2005 was released without being given any reason.
Moazzam was not raised a Muslim but became interested in the religion after witnessing the atrocities practiced against Muslims in some places. When asked […]

The response of Foreign Minister Stephen Smith’s office to the letter by the Monaro Christian Forum asking for an account of Australian action on human rights in West Papua was disappointing, but not necessarily surprising. The question is, where to now? Fortunately our Government is designed with a built-in conscience called the Senate. One of […]

A little while ago I received a text message telling me that 22 missionary families were to be executed today in Afghanistan, to pray and to forward the message on. My immediate response was to do just that, but as soon as I had hit send I decided to look into it.
There is a bit […]

The Dept. Foreign Affairs and Trade has written to the Monaro Christian Forum to defend the track record of this and previous governments in speaking up for human rights in West Papua.
A letter signed by about 50 Monaro Christians, community members and with the support of members of the Sydney Muslim community has asked for […]