George Monbiot to chair Symposium Thurs May 22

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday May 03, 2003 14:10 by Mark Doris - West Papua Action wpaction at iol dot ie 134 Phibsborough Road, Dublin 7. 01 8603431

Globalisation and Genocide in West Papua

Leading journalist and author George Monbiot will chair the Human Rights Symposium at the Annual Convergence Festival on Thursday May 22 at 7.30. Book now! 01 8603 431 or wpaction@iol.ie

Globalisation & Genocide in West Papua

The Human Right Symposium - Thursday 22nd May 19.30 – 22.00

Main Hall, Cultivate, Temple Bar, 15-19 Essex Street West, Dublin 8

Part of the Annual Convergence Festival www.sustainable.ie/convergence

Co-hosted by Amnesty International, frontline, Trócaire, West Papua Action, Afri, and Sustainable Ireland Cooperative

In the "information age", few people know about West Papua, where gold, copper and gas are being extracted, the rainforest is being cut down and the people are facing a genocide at the hands of the Indonesian military, the same military who brutally suppressed the people of East Timor. What are the roles of corporations, governments, the corporate media, human rights defenders, and 'ordinary people' in situations such as West Papua?

George Monbiot (Chair), Guardian columnist and author.

John Rumbiak, West Papua's leading human rights defender.

Carmel Budiardjo, Founder of Tapol, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign.

Booking: 01 8603431 / 674 6415 or wpaction@iol.ie

George Monbiot was born in 1963 and writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. He is the author of a number of books including the The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order (just published), Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain, investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows (about West Papua), Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land. He is Honorary Professor at the Department of Politics in Keele and Visiting Professor at the Department of Environmental Science at the University of East London and formerly Visiting Fellow at Green College Oxford and Visiting Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Bristol. In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. He has also won the Lloyds National Screenwriting Prize for his screenplay The Norwegian, a Sony Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent Award and the OneWorld National Press Award. He helped to found the landrights campaign The Land is Ours.

John Rumbiak is West Papua's best-known human rights advocate. He was born in Biak in 1962. He studied linguistics at Cenderawasih University in Jayapura in the 1980s, and since then has worked in several non-government organisations concerned with human rights. He is currently supervisor of ELSHAM, the West Papuan Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy, in Jayapura. In 1999 he studied human rights advocacy at Columbia University, New York, USA. He is presently based in the US and is visiting scholar at the Center for Human Rights Study at Columbia University. He has begun working on the international affairs of Papua (human rights, justice and peace) in conjunction with the Papua Resource Center (PRC), a New York based non-profit institution that deals with programs such as human resource development, cultural promotion, information center, justice and peace.

Carmel Budiardjo founded TAPOL, the Indonesian human rights campaign, based in London, in 1973. She has worked tirelessly to highlight human rights violations in West Papua, Aceh, East Timor and in Indonesia itself. Born in London, June 1925, she worked with the International Union of Students in Prague from 1946-51. She then moved to Indonesia, where, in 1968 she was arrested and held without trial. She was released in 1971 and expelled from Indonesia. She co-wrote West Papua: the Obliteration of a People and wrote Surviving Indonesia's Gulag. In 1995, she won the Right Livelihood Award ( dubbed the 'Alternative Nobel Peace Prize' ) in recognition of her work for the peoples of Indonesia and its occupied territories.

West Papua Action
134 Phibsborough Road
Dublin 7
Ireland
Tel. (direct) *353 (0)1 860 3431
Mobile *353 (0)87 2969742
Fax. *353 (0)1 882 7576
Email wpaction@iol.ie
http://westpapuaaction.buz.org
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for human rights in West Papua
including the right to self-determination
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