23 November 2015 Mr President of the Human Rights Council Mr Chairperson of this Forum Special Rapporteur Ms Rita Iszak 1. I would like to thank the organisers of this Eight Session of the Forum on Minority Issues for inviting me to address this session. 2. As Director of Legal Advocacy for the Bertha Foundation, I have a unique, global and comparative perspective of the treatment of minorities through the work of our Bertha Justice Initiative partner organisations, who are at the cutting edge of human rights litigation and advocacy on behalf of minority communities around the world. For more than a decade I have worked on issues associated with the persecution of indigenous West Papuans in Indonesia. 3. In this context, I have seen that the treatment of West Papuans is emblematic of the discrimination suffered by minorities worldwide – and among the most severe I have seen. The recommendations must ultimately be judged by their ability to address the most isolated and difficult of situations, so I address the draft recommendations on minorities and the exercise of police powers in relation to West Papua. 4. At the heart of violations suffered by minorities – in West Papua and elsewhere – is racism, dehumanization and discrimination. In West Papua, this aspect of Indonesian oppression has been emphasised by Filep Karma, the Nobel peace prize nominee who was finally released late last week after spending more than a decade in prison for raising a flag. Karma’s book Seakan Kitorang Setengah Binatang (As If We Are Half Animal) (2014), explains that racism is key to understanding both West Papua’s annexation by Indonesia and the ongoing abuse today. The fact the 1969 UN-supervised vote on self-determination was allowed to proceed with only 1,025 representatives out of the population of 800,000 was a decision grounded in racial discrimination: West Papuans were considered too “primitive” to have the popular vote that they were entitled to under international law. The UN turned a blind eye to these unlawful voting methods and violence in the self-determination process. It was not a free or fair vote. This grave injustice meant that Papuans became a minority within Indonesia, instead of establishing their own independent state. While Papuans made up 96.09% of the population in the region at that time, sustained violence and deliberate