SOLOMON Islands Prime Minister Mathew Wale has urged Indonesia to allow a long-awaited United Nations human rights visit to West Papua, telling the UN General Assembly that persistent reports of abuses must be independently verified.
Addressing the Assembly’s decolonisation agenda in New York, Wale linked the issue to wider Pacific calls for self-determination and described West Papuans as “our Melanesian brothers and sisters”.
“Leaving no one behind demands that we complete the unfinished work of decolonisation,” he said. Solomon Islands, he added, continued to support the right to self-determination of the Kanak people of New Caledonia and the Maohi Nui people of French Polynesia.
Wale said the UN decolonisation process “must offer more than hope” and provide practical pathways for people in Non-Self-Governing Territories to determine their political future and development aspirations.
Turning to West Papua, he stressed that the Solomon Islands respected Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and valued its friendship with the Indonesian government and people. “It is precisely because of that friendship that we speak with candour,” Wale said.
“Reports of human rights violations in West Papua have persisted far too long. They must be independently verified, not left in dispute,” he said.
Wale renewed the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ call for Indonesia to facilitate, without further delay, a visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to West Papua.
“Such a visit is an act of confidence between friends, and an affirmation that there is nothing to fear from the light,” he said.
