A West Papuan advocacy group has condemned Indonesia over taking up the presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council, saying it was “totally unfit” and the choice  “makes a mockery” of the office.

Indonesia was the sole candidate for the Asia-Pacific bloc at the council (HRC), which also includes China, Japan and South Korea. It was the group’s turn to propose a leader.

Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro succeeds Switzerland and will now lead proceedings at the UN forum for a year after his nomination last week.

However, a statement by a senior official of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), interim president Benny Wenda, has challenged the nomination, asking: “How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when they are hiding from the world their 66-year occupation of West Papua, with 500,000 men, women, and children dead?”

“How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when their President is a war criminal who is complicit in genocide in East Timor and West Papua?

President Prabowo Subianto “personally tortured East Timorese men, and presided over indiscriminate massacres of Indigenous people from Kraras to Mapenduma”, claimed Wenda whose allegations have been documented in various human rights reports.

‘No apology’
“He has never apologised or been held accountable for his crimes,” said Wenda.

He said Indonesia had not won the presidency due to its human rights record.

“The position rotates around the world, and Indonesia was the only candidate from the Asia Pacific region to put themselves forward,” Wenda said.

“Nonetheless, this appointment makes a mockery of the UN and its claim to uphold international law and human rights.”

Wenda said 105,000 West Papuans were currently displaced due to Indonesian military operations.

“Indonesia holding the presidency of the HRC in 2026 is akin to apartheid South Africa leading it in 1980.”

Instead of leading the HRC, “Indonesia should be a global pariah,” said Wenda.

Refused to admit UN
“For seven years, they have refused to admit the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [to the Papuan provinces], ignoring the repeated demand of over 110 countries, including all members of the EU commission, the United States, the Netherlands, and the UK.

“In that time, with West Papua closed to the world, they have launched countless military operations in Papua, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people.”

Indonesia’s Minister for Human Rights is a West Papuan, Natalius Pigai.

Wenda said Pigai had stated that Indonesia would use the HRC position to “counter breaches of international law in Venezuela and elsewhere”.

“What about your own people, Mr Pigai? What about Indonesia’s own back yard?” asked Wenda.

Until the world intervened to stop such “egregious hypocrisy” and recognised the “ongoing occupation, apartheid, and genocide”, there would “be no peace or justice in the Pacific.”

Principal defender
The UN Human Rights Council is the world’s principal defender of vulnerable people worldwide. This is the first time that an Indonesian diplomat has been elected president of the forum.

After his confirmation last Thursday, Ambassador Suryodipuro said Indonesia had been a strong supporter of the council since it began its work 20 years ago, and of the Geneva forum’s predecessor, the Human Rights Commission.

“Our decision to step forward is rooted in our 1945 constitution and that aligns with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter which mandates Indonesia to contribute to world peace based on independence, peace and social justice,” he told delegates.

At the same meeting, delegates also agreed to the appointment of Ecuadorian candidate Ambassador Marcelo Vázquez Bermúdez as vice-president of the council for 2026.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Caledonia’s 11 newly elected ministers have again failed to elect a new president.

Like two weeks ago, none of the three candidates managed to secure the support of at least six ministers.

At today’s meeting called by the French High Commissioner Laurent Prévost, the anti-independence Future with Confidence coalition’s Thierry Santa won four votes while the two pro-independence contenders, Louis Mapou (UNI candidate) and Samuel Hnepeune I(UC-FLNKS), secured three votes each.

The Caledonia Together minister again abstained.

Without a president, the government is not properly constituted and the previous government, which fell a month ago, will remain in a caretaker capacity.

A date for another election attempt is yet to be set.

A budget needs to be passed before the end of the month for the territory to avoid being placed under French stewardship.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path

Two weeks after the storming of the US Capitol by the followers of his predecessor, in the middle of an out-of-control pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans, Joe Biden — the 46th president of the US — tried to contain the blaze in his inaugural address.

As aspiration, the speech was pitch perfect. Biden rightly took on the present of America’s most serious domestic crisis since the Civil War. Coronavirus, the Capitol attack, economic loss, immigration, climate change and social injustice were confronted:

We’ll press forward with speed and urgency for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibility. Much to do, much to heal, much to restore, much to build and much to gain.

But what distinguished the speech beyond the essential was the sincerity with which it was delivered. Since the election, there has been a commingling of Biden’s personal narrative of loss with the damage that America has suffered.

When he spoke of the “empty chair” and relatives who have died, it was from the heart and not just the script.

So, as he said in front of the Capitol: “My whole soul is in this”, there was no doubt — in contrast to the statements of his predecessor — that it is.

Complementing Biden’s rhetoric are the executive orders and legislation set out in the days before the inauguration. Immigration reform will be accompanied by protection of almost 800,000 young Dreamers from deportation.

There is a mandate to reunite children separated from parents and a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

The US has rejoined the Paris Accords on climate change. The “Muslim Ban” is rescinded, Donald Trump’s wall with Mexico suspended. And coronavirus will finally be confronted with coordination between the federal, state and local governments and a US$1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan”.

Words to a waiting world
But where is America in the world in all this? In Biden’s attention to domestic crises, there was little beyond his intention to re-engage with the world on climate and reverse the previous administration’s myopic immigration measures.

Even the invocations of American greatness, with one exception, stayed within its borders:

Through a crucible for the ages, America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge.

There is historical precedent for the exclusive focus on home. In 1933, as the Great Depression raged, Franklin Delano Roosevelt also made no reference to the world as he said at his first inauguration:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Perhaps even more pertinently, in 1865, Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, a month before his assassination and two months before the end of the Civil War:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.

Beyond the inaugural, there are clues in Biden’s appointment of Obama-era pragmatists: Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Jake Sullivan as national security advisor, John Kerry in a special post for climate change. There will be no sweeping “Biden Doctrine”, nor a grand speech such as Barack Obama’s in Cairo or Ankara in 2009.

Instead, the pragmatists will try to restore alliances, reestablish the “rules of the game” with countries such as China, Russia and North Korea — and work case-by-case on immediate issues such as the Iran nuclear deal.

But for this day, and for the weeks and months to come, the foreign challenges will primarily be an extension of the domestic issues that Biden set out on “America’s day … democracy’s day”.

Recovery of America’s damaged standing will come from success in putting out the fires that are not just in the US: saving lives and vanquishing a virus, committing to a secure environment, tackling the inequities and divisions in the way of justice for all.

For as the world watched, Biden’s exceptional reference to an aspiration beyond the US came in his penultimate paragraph about the “American story” to be written:

That America secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world. That is what we owe our forebears, one another, and generations to follow.

By Scott Lucas, professor of international politics, University of Birmingham. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Professor Thomas Clark

The grace. The elegance. The deftness of touch. The quick intelligence. The soaring rhetoric. The unlimited aspirations. The hope of a better life for all.

Though Barack Obama’s legacy is rather lesser than some might have hoped for when he was inaugurated president of the United States in 2009, in him the world has lost the leadership of a gentle soul, a humble man of immense quality and kindness.

And now, these qualities will be replaced with bitter self-interest and vulgarity.

Even without the contrast of Donald Trump, Obama’s dignified bearing, even his very existence, was an inspiration. He and his wife Michelle were an unrivalled illustration of dignity in public office – and more than that, he has clearly left a profound mark on his country.

In his valedictory address in Chicago, Obama was as always breathtakingly optimistic, both about what has been achieved and in his estimation of America’s potential to achieve greater things yet:

If I’d told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history; if I’d told you that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, take out the mastermind of 9/11; if I’d told you that we would win marriage equality and secure the right to health insurance for another 20m of our fellow citizens – if I’d told you all that, you might have said our sights were set a little too high.

To watch the incoming administration crumble this legacy into rubble will be unbearably painful. But it also pays to ask why this hugely gifted politician didn’t accomplish more – and why he won’t leave a more durable legacy.

Back from the brink
The task Obama faced after his inauguration was monumental. The 2008 financial crisis had threatened to engulf the US in a recession as deep and lasting as the Great Depression in the 1930s; the new president inherited an unemployment rate of 7.8 percent, which by October 2009 had risen to 10 percent.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act delivered an $831 billion stimulus package, pumping money into infrastructure, education, health, energy, federal tax incentives, and expansion of unemployment benefits and welfare provisions.

According to the Council of Economic Advisers, the US economy added jobs for 74 consecutive months and reached its pre-recession average by mid-2015, falling to 4.6 percent by November 2016. Non-farm employment exceeded its pre-recession peak by 6.7m, with the automobile industry adding 700,000 jobs.

This was a stunning turnaround, but millions of casualties of the financial crisis have still not recovered. There remains a lingering sense that the financial institutions that caused the crisis were never made to pay for it.

Then there was the battle to achieve affordable universal health care, Obama’s signal social reform. This was a titanic fight that left him in an intractable conflict with the Republican Party in Congress for the whole of his two terms in office.

The Affordable Care Act, now widely known as “Obamacare”, requires all Americans to purchase a private health plan, secure an exemption, or pay a tax penalty. Those who could not afford health care qualified for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or assistance in the form of tax credits.

Health care was ultimately extended to all citizens. But the system’s troubled implementation and the political guerrilla war waged against it before and since its introduction demonstrates the just how unprepared US for any comprehensive form of social provision.

Bad examples
Obama drew a line under the US’s military adventurism in the Middle East, finally withdrawing US forces from Iraq in December 2011; he also declared an end to the war in Afghanistan in November 2014. But he was unable to head off the horrors of the Syrian civil war, first setting out a “red line” that Bashar al-Assad’s regime could not cross without consequences and then declining to act when it did.

While he avoided putting American “boots on the ground” on a grand scale, he presided over actions by special forces, including the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. He also continued to rain bombs on Muslim countries, and his apparent penchant for drone strikes has arguably set a dangerous precedent.

Obama also maintained a quiet but determined commitment to protect the environment, working hard to replace fossil fuels with renewables. And while the world’s developing economies rebuffed a global climate agreement at Copenhagen in 2009, they ultimately committed to a rapid reduction in emissions at the 2015 Paris summit.

The sense of optimism was capped by Obama’s emmissions reduction agreement with President Xi of China.

But once again, by using his executive powers to circumvent an intransigent Republican congress, Obama laid this and other key achievements open to destruction by future presidents – and first in line is Donald Trump.

The fate of the US economy now lies in the hands of a man who claims to be a serial entrepreneur, but who could just as well be described as a serial bankrupt. The new Republican-controlled Congress is already preparing to dismantle Obamacare, but needs to ensure millions of Americans who now have access to health care don’t suddenly lose it.

In foreign affairs and military intervention, Obama’s successor promises to be highly unpredictable. He might be most dangerous of all when it comes to climate change and environmental protection, although international support for serious global measures to curb emissions has probably never been higher.

System flaws
Obama also failed to achieve some of his fundamental objectives, but many of these failures reflect fundamental flaws in the American system that are beyond any one president’s power to repair.

Above all, his hopes for a new era in race relations were cruelly dashed. Black Americans were still being lethally victimised as his presidency drew to a close, with police brutality perhaps a more incendiary issue than ever. Throughout it all, he remained dignified as ever; his plaintive rendition of Amazing Grace at a church in Charleston, South Carolina where eight worshippers and a pastor were brutally killed marked the end of his effort not to be portrayed as a black president.

Tragically, his efforts to constrain gun violence in the US failed to overcome the onslaught of political opposition to responsible control, and a constant patter of gunfire punctuated his presidency.

At Sandy Hook elementary school, 20 young children and six adults perished at the hands of a single shooter. The event brought Obama to tears: “Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.”

By his own admission, Obama failed to overcome the intense partisanship of American politics and society. The disfigurement of US democracy continues, undermining the possibility of stable government. Tens of millions of Americans don’t participate in the democratic process at all, and the political agenda is still disproportionately shaped by a wealthy corporate elite.

We can only hope that while the traumatic 2016 election may have left America’s more idealistic political forces chastened, they are not broken.

Thomas Clark is professor of business at the University of Sydney Technology. This article is published from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.