 |
|
||||
Leading Indonesia analyst says immigration bill irrelevant to Australia-Indonesia relationsDate: 15 August 2006 “Strengthening or weakening the immigration bill will not have any impact whatsoever on the tensions between Australia and Indonesia,” says Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta office of the International Crisis Group, who will speak at a lecture on Australia-Indonesia relations in Sydney tomorrow. Sidney Jones is responding to the Government’s decision yesterday to abandon plans for tougher new asylum laws which were designed to ease Indonesian concerns following the arrival early this year of a boatload of Papuan asylum seekers. “Indonesian and Australian officials both need to live with the notion that some Papuans will always want to flee to Australia,” Ms Jones said. “But it will be a handful, not a flood, and the effort of everyone should be to ensure that the government, local and central, starts delivering real benefits to the Papuan people.” At the lecture, being organised by the Uniya Jesuit Social Justice Centre, and titled “Good Neighbour, Bad Neighbour”, Ms Jones will argue that the Papua question has been “marked by more idiocy on both sides than almost any other issue in the Indonesian-Australian relationship.” Ms Jones, who is an expert on Muslim fundamentalism and Jemaah Islamiyah, will also address the issue of the Indonesian government's handling of terrorism. She will speak alongside Professor Peter King, Convener of the West Papua Project at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Sydney University, and author of the controversial report Genocide in Papua?, and Fr Frank Brennan, Jesuit lawyer and former director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in East Timor. Professor King will argue that special autonomy laws in Papua have failed the Papuans and that human rights violations are still being “carried out with impunity by the Indonesian police and military” including during the clashes in March with students protesting against the Freeport mine. “I hope that the Jakarta elite does understand very clearly that what finally happened in Timor was indeed largely Australia’s doing and that it can happen all over again in Papua,” he warns, referring to the aftermath of East Timor’s vote for independence in 1999. The Uniya Seminar Series was first held in 1999 to mark 150 years of Jesuit work in Australia. The Series will also visit Adelaide on 22 August (keynote speakers are Dr John Bruni and Tony Kevin). Please visit www.uniya.org or call (02) 9356 3888 for more information about the free lecture. Speakers will be available for brief interviews afterwards.
Uniya Seminar Series 2006 - “Good Neighbour, Bad Neighbour. What’s the difference?”. When: 16 August, 7.30-9.30pm. Where: Eugene Goossens Hall, ABC Centre, 700 Harris St, Ultimo Media contact: Mary Bryant on (02) 9356 3888
|
|||||
