One of the speakers at today’s Road to Freedom conference in Oxford says the West Papua issue remains an obstacle to good relations and prosperity in the region.
Powes Parkop, the Governor of Papua New Guinea’s National Capital District, has travelled to the UK for the high profile gathering at Oxford University.
The conference’s organisers say it’ll be the strongest case to date that the people of Indonesia’s Papua region have the right to self-determination.
Mr Parkop says long-running security issues and human rights abuses in Papua have been a destabilising factor for the immediate region.
He says the region could be peaceful and prosperous.
“West Papua is an obstackle to this potential. And for me, as a national leader in PNG, it is what I want to put forward to the Indonesians, that you are, by holding on to West Papua, hindering and stopping this potential that we have to become a socio-economic centre of the world as well.”
Source; http://www.rnzi.com
