Tag Archives: Australia

Thoughts on a colonial mindset.

Posted on by — 7 Comments ↓

By PNG Echo I am often asked what attracted me to the politics of Papua New Guinea. I can only reply by evoking the country of my birth – Wales. Although I left Wales as a teenager, Wales has never left me – I see in Papua New Guinea many reflections of Wales – especially in the struggle for identity. My Country Today I was reminded of poet, Gerallt Lloyd Owen: a fiercely patriotic Welshman who, in 1972, published an antholology of poems entitled: ‘Cerddi’r Cywilydd’ which, translated from our language (Welsh),  means ‘The Poems of Shame’. The poems were Continue reading Thoughts on a colonial mindset.→

Share Button

West Papua: Australia’s backyard ‘genocide’ continues

Posted on by — 7 Comments ↓

By Hilda Wayne In a village in West Papua, a young Benny Wenda watched as Indonesian military forced his Melanesian aunties to wash themselves by the river ‘ to clean themselves up’ before they were raped. One of Benny’s aunts had her baby ripped from her arms and thrown to the ground before she, the mother, was also raped. Both baby and mother sustained fatal injuries. They died. Severe internal injuries were what eventually killed the West Papuan father of Wiwince Pigome, sustained many years before at the hands of the Indonesian military. Wiwince’s family were from Wamena and her Continue reading West Papua: Australia’s backyard ‘genocide’ continues→

Share Button