Let's not celebrate the 40 years since Indonesia took over West Papua

In the event, the UN pulled out seven months later without any consultation with the Papuans and handed them over to Indonesia. As one senior UN official commented at the time: "That there will ultimately be quite serious resistance to the Indonesians is, I think certain, therefore from the point of view of expediency it behoves the UN to depart as soon as the Indonesians are in fact thick enough on the ground."

When a small UN team returned in 1968 to help Indonesia prepare for the promised act of self-determination, the Papuans had already experienced five years of Jakarta's rule. As one visiting American diplomat noted, the Indonesians had "tried everything from bombing to shelling and mortaring, but a continuous state of semi-rebellion persists."

Aware of its deep unpopularity, Jakarta declared in January 1969 that a referendum was impractical because the people were too "primitive". Instead, they selected 1,026 Papuans to act as representatives for the whole population. Rather than protest, the UN chose to collaborate. As a consequence, in July and August 1969, the hand-picked Papuans were paraded in front of a selection of international diplomats, UN officials and journalists who looked on while these "representatives" unanimously declared their love and loyalty for Indonesia.

Despite the fact that the whole process bore no relation whatsoever to an act of self-determination, there was little international interest. Writing in 1968, one British official commented: "I cannot imagine the US, Japanese, Dutch, or Australian governments putting at risk their economic and political relations with Indonesia on a matter of principle involving a relatively small number of very primitive peoples."

Another British diplomat in New York reported: "the great majority of United Nations members want to see this question cleared out of the way with the minimum of fuss as soon as possible ... the [UN] Secretariat, whose influence could be important, appear only too anxious to get shot of the problem as quickly and smoothly as possible."

US diplomats in Jakarta echoed this, commenting in October 1968: "It would be inconceivable from the point of view of the interests of the UN as well as [Indonesia] that a result other than the continuance of West [Papua] within Indonesian sovereignty should emerge."

In London, a 1969 Foreign Office briefing paper noted: "Privately, however, we recognize that the people of West [Papua] have no desire to be ruled by the Indonesians who are of an alien (Javanese) race, and that the process of consultation did not allow a genuinely free choice to be made."

Meanwhile, according to their British colleagues in the mid-1960s, the attitude of Jakarta-based Australian diplomats towards West Papua had been "one of extreme caution verging on embarrassment. Their main concern is 'not to get involved' since this is the one issue that could seriously jeopardize Indonesia/Australian relations."

Despite this, Canberra showed in 1969 that it would get involved - as long as Jakarta was doing the asking. De-classified documents reveal that when Australian officials detained two prominent West Papuans shortly before the "Act of Free Choice", they did so almost certainly in response to a request from Indonesian Foreign Minister Malik.

It seems that the two Papuans had been on their way to New York to present a petition to the UN from their people calling for independence. Malik feared that this could "stimulate defiance and seriously upset the management of conduct of the Act of Free Choice." Thanks to Canberra they never completed their journey.

In the end, despite protests from some African states led by Ghana, the UN General Assembly simply voted in November 1969 to "take note" of the Papuan "vote" and with that the UN washed its hands of the whole business. Significantly perhaps, at the time no Pacific island states yet had the opportunity to vote at the UN.

As this 40th anniversary comes and goes it can only be hoped that the UN, and those states with a particular responsibility, will turn their attention at last to finding a genuine and just solution to the tragedy and betrayal of the West Papuan people.