AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch / Radio New Zealand International): The 'hacktivist' group Anonymous has announced it will target the Indonesian government over the murders of indigenous West Papuans.
Radio New Zealand International reported that Anonymous, which is known for its opposition to censorship and state secrecy and for its hacking of government and corporate websites, says "West Papuans have been silenced for too long by Indonesia's military and government".
Anonymous today added to the pressure on the United Nations this week, which is currently holding a meeting in Fiji aimed at speeding up the decolonisation of colonised Pacific nations like New Caledonia and Guam.
The UN has been asked by several lobby groups to include West Papua on the list of nations requiring decolonisation instead of continuing to pretend that West Papuans have chosen Indonesian occupation of their country over independence.
According to RNZI, Anonymous says "the United Nations should take responsibility for the sham referendum it sanctioned in 1969 which incorporated the former Dutch New Guinea into Indonesia".
Anonymous is a strong supporter of WikiLeaks and has hacked and publicly released millions of emails about the private intelligence firm Stratfor, for which one of its activists, Jeremy Hammond, is currently serving 10 years in an American jail.
In the past, Anonymous has hacked websites belonging to the Scientology establishment, hundreds of Israeli websites, the Tunisian prime minister, government sites in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, and Zimbabwe and a porn site belonging to Hunter Moore, who had encouraged the public to publish naked photos of their ex-partners and their addresses on his website.
The Guardian newspaper reported earlier this year that the British Ministry of Defence was paying "six-figure sums" to PhD students who were willing to study "the rise of the digital insurgency" that Anonymous practices.
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