SYDNEY (East Timor and Indonesia Action Network / Pacific Media Watch): The West Papua Advocacy Team is pleased to announce that Anne Noonan and Joe Collins and the Australia West Papua Association (Sydney) are winners of the Team's 2012 John Rumbiak Human Rights Defenders Award.
The Australia West Papua Association (Sydney) is a non-partisan, non-religious organisation which has supported the Papuan people in West Papua for more than a decade.
The association works to disseminate information about the situation in West Papua. It produces a regular news bulletin and manages an extensive resource collection.
AWPA (Sydney) is also engaged in practical solidarity work, raising money for youth groups, student and health organisations, and West Papuan refugees living in Papua New Guinea.
The association also works to influence the government of Australia to change its policy of "friendship politics" towards Indonesia, and to urge the immediate stop to Australian weapons export to Indonesia.
The association is a key member of the international solidarity network seeking to address critical problems in West Papua in close collaboration with sister organizations in Papua New Guinea, Sweden, The Netherlands, The Philippines, UK, USA, and Japan.
In Australia, the association cooperates with committees for East Timor and groups working on related problems.
The AWPA, Sydney joins past winners of this award: Carmel Budiardjo and Tapol (2008), John M. Miller and the East Timor and Indonesian Action Network (2009), Andreas Harsono (2010), and US Congressional Delegate Eni Faleomavaega (2011).
The award includes a plaque and a $500 cash stipend.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
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