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Increase the Peace
Dili Allstars
Shock Records

About 100 people rallied on the steps of Flinders Street station during rush hour on November 9 to call on Premier Steve BracksÂ’ Labor government to make public transport free and put it back into public hands.

The arrival of the 43 West Papuan asylum seekers in Australia in January forced Australians to confront two blights on this country’s history: the government’s appalling treatment of refugees and the same government’s ongoing support for the Indonesian occupation of West Papua. The nation held its breath (and some of us kept up the protests) while Canberra sent the West Papuans off to Christmas Island and decided on what to do next.

The United Nations Independent Special Commission of Inquiry released its report on October 17 into the violent conflict in April and May in East Timor. The 79-page report found that the “frailty of state institutions and the weakness of the rule of law” were to blame for the conflict that erupted following the sacking of almost 600 soldiers from the Timorese Defence Force.

The third annual national gathering of the Australian Coalition of West Papua Support Groups on September 16-17 affirmed the right of the people of West Papua to self-determination and decolonisation.

MELBOURNE — Some 150 people spent the evening of November 3 rocking the Maritime Union of Australia's hall in North Melbourne. This fundraiser was just one part of the MUA's solidarity work with East Timor's Transport and

MELBOURNE — Rachland Nashidik, who visited Australia at the invitation of Indonesian Solidarity, is program director of Imparsial, a human-rights monitoring organisation in Indonesia. Nashidik's main message, when he spoke at

BY PIP HINMAN& VANNESSA HEARMAN The Kopassus chief, Commander Major General Sriyanto, invited to Australia to cement a military deal with Canberra, will shortly be tried for human rights abuses in Indonesia. Sriyanto, who graduated from the

MELBOURNE — Zito da Costa, president of the East Timor Confederation of Trade Unions (Konfederasaun Sindikatu Timor Leste — KSTL), one of several trade union groupings in East Timor, addressed a small gathering at Trades

The United States and Australia are moving closer to restoring full military cooperation with Indonesia, including with the discredited Kopassus special operations unit of the Indonesian armed forces (TNI). In July, the

MELBOURNE — Dr Fikret Baskaya is a 63-year-old Turkish intellectual who has been imprisoned twice for criticising the strategy of the Turkish state in dealing with the issue of Kurdistan. Baskaya spoke at packed public

MELBOURNE &#151 "We need a new political and economic order", Aleida Guevara, Cuban paediatrician and eldest daughter of legendary Latin American revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara told 900 people who packed out Storey Hall on