Today I bring you a message from West Papua, my homeland, where my people have been crying for help for the last 48 years, but whose cries have been ignored.

West Papua lies north of Australia and at its closest point is just a few miles from the state of Queensland. It is home to 250 tribes who have been living there for the last 50,000 years.

West Papua is home to the second biggest rainforest in the world after the Amazon and the famous Bird of Paradise can not be found anywhere else outside our island.

Yet today, West Papua is far from paradise. Our land has been under illegal occupation from the Indonesian military since 1963. They have been destroying out nature, our forests, our mountains and our very way of life.

Our struggle is no only about political independence. It is about our identiy, our culture, our forests, our nature, because the forest is our supermarket and it provides everything we need. The land is our Mother because she keeps us alive.

In the wake of the Indonesians has come our second occupation, that of major multi-national companies including BP and Freeport. There destructive mining activities are backed by the Indonesian military and police and are laying waste to our land, and to our culture.

We need your support to free my people

We need your help to free our forests

We need your support to free our mountains

We need your support to free our reserves

Please hear my people's cry for help.

Wa Wa

Benny Wenda