Members of regional parliaments are increasingly alarmed at the continuing violence in the Indonesian Papuan provinces and at the seeming inability of the Indonesian Government to administer these territories without a large military presence. The refusal of permission for journalists and many aid workers to enter the provinces is a growing cause of concern.
On Tuesday 28 February the Australia-Pacific chapter of International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) was launched at Parliament House, hosted by the Greens and attended by some parliamentarians. It is worrying that acting Minister for Foreign Affairs Craig Emerson told Labor MPs not to attend (a rightly ignored by some of the more lion-hearted, including Laurie Ferguson).
That the Greens organised the meeting and that Labor recognises West Papua as an integral part of the Indonesian Republic are not sufficient reasons to expect Australian MPs to ignore the serious human rights abuses on our doorstep.
Letters to our Government by frustrated Australians are answered for the most part by reminders that we recognise the territorial sovereignty of Indonesia, that internal security is a matter for the Indonesians themselves, that the situation in West Papua and Papua is improving, that Australia is dedicated to the promotion of human rights everywhere and that we continue to train the Indonesian military because they are our partners in the region and we help to raise their standards.
This official line fits the Australian-Indonesian partnership, but ignores the Papuan people. The rights of nation-states are not absolute, and where there is engagement in systematic maltreatment of people, no matter where, the rest of the world has an obligation to protest.
There is noble rhetoric in claims that Australia condemns human rights abuses and urges investigation of them. But this is not the experience of the Australian-East Timor relationship.
The previous Australian Government dismissed the findings of the 2005 CAVR Report on the crimes against humanity in East Timor as containing 'errors' (read: accusations against Australia). Official Australian comment on this very large human rights document thereby evaporated, and the recommendations concerning Australia have languished ever since.
After such inaction, what evidence is there that the Australian Government deplores abuse of the Papuan people, or urges investigation into allegations, as it claims in its official answers to letters? Who is urging investigation of crimes against humanity committed in West Papua? Who asks the concrete questions? Where are the reports? Who actually does this work?
More power to the members of the IPWP, and may more Australian parliamentarians give some leadership here after they look into the massacres, the torture, the sham trials, the military abuses and the money trail.
However there are more players in this saga. Where are the churches? There are a few groups and individuals who anguish about the Papuan people, as there are in Parliament, and who see such concern as an obligation flowing from the Gospel. What leadership is offered by the churches? Does the Papuan situation ever make it to the pulpit?
The parallels between the treatment of the West Papuan people and that given to the East Timorese are compelling. How can these things continue on our doorstep?
One of the reasons is the impunity that Indonesia enjoys, shown in the complete lack of responsibility taken for what happened in Timor-Leste between 1974 and 1999.
That period saw the violent deaths of 183,000 Timorese men, women and children, which occurred as a result of the brutal Indonesian occupation. The establishment of an ad hoc Human Rights Court and a Truth and Friendship Commission in its wake brought no one to justice. No one has been held accountable. This has resulted in a further vacuum of human responsibility in West Papua.
Australia might claim some small refuge in ignorance regarding Timor, but as we now know what Indonesia did there and how responsibility has been successfully evaded, we cannot claim any wide-eyed innocence regarding West Papua. 
Susan Connelly is a western Sydney-based Sister of St Joseph who for many years has been the prime mover in the advocacy work of the Mary MacKillop East Timor Mission.