An influenza B outbreak has occurred at shelters housing residents who were hardest hit by Typhoon Mawar.

It has been three weeks since typhoon Mawar wreaked havoc on Guam leaving hundreds displaced.

Melissa Savares, mayor of Dededo, one of the worst hit areas, said some people were being kept apart from others.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Post-typhoon Mawar nfluenza interview
• Other Typhoon Mawar reports

“There have been confirmation that there are some individuals in the shelter that have influenza B, and they’ve actually been segregated or isolated,” she said.

“Now, there’s no isolation rooms in the facility, but they’ve actually been isolated from the general crowd, meaning, they’ve been moved into like a side area of the gymnasium, where they’re not in immediate congregation, their beds, their pots, are not right up into a congregated space.”

The Guam Daily Post reports that the Office of the Governor will step in and help relocate some residents at the shelters.

700 people in shelters
It said a child was hospitalised on Tuesday following an influenza B outbreak at the Red Cross shelter at the Guam Pak Warehouse in Tamuning.

More than 700 people reside in these two shelters, one of which Savares said did not provide proper ventilation.

“In the one shelter that is in the warehouse, ventilation is very poor, in that area. However, the other one that’s in the gymnasium, there is ventilation,” she added.

Last week, Savares said she felt the recovery had been “very slow” two weeks after Typhoon Mawar made landfall in the territory.

She said for her village in the north of Guam, only about half of the community had water and electricity.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A West Papuan advocacy group in Australia has appealed to Foreign Minister Marise Payne to take the cue from a new United Nations Rapporteurs statement this week condemning the “ongoing human rights abuses” in the Indonesian-ruled West Papuan region.

Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) said there was an urgent need for Australia to speak out against the Indonesian military abuses in the two Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua.

“We are urging the Australian government to join with the UN Rapporteurs in raising concerns about the situation in West Papua, publicly with Jakarta, condemning the ongoing human rights abuses in the territory,” Collins said in a statement.

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“We know the government has said it raises concerns about the human rights situation in West Papua with the Indonesian government, but have not seen any public statements of concern on the issue unlike the governments concerns about abuses in China and the situation in the Ukraine.

“The issue of West Papua is not going away.”

In a letter to minister Payne, Collins raised the UN rapporteurs’ concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in Papua and West Papua, “citing shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people.”

The association said it would not go into “all the grave concerns” about human rights abuses in West Papua “as we have written many times on the issue”.

But Collins quoted the rapporteurs’ statement: “Between April and November 2021, we have received allegations indicating several instances of extrajudicial killings, including of young children, enforced disappearance, torture and inhuman treatment and the forced displacement of at least 5,000 indigenous Papuans by security forces.”

It is estimated that the overall number of displaced people in West Papua since the escalation of violence in December 2018 is more than 60,000.

Collins said that “Urgent action is needed to end ongoing human rights violations against indigenous Papuans.”

He also reminded the minister about AWPA’s letter on 12 August 2021 raising concerns about West Papuan activist Victor Yeimo, the international spokesperson for the West Papua National Committee (KNPB).

“He is being charged with treason. We look forward to your reply on this matter.”

Indonesian authorities have been accused of adopting a strategy of deploying military force to drive thousands of Papuans from their homes to make way for powerful business interests.

The accusation comes from the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) in a statement responding to news that about 2400 internal refugees have been displaced from 19 villages after renewed Indonesian military operations in the Maybrat regency.

The humanitarian crisis there is being compared to Nduga and Intan Jaya, where more than 50,000 West Papuans have been displaced by military operations in recent years.

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“Maybrat is a peaceful place. The violence we are seeing now is a result of Indonesian state attempts to clear the local people and grab the gold and minerals that lie under the earth,” said ULMWP interim president Benny Wenda.

“I have been stating for a long time that Indonesia’s military operations are not about ‘sovereignty’, but business.

“Now, Indonesia’s own NGOs have confirmed this. New reports from WALHI Papua, LBH Papua, KontraS, Greenpeace Indonesia and several other groups have noted the deep links Indonesia’s retired generals, Kopassus officers and intelligence chiefs have with resource extraction projects in West Papua.

“Powerful Indonesian leaders like Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Maritime Affairs Minister, hold direct interests in the Wabu Block gold concession in Intan Jaya, where huge military operations have forced thousands of people from their homes.”

‘Wiping out entire villages’
Wenda claimed the military operations were attempts to “wipe out entire villages and clear the way for illegal mines”.

“They are killing us because we are Black, because we are different. This is state-sponsored terrorism,” he said.

Wenda said that given these economic interests, the Papuan people could not “trust the reports of the Indonesian police and military whenever one of their own is killed”.

“The military men’s presence in the region is illegal. Their presence is part of Indonesia’s business interests, part of their illegal colonial occupation of my land.

“The 1969 Act of No Choice was illegal, it was not done by one man one vote as required by the 1962 New York Agreement. The UN did not endorse what happened, it only ‘took note’ following fierce opposition led by Ghana in the UN General Assembly.

“Indonesia cannot claim that its invasion of West Papua is a done deal – it is not. It is the root cause of all the issues we see today.

“Indonesia has no right to send any more military to West Papua, to build the Trans-Papua Highway, or to construct any more military posts.”

Negotiated solution
Wenda said the issue would never end until Indonesian President Joko Widodo negotiated a “solution for the good of West Papua and Indonesia to hold a referendum on independence”.

He said Indonesia must listen to the will of 84 countries and allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua immediately.

“If the international community wants to help end the bloodshed in my homeland, it must act to ensure this visit happens,” Wenda said.

A new wave of displacement of thousands of people from 19 villages in Maybrat, West Papua.

They are running away from raids by Indonesian security forces following the killings of four soldiers by the West Papua National Liberation Army last week. pic.twitter.com/L7D7qTGD1N

— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) September 7, 2021

A pro-independence movement in West Papua has appealed to several Western countries — including New Zealand — to provide urgent humanitarian help by supplying covid vaccines directly to the Papuans to cope with the “double crisis” in the Indonesian-ruled region.

Benny Wenda, interim president of the Provisional Government of West Papua, said today he had made the appeal by writing to the foreign ministers of Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the US.

“I have also written to the President of the European Commission, the WHO [World Health Organisation] and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding the escalating covid-19 situation in our land,” he said in a statement.

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“This new crisis is a further existential threat to my people.”

Indonesia had caused a double crisis for the people of West Papua by launching military operations in the middle of the pandemic, Wenda said, as he had warned.

“Just yesterday, villagers from the West Moskona district were attacked by troops after attending a peaceful worship session against ‘Special Autonomy’, fleeing to the forests and the city of Bintuni,” he said.

“Woman and children are afraid to return to their villages in case the military and police arrest or attack them.”

50,000 plus displaced
“More than 50,000 people have been displaced in Nduga, Puncak and Intan Jaya over the past two and a half years. Their homes have been destroyed, their churches burned and their schools occupied by soldiers.

“They are left in internal displacement camps, where the virus will spread rapidly. Already in the cities, patients are being turned away or treated in cars outside the hospital.”

Western countries and the WHO had an urgent moral obligation to give vaccine doses direct the local Papuan government for distribution, Wenda said.

“As the 2018 Asmat health crisis showed, Jakarta cannot be trusted with the health of the West Papuan people,” he said.

“Over nearly 60 years of colonisation we have seen a chronic failure to develop health facilities in West Papua, leaving us dying on top of the natural riches Indonesia is extracting. If Jakarta is allowed to hold the reigns of vaccine development, my people will suffer further.”

Wenda said the developments were part of a “continued genocide against my people”.

“Our forests have been torn down, our mountains decapitated, our way of life destroyed. Indonesia restricts healthcare and enforces a colonial education whilst killing anyone who speaks out for self-determination,” Wenda said.

“Launching military operations in the middle of a pandemic is a policy designed to further wipe out our population. We need urgent international assistance, direct to the local Papuan government, not through the colonial occupier.”

• Full statement by the ULMWP