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Author: Susan Connelly

  • INTERNATIONAL

    When raising a flag means death

    • Susan Connelly
    • 01 December 2022
    1 Comment

    Filep Karma was found dead on a beach on 1 November, 2022. He was a respected and long-time activist for Papuan freedom. He was jailed in July 1998 and then released after eighteen months. In December 2004 he was again arrested and charged, being sentenced to fifteen years in prison. His crimes? Repeatedly raising the Morning Star flag.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Kafka in Australia: the trial of Witness K

    • Susan Connelly
    • 06 April 2019
    18 Comments

    Our own version of Kafka's The Trial is being played out under our very noses. 'Witness K' and his lawyer Bernard Collaery have been charged with making known Australian state secrets in connection with ASIS spying on Timor-Leste. The similarities between the plights of Kafka's Josef K and Witness K do not end with their names.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fraser Anning's enemy twin

    • Susan Connelly
    • 17 August 2018
    3 Comments

    We see the occasional extreme Muslim cleric railing against the west. This week we witnessed a similar incident in Parliament, with a senator calling for a return to the White Australia policy and a ban on Muslim immigration. An insight of René Girard's assists in interpreting this incident and the resentment and fear which lies beneath it.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    East Timorese heroes of Australian wars

    • Susan Connelly
    • 24 April 2017
    20 Comments

    Fearful of the southward thrust of the Japanese, the Australian government entered East Timor against the wishes of its Portuguese colonisers. The move was not to protect the Timorese, but to thwart possible attacks on Australia. A band of intrepid Australian soldiers, never numbering more than 700, successfully held off thousands of Japanese in Timor, but only because they had the support of the local people. Between 40,000 and 60,000 Timorese died as a result of Japanese reprisals.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    History curriculum perpetuates East Timor myths

    • Susan Connelly
    • 10 July 2012
    7 Comments

    The draft senior secondary history curriculum glosses over Australia's relationship with East Timor. It needs to go beyond the false media and political view that Australia's involvement in East Timor has been unremittingly courageous, generous and exemplary. There is a danger that students will believe Australian soldiers went into Portuguese Timor in 1941 'to protect the Timorese' and that Australia 'saved' East Timor in 1999.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    We need a pulpit perspective on Papua

    • Susan Connelly
    • 02 March 2012
    8 Comments

    No one has been held accountable for the human rights abuses that occurred in East Timor, and this has resulted in a further vacuum of human responsibility in West Papua. The Australian Government has neglected the situation, but so too have the churches.

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