After that incident, he received strange phone calls at his house.

"The phone will ring but when you pick it up, no one answers," says Mr. Warinussy, speaking through an interpreter. His house was constantly being watched and strangers kept following his wife. He says he didn't bother to make any complaints to the police because, nothing would be done about it.

Mr. Warinnussy is from West Papua, a region on the island of Guinea. It is bordered by Papua New Guinea, an independent country on the eastern half of the island. A Dutch colony since 1883, West Papua came under Indonesian rule in May 1963. In 1969, Indonesia conducted a referendum in which a large group of tribal leaders from West Papua voted in favour of unity. Known as the "Act of Free Choice," the vote has been widely criticized because before the voting, the tribal leaders were detained for one month and threatened daily with death if the entire group refused to vote to continue Indonesian rule.

Since then, human rights organizations have documented evidence of widespread rights abuses against the people of the region. According to Rights and Democracy, an estimated 100,000 West Papuans have died because of torture, extra-judicial killings and sexual violence.

Though it has an autonomous government, all major decisions in West Papua have to be sanctioned by Jakarta, says Mr. Warinussy. The region is rich in natural resources. Mr. Warinussy says it ranks among the top three of Indonesia's regions in terms of revenue making. Multinationals, backed by the Indonesian military, have displaced thousands from their ancestral land without proper compensation. Mr. Warinussy says despite the richness of West Papua, it remains the poorest region in Indonesia.

"There's almost nothing compared to Java [the main island of Indonesia]. If Papua is poor, then we can understand why, but Papua is rich," he says.

For 15 years now, Mr. Warinussy has been defending the human rights of West Papuans. A lawyer by training, he is the Executive Director of the Institute for Research, Analyzing and Development of Legal Aid, known by its Indonesian acronym, LP3BH.

"Most of the cases we defend are about land issues, politics and other human rights abuses," he says.

This year Mr. Warinussy's relentless crusade against human rights abuses in West Papua was recognized by Rights and Democracy, a non-partisan Canadian organization created by an act of parliament in 1988 to encourage human rights and democratic institutions around the world. Mr. Warinussy was awarded the John Humphrey Freedom Award for 2005. John Humphrey, a Canadian, drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Mr. Warinussy says he received news of the $25,000 award in June. "It was a big shock," he says. "I was becoming an annoyance and suddenly someone far away recognizes my work, I didn't expect this."

Mika Levesque, Asia Regional Officer with Rights and Democracy, says there were 150 nominations from around the world for the award, but Mr. Warinussy's work stood out because his organization is the only one defending human rights in West Papua.

"He's providing services that if he is not there, no one would do," says Ms. Levesque.

Mr. Warinussy, who has been on a speaking tour in Toronto, Victoria, Winnipeg and Montreal, will be in Ottawa on Dec. 8. He says the purpose of his tour is to inform Canadians about what is taking place in West Papua and also to ask the Canadian government to facilitate a peaceful dialogue to ease tensions. "It must be a peaceful process," he says.

To the Indonesian government, Mr. Warinussy says it is time it stopped the intimidation and initiate real dialogue.

Source: Embassymag