Samson and Delilah is a new film from director Warwick Thornton, set around the lives of two young Aboriginals in a small settlement in central Australia.

Thornton, himself an Aboriginal, beautifully crafts an evocative piece, largely played out in silence but with deeper resounding messsages. The film touches on many of the issues that have blighted Aboriginal communities in the modern age including solvent abuse. Beneath the surface it provides an insight into the reality of life for many Aboriginals, and food for thought on the origins of their suffering.

The effects of the Aboriginals displacement from their traditional environment is seldom reported. Communities rife with alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy and social disorder are common across northern Australia. Displaced from their traditional lands and given large state handouts (in return for the mining operations on their tribal lands), many have turned to alcohol to seek refuge from the world they live in.

That this film finds a glimmer of hope in the end is truly remarkable.

At least 500,000 dead, thousands of others tortured and raped, thousands more ‘disappeared’. Homes burnt, livestock killed, lives ruined.
Written like that you’d think this was a scene from hell. This is the unfortunate reality of life in modern day for the people of West Papua where 40 years of illegal Indonesian occupation has created a hell on earth for those living there. A land where people are put in prison for raising a flag, or tortured if they play traditional music, and killed if they call for their basic human right of self-determination.

The legacy of Indonesian rule is covered in blood. Indonesia may pretend to the world that they are a great democracy and that the evil regime of Suharto is long forgotten, but recent events in West Papua show that Indonesia is up to its old tricks again. It’s hard to forget the level of horror felt around the world ten years ago when Indonesia launched a genocidal sweeping of the East Timorese people. Add to that human rights atrocities committed by them in Aceh, Sumatra and Sulawesi against indigenous people, and it makes you wonder quite why western powers have agreed to do business with Indonesia.

Propped up by Western powers who have helped its weak and ailing economy, it’s hard to know how much longer western powers will turn a blind eye to the atrocities being committed by Indonesia in West Papua remain to be seen. The cover-up in the recent killing of the Australian mining worker at Freeport was another example of how democracy and transparency are as far removed as can be from the Indonesian regime.

What is clear is that the failure of Western powers to come together and act against Indonesia will have major repercussions for the wider region in the long run. The ‘Nazi’ esque genocide of the West Papuan people means that Indonesia simply cannot be trusted not to turn on yet more ethnic groups in the region. Only through foreign intervention will peace and justice ever come to West Papua. Until then it seems likely that the killing fields, the rape, murder, intimidation, brutality and injustice will remain. For the good of humanity, change must come.