Richard Pollett Memorial

Friday, 02 December 2011 09:47

MATTERS OF PUBLIC INTEREST

01 December 2011 

Pollett, Mr R 

Dr FLEGG (Moggill—LNP) (3.35 pm): On 27 September this year young 25-year-old cyclist Richard Pollett was killed on Moggill Road at Chapel Hill. I met with Richard’s devastated parents, both of whom are wonderful people and senior academics at the University of Queensland. Richard was a very talented musician, achieving world acclaim as a violinist, having studied in Switzerland. His orchestra, the Australian Youth Orchestra, with which members will be familiar, and his parents are establishing the Richard Pollett Memorial Award. 

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Amnesty Motion

Friday, 02 December 2011 10:16

Parliamentary Amnesty Group 

Motion 

That the Parliament of Queensland:

1 joins with Amnesty International in calling for the Indonesian Government to act immediately on allegations of humanrights abuse at the Third Papuan Peoples’ Congress on 19 October 2011;

2 notes that an investigation by the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission found that Indonesian security forcesopened fire on participants at the peaceful gathering, as well as beating and kicking them;

3 calls for the protection of human rights in Papua, and, in particular, that the Indonesian Government respect Papuans’rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association;

4 notes that the Indonesian President’s office has rejected the findings of the Commission, along with recommendationsthat the Indonesian National Police Chief investigate the matter.

5 with Amnesty International, urges the Indonesian authorities to initiate an independent, thorough and effectiveinvestigation into the Commission’s findings; and6 if the investigations find that security forces committed unlawful killings, torture or other ill-treatment, then calls for thoseresponsible, including persons with command responsibility to be prosecuted in proceedings that meet internationalstandards of fairness, and victims provided with reparations. 

Dr FLEGG (Moggill—LNP) (6.15 pm): I have great pleasure in seconding the motion moved by the Leader of the House. Indonesia is of course our nearest populous neighbour and the world’s largest Muslim nation. There are many things that we need to appreciate from Indonesia, which has great difficulty with a very diverse country and which has done a lot of good work in the area of fighting terrorism, on cooperating with Australia on people smuggling and on building one of the most functional democracies among emerging countries with a high level of press freedom. We should not underestimate the difficulty of doing that in a country like Indonesia.

Read more: Amnesty Motion