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“We come from completely different national and cultural backgrounds. We have different life stories,” says Bedford-Strohm. "And yet we are connected in this amazing way - because we know, we are all God’s children.”
He especially acknowledged the challenges faced by the people of West Papua. “Your struggle for justice is so often confronted with a military might that does not protect you but suppresses the cry for justice that seeks to heal division and violence in your country,” says Bedford-Strohm. “I was told how a generation of young Indigenous Papuans is growing up amid displacement, interrupted schooling, discrimination, and violence, including violence involving state institutions and security forces.”
Bedford-Strohm asks: What can we as churches worldwide do to put an end to this spiral? “How can we challenge this faith in military strength—this belief that greater force and harsher repression will bring people into submission?” he asks. “How can we expose the failure of domination, which perpetuates the very conflict it seeks to overcome?”
We know that what we now see is not the last word, Bedford-Strohm emphasizes. “Something else is to come,” he says. “We are not walking towards darkness but towards a new heaven and a new earth in which all tears are wiped away.”
The WCC stands in solidarity with the people and churches of Papua, concludes Bedford-Strohm. “Together with other international ecumenical partners we are actively engaged in international awareness-raising and advocacy in relation to the human rights and humanitarian issues in Papua,” he says. “We encourage the ecumenical coordination of churches in Papua in developing strategies and actions on behalf of their communities.”
