Another Type of Freedom

The Honorary Freedom of Boroughs Act 1885 gave the councils of municipal boroughs (like Oxford) the power to award the title of honorary freeman to ‘persons of distinction and any persons who have rendered eminent services to the borough’. The Local Government Act of 1972 Act extended this power to all councils, including parishes. But honorary freemen do not enjoy the rights of hereditary ones – like grazing: it is simply an honour, with no privileges attached.

Oxford City Council has conferred this honour on about 30 recipients, starting in 1919 with Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig and Admiral of the Fleet Sir David Beatty. Some were inanimate: Oxfam, the City’s two universities and twin cities Bonn and Leiden. Many individuals were not only distinguished within Oxford, but also nationally and indeed internationally; Colin Dexter and Sir Roger Bannister, for example. Others have faded from most memories with the passage of time: it is reasonable to mention in this context Florence Andrews, a councillor from 1937 to 1974, and Alic Halford Smith, a ViceChancellor of the University in the 1950s.

The most recent recipient of the honorary Freedom will also be unknown to some readers, and indeed I learnt a lot more about him when I attended the conferment ceremony as a representative of the Freemen on 17th July. He is Benny Wenda, and the City’s decision to bestow on him the honorary Freedom has caused something of a stir. So who is he, and why the stir?

The conferment requires nomination by a councillor, another must second that nomination, then the Council must vote by a two-thirds majority for the ceremony to go ahead. Benny was proposed by Craig Simmons, this year’s Lord Mayor, who has described himself as an active campaigner against social injustice, war and inequality – so perhaps this proposal was not surprising. It is difficult to establish an objective assessment of Benny’s position in Oxford and internationally, but what follows is what I gathered from the speeches at the ceremony and from a friendly conversation with one of his compatriots during the reception that followed.

Benny comes from West Papua. Papua shares its eastern boundary with Papua New Guinea, which was under British rule and is now a member of the Commonwealth. Papua did belong to the Netherlands, but after the Dutch withdrew in the 1960s it came under the rule of Indonesia. In 1969 Indonesia agreed with the United Nations to conduct a referendum on independence for the Papuans, but selected just over 1,000 tribal elders to vote. A full plebiscite would have been difficult as the country is large and sparsely populated by several different peoples with over 200 languages. But there were many allegations of coercion by the government forces, and a widespread view that the vote to accept Indonesian rule was not a free one. Protests followed and many, including Benny, were imprisoned. He eventually fled the country in 2002 and was granted refugee status by the United Kingdom, settling in Oxford where he needed treatment at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre for injuries caused by his shackles in prison. From his headquarters in Cowley Road he leads the Free West Papua Campaign, the most high profile part of the Free Papua Movement that was established before Benny was born to work for independence for all the Papuan provinces.

Since he became involved in the independence movement, he has continuously attracted criticism and indeed hostile action from the Indonesian government. In 2011 it issued an international warrant for his arrest, which prevented his travelling abroad to attract support, until Interpol cancelled the warrant on the basis that it was politically motivated and an abuse of the warrant system. When the Cowley Road office was opened in 2013, attended by MP Andrew Smith (himself a Freeman as a Lord Mayor’s Childe), the British Ambassador in Jakarta was summoned by the Indonesian Government to explain why such an office was being allowed to open.

The controversy continues. In May 2019 the UK Parliament debated West Papuan human rights, with cross-party support for the people there. But there are allegations that abuse of those rights is being disregarded to avoid upsetting Indonesia and in the interests of multinational companies that wish to exploit the country’s natural resources. The Parliamentary debate may have been prompted by events earlier in the year, when a BBC correspondent was questioned for 17 hours after reporting from Papua and then a Polish tourist was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for allegedly plotting against the regime.