Act of Free Choice

Act of Free Choice (Indonesian: Penentuan Pendapat Rakyat, PEPERA, Determination of the People's Opinion), often disparagingly referred to as the Act of No Choice, was a series of eight regional assemblies from July to August 1969 by which Indonesia asserts that the Western New Guinea population decided to relinquish their sovereignty in favor of Indonesian citizenship. The Act of Free Choice was a vote by 1,025 men and women selected by the Indonesian military in Western New Guinea, who were asked to vote by raising their hands or reading from prepared scripts in a display for United Nations observers. The event was noted by the United Nations in General Assembly resolution 2504 (XXIV) without qualification whether it complied with the authorizing New York Agreement, and without qualification whether it was an act of "self-determination" as referred to and described in United Nations General Assembly resolutions 1514 and 1541 (XV) respectively.

The referendum and its conduct had been specified in the New York Agreement; Article 17 of which in part says:

The agreement continues with Article 18:

Under Article 17 of the New York Agreement, the plebiscite was not to occur until one year after the arrival of U.N. representative Fernando Ortiz-Sanz (the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations) in the territory on 22 August 1968. However, after NASA announced the Apollo 11 flight schedule to land on the Moon for July, Indonesia proposed the plebiscite be conducted six weeks early during July 1969.

The New York Agreement specified that all men and women in Papua who were not foreign nationals had the right to vote in the Act. General Sarwo Edhi Wibowo instead selected 1025 Melanesian men and women out of an estimated population of 800,000 as the Western New Guinea representatives for the vote. They voted publicly and unanimously in favour of Indonesian control. The United Nations took note of the results with General Assembly . According to Hugh Lunn, a journalist from Reuters, men who were selected for the vote were blackmailed into voting against independence with threats of violence against their persons. Contemporary diplomatic cables showed American diplomats suspecting that Indonesia could not have won a fair vote, and also suspecting that the vote was not implemented freely, but the diplomats saw the event as a "foregone conclusion" and "marginal to U.S. interests". Ortiz-Sanz wrote in his report that "an act of free choice has taken place in accordance with Indonesian practice”, but not confirming that it was in accordance with international practice as the Act of Free Choice had required.

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