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  • Herman Waingai: A Hidden Genocide
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Herman Waingai: A Hidden Genocide

Produced and Directed by Sam Gollob and Josh Leong
     Curiously, we first learned about Herman Wainggai and the plight of native West Papuans through an old babysitter. Charity Titulu not only serves as a caregiver, but she also serves as a human’s rights activist for Polynesian natives. She initially had told us the story of a visiting scholar at George Mason University - but most interestingly, this man was also a former political prisoner and escapee living in exile. It was that sort of coincidental connection that birthed the opportunity of telling his unique story to the world. In person, Herman Wainggai isn’t imposing. In fact, he’s pretty short and soft-spoken. But standing before us was man who had encountered struggle, suffering, and all kinds of injustice for most of his life. His visceral and emotional experiences convey the brutal realities of the hidden genocide currently taking place in his home country. West Papua is a small island in the Pacific, bordering Papua New Guinea. For the last forty years, West Papua has been plagued by foreign Indonesian military control. The native dark skinned Papuans of Polynesian descent have been enduring excessive human rights violations, without UN intervention. Multiple US-based organizations have tried advocating for freedom in the past, such as FreeWestPapua. Herman himself even has a political following of close to 20,000 people. The clear problem was that there were no effective and captivating methods for telling his story. It’s in our digital age, filled with hashtags and social media, that news rapidly spreads. Our goal through this project was to effectively relay Herman’s message to a unique audience - teens. We felt this was an area we could specialize in - by filming a 10 minute interview-style documentary - freely accessible online. In creating a powerful and moving film, we hoped to send a message that would both convict and resonate with our audience. In order to change the world, our generation has to be inspired to look beyond ourselves and understand the hardships that others face. Giving exposure to some of these hidden injustices, our hope was to be a stepping stone in finding peace for a hurting people. UN intervention is the first step, and we were incredibly blessed to have the film screened in LA, with Herman invited to the Permanent Forum to the United Nations. The Garifuna Indigenous Film Festival premiered Herman Wainggai: A Hidden Genocide to hundreds of influential policymakers, filmmakers, indigenous peoples, human rights organizations, and humanitarian campaigns. This was our first step in sharing Herman’s message with the world. By creating this documentary, we hoped not only to be part of the West Papuan Independence movement - but to also help be part of something greater then ourselves.

Herman Wainggai: A Hidden Genocide was released on April 6th, 2016, and can be seen at: https://youtu.be/ZwbMgzej1k4

Learn more about Herman Wainggai, now a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, at: www.hermanwainggai.net

Learn more about the ongoing genocide in West Papua at: www.freewestpapua.org
  • Behind French Veils
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Behind French Veils: A Muralistic Interpretation of French Secularism and the History of its conflict with Islamic Veiling

By Sophia Li
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Behind French Veils: Historical and Contemporary Significance
The contradiction between France’s commitment to secularism and Islam’s insistence on religious expression in the public sphere, exacerbated by Europe’s contentious Islamic climate, makes complete assimilation into French society challenging for today’s French Muslim women, which highlights France’s need to reevaluate its revolutionary traditions and adapt to the new global climate.
Before the French Revolution of 1789, the Roman Catholic Church played a major role in the French government system. In the Ancient Regime, the First Estate (the clergy) had the majority of the power, and the upper clergy, made up of bishops and abbots, abused their power to gain personal riches. This abuse of power led to the Revolution, and the monarchy and France’s entire social and political system, including the Roman Catholic Church, was overthrown. The French Revolution’s most significant legacy is secularism. Laïcité, the neutrality of the state towards religious beliefs and the complete isolation of religious and public spheres, first appeared in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789. Then, in 1905, the Chamber of Deputies passed the 1905 French Law on the Separation of the Churches and State, which states that no religion can be supported by the state and no religious symbols can be placed in the public sphere, effectively establishing state secularism in France.
Beginning in the late 19th century, France, the first European country to take such an initiative, developed a policy of active labour recruitment from abroad. French private companies began to bring workers from overseas, mostly from French Algeria, but also from protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia. French factories soon became filled with Algerian workers, and by the time of World War I, Algerians became an integral part of the French army. Following the Algerian War (1954-1962), Algerian labourers began to settle in France with their families, which accelerated the demographic transformation of the immigrant population from temporary workers to resident family units. However, these Algerian migrants were never fully accepted by the French state. Algerian workers were viewed as taking jobs away from the native French, and a recession in the mid-1970s increased this belief. Thus, a lack of Muslim assimilation into French culture is not a contemporary issue that has only risen due to radical Islamic terrorism, it has existed since the first Algerian families migrated to France.
So what incited the marginalization of Muslim migrants? At the root of the tension between Muslims and native French citizens is the ideological differences between the two groups. While Islam requires Muslim women to veil and dress according to the Quran, the French Republic stresses the importance of laïcité. Thus, nothing connected with religious belief or practice, which includes Islamic dress, can appear in the public sphere. As a result of France’s rigid commitment to secularism, French Muslim women find themselves confronted with laws that ban the headscarf and burqa and that suppress their self-expression. These laws pose a threat to French Muslim women's identities and their assimilation into French society because one of their identities, a French citizen, contradicts another, a Muslim woman. A compromise between France and Islam must be reached in order for Muslim women to live fulfilling lives in France. Additionally, given today’s new global climate, a reevaluation of France’s revolutionary traditions, specifically towards secularism, has now become a necessity for France to truly address the emerging fear surrounding Islam that has come to envelop the nation. France must allow its political structures to begin to evolve alongside the twenty-first century.



Work Cited
Betros, Gemma. "The French Revolution and the Catholic Church." History Today,
    December 2010. Accessed November 19, 2016. http://www.historytoday.com/
    gemma-betros/french-revolution-and-catholic-church.

Bowen, John R. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and
    Public Space. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.

"The Concept of Laicite in France." Accessed October 16, 2016.
    http://www.normandyvision.org/article12030701.php.

"Declaration of Human and Civic Rights of 26 August 1789." Conseil
    Constitutionnel. Accessed November 20, 2016.
    http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/root/bank_mm/
    anglais/cst2.pdf.

Goyau, Georges. "The French Concordat of 1801." New Advent. Accessed November
    19, 2016. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04204a.htm.

House, Jim. "The Colonial and Post-Colonial Dimensions of Algerian Migration to
    France." History in Focus. Accessed December 12, 2016.
    https://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Migration/articles/house.html.