John Rumbiak laughs heartily at the idea that the Indonesians might have been pleased when he got a scholarship to study at the University of Columbia. The irony is he abandoned linguistics for human rights.
His new direction has meant threats by troops for his parents on the remote island of Biak because of his work with the Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy in the capital of West Papua, Jayapura. But Mr Rumbiak (39) persists, certain that "the fight of the Papuans against Indonesian rule is like the fight of truth - like a flood that cannot be stopped".
These past weeks he has been travelling beyond the little-known Melanesian world of West Papua, Indonesia's 26th province, in an effort to defeat "an international silence" about increasing human rights violations by Indonesian troops. They are trying to put down armed separatist resistance that has persisted for almost 40 years at a cost of up to 100,000 lives.
Mr Rumbiak's institute wants all fighting to stop and dialogue to begin. He wants Indonesia to drop its offer of "wider autonomy" to separatist regions and talk about flexible arrangements for independence of this mineral-rich eldorado.
In Dublin this week he met the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell. Last week the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, told him she would pursue her concern about the situation at the highest levels.
Since 1998, during the "reform period" of President Abdurrahman Wahid that followed the Suharto era, there have been 80 summary executions, as well as 500 arbitrary detentions and other violations in West Papua, Mr Rumbiak said. He has also raised concern at the fate of 22 prisoners of conscience held in Wamena. The World Council of Churches has suggested there is a "culture of impunity" in West Papua. Since January foreign journalists have been banned.
Ireland is well placed to support Mrs Robinson's efforts, according to Mr Rumbiak, as a member of the UN Security Council, because of its past work on the Human Rights Commission and because of its position in the EU.
Armed resistance to integration into Indonesia has persisted since 1969 when a spurious UN-validated "Act of Free Choice" relieved the Netherlands, under US pressure, of the western half of the island of New Guinea and awarded it to Indonesia.
Military officers "appointed" 1,025 traditional chiefs in this last haunt of "Stone Age Man" - JFK called the Papuans "a bunch of cannibals" - and intimidated them into petitioning to be part of Indonesia.
West Papua sits on some of the world's richest mineral deposits, including oil, gold, silver, nickel, cobalt and copper. This has largely determined its history and made it seem a lost cause. But Mr Rumbiak, the guest in Ireland of the West Papua Action group, favours flexibility when it comes to this curse of riches.
Allowing Indonesia to have perhaps 75 per cent of the royalties from the vast Freeport McMoran mine could, for instance, be part of an independence settlement, he said. Many among the OPM guerrillas favoured this, he added.
Mr Rumbiak said he wants the international community to get Indonesia talking seriously, without rhetoric about "dialogue". He is determined that the precedent of East Timor's vote for independence and international sensitivity about criticising a now crisis-ridden Indonesia should not be allowed to inhibit West Papua's cause.