Activist killing sparks riot in Indonesia's Papua
JEFREY PATTIRAJAWANE, Associated Press
Updated 04:43 a.m., Friday, June 15, 2012
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A Papuan man walks past a burning car following a riot in Waena district, Jayapura, Papua province, Indonesia, Thursday, June 14, 2012. Angry mobs burned cars and motorcycles after an independent activist was shot dead by the police during his arrest, news reports said. A small, poorly armed separatist movement has battled Indonesian rule since it took over West Papua from Dutch colonial rule in 1963. Photo: AP / APA plain-clothes police officer and residents walk past a burning motorcycle following a riot in Waena district, Jayapura, Papau province, Indonesia, Thursday, June 14, 2012. Angry mobs burned cars and motorcycles after an independent activist was shot dead by the police during his arrest, news reports said. A small, poorly armed separatist movement has battled Indonesian rule since it took over West Papua from Dutch colonial rule in 1963. Photo: AP / AP
JAYAPURA, Indonesia (AP)
— Rioters angry over the killing of an independence activist by police
set fires and killed one person in Indonesia's restive Papua province
before hundreds of security forces restored order, the police chief
said Friday.
Mobs stabbed an onlooker
to death, injured four other people and burned five shops, four cars
and more than 20 motorbikes Thursday, hours after they learned police
had shot and killed Mako
Tabuni, the deputy chairman of the National
Committee for West Papua.
Shops were closed
Friday, and many people were afraid to leave their homes.
"It is safe and quiet
now. There are many troops on the streets," said Papua police chief Maj.
Gen. Bigman
Lumban Tobing. He said police detained three people and seized
several handmade bombs, machetes, arrows, separatist flags and documents
during a raid in a student dormitory in Jayapura.
A low-level insurgency
in the province remains an extremely sensitive issue for the government,
which restricts access to foreign journalists, human rights workers and
academics, making it difficult to verify claims of abuses.
Tobing said Tabuni was
shot Thursday morning when police tried to arrest him near Waena housing
complex in Jayapura, the capital of Papua province. He said Tabuni
fought back and grabbed a weapon from an officer before he was shot.
Tobing said Tabuni was
suspected in a recent spate of attacks in the province. He said 16
people, including seven soldiers and police, have been killed in
different places in Papua since last month. Four were
pro-independence activists.
Human
Rights Watch, however, says the military is responsible for some of
the violence. The New York-based group said the government is failing
to adequately investigate the killings, and is preventing rights
monitors and journalists from going to Papua to see for themselves.
"Allowing full access to
the province for U.N.
rights experts and the press could curtail the rumors and
misinformation that often fuel abuses," Elaine
Pearson, Human Rights Watch's deputy Asia director, said in a
statement Wednesday.
President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono has conceded that Indonesian security forces have
overreacted at times but said the attacks were "on a small scale with
limited victims."
Tobing said that
following Tabuni's death, a crowd of protesters went on a rampage in
Jayapura, many of them were carrying machetes and arrows. Police said
most of those injured or killed in Thursday's riot were settlers from
elsewhere in Indonesia.
Papua, a former Dutch
colony in the western part of New Guinea, was incorporated into
Indonesia in 1969 after a U.N.-sponsored ballot. A small, poorly armed
separatist group known as the Free
Papua Movement has battled for independence since then..
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