Troops patrolling the Indonesian city of Jayapura rounded up suspects yesterday after a frenzied mob bludgeoned to death four security officers during a protest over the world's largest gold and copper mine.
National police spokesman Brigadier General Anton Bachrul Alam told reporters 57 people had been arrested, though only five were named suspects, including one of the alleged protest organizers. They could face charges of assault, murder or destroying public property, he said.
Thursday's demonstration in Jayapura, Papua's provincial capital, was the most violent in a series targeting the US-owned Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc in recent weeks -- and the killings of three policemen and one air force officer underscored the deep hatred many Papuans feel toward Indonesian security forces.
A decades-long separatist rebellion in the remote province has left more than 100,000 dead, many of them civilians who suffered from mistreatment, starvation and other consequences of the war.
Protesters demanded that Freeport's massive gold mine be shut, saying that while it has earned the New Orleans-based company billions of dollars in revenue, the local community has received little or no benefit.
They went on a rampage after gun-toting security forces fired tear gas in an effort to break up the rally, charging demonstrators with their batons. Hundreds of shots were fired, though police insisted they did not use live ammunition.
"Indonesia should respect the Papuans," resident Robi Kubi said yesterday, as a tense calm returned to the provincial capital. "We have huge natural resources, but why are they extracted by foreigners while the Papuans are still poor?"
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono sent top security chiefs to the region to probe the unrest, and warned that some people were trying to manipulate anger over Freeport into a push for independence. They would not succeed, he said.
Hundreds of paramilitary police stood guard near the state-run university, the site of Thursday's demonstration. The campus was largely deserted yesterday.
London-based Human Rights Watch called on authorities to determine why the rally spiraled out of control.
The group's Asia director, Brad Adams, said it appeared that police may have opened fire first on the demonstrators, wounding several of them, who then responded by attacking the officers with rocks and knives.
One resident, Marcus, said he was walking by the university when he heard gun shots.
"I was chased by plainclothes police and then beaten up," the 31-year-old man said from Jayapura Public Hospital, his face badly bruised. "I didn't know anything about the protest, but I was a victim. My face hurts. I lost my money. And my family does not know where I am."
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS