Calm returned to Papua Province yesterday after three days of tension following a deadly protest against a massive US-owned gold mine in the eastern Indonesian province.
Police have arrested 13 of more than 70 people questioned in connection with the violence -- in which four security officers were bludgeoned to death -- on charges ranging from destruction of property to assault and murder, chief detective Colonel Paulus Waterpauw said.
The killings highlighted the hatred many residents of Indonesia's easternmost province feel toward the country's soldiers and police. Human rights activists accuse authorities of planning a purge of pro-independence activists in the wake of the latest bloodshed.
Protesters say the mine, which is owned by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc, has earned the New Orleans-based company billions of dollars, but the local firm has received little benefit. Freeport, which has acknowledged paying millions of dollars to government troops for security, also is identified with Indonesian oppression by many Papuans.
The province was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 by former dictator Suharto after his security forces orchestrated a referendum in which only 1,025 hand-picked supporters of Indonesian rule took part. The vote is now widely regarded as a sham, and Papuans are demanding a true ballot on self-determination, akin to the one that ended Jakarta's rule in East Timor in 1999.
On Thursday, mine protesters killed three policemen and an air force officer in a rampage when gun-toting security forces fired tear gas and charged protesters with batons in Jayapura, the provincial capital. Papuans said the police shot first, injuring several people, before protesters attacked the security forces.
But by yesterday, no police were left guarding or patrolling the streets around the campus of Cendrawasih University, the location of Thursday's clash.
"People are now going to churches without fear, while shops, stalls and street vendors have returned to their normal activities," Waterpauw said.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
CONFLICT: The move is the latest escalation of the White House’s pitched battle with Harvard University as more than US$2 billion is suspended US President Donald Trump’s administration threatened to assume ownership of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of patents from Harvard University, accusing the Ivy League college of failing to comply with the law on federal research grants. In a letter to Harvard president Alan Garber on Friday, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said the university is failing its obligations to US taxpayers, paving the way for a process that could result in the government seizing its patents under the Bayh-Dole Act. Harvard has until Sept. 5 to prove it is complying with the requirements, including whether it showed a
RSS