Indonesian police have arrested dozens of people in the easternmost region of Papua following protests last week in which buildings were set ablaze, a police spokesman said yesterday.
The area has been racked by civil unrest for two weeks over perceived racial and ethnic discrimination. Some protesters are also demanding an independence vote, although authorities have ruled out such a possibility.
In the provincial capital of Jayapura, 28 people have been arrested and named as suspects, and more face investigation, Papuan police spokesman Ahmad Kamal said by telephone.
Photo: AFP
‘VIOLENCE AND LOOTING’
“Twenty-eight people are suspects in cases of damaging and burning properties, violence, provocation and looting,” Kamal said, adding that all of them had been arrested after a protest in Jayapura on Thursday.
The rioters reportedly set vehicles and buildings ablaze, including a local parliament office and a building housing the offices of the state-controlled telecom firm, during the protest.
Photo: AP
Kamal said that the situation in Papua was now calmer.
In Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, two students suspected of crimes against state security have been arrested, police said in a statement on Saturday.
EVIDENCE
The evidence against them included their mobile telephones, and a shirt and a shawl emblazoned with the Morning Star flag pattern, a banned symbol of Papuan nationhood.
Jakarta Legal Aid lawyer Michael Himan said the two were arrested from a Papuan dormitory in Depok, in a southern part of the capital, late on Friday.
They were charged with treasonous intent against the unity of the nation, Himan told reporters yesterday.
In a statement, Jakarta Legal Aid said that the police also arrested several other Papuan students and an activist in Jakarta on Saturday.
The reason for the arrest of the rest was still unclear, Himan said.
Spokesmen for the national police and Jakarta police were not immediately available to comment.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
Ecuadorans are today to vote on whether to allow the return of foreign military bases and the drafting of a new constitution that could give the country’s president more power. Voters are to decide on the presence of foreign military bases, which have been banned on Ecuadoran soil since 2008. A “yes” vote would likely bring the return of the US military to the Manta air base on the Pacific coast — once a hub for US anti-drug operations. Other questions concern ending public funding for political parties, reducing the number of lawmakers and creating an elected body that would
‘ATTACK ON CIVILIZATION’: The culture ministry released drawings of six missing statues representing the Roman goddess of Venus, the tallest of which was 40cm Investigators believe that the theft of several ancient statues dating back to the Roman era from Syria’s national museum was likely the work of an individual, not an organized gang, officials said on Wednesday. The National Museum of Damascus was closed after the heist was discovered early on Monday. The museum had reopened in January as the country recovers from a 14-year civil war and the fall of the 54-year al-Assad dynasty last year. On Wednesday, a security vehicle was parked outside the main gate of the museum in central Damascus while security guards stood nearby. People were not allowed in because
Tanzanian politicians are in shock over the massacre of hundreds of young protesters during its recent election, insiders told Agence France-Presse, but are too afraid to speak out as a tiny cabal around the president takes control. Gruesome images of dead Tanzanians have flooded the Internet in the wake of the Oct. 29 elections that triggered widespread protests over government repression. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan officially won with 98 percent of the vote, but key opposition leaders were jailed or disqualified. The opposition said that more than 1,000 people were killed as security forces crushed the protests under cover of a five-day
RSS