AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Sunday November 11, 2001 10:33 PM
Violence erupts after killing of Papua independence leader
Protestors set alight buildings in the hometown of Irian Jaya independence leader
Theys Hiyo Eluay, whose body was found after he was abducted in the remote
Indonesian province, an activist said.
Passengers on Garuda flights due to leave Jakarta later Sunday for Jayapura, the
provincial capital of Irian Jaya, were told that because of security reasons the flights
would terminate at Biak, 555 kilometers (344 miles) west of Jayapura.
Jayapura airport at Sentani, Eluay's hometown 55 kilometres west of the provincial
capital, could not be reached for comment.
A policeman on duty at Sentani, who only identified himself as Muar, said that people
were massing around Eluay's home and on the town's main approach road awaiting
the arrival of the independence leader's body .
National police spokesman Brigadier General Saleh Saaf said from Jakarta that at
least four companies of police and two of soldiers had been deployed in Sentani. One
company comprises around 100 men.
Aloysius Renwarin, the deputy director of the human rights group Elsham, told AFP
from Jayapura, that locals, angered by the discovery of Eluay's body had torched
several shops and buildings in Sentani.
After an autopsy lasing more than four hours at Jayapura general hospital and a Mass
attended by hundreds of people, the body of Eluay was prepared to be taken by a
heavily escorted convoy to Sentani, his lawyer Anum Siregar said.
Eluay's body was found in his car which was lodged against a tree at the top of a
ravine in Koya, some nine kilometres from the border between the Indonesian province
and Papua New Guinea.
Pictures apparently of Eluay's corpse show his body was bruised, his face darkened
and his tongue sticking out, indicating possible strangulation.
Eluay, who chaired the pro-independence Papua Praesidium, went missing after
unidentified men, said to be non-Irianese, stopped his car late on Saturday evening
halfway between Jayapura and Sentani.
Eluay and four other members of the pro-independence Papua Presidium -- Don
Flassy, John Mabror, Reverend Herman Awom and Thaha Al-Hamid -- have been on
trial in Jayapura on charges of subversion for demanding independence for Irian Jaya,
known locally as Papua.
They were arrested and charged around last year's December 1 anniversary of a
declaration of Papuan independence. They were released from detention in March.
Irian Jaya is Indonesia's easternmost province, lying on the western half of New
Guinea island. Local resentment has simmered over the central government's
exploitation of its rich oil, gas and mineral reserves.
Anger has also been fostered by the resettlement in the province of huge numbers of
Javanese, and by the occasional brutality of security forces.
Independence supporters, including Eluay's Papua Presidium, maintain that a 1969
UN-sponsored plebiscite, that reaffirmed Indonesian sovereignty over the former Dutch
territory, was flawed and unrepresentative.
Eluay and the presidium have also rejected a broad special autonomy passed by the
Indonesian parliament in October in efforts to head off pressure for independence.
Copyright © 2001 AFP. All rights reserved.
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