www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/police-on-alert-for-worse-violence-in-papua/474079
Police on Alert for Worse Violence In Papua
Banjir Ambarita, Farouk Arnaz & Ronna Nirmala | October 26, 2011
The body of Mulia police chief Adj. Comr. Dominggus Awes being loaded onto a plane to Jayapura from Mulia airport in Puncak Jaya, Papua, on Tuesday. Dominggus was killed by unknown attackers. Antara Photo
Jayapura & Jakarta. The National Police are on the highest alert in Papua after the latest shooting in a spate of increased violence in the restive region.
"Everyone is on alert, especially in Puncak Jaya district," National Police Chief Gen. Timur Pradopo said on Tuesday, a day after two men shot dead the head of the Mulia subdistrict police at the local airport.
The National Police's chief of detectives, Comr. Gen. Sutarman, said Jakarta was sending three teams of 10 police detectives each and 300 more members of the Mobile Brigade (Brimob) to Papua to help hunt down the attackers and reinforce local police.
Shots continued to ring out in Mulia on Tuesday, with an exchange of gunfire at a local Brimob outpost near the Puncak Jaya Police headquarters.
"The separatists shot at the Brimob police outpost twice, in the morning around 7 a.m. and in the afternoon around 1 p.m.," Papua Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Wachyono said, adding that there were no casualties.
Because the Brimob personnel on duty had been on heightened alert, they had been able to fire back, he said. "All our personnel in Puncak Jaya have been asked to remain on alert because they could be attacked anytime," he said.
Unidentified assailants also set the offices of the Mulia Food Resilience Office on fire on Tuesday.
Timur said the police had deployed teams to hunt down the assailants who killed Mulia Police Chief Adj. Comr. Dominggus Otto Awes on Monday. Dominggus, shot in the face and the chest, died on the Mulia Airport apron while his attackers fled into the nearby forest.
Papua has seen a low-intensity and poorly armed separatist movement for the past five decades. Puncak Jaya, in the central Papuan mountain range, is a center of activity for Free Papua Organization (OPM) guerrillas and has seen a series of armed clashes in the past few years.
OPM guerrillas have also been blamed by officials for recent deadly ambushes on vehicles near the giant Freeport-McMoRan mine in Mimika, to the west.
Sutarman said there was no indication that the killing of Dominggus was related to an ongoing labor strike at the Freeport mine or the incident surrounding the disbanding of the Papua People's Congress in Jayapura last week.
Helmy Fauzi, a member of House of Representatives Commission I, dealing with defense affairs, said that the police and not soldiers had to be at the forefront of efforts to re-establish law and order in Papua.
Regretting the violence that has taken place in Papua in recent weeks, he stressed the need "for early detection and prevention" and called on the government not to ignore the problems.
Meanwhile, Usman Hamid, from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said that top alert — for threats of a national scale — was not needed in Papua and sending more police officers there would only worsen the tensions. Dialogue is necessary to address the basic reasons for the protests and violence in Papua, he said.
Djoko Suyanto, the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, called on the public to let the security forces hunt the perpetrators. "This should not be linked to other things, such as human rights. What about the human rights of the subdistrict police chief?" he said.
Further Coverage
Violent upsurge > A5
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