Tue 24 September 2019:
At least 26 people have been killed, including three shot by police, and dozens injured following a new wave of violent clashes between demonstrators and government forces in Indonesia’s West Papua region on Monday, prompting President Joko Widodo to call a security meeting.
Papua, on the western half of New Guinea island, has been gripped by weeks of violent protests fuelled by anger over racism, as well as fresh calls for self-rule in the impoverished territory.
Some 22 people died in Wamena city where hundreds had demonstrated and burned down a government office and other buildings on Monday, with some victims perishing in deliberately set fires, authorities said, as they upped the death toll from a previous 20 with more than 70 injured.
Some 700 people had been rounded up for questioning over the deadly riots, the military said.
Most victims in Wamena were non-Papuans, authorities said, threatening an escalation in violence against migrants from other parts of the Southeast Asian archipelago.
Most of the recent clashes have been between separatist protesters and Indonesian security forces.
A soldier and three civilians also died in provincial capital Jayapura, where security forces and stone-throwing protesters clashed Monday.
The soldier was stabbed to death, while three students died from rubber bullet wounds, authorities said, without elaborating.
– ‘Racist comments’ –
Monday’s protests in Wamena — mostly involving high-schoolers — were reportedly sparked by racist comments made by a teacher, but police have disputed that account as a “hoax”.
Indonesia’s West Papua region is divided into two provinces: West Papua and Papua. Jayapura is the biggest city in Papua province, with a population of some 500,000 people.
Several people were killed during protests in Jayapura last month when the unrest erupted.
Since then, the government has deployed thousands of troops to the region and arrested activists to quell the protests.
West Papua was a Dutch colony until the early 1960s when Indonesia took control, cementing its rule with a controversial referendum.
The government in Jakarta maintains the West Papua region, which occupies the western half of the island of Papua New Guinea, is Indonesia’s because it was part of the Dutch East Indies that forms the basis of the country’s modern-day borders.
A low-level armed rebellion by indigenous Papuans, who now make up about half the population after years of migration by people from other parts of Indonesia, has been rumbling ever since.
West Papua is the poorest region in the country and there have been allegations of human rights violations.
At least 17 people were killed after violence erupted in December, which triggered a military crackdown.
Some 35,000 civilians have been forced from their homes as security forces attempt to flush out the rebels from the forested mountains.
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