Tembagapura, -Indonesian
police said they helped evacuate more than 340 people Friday from
villages in easternmost Papua after security forces apparently gained
the upper hand in a standoff with separatists. It was unclear if there
were any casualties.
Papua police spokesman
Suryadi Diaz said the villages of Kimbeli and Banti, where separatists
stationed gunmen last week, were secured and 344 people including two
dozen children were evacuated by bus to a nearby town. Those who left
were mostly migrants from other regions while hundreds of indigenous
Papuans stayed behind, police said.
Diaz said in a statement
that the evacuation was preceded by a two-hour security operation that
"hit back" against the separatists. Earlier Friday, a spokesman for the
separatist National Liberation Army of West Papua said in an email that a
military surveillance drone had flown over the area. A commander for
the group could not be reached by mobile phone.
Another Papua police
spokesman, Ahmad Musthofa Kamal, said that gunfire from hills
surrounding one village had hampered the efforts of about 300 police and
military personnel to move people.
Indonesia restricts journalist access to Papua and police information is not always reliable.
Tensions in the region
near the U.S.-owned Grasberg gold and copper mine have flared in the
past month. A series of attacks by suspected separatists have killed two
policemen and injured more than half a dozen others.
Members of the National
Liberation Army of West Papua last month declared an area near the mine a
battlefield with Indonesian security forces and last week stationed
armed men in the two main affected villages, Kimbeli and Banti, that are
home to about 1,300 people.
A low-level insurgency
for independence has simmered in Papua since it was annexed by Indonesia
in the early 1960s. The region, which makes up the western half of the
island of New Guinea,
was formally incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 following a
U.N.-sponsored ballot of tribal leaders that has since been dismissed as
a sham.
Police had made
contradictory statements about the status of the villagers, initially
calling them hostages and then in other instances saying their movements
were not being restricted.
A commander of the armed
separatist group, which uses the Indonesian acronym TNP, told The
Associated Press last week that villagers were generally free to go
about their business but prohibited from entering the area defined as a
conflict zone.
Source : http://abcnews.go.com
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar