Kontras claims five missing in Irian Jaya<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Rights activists accused the military yesterday
\nof involvement in the disappearance of five people in a bloody
\npro-independence demonstration in Biak, Irian Jaya, last month
\nwhich left at least one person dead.<\/p>\n
Munir, the head of the Commission for Missing Persons and
\nVictims of Violence (Kontras), told a media briefing yesterday
\nthat four men and a woman went missing in the July 6 protest in
\nBiak, some 500 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital of
\nJayapura.<\/p>\n
But the Trikora Regional Military Command said yesterday the
\nsecurity authorities had not received any reports of missing
\npeople in the wake of the Biak incident.<\/p>\n
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Hery Risdianto was quoted by
\nAntara as saying Ruben Orboy, 27, was confirmed dead in the
\nincident.<\/p>\n
Munir said the missing were a taxi driver, a student, a former
\nhospital orderly and two employees of a private company, one of
\nwhom was a woman.<\/p>\n
Munir quoted witnesses who said they saw the taxi driver being
\ndragged away by three security personnel and bundled into a car
\nwithout a license plate.<\/p>\n
In response to the violence in several pro-independence
\nrallies in Irian Jaya between July 1 and July 6, Kontras set up a
\nsecretariat in Jayapura Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\"Security violence cannot be separated from the fact that
\n(Irian Jaya) is a military operation region,\" Munir said at the
\nbriefing at the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute office in Central
\nJakarta.<\/p>\n
\"The violence in the forms of disappearances, abuse and even
\nmurders have become the greatest threats to the Irianese,\" he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
Eight military officers have been implicated in the fatal
\nshooting of student Steven Suripatty during a free-speech forum
\nat Cendrawasih University in Jayapura on July 3.<\/p>\n
Ten members of the Youth Committee for the Rights of Peoples
\nof Papua were present at the briefing to seek support from
\nKontras in their demand for thorough investigation into the
\nalleged military abuse.<\/p>\n
\"We are here to ask for Kontras' support to feel our pain and
\ndefend the rights of their brothers in Irian Jaya,\" Jimmy
\nDemianus Ijie, the committee's secretary, said.<\/p>\n
Ijie also questioned whether a number of bodies identified as
\ncasualties of a devastating tidal wave in neighboring Papua New
\nGuinea (PNG) were in fact victims of the military action against
\ndemonstrators raising Free Papua flags in Biak.<\/p>\n
\"It was physically impossible for them to be washed ashore in
\nBiak,\" he said.<\/p>\n
The distance from Biak to the border of PNG is 600 kilometers.<\/p>\n
Kontras said in a preliminary report that at least 28 bodies,
\nsome with bullet wounds, had been found by fishermen near Biak
\nisland shortly after the incident.<\/p>\n
The report said the military immediately instructed the
\nfishermen to bury the bodies. (byg)<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/kontras-claims-five-missing-in-irian-jaya-1447893297",
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