Activist rebuffs NGO's alleged role in Irian riots

Activist rebuffs NGO's alleged role in Irian riots

SURABAYA (JP): The Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation challenged the military's allegation that the recent spate of rioting in Irian Jaya was the handiwork of a Jakarta non-governmental organization.

"The accusation is unfounded," foundation chief Bambang Widjojanto, who worked in Irian Jaya for seven years, said here on Wednesday.

If NGO activists are seen mingling with people, this is because their commitment is to help them develop their creativity, he told journalists.

The allegations of NGO involvement were made recently by Lt. Gen. Soeyono, chief of the Armed Forces' (ABRI) general affairs. Soeyono refused to name the suspected organization.

Soeyono said he did not mean to accuse the NGO. He said an activist of the NGO was seen in the crowd that ran amok in Abepura on March 18.

Four people, including one off-duty soldier, were killed in the incident which was sparked this time by the authorities' refusal to allow locals to see the body of Free Papua Movement (OPM) activist Tom Wanggai.

Riots have been breaking out with alarming frequency in Timika, aimed at PT Freeport Indonesia, an American mining company they accuse of looting Irian Jaya's natural wealth.

"The rampaging people were acting spontaneously. No one orchestrated them," he said. "Many Irianese consider Tom Wanggai their hero."

Wanggai recently died in a Jakarta prison where he was serving a 20-year term for trying to turn Irian Jaya into independent West Melanesia in 1988.

The military said Wanggai's sympathizers in Abepura believed that he had been murdered.

Bambang, whose defense of Irianese indigenous people's rights won him the Robert Kennedy Human Rights Awards in 1993, said the smoldering rebellion is a result of the mounting frustration over the injustices they are confronted with.

The local community has no channel to express its views and people are now finding ways to vent their anger, he explained.

Irian has a serious unemployment problem as most well-paid jobs and senior positions in the government go to people from outside Irian Jaya, Bambang said.

The industrial sector in the territory, which is three times the size of Java and has a population of only around two million, has not been able to accommodate the local educated elite.

"It is only logical if people resort to violence and make problems for the government," he said.

Regarding a related development, the authorities in Abepura denied press reports that the March 18 riot was masterminded by a policewoman who supported Wanggai's cause.

Chief of the Irian Jaya police command's detective Col. Leonard Siahaan dismissed this as fabrication.

He said the policewoman in question is an aide of Irian Jaya governor Jacob Pattipi's wife. Her husband, a civil servant, has been detained on charges of embezzling state money, and is on subversion charges.

"The ABRI officer who came to her house wanted to ask her about her husband's health, not to interrogate her as was erroneously reported," he said. (15/pan)