Kontras claims five missing in Irian Jaya

JAKARTA (JP): Rights activists accused the military yesterday of involvement in the disappearance of five people in a bloody pro-independence demonstration in Biak, Irian Jaya, last month which left at least one person dead.

Munir, the head of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), told a media briefing yesterday that four men and a woman went missing in the July 6 protest in Biak, some 500 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital of Jayapura.

But the Trikora Regional Military Command said yesterday the security authorities had not received any reports of missing people in the wake of the Biak incident.

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Hery Risdianto was quoted by Antara as saying Ruben Orboy, 27, was confirmed dead in the incident.

Munir said the missing were a taxi driver, a student, a former hospital orderly and two employees of a private company, one of whom was a woman.

Munir quoted witnesses who said they saw the taxi driver being dragged away by three security personnel and bundled into a car without a license plate.

In response to the violence in several pro-independence rallies in Irian Jaya between July 1 and July 6, Kontras set up a secretariat in Jayapura Wednesday.

"Security violence cannot be separated from the fact that (Irian Jaya) is a military operation region," Munir said at the briefing at the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute office in Central Jakarta.

"The violence in the forms of disappearances, abuse and even murders have become the greatest threats to the Irianese," he said.

Eight military officers have been implicated in the fatal shooting of student Steven Suripatty during a free-speech forum at Cendrawasih University in Jayapura on July 3.

Ten members of the Youth Committee for the Rights of Peoples of Papua were present at the briefing to seek support from Kontras in their demand for thorough investigation into the alleged military abuse.

"We are here to ask for Kontras' support to feel our pain and defend the rights of their brothers in Irian Jaya," Jimmy Demianus Ijie, the committee's secretary, said.

Ijie also questioned whether a number of bodies identified as casualties of a devastating tidal wave in neighboring Papua New Guinea (PNG) were in fact victims of the military action against demonstrators raising Free Papua flags in Biak.

"It was physically impossible for them to be washed ashore in Biak," he said.

The distance from Biak to the border of PNG is 600 kilometers.

Kontras said in a preliminary report that at least 28 bodies, some with bullet wounds, had been found by fishermen near Biak island shortly after the incident.

The report said the military immediately instructed the fishermen to bury the bodies. (byg)