Kontras claims five missing in Irian Jaya

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)