PNG police join hunt for Irianese rebels
JAYAPURA, Irian Jaya (JP): Papua New Guinea (PNG) police are helping Indonesian security authorities track down a group of 30 Irianese separatist rebels who, with 11 people they abducted, are on hiding in the neighboring country.
Chief of Trikora military command overseeing Irian Jaya and Maluku Maj. Gen. Amir Sembiring said on Saturday that a team from PNG had patrolled the Bewani valley, near the Irian Jaya border district of Skow. The rebels are believed to be in a hideout somewhere in the valley.
"Their (PNG's) positive response is a breakthrough, given the fact that the two countries do not have an extradition accord. This coordination is the fruit of good understanding both countries have built," Sembiring said.
He said four platoons taken from the military command's Garuda Darat infantry battalion, plus soldiers at the border posts, had been deployed to find the rebel group, known as the Free Papua Movement (OPM).
According to Sembiring, the troops are equipped with two helicopters.
He said security authorities both in Indonesia and PNG had yet to find traces of the separatist rebels, who killed four residents and wounded three others on Wednesday in an afternoon attack on a transmigration settlement in Moor village, Arso district, near here.
The rebel group also reportedly looted stores of staple foodstuffs and stole Rp 200,000 (US$25) in cash from a woman.
"Hopefully we can find out how the hostages are or perhaps get them released as soon as possible, thanks to the PNG police's assistance," Sembiring said. Most of the kidnappees are women.
Moor is home to workers and their families of a state coconut hybrid plantation. They migrated from Kebumen, Central Java. A total of 44 families were resettled there last year.
All the casualties were flown back to their villages in Java on Friday. The injured are being treated at the state hospital here. One of them, Suryanto, is in the intensive care unit due to serious stab wounds.
Antara reported that Governor Freddy Numberi visited the victims on Saturday. Numberi condemned the OPM rebels, calling them a group of inhuman people.
Sembiring said he was consulting the plantation company's management on a possibility of increasing the number of security personnel in its compound.
"We don't know security conditions there because they have never talked to us," Sembiring said.
All transmigrant families living in the village have taken refuge five kilometers away in Arso for fear of another assault by the separatist rebel group.
Some of the refugees told The Jakarta Post they wanted to leave Irian Jaya.
"We are not safe here. We want to return to Java or some other transmigration settlement," one of the plantation worker, Ngadimin, said.
Separatism has been a long-standing problem in Irian Jaya, the western part of Papua, and one of Indonesia's biggest and richest provinces. But it has become an even greater force following the resignation of president Soeharto in May last year.
The last kidnapping by the OPM occurred in January 1996, when a group of rebels led by Kelly Kwalik kidnapped 26 locals and researchers, including seven foreigners, in Mapenduma in Jayawijaya regency. A military operation four months later ended the hostage-taking drama and released the remaining nine people held captive. (34/amd)