Two people die as riots rock Jayapura

Two people die as riots rock Jayapura

JAKARTA (JP): A market was torched and several cars and houses
damaged as hundreds of students and youths ran riot in Jayapura
yesterday, officials and residents in the Irian Jaya capital
said.

An official at the emergency room of the Jayapura General
Hospital said two people had died and three others were injured
in the riot.

"One person was stabbed, and another was gored by a machete.
Both of them are dead. We have three others who are wounded," the
official told The Jakarta Post by phone last night.

He declined to give details about the victims, whose bodies
were brought to the hospital at 2:00 p.m. local time.

Calm was restored by the evening in Abepura district, home of
the state Cendrawasih University campus where the riot
originated.

A woman resident living in a government employee housing
complex in Abepura said residents were too afraid to venture
outside last night. She added that the main roads have been
blocked by security officers.

Jayapura Police Chief Lt. Col. Sentot Sukandono said his force
was still investigating the cause of the riots.

Residents and officials said the riots started shortly after
Thomas Wapay Wainggai's body arrived in the city. He was an
Irianese separatist leader who died while in a Jakarta prison
last week.

Many Cendrawasih students had hoped that Wainggai's remains
would be brought to the campus where he once was a professor.

When they learned that the body had been driven straight from
the airport to Wainggai's house in Dock 9, an elite housing
complex, the students, joined by local youths, rampaged.

Second Sergeant Rusmanto of the Trikora Military Regional
Command said Abepura's main market was razed.

Buildings, houses and passing vehicles were also attacked by
the angry crowd, he said.

Some non-Irianese also fell victim to the mob.

Taufik H. Mihardja, a journalist from the Jakarta-based Kompas
daily was hit in the head and back while taking photographs of
the riots, according to a colleague in Jakarta. Taufik was not
hospitalized, but he lost his camera and tape recorder, the
colleague said.

Budhi Setyanto, the director of the Jayapura Office of the
Legal Aid Institute (LBH), told the Post that the situation in
Jayapura was critical.

The mob indiscriminately attacked houses, shops and vehicles,
Budhi said.

"Our operational car was destroyed," he said. "The LBH office
was almost attacked. Fortunately, somebody in the crowd reminded
the others that this was the LBH office."

Calm returned as night fell, but a power outage made the
situation tense, Budhi added.

Budhi said the crowd turned violent because security forces
blocked the locals' attempts to pay their last respects to
Wainggai.

Wainggai, 59, was convicted in 1989 under the subversion law
for leading a ceremony the previous year in Jayapura's Mandala
football stadium in which he proclaimed West Papua an independent
state. More than 60 people took part in the ceremony.

He was sent to the Cipinang penitentiary in Jakarta to serve
his 20-year sentence.

He collapsed in his prison cell on March 12, apparently after
refusing to be treated by a police doctor, insisting to be seen
by a doctor from the International Committee of the Red Cross. He
reportedly died on the way to the hospital.

The exact cause of his death has not been publicly announced.
An autopsy was performed on Saturday, witnessed by a Red Cross
official, according to a relative in Jakarta.

Wainggai obtained a masters degree in law from Okayama
University in Japan in 1969, and a doctorate in public
administration from Florida State University in 1985.

He was still registered as a staff lecturer of the Cendrawasih
University when he was arrested in 1988. (imn/has)