Victims of Abepura riot live in misery
Victims of Abepura riot live in misery
JAKARTA (JP): The more than 230 families whose businesses were hit by massive rioting in Abepura last week are badly in need of food and medicine, a local official said Saturday.
Jayapura Mayor Raden Roemantyo said the families lost their livelihoods after their shops in the central Abepura market near the capital were reduced to ashes by rioters on March 18.
"They are being accommodated in makeshift tents set up by the local government outside the market. Their living conditions are deplorable," he said.
Many eat only once a day, he said. Clean water is scarce, the environment is dirty and the fear of diseases is widespread, he added.
Most of the traders who have refused to live in the tents have been put up by their relatives in Abepura or Jayapura, the Antara news agency reported.
The Abepura market was torched by hundreds of Irianese natives after security personnel barred them from seeing the body of Tom Wapai Wanggai, an activist in the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM).
Wanggai died in a Jakarta prison while he was serving his 20- year term. Armed Forces (ABRI) officials said the angry people had been fooled by rumors that Wanggai was murdered.
Students at Cendrawasih University in Abepura had hoped that Wanggai'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 Jayapura airport to Wanggai's house in Dock 9, an elite housing complex, the students, joined by local youths, rampaged.
Four people, including a security officer, were killed, several cars were burned and many houses pelted with stones in the incident.
Roemantyo said the incident caused estimated losses of about 10 billion (about US$4.3 million).
Medical personnel have been called in to help the victims injured in the rioting but medical supplies are insufficient, he said.
Local security authorities said 133 people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the violent protest, 43 of whom are suspected of masterminding the incident.
Antara reported that those suspected of involvement are being handled by the police and those facing subversion charges are in the hands of the military.
Quoting police sources, the crackdown will continue until all the suspects have been arrested.
Religious leaders in the easternmost province have condemned the violence.
Chief of the Armed Forces' general affairs department Lt. Gen. Soeyono said last week that the authorities are investigating allegations that the rioting in Abepura and Timika were controlled by a Jakarta-based non-governmental organization. (pan)