Jakarta – Student and youth protestors from Indonesia's remote Irian Jaya province scuffled with police during a demonstration at the military headquarters here Friday, leaving at least one injured.

Some 40 members of the Front of People Concerned for Papua carrying posters and banners, protested in front of the military headquarters in Central Jakarta before police pushed them away.

A scuffle took place as the baton-wielding police attempted to move the demonstrators away from the front of the headquarters and one protestor was injured by kicks to the head and stomach, witnesses said. The injured man, identified as Clause Oscar Wamafma, a 25-year-old student from a university in Bandung, West Java, was taken to a nearby hospital, witnesses said.

"The suffering of the people of Papua cannot be compensated for by mere autonomy," said one banner carried by the protestors. Others read: "Freedom is not an alternative, it is the only choice," and "Halt the engineering of the aspiration of the people of Papua."

In a statement distributed during the protest, the front urged the government and the military to listen to the people of Irian Jaya, and called for a halt to any attempt to stamp out the cultural identity of its people. It also demanded that the military should account for killings in Irian Jaya and a comprehensive probe of every cases of killing by Indonesian troops should be conducted there. The statement further called for the court martial of local military leaders over deaths during peaceful protests in Irian Jaya earlier this year.

The protestors left the headquarters for the nearby US embassy to convey their statement and report the injury, before marching down a main thouroughfare under the guard of several police and soldiers to their own headquarters in the city's Tanah Abang district.