Lindsay Murdoch and Andrew Kilvert – A Jakarta-based organisation with criminal connections and links to Indonesia's military and Golkar, the former ruling party, is secretly funding part of a burgeoning independence movement in the country's far eastern province of Papua.
Indonesia's armed forces are also believed to be training and funding an East Timor-style anti-independence militia which has already attacked and tortured scores of villagers in the province, formerly called Irian Jaya.
Observers in the provincial capital, Jayapura, fear that the organisation, Pemuda Pancasila, Golkar's youth wing, is backing independence leaders with the aim of fomenting enough civil unrest to force the armed forces to launch a crackdown that would crush the anti-Jakarta movement.
Papua's chief of police, Brigadier-General Silvanus Wenas, has confirmed to The Herald that Pemuda Pancasila's deputy chairman, Yorris Raweyai, is channelling money to the independence movement.
Before his downfall two years ago, president Soeharto used the organisation to perform "dirty tricks" such as provoking riots and attacking his political rivals.
The paramilitary organisation is understood to receive large amounts of money from illegal activities such as gambling, prostitution and protection rackets.
Yorris is awaiting trial in Jakarta on charges relating to a 1996 attack by his thugs on the headquarters of the then opposition leader and now Vice-President, Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri. Mr Soeharto is believed to have approved the attack, which left five people dead, 149 hurt and more than 23 missing.
Asked about money from Pemuda Pancasila, General Wenas confirmed it was being used by the self-proclaimed independence leader Mr Theys Eluay to build up his own 7,000-strong militia called Satgas Papua, or Task Force Papua, which provided the main security for a conference on the province's future in Jayapura this week.
Human rights activists have information that Indonesia's military is funding the training of its own militia, called Satgas Merah Putih, or Red and White Task Force, to counter Mr Eluay's militia.
The Merah Putih militia joined Indonesian troops in March to attack a village near the town of Fak Fak. The villagers had beaten up a Jakarta-appointed administrator. Human rights investigators have told the United Nations that 45 villagers were arrested and tortured at a Fak Fak police station.
Observers fear that some Indonesian authorities want to encourage clashes between the two militias that would see the independence side crushed and its leaders either killed or jailed. The Herald has found that Mr Eluay's militiamen have assaulted and threatened people they suspected of being opposed to independence. "We are afraid it's a case of give them enough rope and they will hang themselves," a social worker in Jayapura said.
Mr John Rumbiak, the head of ELS-HAM, the main human rights organisation in the province, said the militias "can be conditioned to commit crimes that will justify the military attacking and destroying the people's struggle. It's scary. It's very dangerous."
Tensions are high in the province following this week's landmark Papuan People's Congress, which is scheduled to end today. Most of the 2,700 delegates are demanding that Jakarta allow the province to break away, citing repression by the army and police, financial exploitation and Jakarta's failure to fulfil promises of autonomy.