Jayapura – Indonesian police late Friday lowered the separatist Morning Star flag in the capital of rebellious Irian Jaya province, to comply with a government-mandated midnight deadline.
There was no immediate resistance from a stunned crowd of some 700 in Jayapura's Imbia Park who had earlier vowed to defend the flying of the flag with their lives, an AFP reporter there said.
A lone woman could be heard sobbing as the officers, marching out of negotiations with pro-independence leaders, lowered the flag shortly before 11pm, an hour before the deadline.
They handed the neatly-folded flag and an Indonesian national flag to a group of women. One of the women then took the Morning Star – the symbol of resistance to Jakarta's rule – into the self-proclaimed headquarters of the independence movement here, in the center of the park.
The crowds, which earlier had numbered some 2,000, had been dancing and singing Christian hymns to celebrate their apparent victory over police when, with vows of martyrdom, they refused to haul down the flag at sunset.
When the flag finally came down, many of those left in the park started to flee, even though the armed Indonesian riot police, who had circled the park all day, had gone.
Jayapura police chief Lieutenant Colonel Daud Sihombing, had told the crowd that his decision not to force the removal of the flag did not mean he was giving permission for it to remain indefinitely, and had warned that their defiance would incur the wrath of Jakarta.
"Jakarta will know instantly what's happening here," he said. "First they'll have a bigger reason for dropping more troops here. "Secondly provocateurs will take advantage of the situation and third if settlers (non-Papuans) are injured I won't be able to stop the Laskar Jihad flooding in," he said. "If that happens there will be chaos here. Is that what you want?"
The Laskar Jihad, an Indonesian extremist Muslim group, has sent hundreds of armed fighters to Indonesia's Maluku islands where they have vowed to wipe out the Christian population.
In Jakarta, some 300 Papuan student demonstrators – celebrating the December 1 anniversary of a unilateral declaration of independence by Papuans before the former Dutch colony became a part of Indonesia – got a taste of how Jakarta felt about their flag.
The police teargassed and beat up students as they rallied peacefully outside the US embassy, demanding Washington's recognition of the 1961 declaration, witnesses said.
They also protested Washington's role 40 years ago as a mediator in the UN approved transfer of Irian Jaya's sovereignty to Indonesia in 1969, which they argue was flawed and unrepresentative. Seven demonstrators were hauled away in police trucks, and three Morning Star flags seized.
Jakarta, which poured 1,300 crack troop reinforcements into the province and slapped four leading separatists in jail ahead of the anniversary, has flatly ruled out independence for the province. The four arrested men – Theys Eluay, the flamboyant head of the pro-independence Papua Council Presidium, and council members John Mambor, Don Flassy and Thaha Al-Hamid, were charged with treason.
On Thursday Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, who in June allowed the presidium to go ahead with their first national congress, warned in a late night speech that Jakarta would not tolerate separatism. He urged Indonesia's different people to live together in peace.
After the flag was lowered, one of the negotiators, Abina Wasanggay, a member of the Papua Women's Alliance, said no announcement had been made to the crowd in the park before the flag came down because "because the people were already angry." "We will see later if it is raised again tomorrow," Wasanggay said when asked what would happen on Saturday.