Darren Whiteside, Jayapura – Around 10,000 pro-independence supporters in Indonesia's remote Papua province marched peacefully behind the body of their dead leader on Tuesday, making the long trek to his home town.
Police presence was light as the vast crowd made the winding 45-km journey from the local capital Jayapura to the family home of Theys Eluay in Sentani under cloudy skies.
Analysts have said Eluay's death at the weekend could be a setback to Indonesian hopes of calming separatist tensions in the resource-rich province, especially if evidence points to murder.
Most of the marchers sang patriotic songs or shouted "Merdeka (Independence)! Merdeka!" while others carried the separatist Papuan Morning Star Flag as they walked. A few wore elaborate head dresses made of feathers and some women wept.
The cause of the death of Papuan Presidium Council chairman Eluay remains a mystery, with doctors who examined him quoted by local media on Tuesday as saying the eccentric white-haired chief might not have been murdered.
But the New York-based Human Rights Watch has called Eluay's death a well-planned assassination while the council insisted their leader had been killed. "Despite some speculation, his death was clearly murder ... We call on the authorities to solve this," Thaha Al-Hamid, secretary-general of the council, told Reuters.
Choked to death
Doctor Kelemen Mayakori, head of the Jayapura General Hospital, told the Jakarta Post newspaper Eluay had choked to death but he ruled out strangulation because there was no bruise on the Papuan chief's neck.
"What we found was the usual condition of a person who hangs himself ... He did not die of a gunshot wound," he said. Doctors were not immediately available to comment.
Jakarta recently handed greater powers to Papua to manage its own affairs, but this overture was rejected by the council, an umbrella group of Papuan leaders seeking independence peacefully. The council eschews the hard line taken by the pro-independence Free Papua Movement (OPM), rebels who have been fighting a low-level guerrilla war for decades.
The jungle-clad province was known as Irian Jaya until the national parliament changed its name to Papua last month. Jayapura – about 3,700 km east of Jakarta – was calm on Tuesday as business began returning to normal, although many shops remained closed in the provincial capital.
Eluay's supporters followed his body from the local parliament building, where it lay overnight. People lined the roads along the way to Sentani, offering flowers to people in the procession, which was expected to arrive late on Tuesday. Most shops along the route were closed.
Family members plan to hold Eluay's funeral on December 1 – the 40th anniversary of the declaration of independence by Papuan separatists. "The situation [in Papua] is calm," Janner Pasaribu, the province's police spokesman, told Reuters.
Police have said the 64-year-old Eluay was kidnapped and found dead on Sunday in his upturned car at Koya, a town 50 km east of Jayapura, where tribal chiefs wearing little but penis gourds still walk the streets.
Speculation about his death
Some members of the council said there appeared to have been foul play in Eluay's death, and pointed fingers at the military.
The military has denied playing any role in the death. National police spokesman Saleh Saaf speculated Eluay had been murdered by his own men. "Theys was relatively moderate in the struggle for a Free Papua, using diplomacy and non-violence. Maybe the Free Papuan hardliners murdered him," Saaf was quoted by the Post as saying.
While the council represents various tribal leaders and other figureheads in the province of some two million people, many doubt whether it represents the many who live in the jungles and remote mountain areas of the vast province.
Theys himself was once a parliamentarian in the ruling Golkar party, for decades the political vehicle of former President Suharto. Several council members were also close associates of Suharto's family.
Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1963 after heavy diplomatic pressure on the Netherlands, Indonesia's former colonial ruler. In 1969 a UN-run plebiscite was held among local leaders, including Eluay, which resulted in a vote to join Indonesia. The vote has been widely criticised as unfair.
The province is home to the world's biggest copper and gold mine, operated by PT Freeport Indonesia, a unit of New Orleans-based Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.