Asmara Nababan, member of the National Human Rights Commission, Komnas HAM, speaking to the press at Jayapura airport shortly before returning to Jakarta on 15 June, confirmed that human rights abuses as documented in a report submitted to the Commission last month by three church leaders in the region of Timika had indeed occurred].

He said that the moment he and his fellow member of the Commission, Clementiono dos Rais, landed in Timika last week, they visited the villages of Jila and Bela by helicopter and held discussions with the local inhabitants about the reported shootings, acts of violence, the burning of churches and people's homes and the destruction of gardens.

After discussions with villagers in Bela which we visited first, said Nababan, we were taken to see the churches that had been burnt by members of the armed forces at the time. The churches referred to were buildings that were slightly larger than the traditional honai houses, built specifically for the purpose of communal prayer. Some of the houses that had been burnt down by the troops had now been rebuilt and people were living their lives as before.

The Commission members were taken to the grave of one of the victims of a shooting incident.

In Jila, they had discussions with about 400 villagers. There is now a military post, Koramil, and a police office, Polsek in the village. They spoke to several witnesses of the abuses that had been reported. They also met one person who had sustained a gunshot wound during one of the incidents but had survived.

Nababan said that the human rights violations had occurred on such a scale and the area was so extensive and difficult that more than two people would be needed to conduct the investigations. He said that from what they had already seen and heard, they could confirm that abuses had occurred as indicated in the church report.

Because of the scale of the problem, they had decided to return to Jakarta and plan to return to Timika next week with a much larger team so that each of the villages where abuses had occurred could be visited. They promised that their findings would be made known to all the inhabitants of Irian Jaya.

He also said that the villagers they had met had asked for all armed forces posts to be withdrawn. Who do they want to wage war with, some villagers had asked. there are no enemies here.