Jakarta – Indonesia's top security minister on Monday defended the actions of police who shot dead separatist supporters during a protest in remote Irian Jaya province 17 days ago, sparking riots that killed 31 people.
"The police acted proportionately to the unrest," Coordinating Minister for Political, Security and Social Affairs, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, told a luncheon with foreign journalists here.
"There was some sort of resentment against the police action, which caused casualties among the police, and also the indigenous people organised within the [pro-independence] Papua Taskforce," he added. Police opened fire on pro-independence Papuans protesting against the removal of Morning Star separatist flags in the hinterland town of Wamena on October 6, killing four.
Another two died from bullet wounds during later clashes between the police and the pro-independence supporters, hospital and human rights sources have said.
The shootings enraged members of the Papua Taskforce, a pro-independence civilian paramilitary organisation, who with residents from surrounding hills, then attacked police and migrant settlers, killing 25 of the settlers.
Yudhoyono also lashed at the Papua Council and its Presidium, the bodies now spearheading the independence push, for abusing the government's trust and for seeking the support of Pacific nations.
He said the bodies had swayed from their original role of helping the government to implement wide-ranging autonomy for the province. "Unfortunately the trust given by the government has been misused and these establishments have been used to proclaim the independence of Papua," he said.
Yudhoyono said the Papua People's Congress last June had "made it known that there is an intention to declare the independence of Papua on December 1, 2000." "The members of the Papua People's Council have gone to several foreign capitals to rally support and assistance for their aspirations for independence," he said.
"Cooperation has been initiated with several Pacific countries such as Vanuatu and Nauru who have in turn supported the independence of Papua at the UN's millennium summit."
Yudhoyono called the Papua Taskforce, claimed by its leaders to have tens of thousands of members, the "embryonic armed forces of independent Papua."
The Indonesian cabinet has adopted a new intolerant approach to expressions of separatism in Irian Jaya since the Wamena riots, declaring a ban on the Morning Star flag within a week of the incident. Yudhoyono repeated the cabinet's position on the flag, calling it a "political symbol of an independent Papua."
He was speaking as separatist leaders tried to arrange a meeting with President Abdurrahman Wahid to obtain his direct instruction concerning the flag.
The cabinet ban is a reverse of the tolerant approach initiated by Wahid in December last year when he declared the Morning Star could be flown, provided it was alongside and below the national Indonesian flag.
In August this year, Wahid told the 700-seat national assembly he would not tolerate separatist moves in the province, pledging broad autonomy instead. Yudhhoyono said special wide-ranging autonomy would be implemented in Irian Jaya on May 1 next year.
The central government's perceived exploitation of the province's vast mineral resources, years of neglect and the dominance of commercial life and the civil service by migrant settlers have fed separatist sentiments there.
Independence leaders have made increasingly vociferous calls for secession in recent years, peaking with the June congress in which they demanded Jakarta recognise that Papua had been independent since 1961.
They say a UN-conducted "act of free choice" in 1969, which led to the former Dutch territory becoming part of Indonesia, was unrepresentative. About three-quarters of Irian Jaya's roughly 2.5 million population are indigenous Melanesians, spread across 253 predominantly Christian tribes.