Jakarta – The police chief of the restive Indonesian province of Irian Jaya on Tuesday banned the National Liberation Force (TPN), an armed civilian separatist group operating in the remote jungles of the province as subversive.
The ban was contained in a circular issued by Irian Jaya police chief Brigadier General Sylvanus Wenas, dated Tuesday, the Suara Pembaruan evening daily said.
The circular, the daily said, "bans the organisation which calls itself the TPN or any similar organisation affiliated to TPN or the embryo of the TPN organisation."
It said that the organisation "clearly was formed to provide resistance against the lawful government of the Republic of Indonesia with the aim of seceeding from the sovereign territory of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia."
The circular also warned of "firm measures in line with the prevailing legal regulations and laws" against anyone trying to incite people to, or help efforts or attempts, to secede from Indonesia.
It said that the ban was imposed after taking into consideration the security developments in Irian Jaya since December 1. Wenas could not be immediately reached for confirmation.
Irian Jaya police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel R. Siregar told AFP he was not yet aware of the circular. He said however, that the TPN was an organization which principally gathered armed civilians and was operating in the virtually inaccessible jungles that cover most of Irian Jaya.
"They are different from the Papua Taskforce which is visible, they are armed civilians, and we have so far not seen this TPN as an official organisation," Siregar said.
The Papua Taskforce is a moderate civilian security taskforce set up last December ahead of a pro-independence Papua Congress. Indonesian police ordered the Papua Taskforce disbanded shortly after police last week took over by force a building in Jayapura that the taskforce had used as its headquarters. The moderate leaders of the Taskforce have been jailed and charged with subversion.
The government has already outlawed the Free Papua Organisation (OPM), the armed wing of the independence movement in Irian Jaya.
Indonesian troops began infiltrating Irian Jaya in 1962, and in 1969 a UN-organized referendum ratified Indonesian sovereignty over the province after an "act of free choice," which independence leaders maintain was flawed and unrepresentative.
Irian Jaya is home to a native Melanesian population of 1.8 million people, most of them Christians, plus another 700,000 settlers from other parts of Indonesia.