Jakarta – Separatist rebels in remote Irian Jaya have seized seven negotiators trying to win the release of 11 abducted plywood workers and now hold 18 people hostage, police said Friday.
The seven, including two Korean nationals, were captured on Thursday when they travelled to a remote jungled area to negotiate with the rebels, a policeman at the provincial police headquarters in the Irian Jaya capital of Jayapura said. The rebels seized the 11 plywood workers, including a South Korean, on Tuesday.
"According to the police report the hostages are [now] three Koreans, two native people and the rest are migrants" from other Indonesian provinces, the officer, who indentified himself only as Agus, told AFP. He said the two captured South Korean negotiators worked for plywood firm PT Tunas Korindo, which employed the first batch of hostages.
Police and military chiefs from the district of Merauke on Friday travelled to the jungled area near the border with Papua New Guinea to try to restart negotiations for the release of all 18 hostages.
"The police and military chiefs are in Asiki to seek the release of the hostages," First Brigadier Robert Wogono of the Merauke district police told AFP by telephone.
The first 11 captives, 10 Korindo workers and their South Korena manager, Kwon Oh-duk, 49, were abducted on Tuesday at the company's mill in Asiki, a jungled area close to the border with neighbouring Papua New Guinea.
A Korindo worker in Asiki told AFP by phone that the company had not been contacted by the hostage takers, a local separatist group led by Willem Onde. She also said she had no information on the fate of the hostages, nor had she heard about the kidnapping of the negotiators.
The Tempo weekly said the Willem Onde group was estimated to have a force of 500 men operating near the border with Papua New Guinea and the southern boundary of the Jayawijaya mountain range.
Unconfirmed reports have said the kidnappers were asking for a ransom of one million dollars, the pull-out of an Indonesian police unit from the area and a halt to logging. But police have not confirmed those reports.
On Thursday Irian Jaya military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel R. Siregar told AFP from the provincial capital Jayapura that police in Merauke were in charge of facilitating the negotiations.
"The thing is, this case is purely a conflict between PT Korindo and locals, not with the government," Siregar said. "We are still trying to find out the root cause of the problem but what is clear is that there is a conflict there between the company and the local population."
The Media Indonesia daily, quoting a correspondent for the newspaper's affiliate, Metro TV, said 16 policemen from the elite mobil brigade unit and a company of army soldiers had been flown to the hostage area by plane.