The death toll from three days of clashes in Indonesia's Papua province has risen to three and more than 50 have been injured, hospital staff said.
Supporters and opponents of the central government's move to split the existing province into three new provinces clashed for three days starting Saturday in the central town of Timika. The declaration Saturday of a new province of Central Irian Jaya sparked off the violence. No new fighting was reported Tuesday morning but tensions remained high.
Thousands of opponents, mostly mountain tribesmen armed with bows and arrows and spears, gathered in the town Tuesday calling for revenge, said local rights activist John Haluk on Tuesday. About 300 members of the rival camp converged in another area, according to Haluk, from the Amungme Tribal Institute.
He told AFP the tribesmen "want to avenge the death of their two men. They said that they will not rest until a second man from the opposing camp is killed." Two of the dead were opponents of the new province while one was a supporter. "So far, we have been able to call on them [tribesmen] to restrain themselves," Haluk said.
The latest victim died late Monday while in a coma after he was injured earlier in the day, said Himawan Sasongko, director of a hospital in the town. He said more than 50 people have been treated but only two are still in hospital.
District police chief Paulus Waterpauw declined comment when reached by telephone Tuesday, saying, "We are busy handling the situation." He was heard barking orders to move personnel.
Haluk urged Home Minister Hari Sabarno to visit Timika to see the situation for himself. He said indigenous tribesmen oppose the plan for new provinces while supporters are largely migrants from outside Papua.
The central government says the purpose of dividing Papua is to improve administration in the mountainous 411,000-square-kilometre territory, which has a population of more than two million. Critics say the aim is to lessen support for a long-running separatist movement.
Haluk said his institute fears that an influx of outsiders to fill new provincial posts would make indigenous tribespeople "strangers in their own homeland, second-class citizens such as the aborigines in Australia." The government move also faced opposition in Jakarta. Parliament speaker Akbar Tanjung urged ministers to meet legislators again to discuss the issue.
Tanjung, quoted by the Detikcom news service, said the move to split Papua runs counter to the special autonomy which went into force in the resource-rich province in 2001.
Three Papua rights groups urged Jakarta to reduce tensions in Timika by freezing plans for the new province and opening dialogue with locals. Timika is near the giant gold and copper mine operated by US firm Freeport McMoRan.
Indonesia has faced a sporadic low-level armed separatist revolt, along with peaceful pressure for independence, since it took control of Papua in 1963 from Dutch colonialists.
The International Crisis Group of political analysts said in an April report that Jakarta's overriding motive in splitting the province "appears to have been the weakening of the Papuan independence movement." But far from lessening the possibility of conflict, the decree may actually increase it, the ICG said.