Jakarta – Indonesia will maintain a ban on foreign media reporting from its easternmost province of Papua to prevent an escalation of tension in the restive region, Minister of Defense Juwono Sudarsono said Monday.

The ban has been in place since 2003 in Papua, where a low-level guerrilla war has been simmering since Indonesia assumed control of the former Dutch territory in the 1960s.

"We feel that Indonesian unity and cohesion would be threatened by foreign 'intrusion and concern'," Juwono told a press conference attended by foreign correspondents. "There is a balance between international concern and sovereignty that we want to strengthen very peacefully," he said.

Juwono said reporters traveling to the jungle-clad province could heighten tensions between ethnic Papuans and migrants from outside Papua who make up a significant proportion of the province's population. Reporters could be "used as a platform" by Papuans to publicize the alleged abuses, he added.

Juwono admitted that some cases of killing, rapes and abuses by some soldiers had occurred but said Jakarta was working hard to minimize violations.

A sporadic, low-level separatist insurgency has rumbled on in Papua for decades, with international rights groups and activists saying the military has committed widespread human rights abuses against Papua's indigenous population.

Separatists proclaimed the state of West Papua on Dec. 1, 1961, but Indonesia took control of the mountainous, jungle-clad territory from Dutch colonizers the following year. It was formally annexed in 1969.