Wednesday, December 16, 2009
TIMIKA, Indonesia (AFP) - – Indonesian police said they had killed one of the most active Papuan rebel commanders on Wednesday, sparking angry protests in a region scarred by unrest and rights abuses.
Police said they shot Kelly Kwalik after he threatened to open fire on them during an early morning raid on a house in Timika, on the southern coast, Papua province police spokesman Agus Riyanto said.
"We had to shoot him as he tried to shoot the police with a kind of revolver and evade arrest," he said, adding that associates of Kwalik's had identified the body.
"He was shot in the left leg and brought to hospital. He died at the hospital."
Five men were arrested in the operation, Riyanto said.
Another police source said the body had been flown to provincial capital Jayapura for DNA tests to confirm its identity.
Kwalik, 60, was a commander of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) in southern Mimika district.
He stood accused of multiple killings, kidnappings and attacks on employees of US miner Freeport McMoRan.
The OPM has waged a low-level insurgency against Indonesian rule since 1964, a year after the Netherlands ceded sovereignty of the resource-rich, ethnically Melanesian region to Indonesia.
As news of his death spread through Timika, the main town in Mimika, some 300 protesters gathered outside the local parliament building to demand information about the police raid.
When they were told Kwalik's body was being sent to Jayapura for examination about 100 people went to the airport to try to stop the flight. Witnesses said the protesters were angry but there was no violence.
"Whoever the man is, whether he's Kelly Kwalik or not, the body cannot be taken out of Timika. The body has to be buried here," one of the protesters shouted.
Kwalik had commanded the insurgency in Mimika since 1977.
The area includes Freeport's giant Grasberg mine, which sits on one of the world's biggest gold and copper reserves and has long been linked to human rights abuses involving Indonesian troops who secure the facility.
Many Papuans complain they have been dispossessed by the mine and denied income from the use of their lands.
The road linking Timika to the mine in the rugged highlands to the north has been the scene of a string of mysterious ambushes over the past six months, one of which killed Australian mine technician Drew Grant.
Kwalik reportedly claimed responsibility for the attacks but his associates deny this. Others have speculated that the ambushes are the work of rogue Indonesian police or soldiers.
Little is known about Kwalik but he was believed to have been one of the OPM's most committed commanders and his death would be a major blow to the largely dormant guerrilla movement.
"Kelly Kwalik is one of the OPM's most elusive commanders. To many in Papua he is also one of the 'purest' in terms of devotion to the cause," the International Crisis Group think tank said in a 2006 report.
It said he had lost land to the Freeport mine and had tapped into local anger over dispossession and human rights abuses to win support for his armed campaign for independence.
Kwalik has been on a police wanted list since 2002 when he allegedly ordered an attack on a convoy of Freeport employees in which an Indonesian and two US civilians were killed.
In 1986 his group was said to have kidnapped and killed eight Javanese students.
Ten years later he allegedly ordered the kidnapping of 12 scientists including four Indonesians, four Britons, two Germans and two Dutch.
Two of the Indonesians were killed in a military rescue operation which freed the hostages three months later.
No comments:
Post a Comment