U.S. condemns Papua attack
Tuesday, September 3 2002 - 11:56 PM WIB
Indonesia's military called for patience in the hunt for the gunmen who ambushed a convoy of vehicles near a big mine in the remote eastern province on Saturday and denied a media report the attackers had been caught.
"The attack on these innocent victims, who were mostly school teachers, is an outrageous act of terrorism," the U.S. embassy in Jakarta said in a statement.
"We urge the government of Indonesia to take all necessary steps swiftly to apprehend and punish the perpetrators of this horrible attack."
The attack was more bad news for Indonesia which is struggling to draw investors back after the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and trying to prove to aid donors it is moving toward stability.
Papua regional military chief Major General Mahidin Simbolon said troops were battling treacherous conditions in the search for those responsible for the attack -- the worst involving foreigners in a decades-old simmering rebellion.
"Bear in mind this is a vast area with thick jungle, not to mention the heavy showers and thick fog which make it difficult to see and slippery," Simbolon told Reuters.
"We're trying our best here and people just need to be patient."
The province, formerly known as Irian Jaya, borders independent Papua New Guinea on a huge island closer to Australia's north than Jakarta.
Indigenous Papuans differ ethnically from most Indonesians and are generally Christian or animist while the country as a whole is Muslim.
Simbolon denied a report that several members of the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM), which the military blames for the attack near the world's largest gold and copper mine, had been arrested. The OPM has been fighting a low-level guerrilla war for decades.
National Police Chief Da'i Bachtiar, speaking in Jakarta, told reporters he wanted to see how the investigation was going and would be leaving for the remote jungle area, about 3,300 km (2,060 miles) east of the capital, on Tuesday evening.
An estimated 15 gunmen opened fire on the convoy of mainly school teachers on a private road linking the high-altitude town of Tembagapura and the mining operation of U.S.-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc.
Another pro-independence group said it still was not clear if the OPM was responsible for the ambush that also wounded eight Americans and three Indonesians.
"We've sent a letter to (OPM faction leader) Kelly Kwalik asking him whether he was behind the incident or not. His reply may take two to three days. So, we'll wait for news," Tom Beanal, head of the Papua Presidium Council, told Reuters.
A spokesman for Freeport in Papua said the international schools for the children of staff working at the mine reopened on Tuesday after being closed for a day and said armed escorts continued to shuttle staff to and from the mine.
He said no Freeport employees had left Indonesia as a result of the attack and there was no evacuation plan.
"We are holding regular community meetings to keep the employees as up to date as we can and to my knowledge no one has left or has plans to leave," said the spokesman who asked not to be identified.
As the search continued for the attackers, some human rights groups urged that an independent team be set up to investigate the ambush and said it was possible the Indonesian military carried it out in an effort to discredit the rebels.
"If the attackers were members of an armed separatist group, why did they not target the security post? It's strange," leading Papuan-based rights activist Aloysius Renwarin was quoted in Tuesday's Jakarta Post as saying.(*)