Transcript
Freeport is Indonesia's single largest source of revenue but the estimated two thousand Papuans demonstrating in Jayapura say they see no benefit from it.
[Audio of Protestors Chanting]
Recently, Jakarta has been negotiating for Freeport's US parent company to divest from the mine, but West Papuans say they are not consulted over the matter. Now, tensions in Tembagapura region around the mine have been escalating. Reports from there indicate the Indonesian military launched rockets at the TPN earlier this week, killing two members. Police blame the TPN for shootings on the road to the mine last month which left two policeman dead. The road between Mimika's capital Timika and the Freeport mine, about 125 kilometres long, is guarded by an estimated three thousand Indonesian security forces. According to Indonesian human rights researcher Andreas Harsono, 50 people have been killed and over five hundred injured in shootings along the road in the past fifteen years.
"For instance so far the last one month, October - November 2017, there were two police officers who were shot to death and one native papuan in the area plus nine others, employees and police officers, shot, wounded in the area."
He says the road is surrounded by thick jungle, suited to guerilla warfare.
"So the guerillas fighting behind all that thick forest. They can ambush, they can shoot and then runaway. The police or the military can chase them but over the last 15 years not a single shooting case not a single murder case along that road is resolved."
With the recent spate of unrest along the road have come signs of an Indonesian military sweep operation of the kind that have caused many Papuan villagers to flee into the bush in the past. Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman said local people are finding it hard to access their food gardens
"Police and military have been patrolling there, like stationed there. And what prevents the villagers to go back and forth is that they are terrified by the Indonesian police and military. They are afraid that they will get shot."
This week Indonesian police said they were evacuating residents from several villages in Tembagapura to protect them from the TPN. But a spokesman for the Justice and Peace Secretariat in Timika, Saul Paulo Wanimbo, said the TPN relayed a message to local villagers that they were not targetting them.
"TPN said to people we have no problem with you, we only have problem with military and police. If we went to war we went to war with military and police only. They said it to the people in Tembagapura area."
Meanwhile as the Jayapura demo was taking place, Papuans in Timika held their own protest, seeking answers about the reasons for the death of a local Papuan. Having disappeared earlier this month, Martinus Beanal's family has now been told by police that their son is buried. The family said they had not seen his body since and want an autopsy into his death.
