Human Rights Watch said today that an impartial investigation was urgently needed into the firing on demonstrators by the Indonesian military in Biak, Irian Jaya, where two days after the shootings, the casualty toll remains unclear and access is tightly restricted.
We've received highly disturbing reports that wounded detainees are being denied medical care, and that families are not being allowed to visit them,"said Sidney Jones, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "The problem is compounded by a pattern of intimidation and harassment, restrictions on movement, and a clampdown on information. If the Indonesian government is interested in easing tensions in Irian Jaya, it has got to ensure that the full facts of what happened in Biak emerge."
She said the top priority, in addition to a full inquiry, had to be to get adequate medical treatment to those in need.
Human rights investigators in Biak say that families of people wounded or detained in the July 6 attack are being denied access to the hospitals and lock-ups where they are being held. Because of the lack of access, they said, many families are worried that their children are dead or missing. They said intelligence operatives have been stationed in different neighborhoods around Biak, questioning friends and relatives of known protestors. Villagers who helped feed the demonstrators during their four-day demonstration are among those detained. Investigators said that of the more than 200 arrested, 140 were still detained and were being held at three places, the police headquarters, the district military command, and a navy complex.
One of the leaders of the protest, a man named Yopie Karma, was said to be detained at police headquarters in Biak, even though he had been shot in the feet and required medical treatment. His family had been summoned to the headquarters for questioning, but as of July 8, had not been allowed to see him. Eyewitness accounts said many of the wounded had been roughly picked up by troops and dumped into a container truck which was then driven to the navy hospital. Hospital officials appeared to be under orders not to give information to journalists or human rights workers about the number of dead or wounded. Human Rights Watch was told, however, that one man, Elias Ansek, aged fifty-four, who had been shot in the stomach, died in Biak General Hospital on Tuesday. Unconfirmed reports suggested that some of those detained had been tortured, including an eleven-year-old boy named Manuel Air, reported to have been cut with a razor.
"Unless full information is available to the press, both local and international, people are going to believe the worst," said Jones.
In Wamena, the capital of Jayawijaya district, an ostensibly pro-independence demonstration on July 7 was being treated with skepticism by nongovernmental and church leaders in the area. In discussions with Human Rights Watch, they said that the office of district head (bupati) was being contested by a civilian and a military officer, and that evidence of separatist activity in the district would help the military candidate make the case to Jakarta that a military presence was needed. In the demonstration, about 1,000 demonstrators raised the banned flag of West Papua, the name given by nationalists to Irian Jaya, on a flagpole in front of the district council, where it flew from 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. before it was taken down by security forces. The leader of the demonstration, Yan Manuel Menay, aged sixty-two, said he would ensure the demonstrators left peacefully if local officials allowed the flag to fly until 6:00 p.m., which they did. None of the demonstrators was detained, in contrast to the Biak incident.
