Jakarta, Papua conflict escalates as report shows victims mostly women, children

Ivany Atina Arbi and Victor Mambor
The Jakarta Post

PREMIUM

Jakarta/Jayapura / Thu, August 15, 2019 / 08:10 am

Indonesian Military personnel prepare to board a helicopter in Wamena in Papua on Wednesday to retrieve the bodies of the construction workers killed in Nduga. The soldiers hunted for rebels suspected of killing 19 construction workers and one soldier in the restive province of Papua, as an eyewitness account supplied by the military described a grisly mass execution.(AFP/Anyong)

The latest death of a police brigadier in Puncak regency, Papua, blamed on Papuan armed rebels, has prompted Vice President Jusuf Kalla to suggest a “counterattack” against the armed group, while a civil society team verifying the victims in Nduga claimed they had confirmed the death of 182 people in the regency, mostly women and children. On Tuesday at the palace, Kalla said the counterattack should not be considered a “human rights violation.” “This won’t be a human rights violation, because we have to see who violated human rights first. Sometimes people, especially [those in] foreign countries, consider all of these to be human rights violations,” Kalla said on Wednesday. “What if the dead ones were from the Indonesian Military [TNI] and the National Police.” The police reported that they had found the body of First Brig. He...

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