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Four killed, dozens injured as violence flares up again in Papua
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Smoke rises in Wamena, Papua, where fresh unrest broke out on Monday between security forces and senior high school students. (tribunnews.com/ Banjir Ambarita)
The violence involved hundreds of students in two locations on Monday, according to local authorities.
Unrest first broke out in the Papuan capital of Jayapura in the morning when police and military personnel besieged the Cendrawasih University auditorium. The hall had served lately as a temporary shelter for some 300 Papuan students who had fled from cities outside Papua in response to racial abuse of Papuan students in Surabaya, East Java, and elsewhere last month.
The security personnel reportedly ordered the students to leave the auditorium in an orderly manner, but to no avail. After three hours of waiting, they barged into the hall and forced the students into buses that would transfer them to another building, the Waena museum and arts center.
At the arts center, however, security personnel opened fire on the students, according to witnesses.
"We were brutally attacked the minute we arrived at the museum," one of the students, Kales Bagau, told The Jakarta Post on Monday, adding that at least two students had died on the spot, while some security personnel had been injured.
Papua Health Agency head Aloysius Giay confirmed that four people had died in the incident.
