Troops patrolling the Indonesian city of Jayapura rounded up suspects yesterday after a frenzied mob bludgeoned to death four security officers during a protest over the world's largest gold and copper mine.
National police spokesman Brigadier General Anton Bachrul Alam told reporters 57 people had been arrested, though only five were named suspects, including one of the alleged protest organizers. They could face charges of assault, murder or destroying public property, he said.
Thursday's demonstration in Jayapura, Papua's provincial capital, was the most violent in a series targeting the US-owned Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc in recent weeks -- and the killings of three policemen and one air force officer underscored the deep hatred many Papuans feel toward Indonesian security forces.
A decades-long separatist rebellion in the remote province has left more than 100,000 dead, many of them civilians who suffered from mistreatment, starvation and other consequences of the war.
Protesters demanded that Freeport's massive gold mine be shut, saying that while it has earned the New Orleans-based company billions of dollars in revenue, the local community has received little or no benefit.
They went on a rampage after gun-toting security forces fired tear gas in an effort to break up the rally, charging demonstrators with their batons. Hundreds of shots were fired, though police insisted they did not use live ammunition.
"Indonesia should respect the Papuans," resident Robi Kubi said yesterday, as a tense calm returned to the provincial capital. "We have huge natural resources, but why are they extracted by foreigners while the Papuans are still poor?"
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono sent top security chiefs to the region to probe the unrest, and warned that some people were trying to manipulate anger over Freeport into a push for independence. They would not succeed, he said.
Hundreds of paramilitary police stood guard near the state-run university, the site of Thursday's demonstration. The campus was largely deserted yesterday.
London-based Human Rights Watch called on authorities to determine why the rally spiraled out of control.
The group's Asia director, Brad Adams, said it appeared that police may have opened fire first on the demonstrators, wounding several of them, who then responded by attacking the officers with rocks and knives.
One resident, Marcus, said he was walking by the university when he heard gun shots.
"I was chased by plainclothes police and then beaten up," the 31-year-old man said from Jayapura Public Hospital, his face badly bruised. "I didn't know anything about the protest, but I was a victim. My face hurts. I lost my money. And my family does not know where I am."
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