JAKARTA, July 12 (UPI) -- Hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside the provincial parliament in Jayapura demanding Indonesia grant independence to West Papua, a province on the island of New Guinea.
The demonstrators urged the Indonesian government in Jakarta to have a referendum on independence for West Papua, which was created in 2003 out of the larger Papua province to the east.
The two provinces are the western half of the island of New Guinea. The eastern half of the island is the nation Papua New Guinea.
West Papua and Papua provinces are the least populated and the poorest areas of Indonesian archipelago. But the two provinces are also some of the most mineral rich within Indonesia, especially for gold, timber and natural gas.
Special autonomy was granted to Papua in 2001. But it has singularly failed to placate the population, most of which are Melanesian by culture and closer to aboriginal peoples than the Asian and Javanese majorities of most of Indonesia.
The Free Papua Movement has been struggling for independence first from the Dutch when the island was a colony and then from Indonesia which, after its own independence, occupied Papua.
Many of the movement's leaders claim that the central government in Jakarta and the mining companies aren't putting profits back into the province. Also, an influx of other cultures is diluting their own culture, at least in the major towns where the Melanesians are a minority to begin with.
A large pro-independence demonstration occurred Jan. 27 when 1,500 people marched in Timika, a city in Papua province. The demonstrators demanded a referendum on the future status of West Papua.
The rally took place without being attacked, despite recent violent incidents in the area. Three days before the rally, nine people, including a U.S. and a South African citizen, were shot and wounded by unidentified attackers at the nearby Freeport gold and copper mine.
In December 2009 National police said they killed Kelly Kwalik, leader of the pro-independence Free Papua Movement, in a gun battle during an early morning raid on a house in the Timika.
Kwalik was thought to have helped plan the fatal August 2002 ambush of a convoy of buses taking employees to the massive Grasberg gold mine run by U.S. company Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold. Two American civilians and an Indonesian were killed in the worst attacks suffered by the mining business that excavates the 1-mile-wide open pit, the world's largest producer of copper.
Kwalik was also blamed for the attack in July 2009 in which an Australian technician and two other mining employees were killed in a similar ambush.
The government in Jakarta has been deploying security forces in base camps within the jungles of West Papua. But the mostly disparate and poorly armed groups of rebels move freely around the province.
