Large numbers of fully armed police, including members of the Australian trained, armed and funded Detachment 88, are blockading Manokwari after the police shooting of a priest and his son on Wednesday.
Rev. Naftali Kuan (58 years old) from the GPKAI Church and his wife (Mrs. Antomina Kuan, 55 years old) and their twenty-three year old son Septinus were trying to calm their church members when BRIMOB officers short the three of them. Rev. Naftali and his son Septinue were shot dead, and Antomina was shot in the neck and is intensive care at Manokwari Hospital.
Allegations by Indonesian police that a mob attacked them with stones causing them to open fire in self-defence are completely untrue, according to witnesses.
In Manokwari on Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at 18:30, an Indonesian on a motorcycle seriously smashed an elderly Papuan woman, an Arfak tribal elder. The incident occurred in front of BRIMOB headquarters in Rendani Manokwari, and the motorcycle rider ran into BRIMOB office rather than helping the woman to hospital.
Papuans spontaneously gathered in front of the BRIMOB office calling for the driver to take responsibility for the incident. When BRIMOB officers rejected their pleas, frustrated locals started throwing stones at them.
At the moment Rev. Kuan and his son are being carried by thousands in a peace rally in front of the West Papua Governor’s office. The mourning demonstrators are calling on BRIMOB and the central government to take responsibility for their assassinations, and crimes against indigenous Papuans.
Piter Hiyowati of The West Papua National Authority is calling for an urgent dispatch of UN militarized peace-keepers in West Papua to contain the excesses of the Indonesian security forces against the indigenous population which Yudhoyono’s government in Jakarta appears to be unwilling to impose normal standards of military discipline.