National Commission on Human Rights deputy chief Ridha Saleh says the commission is preparing to reveal the findings of its investigation of a violent police crackdown at the Third Papua Peoples Congress, which resulted in the death of six civillians in Abepura.
“We are going to announce the findings on Friday,” Saleh said Wednesday as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.
Saleh hinted that the crackdown was more sinister than had been initially reported. Abepura was the site of another bloody clash between students and police in 2006, which claimed the lives of two police officers who were attempting to disperse a rally protesting over death of two workers at the Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold mine in Grasberg.
Earlier, a group of Papuan students in Jakarta urged Komnas HAM not to cover up the violence committed by either the army or police during the recent incident. Numerous reports of excessive violence by security forces were made at the time of the incident, in which congress participants were allegedly beaten with rifle butts, kicked, punched and shot.
Oktavianus Pogau, one of the students, said he was there when the shootings occurred.
“I saw it with my own eyes. It was the army and police who started shooting at the congress participants,” he said.