http://m.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/12/10/ri-urged-investigate-deadly-shooting-papua.html
Rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the Indonesian authorities to promptly and impartially investigate the apparent use of unnecessary lethal force by security personnel against peaceful protesters in Papua on Dec. 8.
HRW said live ammunition fired by a joint police and military force at about 800 peaceful demonstrators, including women and children, in Enarotali, Panai regency, had caused the death from gunshot wounds of five protesters – Abia Gobay, age unknown, Alfius Youw, 17, Otianus Gobai, 18, Simon Degei, 18, and Yulian Yeimo, 17.
At least 17 others, including five primary school children, were wounded and required hospitalization, HRW revealed, citing information from its interviews with two witnesses to the incident, journalists and a human rights activist from nearby towns.
“The Indonesian government needs to investigate why security forces found it necessary to fire into a crowd of peaceful protesters,” HRW deputy Asia director Phelim Kine said in a release made available to The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
“Ordinary Papuans have too often been victims of security force abuse for which noone is ever punished,” she went on.
The protest was reportedly a response to a brawl that occurred several hours earlier, on the evening of Dec. 7, during which members of the 753 Special Team (Tim Khusus), a unit attached to the Nabire-based Army Battalion 753, assaulted 12-year-old Yulianus Yeimo.
The attack was apparently in retaliation after a group of children and young people, including Yeimo, shouted at a Tim Khusus 753 vehicle to turn on its headlights as it passed the group, whose members were decorating a Christmas tree and nativity scene in Enarotali’s Ipakiye neighborhood.
Kine said the killing of five teenagers of Enarotali was just the latest atrocity by Indonesian security forces in Papua.
“President Joko Widodo should recognize that Papua is anything but ‘safe’ for its residents until the government puts an end to the routine and often-deadly abuses by Indonesian forces stationed there,” she said.