Ratusan Warga Banti - Kimbeli Dievakuasi ke Timika
Hundreds Leave Papua Villages in Separatist Standoff

Editor : Ismail Gani
Translator : Novita Cahyadi
Senin, 20 November 2017
Foto: Associated Press/MailOnline

RATUSAN orang meninggalkan desa-desa di Papua yang menjadi pusat perlawanan kelompok kriminal bersenjata (KKB) seperti dilaporkan polisi, Senin.

Evakuasi kali kedua dari wilayah di dekat pertambangan emas dan tembaga Grasberg milik AS dalam sepekan terakhir ini.

Kapolda Papua  Irjen Boy Rafli Amar mengatakan sekitar 800 penduduk desa diangkut ke kota Timika dan ditampung di aula setempat.

"Mereka akhirnya minta dievakuasi atau direlokasi karena kondisinya sudah menimbulkan trauma," kata Amar.

Pasukan gabungan TNI - Polri tampaknya berhasil mengatasi perlawanan dengan separatis pada Jumat dan mengevakuasi lebih dari 340 orang yang merupakan pendatang dari luar Papua.

Dua orang tewas dalam operasi yang berlangsung pada Jumat. TNI mengatakan KKB tersebut adalah kelompok separatis sementara juru bicara Gerakan Papua Merdeka mengatakan mereka adalah warga sipil.

Konflik bersenjata di wilayah dekat pertambangan Freeport meningkat dalam beberapa pekan terakhir. Serangkaian serangan yang dilakukan oleh separatis yang dicurigai telah membunuh dua polisi dan melukai beberapa lainnya.

Perlawanan kelompok separatis yang menuntut Papua memisahkan dari RI berlangsung sejak masuk ke wilayah Indonesia.

Kedua provinsi di Papua berada di bagian barat dari Pulau Papua, yang secara resmi bergabung dengan Indonesia pada 1969 setelah berlangsung pemungutan suara oleh para kepala suku yang disponsori oleh PBB seperti dikutip Associated Press yang dilansir MailOnline.


HUNDREDS more people have left villages in Papua that were at the center of clashes with separatists, Indonesian police said Monday.

It was the second evacuation from the region near the U.S.-owned Grasberg gold and copper mine in a week.

Papua police chief Boy Rafli Amar said about 800 villagers were bused to the town of Timika and are being accommodated in a local hall.

"They finally asked to be evacuated or relocated because the conditions there were traumatizing," Amar said.

Security forces appeared to gain the upper hand in the standoff with separatists on Friday and evacuated more than 340 people who were migrants from other regions.

Two people were killed in Friday´s security operation. Indonesia´s military said they were separatists while a spokesman for the National Liberation Army of West Papua said they were civilians.

Tensions in the region near the mine have escalated in the past several weeks. A series of attacks by suspected separatists have killed two policemen and injured more than half a dozen others.

A low-level insurgency for independence has simmered in Papua since it was annexed by Indonesia in the early 1960s.

The region, which makes up the western half of the island of New Guinea, was formally incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 following a U.N.-sponsored ballot of tribal leaders that has since been dismissed as a sham.

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