JAYAPURA (Pacnews) — Seven university students from Papua province are staging a hunger strike in Jakarta to protest the government’s failure to bring the killers of Papuan independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay to justice.
The seven members of the Papua Students National Front commenced the hunger strike last Thursday.
Two of the protesters, Robert Manaly from Central Java’s Unika University and Fifi Novia from Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, were on Saturday admitted to Cikini Hospital in the Indonesian capital Jakarta after they fainted due to dehydration.
Their five associates, Hans Gebse, Meti Ronsumbre, Margareta Karoway, Diana Gwijangge and Icon, are continuing the hunger strike in front of the headquarters of the National Commission on Human Rights.
“We won’t stop our protest until our demand is met or until the medical team decides that our colleagues are not fit to continue,” FNMP spokesman Charles Imbir was quoted as saying by Indonesia’s state news agency Antara.
Theys Eluay, leader of the Papua Presidium—a group seeking to negotiate independence for the resource-rich province— was found murdered on Nov. 11, 2001. The previous night he had attended a National Heroes’ Day celebration at the local headquarters of the Army’s elite special forces, or Kopassus, in the provincial capital Jayapura.
He was abducted by a group of Kopassus officers while on his way home and then strangled and left on the side of the road.
Last April, three Kopassus officers were arrested for their role in the murder. They are now being detained in Jakarta and will be tried by a military tribunal at a date that is yet to be announced.
