SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Protesters supporting independence for the Indonesian provinces of Aceh and West Papua denounced the Australian government Saturday for failing to support their cause.
About 40 people protested outside the Sydney offices of the Australian Defense Force calling on Australia to cut its military ties with Indonesia because of Jakarta’s oppression of the two provinces.
Pip Hinman, spokeswoman for Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific, accused Canberra of ignoring the plight of people in Aceh and West Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya, for financial reasons.
“Their eyes are firmly fixed on the special relationship they have with Indonesia,” she said. “They’re firmly fixed on the oil, the gas, the mineral resources that are found in West Papua and Aceh.”
At least 12,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in fighting in Aceh since 1976, when the insurgents began their struggle for independence of their oil- and gas-rich homeland on the northern tip of Sumatra island. Despite recent peace talks between Jakarta and the rebels, the violence has continued unabated with more than 500 killed this year.
Indonesia took over West Papua, on the western part of New Guinea, in 1963. Its sovereignty over the region was formalized in 1969 through a U.N.-sanctioned referendum that critics have since dismissed as a sham.
Since then, a separatist army in the province, 2,300 miles east of Jakarta, has kept up a low-level campaign against Indonesian rule.
