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PNG watching border
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Posted on Dec 05 2000
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Papua New Guinea has stepped up border controls following recent violence between security forces and separatists in the neighboring Indonesian province of Irian Jaya, Prime Minister Mekere Morauta said Monday.
Irian Jaya, also known as West Papua, occupies the western half of Papua island north of Australia. The eastern half is Papua New Guinea. Native Irian Jayans share a Melanesian heritage with their Pacific neighbors to the east.
Ten people, almost all of them separatists, were killed over the weekend in Irian Jaya when troops clashed with pro-independence activists. The fighting came during ceremonies marking the 39th anniversary of a 1961 declaration of independence from Dutch colonial rule by West Papuan chiefs.
Indonesia seized the region in 1963 and renamed it Irian Jaya. Jakarta’s sovereignty was rubber-stamped by a hastily convened assembly of village chiefs, which pro-independence activists dismiss as a sham.
Speaking at a news conference in Sydney, Morauta said his government supported Indonesian sovereignty over Irian Jaya and had stepped up patrols of the border, which stretches for more than 435 miles across almost inaccessible jungle-clad mountains.
