Thursday, November 2 1:04 PM SGT
Police threaten to arrest independence guards in Indonesian province
JAKARTA, Nov 2 (AFP)

Police in Indonesia's Irian Jaya province vowed Thursday to arrest pro-independence guards refusing to leave a government building they have adopted as their headquarters, an officer said.

"Their time is up," Jayapura police chief Lieutenant Colonel Daud Sihombing told AFP, referring to a three-day deadline which expired Thursday.

Jayapura is the capital of the mountainous province of Irian Jaya, known locally as West Papua, which makes up the western half of New Guinea island.

Pro-independence guards calling themselves the Satgas Papua (or Papua Taskforce) appropriated the official Jayapura Cultural Center several months ago and have turned it into their command post,
Sihombing said.

On Monday Sihombing, under instructions from acting governor Musirwan Darmosuwito, gave Papua Taskforce members three days to vacate the building.

"We've already asked them three times to leave voluntarily, but they are still there. So we shall employ forceful methods," he said, outlining summonses, arrests, and trials as the next steps.

"If they ignore the summonses, we will arrest them. If after questioning they are found to have violated the law, we will put them on trial," Sihombing said, ruling out the use of violence.

The use of police force to tear down separatist Morning Star flags in the Irian Jaya hinterland town of Wamena last month resulted in the deaths of 31 people, most of them killed during ensuing riots.

Jayapura authorities want the building to function again as a government-owned cultural center.

"The building is a state asset which is not currently being used for its intended function," Sihombing said.

Independence leaders claim the center belongs to the people of Papua because it was there that Papuan independence was first declared in 1961.

"It has belonged to us since 1962," self-styled independence leader Theys Eluay told AFP on Wednesday.

Eluay has ordered his supporters to defy the governor's orders and stand their ground.

"I have instructed (them) to occupy the building. They cannot be pushed out," he told AFP, adding that the building was "in the hands of the Papua Council leaders."

The cultural center is one of only two remaining places around Jayapura where the separatist "Morning Star" flag continues to fly.

Sihombing however said his orders did not touch on the flag.

"That is a separate problem altogether. That is already being dealt with by the president," he said. "I'm only concerned with the building.

The government renewed its ban on the Morning Star flag in the wake of deadly riots on October 6 in Wamena.

An October 19 deadline for the flags' removal was put on hold in a move to avoid further violence, pending the outcome of negotiations between separatist leaders and President Abdurrahman Wahid.

On October 19 hundreds of uniformed taskforce members stood guard at the cultural center in anticipation of attempts to remove the flag, vowing to martyr themselves and "become victims" in its
defence.

Dozens of Taskforce members gather at the cultural center for ceremonial raisings of the Morning Star each dawn, and its removal at sunset.

Provincial police spokesman Major Zulkifli said Thursday that around ten Taskforce members were patrolling the front of the building, and dozens of residents had gathered outside.

"But there's nothing going on, everything is calm," he told AFP.

Papuans have made increasingly vociferous calls for independence in recent years, climaxing with a mass congress in June at which they demanded Jakarta recognise that they had been independent since
December 1961.

Independence leaders say a UN-conducted "act of free choice" in 1969, which led to the former Dutch territory becoming part of Indonesia, was unrepresentative.

Irian Jaya is home to a native Melanesian population of 1.8 million people, most of them Christians, plus another 700,000 settlers from other parts of Indonesia.