Klojen – The Malang and Surabaya city Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) held a rally in front of the Malang city hall in the East Java city on Friday April 7.
This was the latest of several actions held by the AMP. The scores of demonstrators again made a number of demands including, among others, related to the Freeport Indonesia mine and the expulsion of the gold mining company from the land of Papua.
According to action coordinator Jhons Raffael Giyai the Indonesian government has never involved the West Papuan people in the agreement to divest of 51 percent of shares in the company.
“Traditional West Papuan communities have never been involved in the agreement. Yet what the Papuan people want is the closure of Freeport”, asserted Jhons.
The grounds for this demand are because the mining company expropriated the traditional lands of the West Papuan people.
The other demands articulated by the protesters was an audit of Freeport’s wealth, the return of the area to the Papuan people and severance pay for [recently sacked Freeport] workers. They also called for freedom for West Papua.
[Translated by James Balowski for the Indoleft News Service. The original title of the report was “Kota Malang: Tutup dan Usir Freeport dari Bumi Papua”.]
