27 December 2004, The SMH: "Papua killings"

Papua killings

Your article entitled 'Indonesian army accused of deadly attacks in Papua" (Herald, November 23) is deadly inaccurate and is very clearly driven once again by the separatist activists in Australia and in Indonesia masquerading as human rights activists.

The incident erroneously described by Matthew Moore began on October 16 after peaceful negotiations by the local authorities and elderlies with a group of Papua separatist rebels, led by Gholiat Tabuni, failed in its endeavour to retrieve the bodies of six drivers murdered by the rebels.

It was only then that the military was asked to launch an operation to liberate the besieged village and recover the bodies for proper burial. Before to the action about 800 local citizens living close to the rebels' headquarters were evacuated to safer territory to avoid any casualties.