Yahukimo Police Shoot Student – Victim In Serious Condition

Yahukimo Police have shot a student, whilst he was with friends at the Blue Creek at Yahukimo following their school graduation. The incident occurred on Sunday 19 May 2013 at 04.00 (West Papuan time) when Yahukimo Police were using a Police Patrol vehicle went to the above location.

At the moment the Police arrived they came upon a group of students at the location. A group of five students had been drinking alcohol. The police without questioning the students fired warning shots in the direction of the students. The students fled afraid of the police gunfire. Four of them succeeded in fleeing but the fifth named Carles Suhuniap was hit in the right shoulder by further police gunfire whilst trying to flee. Wounded, he was arrested by the police who became smeared with his blood.


The victim was later evacuated to Jayapura where he is at this time being treated at the Dian Harapan Hospital in Jayapura. Of those students that successfully fled three have been named as Deni Asso, Andre Kiban and Gelgi Giban.

Media sources reported that the students after drinking alcohol at the time of the shooting incident, had not being doing anything untoward or acting negatively towards anyone in particular or causing any harm or threat to anyones’ property. They merely had an intention of going home. The police had no cause to shoot.
This incident was a human rights violation. The Police wanted an excuse to kill (dengan dalih menewaskan) the victim but rather he was not killed but left seriously wounded.

It is not just this incident as killing of community members in Yahukimo is happening regularly via para-military agents that are assigned to the hospitals in Yahukimo as sisters, medical aides and doctors. There have been many experiences of people entering the hospitals in Yahukimo as patients not in any critical or particularly serious condition, only to rather than get better and be released to instead come out as dead bodies. This has been happening and continues to happen in Yahukimo.

This is the problem in Yahukimo at this time. The regional government does not appear to be serious about addressing the problem. Covert killings are happening in Yahukimo and this is the mission of the State to kill the Papuan community throughout Papua. The situation is similar to that news reported by Bintang Papua last year with the news regarding 15 people from Paniai who were killed whilst drunk. These things are happening as part of a mission of the Republic of Indonesia in Papua.