Saturday, June 1, 2013

1)US Pledges to Step Up Military Ties With Indonesia


1)US Pledges to Step Up Military Ties With Indonesia
2) Freeport worker in ‘critical condition’
3) Police seek ‘waimun’ of groups clashing in Wamena

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1)US Pledges to Step Up Military Ties With Indonesia


Singapore. The United States will step up its military cooperation with Indonesia, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in Singapore on Friday after meeting his Indonesian counterpart Purnomo Yusgiantoro.
“The two leaders reaffirmed the importance of deepening ties (and) reviewed progress made in recent years to increase exercises and training, as well as regular defense policy dialogues,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said after the meeting.
The two defense ministers met on the sidelines of Singapore’s annual security forum, the Shangri-La Dialogue, organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Hagel recalled the importance of respect for human rights as a prerequisite for deeper military ties and “discussed American support for Indonesia’s military modernisation, including through US foreign military sales,” Little said.
US interest in boosting military ties with Indonesia is in line with President Barack Obama’s “pivot,” or strategic shift, to the Pacific region announced in January 2012 after a decade of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, put a priority in his first term on building ties with the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, which has quickly embraced democracy since the 1990s.
While some experts see the warming ties as more rhetorical than substantive, the United States has notably boosted relations with Indonesia’s military after earlier concerns about a special forces unit’s human rights record.
Agence France-Presse
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2) Freeport worker in ‘critical condition’

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Another slap in the face for mining giant Freeport occurred on Friday as a worker suffered major injuries after an incident at the American company’s Deep Ore Zone (DOZ) facility in Papua.

Arizona-based Freeport-McMoRan’s subsidiary, PT Freeport Indonesia, announced on Friday that the incident at the underground mining site took place only two weeks after a deadly cave-in during maintenance activities on May 14.

“Wet ore material or sludge flowed from an ore bin, covering a truck and its operator,” Freeport Indonesia spokeswoman Daisy Primayanti said in a statement.

“The circumstances of this incident are inconsistent with the company’s established safety protocol for handling sludge and is being investigated.”

She maintained, however, that the incident was not the result of a collapse in the mine, citing that it “has been incorrectly reported” by several online media sources and thus “does not in any way reflect upon the integrity of the mine”.

Daisy said the company regretted the accident.

The truck operator, which the company did not identify, was taken to Tembagapura Hospital and was in a critical condition, according to the firm’s statement.

Meanwhile, the Papua Police identified the No. 138 truck operator as Herman Wahid.

“Herman Wahid was buried by sludge at the loading Point 1 Charlie DOZ underground and was rescued immediately. He was still breathing when rushed to the hospital,” Papua Police chief spokesman Sr. Comr. I Gede Sumerta Jaya said in Jayapura.

He added that the accident took place at about 1:40 p.m. local time (11:40 a.m. Jakarta time).

The DOZ mine, an underground block cave, is located a few kilometers from the giant Grasberg open-mine site, with a production capacity of 80,000 tons of ore per day.

The mine is located 2.1 kilometers from the underground training facility near another site, the Big Gossan mine, in which 28 workers died following a collapsed tunnel. Ten other workers survived in the collapse.

Earlier this week, Freeport Indonesia president director Rozik B. Soetjipto said that the company was going to restart production activities at the Grasberg open-mine site — which produces 140,000 tons of ore per day — while only maintaining its underground mining facility until it receives approval from the government to restart its producing activities.

Freeport has planned to invest US$15 billion in developing underground mining operations at the Grasberg mine.

The new site, which will be called the Grasberg block cave mine, is expected to begin operations in 2017 with an estimated production of 160,000 tons of ore per day at full capacity.

The combined production from the planned Grasberg block cave mine with the existing DOZ mine would bring Freeport’s production in Papua to around 240,000 tons of ore per day or 9 percent higher than the current output capacity.

Separately, the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry’s mineral director, Dede Indra Suhendra, told The Jakarta Post in a telephone interview the government had immediately sent a mining inspector to Papua to investigate Friday’s incident.

“We have sent the inspector to investigate the latest incident in order to avoid the same thing happening again in other sites,” he said on Friday.

Dede, however, said that the government had yet to take action against Freeport — one of the country’s biggest taxpayers — given that this was the second incident this month as the government was still currently inspecting the company’s mining sites in Papua.
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3) Police seek ‘waimun’ of groups clashing in Wamena

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Papua Police are currently pursuing the waimun, or commanders, of two warring factions in a conflict in Nduga regency that has left seven people dead.

“The waimun from both groups must be arrested or else they will still be able to give orders to resume fighting. Their arrest will also end the conflict,” Papua Police deputy chief Brig. Gen. Paulus Waterpauw said in Jayapura on Friday.

Waterpauw cited the dispute in Puncak regency which had held up the regency election for five years. The Puncak conflict, which claimed the lives of some 50 people, involved the supporters of candidates contesting the election.

“Papua Police detained the respective commanders, who were candidates,” said Waterpauw.

“Both of them then ordered their followers to stop the war so the regency election could be held. Now the regency has its own definitive regent and vice regent.”

Waterpauw urged Nduga residents to get used to leaving legal disputes to the police to deal with and resolve, and not to resort to traditional methods that resulted in a spiral of conflict and revenge.

He said it was difficult to find witnesses to the stabbing of the Nduga regency administration’s general affairs bureau head, Yulius Gwijangge, on March 23.

“If someone could provide information it would make investigating the case easier, but people tend to settle murder cases by taking revenge, so the case has become aggravated and now involves a lot of people,” said Waterpauw.

The Wamena clash was sparked by plans to increase the number of districts and villages in Nduga.

Meanwhile, three suspects in the killing of Nduga regency councilor Eka Tabuni on Jl. Hawai Sentani, Jayapura regency, were charged on Thursday.

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