The administrations of Nduga regency and Papua province have been called on to provide immediate assistance to refugees who fled their homes to escape armed conflict in the regency. Many refugees have reportedly died of starvation and malnutrition.
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JAKARTA, KOMPAS — The administrations of Nduga regency and Papua province have been called on to provide immediate assistance to refugees who fled their homes to escape armed conflict in the regency. Many refugees have reportedly died of starvation and malnutrition.
The central government intends to intervene if the local administrations are unable to resolve the issue.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla said that the Nduga regent and the Papua governor should have monitored the situation and kept a record of the refugees. “How come they waited until the central government counted the number of refugees? That’s too much,” Kalla told reporters on Tuesday at his office in Jakarta.
If the local administrations were unable to manage the refugee crisis, the central government would step in. Kalla believed that the number of refugees was not very high. Meanwhile, local communities were expected to help by providing information to security forces.
It is estimated that more than 1,000 displaced people are in Wamena, the capital of Jayawijaya regency. They are staying with relatives and lack adequate facilities, including schooling for their children.
Nduga community leader Hezkia Gwijangge, who is sheltering refugees at his residence in Wamena, said that he could no longer continue to feed the refugees. "I can\'t afford milk for the children and provide food every day. I am just a farmer," he said.
On Tuesday, it was discovered that around 50 refugee children from Nduga’s Mbua district were staying at nine houses in Woken village of Wamena’s Napua district. Children under 5 were living with dozens of people in a honai, the dome-shaped traditional house of Papua. One honai measuring about 5 meters by 6 meters was accommodating 10 people without proper ventilation. The people were roasting sweet potatoes in the honai while a 3-year-old refugee ate roasted cassava with gusto.
"The refugees in Woken, the elderly as well as infants, only consume cassava and water. We don\'t have the money to buy milk and food for the children,” said Mbua community leader Keli Kogoya during a meeting in Woken.
Namantus Gwijangge, who leads a group of volunteers from Nduga, said that the volunteers had reported the problem to the Papua provincial government a few months ago. However, about 1,000 Nduga children had still not received health services, nutritional foods or adequate schooling.
Earlier, the Social Affairs Ministry had stated that aid for refugees would arrive in Wamena this week (Kompas, 23/7).
Jayawijaya Social Affairs Offie head Daulat Martua Raja expressed his deep regret that many children from Nduga had died in the refugee camps because they did not receive proper care.
"The Jayawijaya regional government is ready to assist the refugees, but we are constrained by a lack of data on the number of refugees from the Nduga regional administration," he said.
Throughout last year until July 2019, 37 skirmishes broke out between the joint Indonesian Military (TNI)-police security forces and the armed criminal group led by Egianus Kogoya, killing 23 civilians and 15 TNI soldiers and wounding seven civilians and 14 security personnel.
In Jakarta, anthropologist Antie Soelaiman of the Christian University of Indonesia pointed out that the Nduga people were threatened with extinction. The community was scattered geographically, uprooted from their place of origin, and immediate assistance was necessary to mitigate the social impacts