Papuan separatist leader 'was murdered'

Eluay's death is the subject of a murder investigation

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian police say that Pro-independence leader Theys Eluay, who was found dead in the restive province of Papua on November 11, was murdered.

"Clearly it was a kidnapping and a murder," Papua police chief Inspector-General Made Mangku Pastika told Reuters news agency on Thursday by telephone from Jayapura, 3,700 km (2,300 miles) east of Jakarta.

He said police had so far questioned about 100 witnesses into the killing of Eluay whose death caused further tension in the vast and remote eastern territory.

Eluay was found dead in his upturned car after eating dinner with the head of the army's elite special forces.

It was the first official comment on the mysterious death although local activists and Eluay's family have said all along he was murdered.

Despite his links to the autocratic rule of former President Suharto, Eluay was revered by many. He was once a parliamentarian in the former ruling Golkar party, Suharto's political vehicle.

The pro-independence movement insists Eluay was killed because of his efforts to break the province away from Indonesia.

Separatist tension

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While there has been only relatively minor trouble since his death, it could be a setback to Indonesia's hope of calming decades of separatist tension in the sparsely populated territory if evidence points to murder.

Eluay's council had already rejected the granting of greater autonomy that handed Papuan people a bigger share of the province's wealth, saying it did not go far enough.

Papua is home to the world's richest copper and gold mine as well as lucrative oil and gas fields.

The council Eluay led eschews the hard line taken by the pro-independence Free Papua Movement (OPM), rebels who have been fighting a low-level guerrilla war for decades.

Some people in the eastern province of two million people, previously called Irian Jaya, also refer to it as West Papua.

The province makes up the western half of New Guinea island, north of Australia.