TIMIKA

A mob angered by a road accident stabbed a soldier to death in Papua on Wednesday.

The road accident took place at 12:45am when two soldiers were riding a motorcycle and hit a child on a street in Wamena town, provincial military spokesman Ali Hamdan Bogra said.

“Locals got angry by the accident and mobbed our members. They stabbed them on the chest with sharp weapons. One died in a nearby hospital and another is critically injured,” he said.

He said security in the town had returned to normal.

The security forces are widely accused of abusing the basic rights of indigenous Melanesians in Papua, where a low-level insurgency has simmered for decades.

In 1969, Indonesia took control of Papua, a former Dutch colony on the western half of New Guinea island, after a vote among a select group of Papuans widely seen as a sham.