Jayapura, Jubi – Jayawijaya students have criticized Regent Wempi Wetipo for supporting the establishment of a Mobile Brigade police headquarters in his region.
“We are the students and Papuan people in Jayawijaya Regency regretted the Jayawijaya Regent’s statement saying the Mobile Brigade Headquarters will be and must be established in Wamena. We thought his statement did not totally make sense,” the student activist Soleman Itlay told Jubi on Tuesday (24/2/2015) in Jayapura.
According to him, the regent’s statement about the Mobile Brigade Headquarter was ran counter to people’s aspirations.
Even the landowners have rejected it.
“Do not make any excuses. If drunken people or crimes are behind the reason, the local police could help. What do they do if we cannot optimize their role? Or there is something behind it?” Itlay said.
The regent shouldn’t take a policy to smooth his own interest, but on the other hand he must embracing all related stakeholders to sit and discuss together. “If he didn’t do, it would potentially raise a conflict of clans in Wamena. At the end, people will get suffered. Because people in Wamena has a traumatic experiences in the past and it still continues under their conscience until now,” Itlay said.
Meanwhile, the Jayawijaya Regent Wempi Wetipo told reporters at his office on Monday (23/2/2015) that not a single person could stop the government’s plan on Mobile Brigade Headquarter in Jayawijaya Regency.
“So what we have discussed is for the public interest not mine. I don’t have any interest, but I speak for the sake of people’s secure. We saw snatchers acted everywhere; drunken people walk on the street. During this time the government just acted like a fire fighter, and I don’t want to do this anymore,” Wetipo said.
When asked about the Jayawijaya people who protested to reject the Mobile Brigade Headquarter, he questioned who are they? Because he had a guarantee from the landowners who are ready to handover their land.
“Who are they and which one? If they said they were Jayawijaya people, so they aren’t. They are not Jayawijaya people. I am Baliem native; so I knew the landowners. I didn’t come from outside of Papua to be appointed as regent in here. I am Baliem native. I was born in Baliem and know who the landowners are,” he said.
“I talked with the landowners and they agreed to handover their land, so why are they now talking about a rejection. If it is said about the political interest, I don’t do politic. I only care about the development,” he said. (Arnold Belau/rom)
