SYDNEY, July 12 (Kyodo) — Australian police arrived Sunday in Indonesia's restive Papua province Sunday to help investigate Saturday's murder of an Australian mine worker, even as a second fatal shooting at the mine was reported.
Two Australian Federal Police officers have arrived in Papua to help investigate the murder of 29-year-old Drew Grant at the request of Indonesian police, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was quoted by the Australian Associated Press as saying.
Grant, who worked at the massive Grasberg mining complex operated by PT Freeport Indonesia, a subsidiary of U.S. mining giant Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold Inc., was killed while traveling in a car with four others on the way to a game of golf.
Papuan police have said he was shot five times in the neck, chest and stomach from a distance of some 25 meters in what appeared to be an ambush by gunmen using government-issue weapons, according to Australian media reports.
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Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that Freeport said Sunday one of its guards has been killed and five other people received minor injuries in another shooting near the mine.
AP quoted a company statement as saying, "Shots were fired at two security vehicles, fatally wounding one (PT Freeport) contract security employee."
Smith called Grant's death as "tragic' and said that Indonesian police are treating the shooting as a high-priority investigation.
It occurred in the same area where two American teachers and an Indonesian colleague were slain in an ambush in 2002.
The Grasberg mining complex, which is one of the world's largest single producers of copper and gold, is located in the western half of the island of New Guinea where Free Papua Movement rebels are fighting for an independent state.
Its operation since 1990 has triggered controversy over the environmental impact of its open-pit mining and the share of revenue received by local Papuans, while it is also viewed as a symbol of Jakarta's rule over the area, which was incorporated into Indonesia after a 1969 U.N.-sanctioned plebiscite.
Jakarta has attempted to dampen separatist sentiment by offering Papuans a greater say in provincial-level government. It has also offered provincial authorities a larger share of local forestry, fishery, oil, gas and mining revenues.
Freeport says taxes, royalties, dividends and fees paid to the Indonesia government totaled approximately $1.8 billion in 2007.