Students in the capital of Irian Jaya vowed Monday to maintain their strike until the restive Indonesian province is granted independence.
The pledge came as students removed the barricades they had placed three days earlier ago around the state Cendrawasih University campus in Jayapura.
"We have just declared that we will not study or attend classes again until Papua gets independence," Matheus Maryen of the West Papua Student Solidarity Movement told AFP.
West Papua is the locally used name for the eastern remote Indonesian province that lies on the western half of New Guinea island.
Maryen was speaking after a demonstration by some 500 students at the campus.
All activity at the university has ceased since students closed down the campus on Friday, erecting log barricades across gates in a pro-independence protest.
Friday was the 39th anniversary of an unrecognized declaration of an independent Papua state.
Maryen said students had agreed to lift the barricades after the University's rector asked them to, however he said they were sticking to their strike.
He said the rector had accepted a continuing cessation of campus activity.
All 500 students at Monday's demonstration agreed with the decision not to return to classes until their independence demands are met, Yance Kambu, a youth leader from Manokwari, told AFP at the campus.
"This is what all Papuan students across Papua feel," Kambu said after the demonstration.
Both Kambu and Maryen said that the students were expecting independence within two years.
"Five years, 10 years, that is too long ... we would rather die than live under Indonesia that long," Kambu said.
The Indonesian police have strengthened their anti-separatist action in the predominantly Melanesian province of Irian Jaya, arresting independence leaders, raiding the headquarters of a pro-independence civilian guard and enforcing a ban on the flying of the separatist flag.
Separatism has been on the rise in the province after the iron-fist rule of former president Suharto ended in 1998.
It redoubled in intensity after Jakarta relinquished its sovereignty over the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, following a UN-held independence ballot there last year.
Independence campaigners in Irian Jaya said that the 1969 UN-supervised referendum which placed the province under Indonesian jurisdiction was invalid as it was not representative of the whole population of Irian Jaya.
They maintain that their declaration of the free state of West Papua -- made on December 1, 1961 as Dutch colonial administrators were relinquishing the territory -- remains valid and they have called on Jakarta to recognize the declaration.
Jakarta has rejected the demands, instead promising broad autonomy for the region, which is rich in natural resources, before the end of the year -- JAYAPURA (AFP)
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