Both adults and children will undergo the therapy
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Social Affairs Ministry has deployed several social workers and volunteers to help survivors of the recent Wamena rioting recover through a trauma healing therapy, the ministry's top official, Edi Suharto, said. The volunteers were recruited from organisations such as the disaster mitigation and emergency response unit (Tagana) and the Family Hope Program (PKH), he said in Jakarta Tuesday.

Both adults and children will undergo the therapy, Suharto who is the Director General of the Social Affairs Ministry's Social Rehabilitation Directorate, said.

For those with more serious psychological problems, they would be sent to more credible rehabilitation centers, he said. The trauma team would hold therapy sessions with the survivors as well as games, sports, and plays for children, he added.

The Wamena rioting has left so many Indonesians in misery. The incident did not merely claim 33 lives of innocent civilians but it also forced several thousand survivors to take refuge leaving their torched and destroyed properties behind.

Many survivors, originally from such provinces as West Sumatra, South Sulawesi, East Java, and Banten, have even returned to their hometowns.

The rioting in Wamena was incited by the proliferation of hoaxes through social media platforms that angered its residents, Papua Police Chief Inspector General Rudolf A. Rodja claimed.

Several local media reports confirmed Rodja's claim that the riot was caused by hoaxes about a teacher's racist slur against native Papuan students.

Considering the casualties, the riot has become the deadliest of a wave of violence that erupted in several parts of Papua and West Papua over the past two months following the Surabaya incident on August 16 that triggered resentment and fury among native Papuans.

The Indonesian police blamed Benny Wenda, a campaigner of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) who enjoys a good life in the United Kingdom, for the spate of violence that broke out in these two Indonesian provinces, including the latest deadly rioting in Wamena.

In response to this miserable condition, several district and provincial administrations whose people were directly affected by the rioting had facilitated their evacuation from Papua.

The Banten provincial administration has brought 23 Wamena riot survivors originally from Banten home. (INE)
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EDITED BY INE

Translator: Katriana, Rahmad Nasution
Editor: Suharto
Copyright © ANTARA 2019