Theys Eluay, the jailed leader of the pro-independence movement in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya, has been rushed to hospital, the state news agency Antara said Saturday.
Antara said Papua Praesidium Eluay was taken from his prison cell in the remote province Friday suffering heart and prostate problems.
Cleiments Manyokori, head of the general hospital in the Irian Jayan capital of Jayapura, said Eluay underwent minor surgery to help him urinate and his condition improved, according to the agency.
A surgeon, a heart specialist, an anaesthetist and a paramedic were monitoring the pro-independence leader's condition and he would be evacuated to Jakarta if his health deteriorated, Manyokori said.
Doctors were also monitoring Eluay's lungs, he added.
Eluay and four other Praesidium leaders have been under police custody since early December with police preparing charges of subversion against them for advocating a split from Indonesia.
In June during a Papua Congress, the pro-independence Papua Presidium called on the Indonesian government to recognize a 1961 declaration of independence by the people of Irian Jaya.
Separatists in Irian Jaya, who refer to their province as West Papua, declared independence on December 1, 1961.
Eight years later the former Dutch colony became part of Indonesia under a United Nations-sanctioned act of free choice, a process that ethnic Papuans say was flawed.
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid has said Jakarta will not grant Irian Jaya independence, whose people are largely Melanesian Christians, but promised to give it broad autonomy instead -- JAKARTA (AFP)
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