BANGKOK — Protests erupted across the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua this week after reports circulated that students from the region were harassed by the police and insulted with racist slurs in the East Java city of Surabaya.

Thousands of people took to the streets in the two distant provinces, torching a provincial government building and clashing with police officers after a video circulated showing the students in Surabaya being called “monkey” and other names as the police surrounded their dormitory.

The Indonesian authorities attempted to halt the protests by sending about 1,000 police officers to Indonesian Papua as reinforcements and by disrupting internet service in Papua Province, a tactic they used earlier to quell election protests in Jakarta.

Papua, the western part of the island of Papua New Guinea, declared independence in the 1960s but was annexed soon after by Indonesia, a move resented ever since by many Papuans, who are ethnically Melanesian.