Indonesian Army involved in Aceh atrocities
By Jo Mazzocchi
ABC
19 June, 2003
To the Indonesian military campaign against separatist rebels in the province of Aceh, and an American freelance journalist who's been playing a dangerous cat and mouse game with the invading Indonesian Forces is claiming to have witnessed their role in atrocities there.William Nessen, who previously travelled with the rebel forces, is the only journalist who remains working within the rebel-held regions of Aceh, and he claims that unarmed civilians are being targeted by the Indonesian Army even after they've surrendered.
He also says the Acehnese civilian population is overwhelmingly behind the rebel forces and that the Indonesian Army has underestimated the sophistication of the rebel army known as GAM.
Jo Mazzocchi reports.
JO MAZZOCCHI: William Nessen is an American journalist who's a long-time Aceh watcher. He's a correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle in Jakarta, but for weeks he's been with rebel forces in Aceh.
The journalist says he stayed in Aceh when many others fled, because it was important to know the truth about the conflict.
Speaking on his mobile, he's revealed what kind of atrocities have been committed by the Indonesian Army against the civilian population.
WILLIAM NESSEN: The Indonesians have been able to cover this up partly because war is such a scary situation you can't go back to count how many people got killed.
I can't say, but I've seen people shot next to me, people who are, I saw a man raise his arms in the air and was shot. The man that was holding my camera for me, who sometimes filmed for me, was killed a few metres away from me as he raised his arms in the air.
JO MAZZOCCHI: He also claims he's seen aircraft attack villages.
WILLIAM NESSEN: But people, from many accounts that I've heard, were in a field sleeping, it was about nine in the morning, and they saw these planes come over, three planes, and they saw them circle over, and people stood up, these are unarmed civilians, these refugees who've rarely seen planes, and they saw them circle, and then all of a sudden one seemed to fall and someone said to me, we all thought oh god the Indonesian's can't even fly a plane. But no, that was coming in to bomb and it dropped a bomb.
They did not have guns, they were not shooting at them, this was not cover fire from the Indonesians, which they're claiming that they bring in the planes when they're fighting the guerrillas, these were hundreds of unarmed people looking up at the planes, and they dropped the bombs on them, and I do not know to this day how many people were killed.
JO MAZZOCCHI: He's also revealed the Indonesian Army is trying to starve the locals as one way of flushing out rebel forces.
WILLIAM NESSEN: And they're also, as part of the total strategy, they're cutting off food to those areas. People can only buy a certain amount of food.
JO MAZZOCCHI: So they're starving the villagers?
WILLIAM NESSEN: They're starving them, they're cutting off, they know, I mean they are trying to destroy the guerrillas. I believe that this is a war to destroy the guerrilla movement. They can't destroy all the Acehnese. But the guerrillas are part of that, the ordinary people. These were ordinary people three years ago, but they, so they are going after them. I don't think that their target is to kill thousands of Acehnese. Maybe it was East Timor, but today they can't get away with that or they don't want to. They are trying to make them afraid, to isolate them from the guerrillas.
JO MAZZOCCHI: And, he says, his position is still vulnerable, because he's relying on the Acehnese to help hide him from the Indonesian Army.
WILLIAM NESSEN: My position is not very safe. I mean it depends once again on the ordinary Acehnese giving information to me or when I'm with the guerrillas, to the guerrillas. I've been hidden by ordinary Acehnese for the last several days. I'm not always in, I'm usually in contact with the guerrillas because they're everywhere, and the guerrilla, the independence movement embodied in GAM is far more extensive than anyone has said before.
In every village there are 10 to 15 people, I mean in the dozens of villages I've been, who consider themselves GAM members. These are unarmed people. So you multiply that by the hundreds of villages in Aceh and you get a figure that's far greater than the several thousand fighters than they have. The civilian GAM structure is in the tens of thousands.
JO MAZZOCCHI: He's now relying on the US Embassy to guarantee him safe passage out of Aceh and Indonesia so he can reveal exactly what he's seen during this conflict.
PETER CAVE: Jo Mazzocchi with that report.
© 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation