New
Evidence Of Indonesias
War Of Repression In Aceh
By John Roberts
World Socialist Web Site
07 January 2004
For
more than seven months, the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) have been
waging a war of repression in the province of Aceh, aimed at crushing
the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and intimidating the population
as a whole.
The TNI and President
Megawati Sukarnoputri, who signed an emergency decree placing the province
under martial law, claimed that the shock and awe operation
involving 40,000 soldiers and paramilitary police officers would be
over quicklyin no more than six months. But the offensive has
dragged on, claiming at least 1,000 lives, and it shows no sign of winding
down.
News of the conflict
has been tightly controlled. The military has sought to exclude any
independent witnesses by rigidly controlling access by journalists and
forcing out aid organisations. Most of the limited reports from the
province have come from the martial law administration itself.
Deaths, however,
are reported virtually every day in the Indonesian press. On December
13, for example, the Jakarta Post reported military claims that it had
killed five GAM rebels over the previous two days. The article noted
that the military had not identified the rebels and had handed over
their bodies to villagers for quick burials. Such practices are common
place, making it difficult to verify exactly whom the military has killed.
A number of recent
reports provide a more detailed picture of the TNIs activities
in Aceh. A growing body of evidence points to indiscriminate civilian
killings, beatings and torture, and arbitrary justice for suspects dragged
before the courts.
On December 18,
the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report entitled Aceh
under Martial Law: Inside the Secret War, based on evidence collected
from 85 Acehnese refugees interviewed in Malaysia. The 50-page report
documents cases of extra-judicial murder, disappearances,
physical abuse, arbitrary detention and restrictions on freedom of movement.
The highest levels
of the government and Indonesian military are promoting hostility toward
the civilian population of the province. Army chief General Ryamizard
Ryacudu baldly told the official Antara news agency on December 7: People
who dislike the military emergency in Aceh are GAM members.
The witness statements
make chilling reading. HRW official Brad Adams said all refugees who
were interviewed had a story to tell. We fear that the abuses
we have uncovered against the civilian population may just be the tip
of the iceberg.... In case after case, soldiers have gone into villages
and publicly executed or beat people seemingly at random, he stated.
The report presents
testimony by seven refugees who claim they have witnessed young Acehnese
men being executed by the military on the presumption they were GAM
sympathisers. Three others testified to HRW that they had discovered
bodies after military operations in their areas.
One witness recounted
an incident in Lhokseumawe last May, in which Indonesian troops dragged
a man through the streets, demanding that the villagers identify him.
The man was then killed by having his head repeatedly smashed against
a tree. Another refugee told how troops entered the village of Peureulak
in August to search for GAM members. A 20-year-old man was singled out,
questioned and then shot. The soldiers ordered villagers to bury the
body.
According to the
testimony of another witness, a 15-year-old boy was taken away by soldiers
on September 4 to answer questions on why he had bought so much fish
at a market. His body was found two days later with a bullet wound to
his head.
To be young
and male in Aceh is to be regarded with suspicion and to be at risk,
the HRW report comments.
One witness described
a seven-day ordeal in May at the hands of troops in which he saw two
villagers murdered. He told HRW: GAM is all in the mountains,
but the soldiers are always in the villages looking for GAM.
In an incident that
took place during October, villagers in an area of East Aceh were fired
on as they attempted to flee from Indonesian troops searching the area
for GAM guerillas. The witness to the event was wounded. He told HRW:
The military goes beyond the targets of the operation. Violence
to civilians has passed the limit. They look for GAM, come to the village.
If there is no GAM, their emotions run away with them towards civilians.
On the same day
as HRW released its report, the BBC interviewed the Indonesian ambassador
to the US, former defence minister Juwono Sudrasono. Significantly,
he did not specifically deny the allegations of human rights abuses
but justified them. He stated: You cannot expect accountability
in a war situation.... The precise rules of humanitarian law just go
out the window once the shooting starts.
Prisoners tortured
Such indifference
for human rights permeates the Indonesian governments operation
in Aceh. An Associated Press report appearing in the Taipei Times of
December 7 exposed what is meant by Indonesian officials when they boast
about the lightning quick justice they are dispensing in
the province.
An AP reporter was
allowed to interview some of the 1,200 alleged Acehnese rebels being
held in detention, as well as their families, Indonesian military personnel
and legal aid workers. Some prisoners refused to be identified, but
all painted a similar picture of their treatment. The report noted:
Suspected rebels in Indonesias war-torn province of Aceh
get multi-year prison terms after one-hour trials. Many have no lawyers.
Confessions, by many accounts, are extracted through torture.
The chief judge
of the court at Pidie, Nani Sukmawati, admitted her court ruled on 72
cases in six weeks. Legal aid official Afridal Darmi told AP that 40
percent of those detained have no lawyer.
A teacher was sentenced
to five years jail for allegedly selling rice to raise money for the
rebels. There were no witnesses at the trial and the allegations were
simply read out. I blinked and the judge banged the gavel to end
the trial, he said. The teacher claimed that the whole village
wanted to testify that he had been raising money for his school but
were too afraid to appear in court.
Like many of those
interviewed, the teacher reported he had been tortured during interrogation.
He said he was treated like a punching bag during several sessions each
day and showed the journalist wounds from being dragged across concrete.
The teacher said he had witnessed suicide attempts because some prisoners
could not stand the beatings.
Whatever the militarys
motives for allowing this access to prisoners, the normal practice of
the Indonesian authorities is to restrict media coverage rather than
facilitate it.
Media blackout
An earlier report
published on November 25 by HRW, Aceh under Martial Law: Muzzling the
Messengers: Attacks and Restrictions on the Media, detailed the systematic
attempts under the martial law regime to stop any uncontrolled reporting
from inside Aceh.
Prior to the clampdown
on media coverage, there had been reports of serious abuses by the military.
These included an incident at Mapa Mamplam on May 21 in which eyewitnesses
reported the execution of villagers, including three boys. HRW notes:
Such reports have become increasingly rare, not because of an
improvement in the conduct of the war, but because the messengers have
been successfully muzzled.
The 33-page report
details how foreign journalists have been denied permits to enter the
province, or subjected to arbitrary bureaucratic delays in the processing
of applications. Resident foreign journalists claim to be in fear of
future visa restrictions if they file critical reports.
Indonesian journalists
face the most severe risks and restrictions. Reporters have been arbitrarily
detained and subjected to physical and verbal abuse. Journalists have
been fired on, despite travelling in clearly marked vehicles. One television
cameraman was tortured and murdered by unidentified attackers near the
capital, Banda Aceh. Kopassus special forces troops bashed a radio journalist.
The pressure is
not limited to journalists in the field. Political pressure in Jakarta
has led to self-censorship in the Indonesian media, which the HRW says
has resulted in the war dropping off even Indonesias front
pages.
A speech delivered
on December 7 by Major-General Sudrajat, the TNIs director general
for strategic defence planning, shed light on the reason for both the
intensity of the Aceh operation and the Megawati governments ability
to escape any serious international scrutiny.
Addressing a conference
of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific in Jakarta,
Sudrajat labelled the separatist movements in the resource-rich provinces
of Aceh and West Papua as the greatest threat to the control to Jakartas
ruling elite. Sudrajat told the conference: We perceive Indonesias
integrity as the primary concern, while other countries may presume
terrorism is their main concern. The United States and Indonesias
neighbours such as Australia, he said, had an understanding
about this perception of threats in Jakarta.
The oil and gas
reserves in Aceh are not only important to Indonesias ruling elite
as a whole but also are sources of income for TNI leaders. Special security
arrangements with the operators of the oil and gas fieldsas well
as outright extortionhave proved very lucrative for the military
high command.
The understanding
of the US and Australia is based on their decades-long reliance on the
Indonesian military to protect their commercial interests in the economically
and strategically important archipelago. This understanding has been
renewed since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998 and the conflict
over East Timor in 1999. The willingness of Washington and Canberra
to ignore the state-organised terror in Aceh makes their governments
accomplices to the crimes being committed.