| Home > South-East Asia >> Indonesia | |
ASIET Net News 28 – July 12-18, 1999
| East Timor |
Sugianto Tandra, Balibo -- A leader of a pro-Indonesia East Timor militia unit said Saturday he has been ordered to make guns in case East Timorese reject autonomy within Indonesia in a late- August UN-sponsored referendum.
The 33-year-old was among some 6,000 people attending a pro- Indonesia rally in Balibo, a hotbed of Indonesian support about 80 kilometers southwest of the East Timor capital Dili, to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of the territory's annexation by Jakarta.
Organizers said the residents arrived for the celebrations voluntarily, but the unit leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, said members of gangs of local militias had threatened many of his fellow villagers with punishment if they did not attend.
And he said he knew that firsthand because he is a militia company commander in his own village about 10 km from Balibo.
"If I didn't do what I do, I'd be punished," he told Kyodo News after attending the ceremony. I was forced to join the militia, although I resisted until [other militia men] almost killed me and burned my house.
"But what concerns me most now is that we are told to make guns, to get ready for a war should autonomy be defeated. My friends and I in my company, however, have determined that we would just as well flee to Dili after the poll," he said.
Militia leaders have told them to prepare weapons, he said. The company leader, who claimed to have 270 men under his command, said members of an Indonesian army unit led by a second sergeant in his area have forced them to commit violence.
Money for making guns, he added, is being generated through gambling dens organized by militia members. "I have reported this all to UNAMET (the UN Mission in East Timor)," the man added.
While not commenting on the man's allegation, UNAMET has already expressed concern that the referendum scheduled for either Aug. 21 or 22, in which voters will choose between independence or autonomy underIndonesia, could be marred or delayed by violence.
The beginning of voter registration was delayed until last Friday for fear of violence and the referendum itself has been put back from early August because of security concerns.
Balibo is "historic" because the "Balibo Declaration" calling for integration with Indonesia is believed to have been signed there Nov. 30, 1975, an act that led to Indonesia invading the former Portuguese colony in December of the same year and annexing it a year later.
Sugianto Tandra, Balibo -- The UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) is facing its first protest over voter registration for an August ballot on the territory's future as pro-Indonesia figures criticized Saturday registration requirements as being "unreasonably strict."
Speaking to 6,000 people attending an annual "Integration Day" ceremony in Balibo, Bobonaro Regent Guilherme Do Santos urged villagers to boycott the registration if UNAMET remains insensitive to his concerns.
"One citizenship ID card should be enough to register. If there is another requirement, Bobonaro people can just as well not register," Guilherme said to thunderous applause.
To the dismay of some villagers, UNAMET has asked them to produce two ID cards when registering. During its information campaign, UNAMET said only one of eight permissible ID cards would be sufficient.
Another pro-Indonesia figure, Eurico Guterres of the Aitarak militia group, raised a similar concern. "They (UNAMET) have caused more problems to villagers. The villagers will have to spend more money for the other ID cards ... this can't be justified at all," he told journalists.
Bobonaro is a regency to the southwest of the capital Dili with a population of around 91,000. In Indonesia's June 7 general election, more than 45,000 people there were deemed eligible to vote.
During the registration, villagers are asked to show their ID card and one other document to authenticate their eligibility. The registration period will last 20 days.
Mark Dodd, Dili -- Despite nagging security concerns, the United Nations gave its qualified approval yesterday to start voter registration in East Timor, less than six weeks before its planned vote on self-determination.
The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, told the Security Council in a letter that it was not possible yet to make a "positive assessment" of the security conditions throughout East Timor.
But he decided to allow voter registration to proceed from today throughout the territory and at external registration centres in Portugal, Australia, Indonesia, Macau, Mozambique and the United States, where there are large communities of Timorese exiles.
The UN will review security half way through the 20-day voter registration period, and it is still possible that the vote, already postponed once from August 8 to August 21 or 22 because of violence by pro-Indonesian militias and logistical delays, may be postponed again. The head of the UN Assistance Mission in East Timor, Mr Ian Martin, said strong assurances from the Indonesian Government that it would improve security territory-wide had been critical in the decision to proceed with voter registration.
But he warned that if Indonesia failed to make good its promise he would not hesitate to suspend voter registration.
Indonesia, meanwhile, mounted a new show of force in Dili. An Indonesian Air Force jet, one of three British-made Hawk 100 fighters based at Kupang in West Timor, made two low passes over the provincial capital, while a frigate appeared offshore. One diplomat described it as "macho posturing" to remind East Timorese who was controlling the territory.
Mr Martin's warning to Jakarta was backed up by equally strong comments from the US Assistant Secretary of State Mr Stanley Roth, arriving from Jakarta on a two-day visit.
"All the senior officials I met -- President Habibie, [Defence Minister] General Wiranto -- indicated to us they intended to abide by the terms of the New York [May 5] agreement," Mr Roth said.
"What we are looking for is the result on the ground. I think I made it clear [yesterday] there was enough significant evidence that elements of the military had been supporting some of the militia groups and that was a large contribution to the lack of security on the ground."
More than 200 people have been killed in militia violence since January and more than 60,000 people displaced, causing a major humanitarian crisis and a logistical nightmare for electoral staff.
Today, 200 voter registration sites staffed by 400 district electoral officers will open across the half-island territory to register an estimated 390,000 eligible voters. Registration was delayed by three weeks last month and again for three days last week because of security worries.
Mr Martin welcomed an announcement by the Indonesian police that six members of a pro-Jakarta militia had been arrested over an attack last month on a UN office in south-west Maliana.
Another seven men suspected of being members of the hardline Besi Merah Putih (Red and White Iron) militia had been arrested and were being held in police custody in Dili for their alleged involvement in an attack on a humanitarian convoy in western Liquica earlier this month.
Dili -- UN blue berets and volunteers on Friday opened voter registration for the landmark poll on the future of East Timor, but the start was marred by the after effects of a violent militia attack.
The attack, and in places the intimidating presence of the anti- independence militia, failed however to deter registrants whose vote next month could determine whether the territory remains a part of Indonesia or goes alone as an independent state.
Old and young lined up in their hundreds clutching identity papers to register at schools throughout the troubled territory, journalists and observers said.
David Wimhurst, the spokesman for the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), said the anti-independence Mahidi militia on Thursday had attacked a village in the district of Suai, 110 kilometers southwest of Dili.
He said the attack prevented four registration posts there from opening on Friday, the first day of the 20-day voter registration period.
But it was the only reported incident of violence in the troubled former Portuguese colony, and the remaining 196 registration stations, most of them in school buildings, worked uninterrupted through the day.
Wimhurst described the Mahidi attack on the village of Salesa as "regrettable." He said that villagers had repulsed the attackers, killing one of the militiamen and wounding another, while suffering four wounded themselves.
"This has caused tension in the area ... and a suspension of registration in four registration centers," he said. "Apart from that I haven't heard of any other problems," Wimhurst said, adding that he expected "the first day or two will be slow and then it will pick up speed."
But in the district of Liquisa, where militia painted skull and cross bones on the windows of a poll station, so many turned up that they had to be told to come back later.
At a school in Bairo Pite in eastern Dili, a 52-year-old man at the end of a long line, holding an old Portuguese civil service "Arquivo de Identificao" (identity card), said he didn't mind waiting. "We struggled for 24 years, we can wait ... No problem," he said.
Asked why he was voting, the man replied: "Because we need to, it's very important. I spent three years in an Indonesian jail ... if it is autonomy, it would be better to be dead."
At the same time, militia members in Dili were busy stringing up banners reading "Autonomy dead or alive," along with bunting in the national red-and-white colours, to celebrate Saturday's anniversary of the 1976 integration of East Timor into Indonesia.
The registrants received stamped voter registration cards slipped into protective plastic folders and were listed in the UNAMET voter roll.
In Jakarta, where East Timorese voted at a UN building, a troupe of artists with orchids staged a peace demonstration in favor of the vote as Indonesian President B.J. Habibie said he would visit East Timor if the vote was in favor of integration. If not, he would give a speech accepting the result, he said.
Jakarta -- Some 2,250 East Timorese living elsewhere in Indonesia are expected to register for August's vote on the territory's future, an independent East Timorese youth group said here Friday.
The group, the East Timor Student and Youth Direct Ballot Monitoring Forum, said in a statement that it had made a survey of potential voters living in five areas of Java island and five other provinces.
Its announcement here came as the United Nations, which is organizing the self-determination vote, opened the 20-day voter registration period in the former Portuguese colony.
The UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) has said it expects between 300,000 and 400,000 East Timorese to register for the vote inside the troubled territory including some 60,000 internally displaced persons.
But it said it had no figure for the number expected to register simultaneously at registration stations outside East Timor, save to say they were in their "thousands."
In Indonesia at large the UN has set up five registration posts for East Timorese, many of them students, in the cities of Jakarta, Ujung Pandang, Denpasar, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.
Overseas posts have also been opened in New York, Geneva, five cities in Australia, Macau (a Portuguese enclave near Hong Kong), Lisbon and Maputo in Mozambique to cater for the thousands of East Timorese who have fled the territory since Indonesia invaded in 1975.
The students' forum coordinator, Alexandre Gusmao, said the group had been accredited by UNAMET to observe the registration process outside the territory. Michael Kennedy, of the External Voting Program of East Timor, told AFP the group was "in the process of being accredited if not already."
Gusmao, a student from the Driyakarya Theological Institute here, also called on his fellow East Timorese to exercise their rights without any fear of intimidation or pressure. He said the group had received no reports of intimidation from the East Timorese community in Jakarta.
The opening of the registration period was ordered by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York Wednesday, despite continuing security fears.
Annan said he had received assurances from the Indonesian authorities, who are responsible for security, that full efforts would be made to curb violence by pro-Indonesian militia in East Timor.
The militia have been blamed by UNAMET in the past months for bloody attacks on pro-independence groups, and more recently for serious harassment of UN personnel in East Timor.
Annan, who has already postponed the ballot from August 8, has said the registration could be halted mid-way if the militia violence is not brought under control.
In the actual ballot, now scheduled for August 21-22 if security permits, East Timorese will be asked whether or not they accept an offer of broad autonomy from Indonesia, which annexed the territory in 1976. Indonesia has said it may grant independence to East Timor if the autonomy offer is rejected.
Geoff Spencer, Suai -- Bloodshed marred the start of voter registration in East Timor for a UN-supervised ballot on independence for the Indonesian province, UN officials said today.
Witnesses said anti-independence militiamen attacked independence supporters Thursday night in the village of Salasa, about 60 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Dili.
One militia member was killed and two people were injured in the brawl, officials said. The clash erupted just hours before a 20- day registration period began today at 200 UN outposts and offices across the half-island territory.
The referendum, scheduled for August 21 or 22, will allow voters to decide whether East Timor should become an autonomous region within Indonesia or become fully independent.
East Timor has endured years of protests, guerrilla warfare and human rights abuses since it became part of Indonesia in the mid-1970s. The question of independence has polarized its 800,000 inhabitants.
Jan Devold, a UN electoral officer in the town of Suai, said four registration posts had been closed because of the fighting. Some 200 villagers fled their homes before UN personnel arrived at the scene of the attack, witnesses said.
The area around Suai and other parts of East Timor have been wracked by violence pitting supporters of continued Indonesian rule against those who support independence.
In Indonesia's capital Jakarta, President B.J. Habibie pledged to respect the results of the referendum. Francisco Lopes da Cruz, the government's envoy for the region, said Habibie would visit the province if voters choose autonomy.
"Otherwise, the president will deliver a nationwide address to congratulate the East Timorese who chose to separate from Indonesia," Da Cruz said.
Elsewhere, voter registration got off to a mainly peaceful start after the United Nations postponed it by three days because of fears of violence.
For days, the United Nations has been urging people to register in repeated radio broadcasts in several languages. Only small groups of people turned out at registration offices in Dili. Larger numbers gathered at UN posts in other towns.
"I'm very happy that this is happening. I want to vote. That's why I am registering," said Domingos da Costa, a high school teacher, who was among about 100 people lined up at a community hall in Maliana, 35 miles southwest of Dili.
He clutched his Indonesian citizenship card along with a Roman Catholic baptismal certificate to present as required identification. The registration process includes taking signatures and thumbprints.
Last month, an anti-independence mob stoned and invaded a UN compound in Maliana. UN staff members also have been threatened and attacked in other areas.
Geoff Fisher, chief electoral officer for the UN Assistance Mission in East Timor, said he was pleased with today's response by would-be voters. "The fact that people have turned out is something I accept as a positive signal," he said. "But there are 19 more days to go yet."
Fisher, who visited several registration posts outside Dili today, said there appeared to be no sign of overt intimidation by armed groups that are accused of killing civilians and mounting a terror campaign to derail the ballot. "Their were many smiles on the people's faces. That's a positive sign," he said.
Visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth said the registration process had only just begun and concerns about security remained. But, he said, "it has got off to a good start."
Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975 and formally annexed it on July 17, 1976. Ceremonies marking the anniversary are scheduled for Saturday.
Liquisa -- Hundreds of people braved pro-Indonesia militia intimidation in this traumatized district to register Friday for a vote on East Timor's future.
A skull-and-crossbones had been painted on the window of one registration centre when 500 local residents showed up hoping to get on the voters' list at 9am, a source with the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) said.
About one-quarter of the village population arrived to register even though the registration centre is located three metres from a bamboo hut that serves as a neighbourhood post of the Besi Merah Putih (Red and white iron) pro-Indonesian militia.
The militia have been blamed for arson, mass murder and other crimes in this district, which is a 45-minute drive from the capital, Dili.
UNAMET told most members of the large morning crowd in Ulmera village to come back over the next couple of days to register at the school building, because they could not handle them, all.
In the afternoon, a more manageable group of about 30 residents lined up clutching documents to prove their eligibility to vote. Just around the corner in the militia post, six men played cards.
"They register first and then rest here," an Indonesian policeman claimed to AFP. He said the hut only serves as a militia post at night but UNAMET officials don't believe that.
They are concerned the post could deter villagers from registering for the late-August ballot on autonomy with Indonesia or independence for this territory which Indonesia invaded in 1975.
"There's a lot of people in the hills still and we're hoping we can persuade them to come down and vote," the source said, adding that UNAMET hopes to meet with militia officials "and ask them if they wouldn't mind moving a little further down the road".
Red-and-white Indonesian flags lined both sides of the street around the registration centre guarded by four armed Indonesian police and one unarmed UNAMET police officer.
Further west in the town of Liquisa, another 30 people sat on chairs waiting for their turn to sign up for the ballot. "It's been pretty much steady like this all day," another UNAMET source said.
Unlike the many who turned out smiling to register in the capital city of Dili, the Liquisa people seemed more reserved.
There are 10 separate registration centres in Liquisa, a district of burned houses and refugees. A driver ferrying journalists to the area made the sign of the cross three times as he drove into the region.
Some refugees said they couldn't sign up on Friday for the vote because they were busy trying to find food. "We heard there was rice in town but when we got there, there wasn't any," said one man who said he fled the village of Loidahar three months ago when militias burned his house.
He lives with 25 other refugees, many of them children, in a room with two beds on the edge of Liquisa town. The white tile floor is stained brown from dirt. They have little food and no fresh clothes. But the man still has two plastic identity cards that he will use to register on Saturday for the ballot.
The militia men want to register, too. At a post just west of Dili, about 10 members of the Pam Swakarsa militia were gathered outside when the first of their group returned to show a green card that confirms he is on the voters' list.
Do they plan to vote for autonomy or independence? "That's secret," one militia man said.
United Nations -- The UN Security Council today called on Jakarta to make 'concrete progress' in improving the security situation in East Timor to ensure the holding of a landmark ballot on schedule.
In a statement read to reporters after closed-door council discussions, council president Hasmy Agam said the 15 members endorsed a decision by UN chief Kofi Annan to delay by three days until Friday the start of voter registration for the East Timor poll.
The East Timorese are to decide whether their former Portuguese colony, annexed by Jakarta in 1975, should remain part of Indonesia or become independent.
The poll is scheduled for between August 21 and 23, but amid security concerns Annan on Saturday delayed voter registration to give the Indonesian authorities another chance to make good on promises to rein in anti-independence militia.
The Security Council members "called on the Indonesian authorities urgently to make concrete progress on improving the security situation in East Timor so that the peaceful implementation of the consultation process can be completed in time," Hasmy said.
Hasmy, the Malaysian ambassador, said that the council welcomed a visit to the territory by a delegation of Indonesian ministers on Monday, and noted the government's reaffirmation of "its commitment to the full implementation of the agreements on East Timor".
The council noted that under the agreements, signed by Portugal and Indonesia in May, the Indonesian authorities have the responsibility to provide security ahead of the vote.
Jakarta -- US relations with Indonesia could suffer if ongoing violence derails a planned vote on self-determination in East Timor, a senior US government official said here Wednesday.
"If the agreement falls apart, that obviously will have consequences and affect relations with a number of countries around the world, including my own," US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Stanley Roth said.
At a press conference at the US embassy in Jakarta after two days of talks with Indonesian ministers, Roth said Jakarta's failure to rein in Indonesian army-backed militias was the main obstacle to the vote.
"I have been very candid in all my conversations that the primary problem ... is bringing the violence under control and that means the militias, although I emphasize the United States condemns violence on any side."
Washington has in recent weeks strongly urged Indonesia to control armed pro-Indonesia militias in East Timor, blamed for attacks on pro-independence groups and United Nations workers.
"We've made it very clear, unmistakably clear, our view that the actions of the militias or paramilitaries on East Timor are unacceptable," State Department spokesman James Foley said on July 7. Indonesia has agreed to a United Nations poll next month on an offer of autonomy under Indonesian rule for East Timor, the former Portuguese colony which it invaded in 1975 and annexed a year later.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has already delayed the vote from August 8 for two weeks because of ongoing militia violence, and will decide this week whether to postpone it again.
Roth said he would leave for East Timor Thursday to see the situation on the ground for himself, travelling outside the capital Dili over two days.
He said he would concentrate on whether workers with the United Nations Assessment Mission to East Timor (UNAMET) were able to open some 200 planned polling centers, and whether tens of thousands of refugees could register and all parties campaign without fear.
But the final decision later this week on the security situation -- which under an agreement between Indonesia and Portugal is Jakarta's responsibility -- rests not with Washington but the UN, Roth said. "Indonesia insisted on responsibility for security ... and has to live up to that," he said.
Since his arrival here early in the week, Roth has held talks with Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, armed forces chief General Wiranto, Foreign Minister Ali Alatas and opposition politicians. All the talks, he said, concentrated on Indonesia's general elections last month and East Timor.
Jakarta said in January that if the East Timorese rejected its autonomy offer, it may allow independence. But since then unrest in the territory has spiralled, with the militias taking most of the blame for killings of pro-independence East Timorese and attacks on UN workers.
Earlier Wednesday Roth visited East Timorese independence leader Xanana Gusmao, who is serving a 20-year sentence for armed rebellion. Gusmao is the leader of the Resistance Council for East Timor (CNRT). Jakarta has said it will not consider freeing him until after the vote.
Foreign Minister Alatas visited East Timor Monday with a strong contingent of fellow ministers including General Wiranto. He said at the time security conditions were improving and Indonesia was fully committed to the vote going ahead.
Don Greenlees (Jakarta) and Sian Powell (Dili) -- Almost half the Indonesian Cabinet flew into East Timor yesterday in a dramatic bid by Jakarta to quell growing international anger over its failure to maintain security ahead of the UN-sponsored ballot on autonomy.
Defence Minister and armed forces chief General Wiranto and Foreign Minister Ali Alatas headed the delegation of 16 ministers and 15 senior officials on its one-day flying visit to the disputed territory.
The visit signals the Habibie Cabinet is prepared to put its reputation on the line over its ability to deliver on security guarantees and bring the pro-Jakarta militias under control.
After an hour-long meeting with Mr Alatas, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy, Francesc Vendrell, declared that the Indonesian Government was now making a realistic assessment of the difficulties in holding a free and fair ballot in August.
"I think I have seen and I have noticed a great willingness to see the problem as it is and to do something about it," Mr Vendrell said.
"They [the Indonesian Government] have certainly said they will take measures that we believe are needed to allow everybody to express their views, to allow everybody to have freedom of movement in the territory."
Pro-independence National Council of Timorese Resistance spokesman Leandro Isaac welcomed the visit as a positive step but raised pro-independence concerns that it was merely a public relations exercise.
"I hope the coming of the ministers ... could decrease the violence in the towns of East Timor. But if the violence still goes on after this, it is up to the UN to decide what to do," Mr Isaac said. "I don't know whether the visit of the ministers is cosmetic or not."
The six-hour visit comes amid grave doubts, on the part of the UN and Australia, about the willingness of the Indonesian military and police to fulfil obligations agreed to under the New York accord to enable a free and fair ballot to take place on whether East Timorese wish to maintain Indonesia's 24-year rule.
In Washington overnight, John Howard was expected to strongly urge US President Bill Clinton to apply maximum pressure on Indonesia to improve security. Past guarantees by Indonesia that security would be improved have been followed quickly by further incidents of harassment and intimidation, including attacks against UN offices and personnel.
Mr Alatas said the sheer number of ministers demonstrated Indonesia's determination to facilitate a free and fair ballot on independence, now set down for August 21 or 22.
"It shows our Government's determination and our sincerity and our seriousness to really implement what we agreed to do," Mr Alatas said in Dili.
But pro-independence student leader Francisco Dionisio said only the total withdrawal of the Indonesian armed forces from East Timor would bring peace.
"Our people are not ready to join the ballot," he said. "Only a peacekeeping force can maintain security." Mr Dionisio said the ministers' visit was simply a response to international pressure and nothing concrete would come of it.
Mr Alatas brushed off concerns about violence and said security in the region was continuously improving. He said the three-day delay in registering voters, announced by the UN on Sunday because of continuing outbreaks of violence and intimidation, would not delay the referendum itself. Mr Annan is due to announce on Friday whether the registration process will begin.
Don Greenlees, Jakarta -- East Timor militia leader Eurico Guterres was due to meet UN envoy Francesc Vendrell in Dili on Saturday. He didn't show up. The UN was led to believe Guterres instead went to see Governor Abilio Soares, a man with whom he has regular contact.
The pro-Jakarta militias do not bother to disguise the contempt with which they regard the UN Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET). Even if Guterres did try to see Vendrell later by going to the central Mahkota Hotel, as he claims, the militia has clearly got the UN in its sights.
Asked if he can guarantee the safety of UN personnel, Guterres, the head of the Aitarak militia, says: "I cannot guarantee that. They have to safeguard themselves. I have already said that if UNAMET does not remain neutral, I won't take part in the ballot. We have no plan to oppose UNAMET, but we could do that if they don't respect us." Such veiled warnings have been backed by a spate of attacks and threats against UN staff and posts. Forces supporting Indonesian rule have rejected UNAMET's presence, accusing it of bias in favour of independence. Although the UN has reacted sharply to acts of harassment, the problems have at times been worse than it has publicly disclosed and reinforce misgivings about the role being played by Indonesia's troops.
Two incidents, in particular, have given officials cause for concern over the UN's precarious position in East Timor. Late on Wednesday, June 30, the UN said seven electoral staff were being pulled out of the town of Viqueque, in the territory's south- east, because of militia threats.
Shortly before the threats were made, local police in Viqueque were told about a killing in a nearby village. They went to the area and retrieved the body. Back in Viqueque, the trouble started.
A group of troops demanded the body be handed over. The local police refused Guns were drawn in a tense stand-off, said to have been witnessed by a UN political officer. While the army backed down, the UN may have paid the price.
A band of militia subsequently arrived and made the threats against UN staff. In Dili, UNAMET headquarters could get only sketchy reports of the situation on the ground because of communications difficulties, highlighting another weakness in the initial phase of its deployment.
Even after the seven electoral staff were withdrawn, the problems continued. On the Thursday night, police protecting a residence housing some of the remaining UN personnel fired warning shots in the air to scare off a group gathering outside. The identity of this group is unknown -- some believe they could have been militia or military.
The next incident took place the following Sunday in Liquica, west of Dili. An aid convoy returning from assisting refugees was attacked by members of the Besi Merah Putih (Red and White Iron) militia. This incident led to the withdrawal of all UN personnel.
Earlier in the day, two UN vehicles had passed through a militia roadblock. Their vehicles were searched, but they were otherwise unhindered. The most troubling aspect of the encounter was an East Timorese with the UN recognised someone manning the roadblock -- a military intelligence sergeant in plain clothes, carrying a two-way radio.
When a UN helicopter tried to evacuate Liquica staff, it had to abort a landing because of gunfire. Bullets were seen striking the ground.
After numerous trips to Liquica by UN security officers, the Liquica post is yet to reopen. All but two of the staff assigned to Liquica said they wanted to see security improve further before they returned.
UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan has now delayed a decision on whether conditions are right to allow
the start of voter registration. It was due to begin today but a decision
will be made on Friday as to whether it can proceed.
| June 7 election |
Susan Sim and Derwin Pereira, Jakarta -- President B.J. Habibie has rejected opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri's claim to a popular mandate following last month's general election, insisting that it is misleading to assume that the party with the most votes will win the presidency automatically.
Giving his analysis of the election results to The Straits Times in a 2-1/2-hour interview on Sunday, he made it clear that such a reading of the results was too simplistic and not in accordance with Indonesia's Constitution.
In any case, he said, her party, while leading others in the vote count, was by no means the overwhelming winner. And he left no doubt that he was very much in the running for the job.
He said that as in the American model, the Indonesian Constitution provided for an indirect election of the president by an electoral college.
In practical terms, this meant that 700 Indonesians who were members of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), and not the 116 million voters, had the right to decide if he or any of five other eligible candidates would be president.
Anticipating arguments about the will of the people and how that should be taken into account, he said that when Indonesians went to the polls last month, they were aware who the presidential candidate of each party contesting the general election was. Thus, as he saw it, there was no denial of the people's aspirations.
However, he left open the possibility that the Constitution could be amended in the future to provide for a direct election of the president the next round.
For now, Indonesia's best son or daughter would become the next president, he said in the interview, his first since the election, the results of which have yet to be proclaimed officially though latest vote counts put his party, the Golkar, at least 12 percentage points behind Ms Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party-Perjuangan (Struggle).
So did he think he was the best man for the job then? "I leave it to the people," said the German-trained aeronautical engineer who took over from former President Suharto only 13 months ago.
Would he accept Ms Megawati as president if the MPR so decided? "Of course, I'm a democrat," he said, adding: "If the people want to have her, then I will accept it because I have full confidence that the people will take the best." But he also made it a point to say that as Indonesia would have to face numerous challenges ahead in the new millennium, the new president would have to be a "high-quality" person.
"No experimenting with 211 million people," he said as he went on to recount what he had achieved during his watch as Indonesia's third president, chief of which were the holding of a free, fair and open general election and stabilising the economy.
Accompanied by several ministers and aides, including State Secretary Muladi and Information Minister Yunus Yosfiah, he was in an upbeat mood as he spoke at length about reforming Indonesia's politics and economy as well as the importance of good ties with Singapore.
There were also glimpses of "Habibie the family man" as he talked of his longing to see the twins, a boy and a girl, newly born to his second son and still in Singapore after delivery last month -- and just that hint of hurt at the scorn heaped on him by some critics.
"There is a lot of presumption of me as a stupid guy, you know, big-spender and knows nothing about anything and not more than a puppet of the former president and so on," he noted as he laughed mirthlessly at those jibes.
Hence his desire to let people in South-east Asia know, through The Straits Times, that though he became president overnight in May last year, "without preparation", he had led his country through a "fair, just, transparent and open election" a year later.
The June 7 ballot was to choose 462 parliamentary representatives from among 48 parties, but 99 per cent of the voters had cast their ballots for six main parties.
Given that the top three or four parties by vote count had been around in various guises since Indonesia became independent, his interpretation of the results was that the people rallied behind, essentially, the same political forces.
He described the election as "accelerated evolution" rather than revolution, and was happy that there was no single dominant party, for that would have meant a return to the times when the Golkar ruled the roost.
He was emphatic that no party could claim to have a majority in the MPR; his estimate was that Ms Megawati's PDI-P would muster no more than 23 per cent of the seats in the MPR, with his Golkar, in second place with about 17 per cent.
As voters knew in advance who the presidential candidate of each of the six main parties was, that meant there were "only six real candidates" with "legitimacy to participate" in the November presidential contest.
And these were Ms Megawati, Mr Amien Rais of the National Mandate Party (PAN), Mr Hamzah Haz of the United Development Party (PPP), Mr Abdurrahman Wahid of the Nation Awakening Party (PKB), Mr Yusril Mahendra of the Crescent Star Party (PBB) and himself.
Foreclosing the possibility of "dark horses" emerging later, and doubtless aware that some in his own Golkar party had whispered aloud about dropping him as its candidate, he insisted no one else was eligible unless any or some of these six parties called special congresses to change their nominees.
Of Ms Megawati's claim on the presidency, which she reportedly made in an interview last week, he said simply: "I have given you the mechanism. It is clear enough, the rationale ... You can make your own conclusions."
And by pointing out that physical and mental health was one of the criteria for eligibility, he did not leave it to imagination that the semi-blind Mr Wahid would probably not qualify.
Maintaining that it was neither his style nor in the Indonesian culture for him to declare himself the best candidate, he also ducked the question of whom he would pick as his vice-president. Not Indonesian culture to name names, and counter-productive too, he said.
Nor was he drawn to the idea of a grand coalition government with Ms Megawati, as one of his aides had suggested he would. Indonesia, he said, operated a presidential system, not a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy in which coalition governments were possible.
He did let on that he had met four of the other five candidates -- only Ms Megawati had yet to see him -- but insisted this was in his capacity as president, not another candidate. The discussions they had were about what lay ahead for Indonesia and the region, not about who should occupy the palace.
Would the voting in the MPR be open? No, one-man-one-vote, in secret, he said, just like in Singapore.
His last word on the subject was that when the time came, he would go to the MPR to press his candidacy, not summon the MPR to his palace. "They should call me. I'll come. Of course ... I'm not God or King and not setting up a dynasty. I just could be anybody. I could be your next-door neighbour."
Singapore -- Indonesian opposition leader Amien Rais said here Wednesday that it was too early to declare a winner in the race for the presidency and witheld his support for frontrunner Megawati Sukarnoputri.
"The politicial landscape is very hard to map out. Nobody knows how the political parties will form [coalitions]," he told a forum on the post-election prospects of Southeast Asia's largest country.
Opposition parties together have edged the ruling Golkar out in the June 7 polls but Indonesia's political transition will only be completed when the president is indirectly elected in November.
The president is to be chosen by the 700-member People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) which includes the 462-member parliament elected in the recent polls. This allows for intense horse-trading before the MPR vote.
Opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democracy Party-Struggle (PDI-P) has won about 35 percent of the popular vote in the polls, according to a still ongoing slow tally, with President B. J. Habibie's Golkar trailing at about 19 percent.
"I do not hesitate to congratulate Mrs. Megawati," Rais, whose National Mandate Party (PAN) was in fifth place with 6.9 percent, said in the Singapore forum. "But we must not forget the 65 percent who did not vote for Mega's party," he said. "It is too early to declare the PDI-P the winner."
He also laid down conditions which appeared to distance himself from Megawati. "I will never support any presidential candidate who opposes an act of self-determination for the people of East Timor," he said, referring to Megawati's opposition to a breakaway by the former Portugese colony invaded and annexed by Indonesia in the mid-1970s. "Their right to decide their future is inalienable," Rais said.
He also said "the reason I withold support [for Megawati] is because there are some confusing policies ... there are strong similarities between PDI-P and Golkar."
Rais said former president Suharto, who stepped down in May 1998 amid popular unrest, must face justice. "I will not support a presidential candidate who will not work for national reconciliation," he said.
"The next president must work to achieve just resolution of the Suharto issue. The ex-general must be held accountable for the results of his presidency. This is a matter of social necessity," he said. Rais also said the PDI-P was "reluctant" to reform the 1945 constitution which "fostered two dictatorships."
Megawati, daughter of Indonesia's founding president Sukarno, who was replaced by Suharto in 1966, has largely stayed silent as the election vote count progresses slowly.
She has said that not only Suharto should face the due process of law but many others too. She sticks meticulously to the law, saying she and her family knew what it was like to suffer.
Before the elections Megawati called the 1945 constitution a sacred legacy and said it would not be changed. But her legal advisor and party vice president Dimiati Hartono has since clarified that Megawati was intent on preserving only the preamble of the constitution as it is -- namely Pancasila, allowing freedom of worship and a unitary state.
This would leave her open to devolve more powers to the regions and tighten clauses which allow a president to take almost absolute power.
Jakarta -- Hundreds of Muslim students in Ujungpandang, South Sulawesi, took to the streets on Monday voicing their rejection of Megawati Soekarnoputri's presidential bid.
The demonstration took place at about the same time that hundreds of locals gathered in Medan, North Sumatra, to express their support of the chairwoman of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) by compiling thumb prints in blood.
The young detractors of Megawati burned tires and shouted slogans as they marched along Jl. Urip Sumoharjo toward the office of the South Sulawesi provincial legislative council where they unfurled a large banner that said: "Mega Yes, President No!"
Student leader Anas Ahmad said they wanted the legislators and the provincial delegation to the General Session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) to heed their aspirations. "They should at least campaign so we can have a (Muslim) president," he said.
Megawati's detractors have often questioned her religious affiliation. Another group of Muslim students held a similar demonstration at the Free West Irian Monument, also in Ujungpandang.
In Medan, hundreds of supporters gathered on Jl. Jamin Ginting in the Padang Bulan area to give their thumb prints in blood. One enthusiastic supporter even made prints of all his fingers, pricking them with a needle one by one.
"I am her supporter, I want her to 'ascend' during the general assembly," said the supporter, a driver by the name of Rizal T. Organizer Ahmad said that by Monday afternoon, some 500 prints had been collected on an 8-meter-long piece of white cloth.
Similar expressions of support had been made earlier, including one in the Central Java capital of Semarang where some 2,000 people collected their signatures on a long red banner, and in Jakarta on Sunday, where hundreds of people signed a long banner reading "Megawati or Revolution".
The secretary of the North Sumatra chapter of PDI Perjuangan, Taufan Agung Ginting, said the prints collection was "like a referendum and proof that the people want her to be president".
A similar demonstration of support was voiced by about 100 women activists from various towns on Java, who gathered on Sunday in Yogyakarta. Led by the wife of PDI Perjuangan executive Soetardjo Soerjogoeritno, the group read a pledge of loyalty to Megawati.
They unfurled a banner that read, "Rise, oh Indonesian women, your time has come." Soetardjo, who also attended the rally, said it would be an injustice if Megawati failed to become president because she was a woman. He believed there was no religious teaching against a woman being president. "Of 24 million Megawati supporters, some 90 percent are Muslims," he insisted.
Another Megawati aide, legal expert Dimyati Hartono, said on Sunday in Semarang, Central Java, that PDI Perjuangan's commanding lead in the provisional poll results reflected the people's support for Megawati. "This controversy about her presidency should really stop," he said.
Megawati has been facing the greatest challenge yet to her presidential bid, namely resistance from Muslim groups who believe Islam bars a woman from heading an administration.
The opinion of the Muslim groups, however, was far from uniform. Hundreds of ulemas from one group -- Indonesia's largest Islamic organization Nahdlatul Ulama -- have been split over the matter.
In the East Java town of Kediri, for instance, ulemas gathering at Lirboyo pesantren (boarding school) selected several respected Muslim scholars among them to say the special istikharah prayer for divine guidance on the matter of Megawati's presidency.
Nahdlatul Ulama's local leader, Ali Maschan Moesa, said in Surabaya that the forum on religious matters, begun on July 10, could not be concluded yet because the ulemas believe none of the existing presidential candidates meet their criteria. "Which is why we asked some ulemas to say the prayer so Allah could help us make the best decision," Moesa said.
Moesa said he believed the ulemas were no longer making an issue out of Megawati's gender because they believed there were great differences between a president and Islamic caliph.
A caliph in Islam, for instance, bears all of the executive, legislative and judiciary power, while a president holds only the executive power, he said, hinting at the possibility of eventual support for Megawati.
The Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI) was among the first Islamic organizations that reminded Muslims to choose political parties that fight for "national interests and that field Muslim legislative candidates".
The council was soon blasted by many people who thought it was attacking PDI Perjuangan, which fielded non-Muslims for 60 percent of its legislative candidates. Another critic was Nahdlatul Ulama chairman Abdurrahman Wahid, who accused the council of meddling in politics and overstepping its boundary.
However MUI chairman Ali
Yafie said the council was merely carrying out its moral responsibilities
toward Muslims.
| Aceh/West Papua |
Jakarta -- Indonesian Military (TNI) Commander Gen. Wiranto defended on Tuesday the presence of anti-riot troops in Aceh, following recent clashes which left nine people dead.
Eight alleged rebels were shot dead in two separate clashes in East Aceh and Central Aceh on Monday, the day bodies of two police were found in East Aceh with severe wounds.
Wiranto repeated the military stance that the troops were deployed to the troubled province to enable locals to feel secure in the wake of armed antigovernment action lead by separatist groups. "They [the troops] are assigned to restore order, not to engage in combat," Wiranto said.
He was commenting on mounting calls for the government to withdraw security personnel from Aceh's three volatile regencies of Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh.
Among those who oppose the presence of an armed presence in Aceh is human rights activist Hasballah Saad, who was quoted by Kompas as saying on Monday that the anti-government movement in Aceh could not be settled through violence.
Violence has intensified despite the dispatch in May of a 1,200- strong joint force composed of police and military troops to Aceh, where over 100 people have been killed in the past three months. Thousands have fled their homes. Rights groups have said the number of security personnel posted there could reach 10,000.
The spokesman for Bukit Barisan Military Command, which oversees Aceh, Lt. Col. Nurdin Sulistyo, said on Tuesday in Medan, North Sumatra, that riot troops shot dead three alleged rebels in Simpang Alue village in East Aceh and four others on a section of a road linking Bireun and Takengon in Central Aceh during evening gunbattles. Nurdin said no security personnel were killed or wounded in the clashes.
Another rebel suspect escaped the troops with gunshot wounds in Simpang Alue. Security authorities identified the three killed alleged rebels as Abdullah, alias Keucik Lah, Usman from Seunebok village and Baktiar of Meunasah village. The three were 30 years old.
A two-way radio, three swords, three Free Aceh Movement member cards, a separatist flag and several receipts prepared for donors were found, authorities said.
In Central Aceh, the exchange of gunfire involved riot troops and a group of seven alleged rebels, who fled after their Panther van was caught during a routine patrol. Rebel suspects identified as Tengku Rizal, M. Amin, Ridwan, Muhammad, Ismail Ali and Nurdin were killed in Lampahan market. Their friend, Mukhtar, was arrested with severe wounds, while the other managed to escape.
Tension mounted in villages near the scene on Tuesday following the overnight armed clash.
Chief of Lilawangsa Military Command overseeing Central Aceh and East Aceh, Col. Syafnil Armen, said on Tuesday that security troops had been deployed to hunt down the two escapees, whom he believed were armed with rifles.
Villagers in Aluedai in East Aceh found on Monday the bodies of Sgt. Maj. Parulian Mandalahi, 40, and Second Sgt. Piter Tetani, 21, members of North Aceh Police, in a pickup truck ditched on the side of the main highway linking the provincial capital Banda Aceh to Medan. Their necks were slashed, Antara reported.
Parulian was from the Lhoksukon police station in the regency, while Piter was a member of the anti riot force posted in the North Aceh capital of Lhokseumawe. North Aceh Police chief Lt. Col. Iskandar Hasan was not available for comment.
Residents of Aluedai, a poor village 85 kilometers east of natural gas-rich Lhokseumawe, found Parulian's body in the cabin, while Piter's was wrapped in a sack on the truck's bed.
The two bodies were taken by riot troops to the Lhokseumawe military hospital at noon on Tuesday. In an unusually secretive move, journalists were barred from taking pictures of the two fatalities or seeking comments from medical employees.
In Jakarta, Wiranto said he would heed advice from the public regarding a wise resolution of the antigovernment movement in Aceh.
"But it's clear that our decision to send anti-riot troops to Aceh was aimed at helping people regain their feeling of security."
He said disappointments over the government's measures were understandable, mainly because of the complicated nature of the problems in the province.
Jakarta -- Troops killed six suspected separatist rebels and injured three others in two separate incidents in Indonesia's troubled Aceh province, a report said Tuesday.
Colonel Syafnil Armen, chief of the military command based in Lhokseumawe, the main city of North Aceh district, was quoted by the state Antara news agency as saying four suspected rebels were shot dead Monday in a chase in Central Aceh. The two others were killed in an armed encounter in East Aceh, also on Monday, he added.
Armen said the first incident began when a group of rebels, riding on a van, broke through a security checkpoint manned by soldiers, who later chased and opened fire on the vehicle, killing four of them.
In the second encounter, troops fired at rebels in a chase, killing two and wounded three others, Armen said. He added a fourth rebel might have escaped with gunshot wounds.
Soldiers and crack riot police were continuing a sweeping operation to search for suspected strongholds of the rebels, he said. Aceh police spokeswoman Major P. Budiastuti, contacted by AFP, confirmed the incidents but declined to give further details.
Neles Tebay, Jayapura -- Security authorities continued to commit human rights violations in Irian Jaya in the past year as popular resentment against the central government unfolded in the wake of an upsurge in separatist activities, a rights group and churches say.
The local Catholic diocese, the Christian Evangelical Church, Indonesian Bible Camp Church and Institute for Human Rights Studies and Advocacy (IHRSTAD) urged the government on Saturday to set up an independent international team to investigate rights abuses, dating back to last year's fatal shooting in Biak.
Police and the National Commission on Human Rights reported a man, Ruben Uroboy, 29, was killed in the incident when security troops opened fire to disperse hundreds of indigenous Irianese who were hoisting a West Papua Morning Star flag.
On Friday, a civilian, Daud Edward Waromi, 25, died after he was shot in the head at Jayapura Port. Three suspects, who are members of the Military Police in Sorong, 1,000 kilometers west of here, have been detained at the local Military Police Headquarters.
On Saturday, the churches and IHRSTAD unveiled new findings in the Biak case. They claimed that at least eight people died and 37 were hurt, with four of them left physically disabled by their injuries.
Their joint investigation team also linked the shooting to the subsequent recovery of 32 bodies from the sea off Biak. Signs of torture were found on the bodies, the team said. One of the bodies was clad in a high school student internal organization (OSIS) uniform and another in attire of the Golkar Party.
The local military said the bodies were victims of a tsunami in Aitape in Papua New Guinea who drifted the hundreds of miles to Biak.
IHRSTAD executive director Yohanes Bonay insisted the military explanation was nonsense. "We all know that the tsunami occurred on July 17, 1998, eight days after the bodies were found. Besides, do Papua New Guineans wear Golkar or Indonesian student group T-shirts?"
The rights group and churches identified the fatalities as Ruben, Fransiskus Delton Gawe, 29, Wilhelminus Rumpaisum, 65, Paulus Mamoribo, 20, and Niko Smass, 24. The other three fatalities were reported by a witness at the local Navy hospital, but he could not identify them, Bonay said.
The four organizations also reported that arrests were made of locals without proper legal procedures.
Rev. Herman Awom, deputy chairman of the Christian Evangelical Church Synode, said the findings were unveiled because the government never publicly announced the results of its probe into the case and any legal measures taken against the shooters.
Awom said an independent team, involving Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the governments of Indonesia, Australia and Papua New Guinea, should be formed to investigate human rights violations in the country's easternmost province due to conflicting versions of reports.
The list of fatalities also included Steven Suripaty, a student who was shot to death on the campus of state Cendrawasih University during a proindependence rally on July 3 last year; a senior high school student, Roby Young, 19, who was killed by an Army Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad) member following a dispute on June 7, 1999, in Genyem, 100 kilometers west of here; and two people who died of gunshot wounds in unrest which followed harsh measures used against locals who hoisted a West Papua flag on July 5, 1999, in Sorong.
Robby's killer, Pvt. Hadi Prajitno, was sentenced to five years in jail and dismissed from military service on Thursday.
Bonay said more Irianese would raise separatist flags to express their disappointment with the central government and their powerlessness to cope with suffering and the resolution of their grievances. "The move reflects the people's protest against the government, which they said has never heeded their aspirations."
Natural resources-rich Irian Jaya has contributed billions of dollars from mining exploration to the country's coffers in the past three decades, but the province's people are rated among the poorest.
The rights group and churches recommended that the government initiate dialogs to listen to complaints, difficulties and the hopes of the Irianese instead of relying on repressive measures. "Such an approach is the best and most humane way to root the problems in the province," Bonay said.
In the conclusion of their joint statement, the institutions urged the government to stop the use of violence, release political prisoners linked to the separatist movement and lift the province's status as a politically volatile territory.
Sydney -- Britain's crack SAS army regiment was involved in a 1996 mission to rescue hostages from rebels in Indonesia's Irian Jaya province during which eight civilians died, an Australian television report claimed Monday.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) Four Corners program also alleged the Special Air Services (SAS) worked with mercenaries in planning the operation, and used a helicopter with International Red Cross markings.
Some of the mercenaries came from Executive Outcomes, a South African company involved a year later in the so-called Sandline scandal which ended with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan leaving office.
A helicopter with International Red Cross markings was claimed in the ABC report to have been used by soldiers who shot the villagers in the southern highlands of Irian Jaya in May 1996.
The report, to be broadcast late Monday, said the truth about the mission had been concealed and the Indonesian military was credited with a rescue that triggered a crackdown in which many Irianese were massacred, raped, tortured or dispossessed.
The report does not allege the SAS directly took part in the mission, to rescue a team of European biologists and Indonesian researchers, but claims SAS personnel were implicated at least as advisors and planners.
Four Britons, a German, a Dutchman and his pregnant wife, and four Indonesians had been held for four months while the International Red Cross negotiated for their release.
Free Papua Movement (OPM) guerillas had captured the team to draw international attention to their battle against Indonesia for independence in the western half of New Guinea.
Indonesia was accused in Monday's report of bombing and strafing villages whose loyalties were regarded as suspect during a campaign that brought famine to the region.
One villager told the ABC that between 1,000 people and 5,000 people were killed in the years leading up to the capture of the hostages. "Others fled into the forest never to return, not even to visit any government controlled area again," he said.
Officially, eight OPM soldiers were killed by Indonesian Kopassus special forces in a battle that reached its climax after two of the Indonesian captives had been killed by the OPM.
But Daniel Start, leader of the British team, was quoted as saying the Indonesians were not killed by their OPM captors, but by grieving civilian friends and relatives of innocent people "murdered days before under extraordinary circumstances."
Start said those murdered had been lured to their deaths by a Red Cross flag and gunned down by four or five white people and Indonesians behind them. Eight were killed and many more were wounded.
The International Red Cross denied it had authorised the use of the helicopter with Red Cross markings, but had failed to make any further inquiries, the report said.
OPM leader Kelly Kwalik said the International Red Cross had been "used" by the Indonesians and the military involved in the rescue mission.
Britain appointed military attache Ivor Helberg, a former SAS colonel, to provide specialised assistance and advice to Kopassus commander Major-General Prabowo.
Helberg admitted Britain had also provided sophisticated surveillance equipment to help in the operation, but denied the SAS or any British troops were involved in the rescue mission.
Executive Outcomes' now retired chief executive officer, Nick Van Den Bergh, said he led a team of five mercenaries in Irian Jaya during the hostage crisis, providing advice and training for a helicopter assault, but denied he or his men took part in it. Van Den Berg also said he could name two of the SAS team who were in the area.
Jakarta -- More than 40,000 refugees packed camps in Indonesia's Aceh province Saturday, an official said, after fleeing their villages out of fear of continuing violence between soldiers and rebels.
A preliminary count of the refugees in Pidie disctrict showed 44,740 people had fled, said the official who asked to remain anonymous.
"For some it is their 10th day of living as refugees while for others it has only been some six days, but none are prepared to return home," the official told AFP by telephone from the town of Sigli.
He said the bulk of the refugees came from the Tangse sub- district. Tangse subdistrict chief Yusri was quoted by the Kompas daily on Friday as describing the area as "practically empty".
Human rights activists have said the refugees left their homes fearing violence between soldiers and members of the Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh) separatist movement.
Officials have provided uncooked rice and other foodstuffs to them. Most refugees staying in open tents, or in the grounds of mosques or schools. "It's really sad to see the conditions of the places that they are living in, especially when it rains," said the refugee official.
Pidie is one of three Aceh districts, along with East Aceh and North Aceh, most affected by violence involving soldiers and the rebels. Rebels have set fire to hundreds of houses, schools and public facilities in Aceh in recent months.
The province has seen a decade of violent military operations against the Aceh Merdeka, which has been fighting for an Islamic state since the mid-1970s. The military operations ended last year, amid accusations of widespread human rights violations by the military.
But violence which has erupted again in the areas since early May has already left more than 80 dead.
The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) said several rape cases involving soldiers had been reported since security forces were deployed again in Aceh in May, the Jakarta Post reported Saturday.
"At least seven women between 16 and 30 years of age were raped in North Aceh in the last three weeks," Kontras coordinator Munir was quoted as saying.
"We still need to investigate further, but we have received reports from a number of local non-governmental organizations saying these acts were committed by security personnel," he added.
[On July 11 AFP reported
that a retired captain, Rahmat Raden, 60, former chief of a subdistrict
military command, was shot dead on July 10 by two men riding on a motorcycle
in Panton Labu, North Aceh - James Balowski.]
| News & issues |
The case of (temporarily non-active) Attorney General, Lt. General Ghalib, is increasingly slipping from the rails of justice as political elements tend to appear on the surface. Cancellation of the Central Command Military Police, Major General Djasri Marin, who decided to make a suspect of Ghalib in the corruption case, indicates that a conspiracy is going on to save the good name of the military corps from corruption charges.
"It is bound to happen, since Djasri and Ghalib are both top military officers. The more so, as they just had a meeting with the Minister Defence and Security/Commander Armed Forces," the Coordinator Legal Bureau for Total Reformation Supervision, Dindin S. Maolani told the press during a Restricted Discussion related to the Finalisation of Suspected KKN practises of former President Soeharto and his cronies as well as President BJ Habibie's responsibility at the Savoy Homan Hotel on Friday (9/7) in Bandung.
Defence and Security Minister/Commander Armed Forces General Wiranto, stressed at the military staff meeting on Thursday that the Ghalib case was not at all brought up. Wiranto said, about his meeting with Ghalib and Djasri that Ghalib has been put on non-active duty.
"For the time being he is not going to function as Attorney General, he will report to me periodically about his activities. I will also give him instructions for the time being," Wiranto said.
"There is no inkling of a figure with a legal problem," said Wiranto. Ghalib's case is a matter for the Military Police, he said. "I have given the Military Police full authority. We believe in delegating full authority to officials in function. If investigations are completed, the Military Police Commander will report to me," Wiranto said.
Meanwhile the Deputy Chief Information Services of Defence and Security, Brigadier General Sudradjat, underlined his commitment and his consistency as a military leader to entirely wipe off the Andi Ghalib corruption case in line with the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW).
"The Defence Minister/Armed Forces Commander, General Wiranto, is still committed to the solution of the case," said the Deputy Information Chief in reply to questions from reporters at Military Headquarters on Jl. Merdeka Barat, Central Jakarta, Friday , as quoted by Antara.
Few commitments
The Coordinator of the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), Teten Masduki and ICW defender, Iskandar Sonhaji, who were met after hearing out the Special Committee for the KKN drafts said that the withdrawal of the Military Police's letter to the Police which had repeatedly withdrawn Ghalib's status of suspect and lack of government's commitments to finalise the Ghalib case. This case could not possibly be finalised without further investigations. Links leading to the Ghalib case have to be decided by the Justice Minister and Minister Defence in a letter of decision.
While the Chairman of the Special Committee for KKN Drafts, Agus Muhidin, admitted his confusion about the Ghalib case. For this reason, his department will forward a question through Commission I about the matter.
National Commission of Human Rights (HAM) member, Benjamin Mangkoedilaga, said that withdrawal of the Military Police letter would not pose a problem when observed from a legal aspect. "If it is still with the Papera (case officer), what can we do," he said. When viewed from a public sense of justice, he said, there seemed to be an overlapping problem. "Whatever might happen, it has become the focus of the people," he said.
Military corps
Dindin added, if investigation of the Ghalib case would be done by the military police, its commander would be suffering a psychological snag. In the hierarchy Ghalib ranks a Lt. General, a grade higher than Djasri who is Major General.
"As long as this method is being used, powers of the Military Police Commander to charge Ghalib as a suspect will always clash against politics. The Military Police Commander could be leaving the impression as to leave the whole problem to the Military Prosecuting Officer. While the first party entitled to clink Ghalib as a suspect should be the Military Police Commander," Dindin said.
Dindin stated that he was of the same opinion at the discussion if the letter of the Military Police to the Police, and to be forwarded to the Governor Bank Indonesia since it dealt with the Ghalib case, has been retrieved from circulation for reasons of wrong addressing.
"I agree with that. The letter addressed to Police Headquarters was not right. It should have gone to the Military Prosecuting Officer," he said.
Change of address does not imply a change into Ghalib's status of suspect. "Address correction on a letter does not mean a change into the suspect's status. If he is a suspect, he'd still be a suspect," Didin said.
Jakarta -- A 10-day training course on crowd control given by the US government to the Indonesian Police will be useless, and would be used by local officers only to break up student and worker demonstrations here, lawyers and students said on Monday.
In a discussion at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute on violence committed by security personnel against demonstrators, the activists regretted the US-sponsored training, which started on Monday at the National Police Mobil Brigade Unit headquarters in Kelapa Dua, south of Jakarta.
The institute's social and political head, Daniel Panjaitan, said the training, which included 50 police officers ranked between second lieutenant and captain, would not give much benefit to Indonesian police.
"It's just a way to share experiences and would not give a [positive] result for our police. Our police system is different from the US," Daniel, who attended the training as an observer, told The Jakarta Post.
He said Indonesia's police would continue to use violence against demonstrators, since they are still part of the military system. "Actually our police already know the skills to control the protesters properly. But they do not use it in the field," he said.
The institute's labor division head, Surya Tjandra, said he was worried the training would be used by police to disrupt student and worker demonstrations.
"We should remember how members of the Army's Kopassus [special forces], whose personnel were trained by the US, kidnapped student activists. We should stop this from happening again," Surya said.
He was referring to 11 Kopassus soldiers who were sentenced by a military court on April 6 to between one year and 22 months in prison for abducting nine political activists in the last month of Soeharto's regime in 1998.
Surya said the Indonesian police would use the training to justify their dispersal of demonstrations and treatment of activists as being in line with standard procedures.
He said the training was intended to gradually reduce the number of street rallies, which have been mostly conducted by students and workers and have often ended in clashes with officers.
Such public protests, which were often referred to by police as "public order disturbances", should not be dispersed because they are part of freedom of expression, he said. "Police should protect the demonstrators, instead of beating and shooting them," he said.
Meanwhile, Suma Miharja, a member of the Big Family of the University of Indonesia (KBUI) student group, also said that the training would not change the abusive attitude of the police against student protesters.
"If the police use the training to press us further, the students' feelings of hate for the police would increase further," Suma warned.
He said student groups are currently arranging new strategies following a clash between police officers and activists of the Democratic People's Party in front of the General Election Commission (KPU) office on Jl. Imam Bonjol, Central Jakarta, early this month.
Documents at the Australian Archives show the Federal Government turned a blind eye to the indiscriminate slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians after an alleged communist coup, writes David Jenkins.
It had been nearly a year since Colonel Sarwo Edhie had returned from an 18-month course at the Australian Army Staff College at Queenscliff, Victoria. Now, on November 10, 1965, he was leading 400 soldiers on a sweep through the lushly beautiful ricefields of Central Java, at war not with a foreign enemy but with fellow Indonesians whose sympathies lay with President Sukarno and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
November 10 is Heroes' Day in Indonesia. But there were no heroes among the patrol that swept through the Boyolali district, 40 kilometres north-east of Jogjakarta, that day, led by men of the feared RPKAD (special forces) regiment, or Kopassus as it is known these days.
At 6.30am, as the soldiers approached a village at the foot of Mount Merapi, firing "test shots" into the air, between 100 and 200 people, many of them women and children, appeared at the side of the road.
The villagers, who advanced on the troops with cries of "Nekolim", meaning "Neo-colonialists and imperialists", were armed with bamboo spears, knives and "one or two guns", the Australian Embassy in Jakarta reported to Canberra nine days later, having received a first-hand account of the "action" from an Indian journalist, B.K.Tiwari, who had spent 11 days in Central Java as Sarwo Edhie's guest.
"Shots fired over their heads by the patrol failed to deter them and the army was obliged to shoot at them, killing seven and wounding 17."
This rather matter-of-fact account of a morning's slaughter in Central Java lies buried in a mountain of once-secret documents at the Australian Archives in Canberra.
It is one of many hundreds of reports which reveal that Australian diplomats were keeping the closest possible watch on developments in Indonesia after an abortive coup on September 30, 1965, and a particular eye on the ferocious anti-Communist witch-hunt being directed by Major General Soeharto, the new army commander and future president.
It also provides some of the earliest evidence that the Indonesian army was training civilian death squads, a practice to which it would return in later years, not least in East Timor. Colonel Sarwo Edhie, the embassy report noted, drawing further on the interview with Tiwari, had "spoken of the training he was giving Muslim groups (as yet no arms had been issued)". Muslim youths were acting "as the ears and eyes of the army, guiding patrols and generally informing".
Two days earlier, the embassy had noted that army-Muslim operations in the Boyolali area were progressing steadily. It added, ominously: "The behaviour of RPKAD troops has been pretty rough."
According to the embassy, it had apparently become the practice in factories and other workplaces "for the army to assemble the labour force and ask them whether they wish to continue work as usual. Those who decline are asked again and, unless they change their mind, summarily shot."
In short, Australian diplomats had a ringside seat as the Indonesian army directed one of the worst bloodbaths of the 20th century, unleashing a wave of terror against the PKI, at that time the third largest communist party in the world, with three million members.
For several months in late 1965 and early 1966, Indonesia was caught in a nightmare of killing, with the worst pogroms taking place in three densely settled provinces -- Central Java, East Java and Bali.
As the Australian Embassy reported two days before Christmas 1965: "Estimates of the number of people killed vary between 100,000 and 200,000, the latter being the figure accepted by the American and West German embassies.
"The West Germans have heard that 70,000 people have been killed in East Java alone. Without having any firm basis for making an estimate we would if we had to name a figure put it at between 100,000 and 150,000. This works out at about 1,500 assassinations per day since September 30th."
Australia raised not one word of protest as the Indonesian Army and its Muslim allies went about this systematic slaughter. Canberra was, in fact, privately pleased by the turn of events in Indonesia. It welcomed the "dismantling" of the Communist Party. It was hoping that Sukarno would be unable to reassert his authority.
All of this was in keeping with the mood of the times. In 1965, the Menzies Government was deeply concerned about communist advances not just in South Vietnam, Laos and north-eastern Thailand but also in Indonesia, where an increasingly unpredictable Sukarno had courted the People's Republic of China, proclaimed a Jakarta-Phnom Penh-Beijing-Pyongyang axis, withdrawn from the UN and sent soldiers and saboteurs across the border into Malaysia.
These developments had led, during the year, to significant Australian military deployments in South-East Asia. In January, Canberra had agreed to the deployment of a combat battalion and 100-strong SAS unit to Borneo, to counter Indonesian infiltrators. In April, it had committed the first battalion of Australian infantry to South Vietnam.
In Indonesia itself there was an air of crisis and expectation in 1965, with Sukarno trying, with growing difficulty, to balance two powerful and mutually hostile institutions -- the army and the communist party.
That "triangle" was damaged beyond repair on the night of September 30, 1965, when a group of left-leaning army officers kidnapped and killed six of the nation's most senior generals.
The army's surviving leaders insisted that the PKI had been behind the murders and added, falsely, that their dead colleagues had had their eyes gouged out and their genitals hacked off.
In this confrontation, Australia was pinning its hopes on Soeharto and his fellow generals, though striving in public to maintain a low profile, not wanting to give the army "the kiss of death".
Five days after the September 30 coup the Australian Ambassador in Jakarta, Mr K.C.O. "Mick" Shann, advised Canberra that it was "now or never" for the Indonesian Army to deal with the PKI.
At that time, it is true, no-one knew just how brutal the army campaign was going to be, nor in fact whether the army was even prepared to take decisive action against its opponents.
The crucial question, Shann advised Canberra, "is whether the generals will succeed in establishing their supremacy over Sukarno or whether he will re-emerge as the dominant figure ... The latest indications are that Sukarno has already persuaded the generals not to take drastic measures against the communists."
Within 10 days, there was no longer any doubt that drastic action was indeed being taken. "Almost daily," the embassy advised on October 15, "offices, houses and bookshops have been ransacked or burned and the momentum does not seem to be faltering."
A week later, the embassy reported that Indonesia was experiencing "a mounting wave of anti-communist demonstrations and sentiment and a general army-condoned, or perhaps army- inspired, blackening of the communist image."
This "cleansing operation" included "nocturnal army operations" at all levels of the society. Shann himself had seen about 250 prisoners being "whisked off" by military police. "It is impossible," the embassy said, "to make any estimate of the number of people killed or detained. It cannot be small."
None of this seemed to trouble the embassy. "He would be a very cautious man," it declared on October 22, six days after Soeharto took charge of the army, "who did not derive some encouragement from events in Indonesia over the past week."
A week after that the embassy was reporting that "on all sides and in all areas 'cleansing', 'purging' and 'freezing' [of PKI assets] proceeds apace".
A report by the Canadian Embassy, passed on to the Australians and filed away in Canberra, claimed that in certain areas in Sumatra and Sulawesi "where there are rabid Muslim religious groups all PKI members have been beheaded and for good measure [had their] heads impaled on spikes."
Australia's reluctance to utter a word of protest as this wave of terror swept Indonesia is all the more striking given the fact that none of the major Western embassies believed that the PKI had initiated the September 30 coup, a line the army was running as strongly as it could in an attempt to whip up anti-PKI sentiment.
According to the archive material, the Australian Embassy in Jakarta thought that the coup had been an internal army affair, which had attracted only last-minute backing from some PKI leaders. It was "unlikely" that the party directed the coup, the embassy reported on October 9. "It appears to have been ready to exploit a situation of which it was aware but which was not its creation."
The United States came to a similar conclusion, the archive documents show. So, too, did Britain. Whatever the origins of the coup, the Australians, Americans and British believed that events were moving in the right direction.
"Change there will be," Shann advised Canberra in a secret report on October 6, lapsing into the sometimes intemperate language that characterised his despatches. "We will never get back to the status quo ante. But if Sukarno and his greasy civilian cohorts get back into the saddle it will be a change for the worse."
By October 12 officials in Canberra were taking heart from developments in Indonesia, where the army was showing no mercy towards the Left. Arrests and murders were in full swing and mobs had ransacked the houses of PKI cabinet ministers.
In a memo to the Minister of External Affairs, Mr Paul Hasluck, a first assistant secretary in the department, Gordon Jockel, said: "Since our last note to you the army has been more vigorous and independent. Despite the president's call for unity, the army and the Muslim groups are taking strong practical action to disarm the PKI and disrupt its organisation." These trends were "favourable", Jockel said, although there were "still great uncertainties".
In a secret report on October 15, Shann complained that no attempt had been made "to rid the place of [Foreign Minister] Subandrio ... and the other snakes that infest the country".
Turning to the anti-PKI witchhunt, Shann said "at least a few 'suspects' have been brutally murdered. We will never know how many people have lost their lives. We think it is a lot."
The army, Shann thought, would no doubt be better, if less efficient, than the communists. But there was likely to be no great joy for the West if the army came to power. It would remain "implacably anti-imperialist and therefore ... anti-American, anti-British and, to the extent that we bother them much, anti- Australian."
Despite some promising developments, Shann said, "the discouraging thing is that we are dealing with such an odd, devious, contradictory mess like the Indonesian mind. They will confuse anything, including, and even deliberately and especially, themselves." By November 19, when the extent of the massacre was becoming more widely known, Shann's embassy was reporting that Indonesians were getting over their fear of the PKI. "But," it said, "the Indonesians are a dreadfully pliable lot and a little [PKI] terror could go a long way."
In the event, the PKI lay low. It was, instead, the army which orchestrated a campaign of terror. That campaign, which may have claimed 200,000 to 500,000 lives, was carried out under the direction of two men, the army commander, Soeharto, and the Defence Minister, General A.H. Nasution, who had narrowly escaped death on the night of September 30. Before long, Soeharto had sidelined both Sukarno and Nasution and assumed the presidency, ruling Indonesia for 32 years.
Only now, with Soeharto forced from office, are Indonesians beginning to ask questions about this army-backed orgy of killing.
There are questions, too, that might be asked about Australia's response to the massacres, even if that task is hampered somewhat by archive rules that block access to hundreds of pages of material compiled on developments in Indonesia in the six months after September 30, 1965.
Jakarta -- Residents of Koja, an area on the northeast coast of Jakarta, are threatening to use force to take over land that was seized from them in 1995 by a state-owned company with close ties to former president Soeharto's eldest daughter, Siti Hardiyanti 'Tutut' Rukmana.
The land was "purchased" by PT Pelindo, the state company responsible for the management of the Tanjung Priok Harbor. Pelindo had the military come in to ensure the Koja residents departed, and then contracted one of Tutut's companies to construct a container terminal on the land.
Pelindo had promised to pay the locals Rp1.2 million (US$180) per square meter of land. Residents wanted more and rejected that offer, so the company then shafted them by paying out only Rp120,000 (US$18) per square meter.
Locals say the only people who received a reasonable amount of money for their land were the village head and "traitors" who coordinated the sale.
The threat to forcibly take over the land has alarmed staff at Tanjung Priok Port. Yesterday they called on the Koja residents not to take any action that could spark violence.
But the locals said that if Pelindo doesn't give them adequate compensation, they will seize the land and then sell it.
When the military came in 1995 to make sure the residents all left their village, locals were told the hackneyed line that was used as an excuse to give legitimacy to so many projects that displaced people -- "this is in the national interest, so don't be selfish. Now get off your land".
The lousy payment for the land triggered years of demonstrations and rallies by the Koja people.
Imrom Rahman, head of the Tanjung Priok Port Labor Union, yesterday told reporters the compensation case is very complicated, because Pelindo considers the case closed, while Koja locals are determined to get a reasonable amount of money for their land.
He said locals cannot understand why a handful of people received a fair price for their land, while 400 families received virtually jack.
Tutut Rahman said the main reason why locals were driven off their land for a pittance was because the container terminal project was being handled by the powerful Tutut.
He said it's difficult to ask Tutut to pay them more compensation, because the project has been completed and the port is now being controlled by Pelindo.
Furthermore, Tutut has a bigger problem with the Sultan of Brunei, Hasanal Bolkiah, over a controversial road construction in Brunei, he added.
The Koja residents recently filed a lawsuit against Pelindo at the North Jakarta District Court. The board of directors of PT Pelindo II promised the people that if they will win the case, the company will pay them.
But it could take the dubious Indonesian justice system years to reach a verdict. A lawyer at Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation said the case will spend more than one year at the low court, then it will be appealed at a higher court by the unsatisfied party, and finally be reviewed again at Supreme Court.
The whole process could take place for up to 10 years, and by the time a final verdict is issued, the Koja people will be exhausted, said the lawyer.
Secret records of the US State Department and CIA provide evidence that the massacre of Indonesia's communists in 1965 was not a result of spontaneous uprisings but a deliberate campaign by General Soeharto. Marian Wilkinson reveals that the records show the US and Australia knew what was happening -- but continued to back the army in its bloody takeover.
The recent elections in Indonesia were the first in three decades not stage-managed by the army and former President Soeharto.
But casting a long shadow over the poll are the brutal events in 1965 that first brought General Soeharto to office and toppled the government of President Sukarno, the father of Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Between 500,000 and a million Indonesians, many of them members or supporters of Indonesia's then Communist party, the PKI, are estimated to have died in the slaughter that accompanied the military takeover. Tens of thousands more were rounded up and sent to gulag-style of prisons.
Some of these former political prisoners are calling for any new government to hold a truth commission into this dark period of Indonesian history, and several recent events lend weight to those calls.
The current brutal activities by paramilitary groups in East Timor have direct parallels with the events of 1965. Cables from the US State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, recounting the Indonesian Army's strategy in 1965, eerily reflect many incidents now taking place in East Timor: most disturbingly, the training and arming of paramilitary death squads to kill leftist opponents.
The records from 1965 show damning evidence of the Indonesian Army directing massacres and employing death squads against its communist opponents. Over the past two decades, leading American and Australian academics have been examining these records as they became declassified.
In 1990, a US lawyer, Kathy Kadane, published an extraordinary account detailing how an American diplomat provided lists of Indonesian communists to the Soeharto forces when the mass killings were beginning. A collection of former "Top Secret" and "Secret" US records on the massacres was recently gathered by Washington researcher John Kelly for a documentary project, but when the project lapsed these records were handed to the Herald. Using these and other recently declassified documents, along with Kadane's records, it is possible to chart one of the greatest massacres of postwar history through the voices of American diplomats and intelligence officers.
Many of the cables, written over five months from October 1965 to February 1966, are from the US Ambassador, Marshall Green, who later served as ambassador to Australia. They are addressed to the then US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and his aides.
One of the most confronting aspect of the cables is the American accounts of the Indonesian Army's use of death squads drawn from Muslim and Catholic youth groups, and the propaganda efforts used to whip up their political supporters into a frenzy. The cables reveal the strong US support for the anti-communist purges even as the killings mounted. They also reveal the extensive links between senior Indonesian Army officers and the US Embassy.
Two key US connections were General Nasution, Soeharto's close confidant, and Adam Malik, the man who would become Soeharto's long-serving Foreign Minister. Indeed, as Kadane revealed, it was Malik's aide who was given the list of communist names by the US Embassy to hand to the army.
The events that triggered the bloody army takeover are bitterly disputed, even today. Both the Indonesian Army and the West maintained the bloodshed began after an attempted coup masterminded by the PKI.
In September 1965, Indonesia, under the left-wing nationalist President Sukarno, was in crisis. Sukarno's power rested, in part, on the support of the PKI, the largest political party in the country. Sukarno used the PKI to contain the power of the army. His relations with his top generals and the West were tense. His country was in armed border "confrontation" with Britain and Australia over Malaysia, and he was threatening to break diplomatic relations with the US and nationalise American oil assets. His deputy, Foreign Minister Subandrio, only months before had accused the West of working with senior army officers to assassinate the President, and rumours were rife that pro-US generals were planning a coup for early October.
On the night of September 30, 1965, a small group of junior military officers, led by one of Sukarno's bodyguards, Colonel Untung, kidnapped and killed six senior army generals and announced that a revolutionary council was now running the country in order to save Sukarno from a "CIA-backed coup". But one of its main targets, General Nasution, escaped to launch a counterattack with General Soeharto, then head of the army's strategic command.
There was great confusion at the time over who ordered the original attack: was it Sukarno himself, a dissident military faction or the PKI? Despite the contradictory evidence, Soeharto and Nasution moved quickly to blame the PKI and used the "September 30 affair" as the justification for the bloody suppression of the communists and their supporters.
The PKI could muster very little resistance, despite the army's claims that it had been preparing an armed uprising. In just five months, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. The US and Australia came out strongly behind Soeharto.
Just when the army first decided to exploit the "September 30 affair", to purge the PKI, is outlined in a cable from Green to Washington five days after the generals' murder. The cable, dated October 5, shows Green is still unsure of the evidence for the PKI's role. He telegrams that the rebels probably included the air force, a key army division, and Colonel Untung but that the: inclusion of Sukarno and or PKI leadership not certain although there is considerable evidence that both probably involved in some way. But Green stresses: Whatever the background ... army in control, and it has important instruments of power such as press, radio and TV. It also has a cause in murder of six top leaders if army chooses to use it and it has already begun to do so ... Muslim groups and others (except communists and their stooges) are lined up behind army ... PKI has suffered a serious setback for its endorsement of, and perhaps participation in, discredited Sept Movement ... Army now has opportunity to move against PKI if it acts quickly ... Momentum is now at peak with discovery of bodies of murdered army leaders. In short, it's now or never ...
Then he advises: Despite all its shortcomings, we believe odds are that army will act to pin blame for recent events on PKI and its allies. Much remains in doubt, but it seems almost certain that agony of ridding Indonesia of effects of Sukarno ... has begun.
Green's recommendations to Washington were: Avoid overt involvement as power struggle unfolds ... However, indicate clearly to key people in army such as Nasution and Soeharto our desire to be of assistance where we can ... Maintain and if possible extend our contact with military, and: Spread the story of PKI's guilt, treachery and brutality (this priority effort is perhaps most-needed immediate assistance we can give army if we can find way to do it without identifying it as solely or largely US effort).
The next day the embassy's Indonesian Working Group, made up of diplomats and CIA officers, sent an optimistic report to Washington: The army appears now to have determined to move vigorously against the PKI ... Chief of the Jakarta PKI Committee and former head of SOBSI (PKI-led labour federation) was arrested by the army along with several members of Pemuda Rakjat and Gerwani (respectively, PKI youth and women's auxiliaries) and an undetermined number of lesser PKI officials. There is less reliable information that firing squads are being formed to execute captured PKI members.
But a day later Green warned Washington he was worried that: Extent army determination to stand up to Sukarno still not (repeat) not clear. However, he informed them: Army has begun extensive sweeps in Jakarta lower-class suburbs to round up communist para-military elements active in Sept 30 violence. He also had news that Muslim and Christian newspapers had began publishing anti-PKI stories: Joining anti-communist campaign begun by the two army dailies; and that a pro-army youth group in Medan, the IP-KI: Began destroying PKI property in late afternoon of Oct 5 and PKI had gone into hiding there. He also stated the embassy had received reports: That PKI in recent days slaughtered 90 Muslims in Padang.
By October 8, Green cabled Washington optimistically: Communists are now on the run for the first time in many years in Indonesia. The most encouraging developments, he reported, were: ... PKI organisational apparatus has been disrupted and party documents dispersed. This capped today with burning of PKI headquarters in Jakarta. At the same time, Green reported, the US defence attache, Colonel Willis Ethel, met a senior aide to General Nasution who informed him that the general: is calling shots which Soeharto is implementing [and] encouraging religious groups to take political action which army will support. Army meanwhile is staying in background politically. Contact indicated this political action will continue and, in fact, increase in next two or three days. By October 13, Green could report that the purge was going well: Anti-communists continue [to] make most of their present ascendancy. Today's tally included closing of communist universities, banning of leftist student organisations and still more attacks on PKI premises. Formation of special military "investigating teams" provided further evidence of army determination to exploit to fullest September 30 affair ... Youth groups sacked second PKI bookstore ... [Youth] headquarters in Chinese section also hit. Youth painted fresh anti-PKI signs on city walls. Most promising new theme: banning of PKI means cheaper rice.
Around this time, the embassy was dealing not only with senior army officers but with key Muslim political leaders who were working with the army in the purges, as Green revealed in a cable to Washington on October 15: Army and Muslim sources have discussed with [embassy officers] strategy they hope army will follow. They hope army will proceed in step-by-step campaign not only against PKI but against whole communist/Sukarno clique. However, they believe that for tactical reasons army is trying to discredit and destroy PKI first while leaving other groups temporarily intact.
The same day, in a cable dealing with "anti-communist actions", Green wrote that confidential sources reported that: Army has already executed 74 communists seized in connection with coup attempt, despite efforts by Subandrio to stop executions.
But Green wanted no let-up in the anti-communist campaign. In a cable to Washington which he asked to be forwarded to the US Information Agency, Green stressed the need to keep pushing anti-PKI propaganda: In all media, by implication as well as by repetition of bald facts, link this horror and tragedy with Peking and its brand of communism; associate diabolical murder and mutilation of the generals with similar methods used against village headmen in Vietnam. On Indo-language broadcasts show that the South Vietnamese are fighting this same kind of Gestapu terror.
Two days later, a State Department memo of conversation shows the US Assistant Secretary of State, McGeorge Bundy, met the head of Australia's Foreign Affairs Department, Sir James Plimsoll, and Australia's Ambassador, Keith Waller, in Washington to discuss Indonesia and the army's strategy. Bundy informed the Australians: Army is aiming at [Subandrio] above all and that they want especially to clip the wings of his intelligence organisation ... The next day, Green was back with news of a bloody anti-communist assault in the northern province of Sumatra, where an army-linked Muslim youth group was highly active: IP-KI youth arm Pemuda Pantjasila, which has spearheaded anti-communist attack in North Sumatra, may have set out to kill leadership of PKI youth organisation, Pemuda Rakjat. Several Pemuda Rakjat dead, reportedly found in Medan streets after weekend demonstrations ... Army source intimated that attacks on North Sumatran PKI have army support and army's ban on demonstrations simply designed to hide army's role. ... Separate ... source states that military director of army- controlled Permina oil company has ordered the arrest, interrogation and execution of PKI leaders in Permina camp.
Muslims have begun attacking Chinese-communist elements in Medan and other North Sumatran cities. Merchandise burned, homes sacked and Chinese beaten. Consulate has noted many fires in Medan and Belawan Chinese districts. Muslims apparently not distinguishing between Chicom [Chinese communists] and Indonesian citizens.
By October 20, Green summed up the success so far of the anti- Communist Party campaign: Party has received major, though not necessarily mortal, blow to its image, considerable damage to its communications and command structures, and some damage to its organisational strength through arrest, harassment and, in some cases, execution of PKI cadres ... Some thousands of PKI cadres have reportedly been arrested in Jakarta ... several hundred of them have been executed. We know that ... head of Jakarta PKI arrested and may have been executed ...
But Green believed the campaign had not yet gone far enough: Thus far, however, basic PKI organisational potential would appear to be largely intact and capable of recovering quickly in a purely organisational sense if its status were recognised by the government and army attacks were stopped.
... Army repression of PKI will not be success unless it is willing to attack communism as such, including associations with China and other bloc countries and communist ideology ... Army has nevertheless been working hard at destroying PKI and I, for one, have increasing respect for its determination and organisation in carrying out this crucial assignment.
That same day Green, in a separate cable sent to Washington, detailed what amounted to death squad killings by army-backed Muslim groups after a secret visit to the embassy by a Muslim Youth leader: ... who has given accurate information over past several months. The leader told of: ... army sweeps continuing in kampongs and other locations Jakarta area ... Muslim youth "assistants" are accompanying troops. Source said "some" killings had resulted from these sweeps. MORE evidence of army links with organised gangs in the anti-PKI campaign came after another meeting between Colonel Ethel, and General Nasution's senior aide, who told the American: Anti-PKI demonstrations and raids taking on more of an anti-Chinese line. Recently there have been raids against Chinese residents in [the outer provinces] Kalimantan and Atjeh [now spelt Aceh] ... The forcible entry and search of Chinese Embassy commercial office in Tjikini was not done by the army but by those "who do this kind of thing for us", Muslims and Ansor. (Ansor was the youth organisation of Indonesia's most influential Muslim organisation, NU.)
By October 23, however, the US Embassy was again worried that the army was weakening in its drive. Green reported to Washington a meeting between his deputy and a Catholic youth leader close to Nasution's headquarters, who claimed that communist youths had tried to attack his group with arms. The youth informant told the embassy his group: ... had trained 100 men to handle weapons and army approved their possessing them but so far have been able to provide them with only five assorted rifles and pistols. The youth leader wanted the US to supply machineguns which, Green said, had been refused.
But four days later, Green was more encouraged after another meeting between Ethel and senior Indonesian army officers. Over golf, Green said, Ethel was told: We are soon likely to hear reports about executions, including executions of public figures on whose behalf Sukarno is likely to make pleas for leniency ... Ethel's contacts expressed the view the US: playing current situation about right, but that: Army would appreciate anything US could quietly do to help alert the Indonesian people to dangers of association with Communist China. They specifically mentioned psywar [psychological warfare] techniques. The embassy's high-ranking intelligence links to the army were confirmed by a CIA cable to the White House the same day with information from the commander of the East Java Military reporting: he will begin a mass suppression and round-up of the PKI ... Significantly, while the embassy was feeding propaganda about the PKI's masterminding of the events of September 30, a secret CIA memo at the time admitted that: Elements of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) were involved, but the role of the party leadership remains obscure, and: Information is sketchy as to the involvement and reaction of communist leaders. A confidential CIA source had reported that: The party's central committee decided to give Untung military support only after hearing his radio announcement on 1 October ... Communist leaders believed the army was about to take action against the party ...
On the critical question of who had given the order to kidnap and murder the generals, the CIA admitted: Precisely who instructed them ... is not known. But the anti-PKI campaign by the army was now unstoppable and, on October 29, the State Department sent a cable marked "Action" to Jakarta, noting that Washington was developing its policy on Indonesia and wanted a military-run government. Washington said: Sooner or later ... it will become increasingly clear to army leaders they are only force capable of creating order in Indonesia, and that they must take initiative to form a military or civilian-military provisional government, with or without Sukarno. It urged the embassy to convey this to the army: The next few days, weeks or months may offer unprecedented opportunities for us to begin to influence people and events ... Small arms and equipment may be needed to deal with the PKI ... As events develop, the army may find itself in major military campaign against PKI, and we must be ready for that contingency ... We shall, of course, want to consult the British, Australians, and others as well. At this very time, the mass killings of PKI supporters was under way in earnest, causing even some senior Indonesian army officers to baulk, as Green reported on October 29: Army sources report All-Sumatra Commander Mokoginta wants to stop army-inspired violence against PKI but his subordinates continuing to incite attacks behind his back ... Muslim fervour in Atjeh [province] has apparently put all but few PKI out of action. Atjehese has decapacitated [sic] PKI and placed their heads on stakes along road.
From Riau province, a US Embassy officer reported: Muslims with army consent have sacked communist premises in city and closed their buildings in countryside. Army has raided PKI leaders' houses and informed Caltex management it plans on Oct 29 to arrest key leaders of communist oil workers' union Perbum, which forms core of PKI structure that province. Oil fields, however, remain vulnerable to communist sabotage.
From East Kalimantan, the embassy reported: Muslim paper running stories that PKI youth set major fire which left 10,000 homeless and planned to poison city water supply ... Impossible confirm reports of this nature but such rumours in themselves are source further violence. By November 4, just five weeks into the anti- communist campaign, Green had high praise for the army, reporting to Washington: Army is doing a first-class job here of moving against communists, and by all current indications is the emerging authority in Indonesia ... In the immediate offing there is the problem of pacifying and establishing a firm control over communist redoubt areas, particularly in Central Java, and of combating PKI sabotage and terror. There is likely to be bloodshed involving Muslims and Christian youth groups, as well as military and others. Need for medical and other assistance likely to very real and urgent ... Green ended this cable with an appeal that the US meet one of Soeharto's senior officers, General Sukendro, who was on his way to Bangkok to ask the US to covertly supply the army with medical supplies, communications equipment and small arms for its campaign against the PKI.
The next day, the US Ambassador in Bangkok, James Wilson, cabled Washington saying Sukendro had arrived in Thailand. Wilson wrote: There ensued a discussion of the covert arrangements to be made for the Indonesian Army's ostensible purchase of the medicines ... but, Wilson added: Sukendro specifically stated the Indonesian Army leadership does desire to pursue further in subsequent discussion here the possibility of covert limited provision of weapons and communications equipment. Wilson demanded clarification: ... We necessarily need more explicit guidance as to how this matter is to be handled here. By now it was increasingly apparent that the army was using Muslim and Christian youth groups as death squads. On November 7, 1965, the American Consul in Surabaya, Ted Heavner, cabled Washington with information that: Army recently held meeting Malang with Muslim youth leaders and told them be ready face PKI and prepared 'kill or be killed'. Heavner commented: Seems likely East Java Military Command with its shortage troops may be planning use Muslim manpower, if PKI starts getting out of hand. On the other hand army may be seeking to establish greater control over Muslims and reduce likelihood their provoking PKI in some military actions.
Five days later, Green reported confidential information from Jakarta's police information chief that: almost all of top PKI leadership, politburo and central committee levels, had been seized by army, and further on the death squads, that: from 50 to 100 PKI members are being killed every night in East and Central Java by civilian anti-communist groups with blessing of army.
Soon after, on November 16, another cable from the American consul in Medan brutally illustrated that US officials were being informed of planned massacres: Two officers of Pemuda Pantjasila [the Muslim youth group] separately told consulate officers that their organisation intends kill every PKI member they can catch ... He stated [they] will not (repeat) not hand over captured PKI to authorities until they are dead or near death ... Similar statements made few days earlier by leader North Sumatra cultural arm of Pemuda Pantjasila.
The consul then noted that confidential sources: indicate that much indiscriminate killing is taking place ... Sources have connected some of this violence with declaration "holy war" against PKI by local Muslim leaders ... Attitude Pemuda Pantjasila leaders can only be described as bloodthirsty. While reports of wholesale killings may be greatly exaggerated, number and frequency such reports plus attitude of youth leaders suggests that something like real reign of terror against PKI is taking place. This terror is not (repeat) not discriminating very carefully between PKI leaders and ordinary PKI members with no ideological bond to the party. [Source] suggests that army itself is officially adopting extreme measures against PKI with plans to put many thousands in concentration camps. Days later, the consul sent a full report to Washington. With details of massacres, it included the propaganda and psychological warfare techniques being used by the army in conjunction with Muslim groups: In mid-October the army began a determined effort to wipe out the Communist Party on Sumatra. By November 1, this army-directed drive was rapidly cutting down communist and fellow traveller resistance, and by the end of the reporting period, army authorities were saying that the PKI no longer exists as an organisation on this island.
... PKI leaders are under arrest, in hiding, or dead. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of PKI cadre and activists are in jail or in makeshift detention areas.The attack on the PKI has included much violence. Spearheaded by extremist youth groups, particularly the Pemuda Pantjasila, PKI offices, businesses and homes have been burned. While no figures are available, it is clear that many PKI leaders and cadre have been killed outright.
The PKI, reported the consul, offered: no meaningful resistance. Nevertheless, he reported: In early November the attacks on the PKI took on an even more violent aspect; spearheaded by the Pemuda Pantjasila and often protected by the army, anti-communist gangs began to round up and beat known communist leaders and cadre. The beatings frequently resulted in fatalities ... This violence is apparently now becoming even less discriminating ... [Sources] paint a picture of widespread killings. In particular, [sources] suggest large numbers have died in what amounts to a wave of terror.
At the same time, Ambassador Green cabled from Jakarta that killings of PKI members were being sanctioned from the top: As to Central Java situation, fighting continues. RPKAD [the key paratrooper strike force] is not taking prisoners (I gather this means they are shooting PKI on sight).
This was followed by a blunt cable quoting confidential informants saying that: ... Three separate Muslim youth sources informed us that all PKI officers and cadres in Djakarta and Bogor areas being killed after capture. This massacre justified as necessary to prevent third communist uprising. Green added that in Lampung province there was an "unconfirmed report" of kidnappings and assassination of Muslims and non-communist leaders, apparently by leftists as it was a province "harbouring strong communist sympathies". But any communist response was minimal. Green cabled soon after that the PKI chairman was finally dead: Big news today was report of capture and execution of PKI chairman Aidit. He included information from the Foreign Ministry that: PKI prisoners in Java now total 34,000 ... This most authoritative count of PKI arrests embassy has yet received. By the new year, just three months after the anti-PKI campaign began, the CIA reported: Nearly every member of the PKI politburo has been arrested; many have already been executed, including the three top party leaders. The party's mass organisations have been paralysed and virtually put out of business ... The slaughter of PKI members and sympathisers in North Sumatra, East and Central Java and Bali is continuing.
The scale of the mass slaughter, whipped up by the propaganda campaigns, finally began to register in the embassy by February and in a cable to Washington, Green's deputy reported intelligence from a friendly power that: as a result of ... calculations by his embassy as well as [confidential], a total of about 400,000 killed as a result of the Sept 30 affair had been agreed. But, the cable admitted, there could be many more dead.
For the US and its allies, the success of the army's anti-PKI campaign was a triumph. The purge broke the power of Sukarno, who was forced to resign, and Soeharto's military-backed regime took over. A year later, US scholars were estimating that between 500,000 and a million Indonesians had died in the slaughter.