• Rights group calls for independent probe of UN deaths - Agence France-Presse
• Timor militias stage show of force - Associated Press
• Brutality brings prosperity for Guterres and other ringleaders - Sydney Morning Herald
• Twenty killed in refugee camp bloodshed - South China Morning Post
• Militia chief armed youths days before murders - South China Morning Post
• Survivors tell of raid by 'beasts' - Sydney Morning Herald
• A chronology of events since the independence vote - Agence France-Presse
• East Timorese militia - trained to kill then abandoned - Agence France-Presse
• Army hardliners blamed for attack - Sydney Morning Herald
• Rampage became a certainty after militia leader's murder - Sydney Morning Herald
• Deaths a tragedy waiting to happen - South China Morning Post
• Grim e-mail from Militia attack - Associated Press
• 'Remember the past, look to the future' - Sydney Morning Herald
• The other side of the divide - The Industry Standard
• PST in dispute with UNTAET - Green Left Weekly
• CNRT holds national congress - Green Left Weekly
• All is not well in East Timor - American doctor - The Progressive

• The season of scandal - Asiaweek

• Firearms seized in Kalimantan - Straits Times
• Bin Laden `linked to Indonesian militants' - Sydney Morning Herald
• Maluku residents say calm is deceptive - Straits Times

• Aceh ceasefire extension ruled out - South China Morning Post
• Twelve die in latest Aceh violence - Associated Press
• Three officers killed, two bodies found in Aceh - Agence France-Presse
• Mobil sees its gas plant become rallying point for rebels - Wall Street Journal
• 24 dead in two days of killings in troubled Aceh - Agence France-Presse
• Slain activist to be given hero's burial - South China Morning Post
• A guerrilla's story - The Age
• Irian Jaya police get tough on rebel flags - Indonesian Observer

• Nike workers upset over allegations - Jakarta Post
• Newmont Minahasa resumes its mining operations - Jakarta Post

• Jakarta police abducted four activists - Detik
• Abdurrahman appoints 16 new judges - Agence France-Presse
• Wiranto, Zacky should be on the suspect list: Solidamor - Jakarta Post
• Former Tapols demand soeharto be tried in international court - Tempo

• Jakarta `seems to have lost control of country' - Straits Times
• Mob destroy Sampang parliament - Detik
• Malaysian businessman kidnapped in Medan - Indonesian Observer

• Jakarta proposes a ban on log exports - Straits Times

• Ex-army chief Nasution dies - Associated Press

• Indonesia gets more leeway in IMF new deal - Straits Times
• IBRA to restructure 70% of major loans this month - Dow Jones Newswires
• Indonesia anti-monopoly law may hit listed firms - Reuters
• Crossed connections - Time Magazine

Activists demand suspension of West Java governor

Bandung -- Activists demanded on Friday that West Java Governor R. Nuriana be suspended to facilitate the legal process of the local high court relating to alleged corruption involving Rp 209 billion (US$25.2 million) within his administration.

"I strongly suggest Nuriana temporarily step down from his position," said Teten Masduki, head of the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW). "If Nuriana continues in his position, it will put pressure on the high court," he added.

Despite having noble principles, Teten said it would be difficult for judges not to be swayed in such a case especially when the individual involved was one of the highest serving public officials in the province. "We have to suppose it would psychologically affect the officials performance," he told reporters. Nevertheless, Teten remained optimistic that with strong public support the high court could adequately perform its task.

Teten then expressed his disappointment at the performance of local councillors who neglected to press the issue of corruption within the provincial administration and summon Nuriana to give his account of the matter.

Provincial council speaker Kurdi Moekri of the United Development Party (PPP) decided on Wednesday not to press forward with the findings by a Special Board that discovered seven alleged corruption cases, amounting to Rp 209 billion.

Kurdi's decision came despite protests from 25 councillors. Eventually, 14 councillors from several factions walked out on Wednesday's proceedings in protest.

"It was obvious that the chairman of the plenary session was partial in his decision and we are very disappointed as the work of the Special Board set up three months ago was not properly followed up," said Yudi Widiana Adia, a councillor from the Justice Party, who participated in the walkout. The 14 councillors who walked out of the session argued that the governor should be summoned to explain the findings.

They argued that if the governor cannot present a proper explanation, then the council should present a recommendation for President Abdurrahman Wahid to dismiss Nuriana.

The protesting councillors also remarked that if the case is left solely in the hands of the high court, the legal proceedings would take too long and could nullify the findings by the council's special board which found strong indications of corruption. Nuriana has refused to comment on the allegations made by the councillors.

The councillors also questioned the ability of the high court to settle the case, saying that the institution is not free of intervention from people who support Nuriana.

West Java Corruption Watch claims that it found evidence that former Siliwangi Commander Maj. Gen. Slamet Supriyadi had called Harprileny Soebiantoro, head of the local high court, implicitly intimidating the court official concerning the case.

Protests halt two Timah units in Bangka

Jakarta -- State-owned PT Timah Tbk, the world's largest integrated tin maker, said protests at its main Bangka island plant had halted operations at two units, and warned the situation could be serious.

So far the potential losses are 1.5 tons a day, which a company spokesman described as not significant when compared to normal daily output of 100 tons. "What we are afraid of is that the protest would trigger more people in the area to start looting. This has already happened," Pudji Samekto said.

Starting on Monday, 250 ex-workers have protested against the outcome of talks over compensation with Timah management and the South Sumatra government. "The former workers blocked several installation units at two units in Toboali, Bangka ... They also stole some of the tin ore reserves in the area," the company said in a statement.

Timah, like many mining firms in Indonesia, has been hit by looting and clashes with locals mainly at its inland mining sites, hindering exploration efforts.

The company said many of its mining sites could not be exploited last year because of the conflicts, and some operations were abandoned after local communities took over the sites. "If this drags on we may have to relocate processing to other units," Samekto said, adding the company still had several other processing units in the island. Timah shares were trading at Rp2,275, up Rp20 despite the news, in late afternoon trade.

Anger over planned fuel price rises

Chris McCall, Jakarta -- Unions threatened nationwide protests yesterday after the Government vowed to press ahead with controversial fuel price increases next month.

It will be the first across-the-board increase since May 1998, when a similar move triggered a nationwide wave of bloody rioting which ended former president Suharto's 32-year reign.

One leading trade unionist and former political prisoner said unions had vowed to resist the move. "We have already come to an agreement with the other trade unions that we are going to try to have a mass demonstration on October 1," said Dita Sari, chairwoman of the National Front for Indonesian Workers' Struggle. "We plan to make it national but we will see the conditions. If we can make it national it will be better," she said.

Mines and Energy Department officials confirmed that retail oil and gas prices would rise by an average 12 per cent on October 1, as mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under its US$5 billion loan package to Jakarta.

Tomorrow, new economics chief Rizal Ramli is due to sign the latest letter of intent with the IMF, after which the fund is expected to release a US$400 million loan tranche. Without IMF support, Indonesia's cash-strapped Government cannot balance its books.

Ms Dita accused Mr Ramli of using the issue to prove his mettle to the IMF following his appointment in last month's cabinet reshuffle. She doubted the Government would back down this time but said the move would damage President Abdurrahman Wahid's credibility.

"This is the kind of price that he has to pay," she said. "This kind of decision will have a very deep impact on the economy of the people."

In a bid to deflect criticism, Mr Ramli said yesterday the Government would allocate 800 billion rupiah for fuel subsidies to help the needy. Funds will be channelled through three mechanisms -- cash transfers directly to poor people, financing for infrastructure projects designed to create jobs, and loans for small businesses and co-operatives, said Mr Ramli. Living standards in Indonesia have been slashed by the Asian economic collapse, the weak rupiah and an unemployment rate of 40 per cent. But the country is a net oil exporter. Oil and gas prices have been heavily subsidised and the issue is sensitive.

Earlier this year Mr Wahid cancelled a bid to raise oil prices at the last minute after mass protests broke out. Next month's price rises come on top of increases in economy-class public transport fares and electricity prices. They are to be followed by a new round of oil price increases next year. The Government has agreed to a special relief scheme to relieve the burden on the poorest households.

Economists say the plan is badly needed as Indonesia's oil production gradually declines. They also point out that new laws on regional autonomy will leave less of the crucial oil revenue, a mainstay of the national budget, in Jakarta's hands.

Indonesian security firms are gearing up for potential unrest, said Mr Arian Ardie of the Jakarta-based consultancy Van Zorge, Heffernan and Associates. "It is one of the issues that they always highlight. It is anticipated that there will be some problems." But for all that, the Government could not avoid the subject forever, he said. "Sooner or later they are going to have to start dealing with the subsidy issue."

An adviser to ex-president Bacharuddin Habibie agreed. "The Government has to do it," said Dewi Fortuna Anwar. "It is a major burden on the budget and also encourages smuggling."
 

East Timor

Rights group calls for independent probe of UN deaths

Jakarta -- The global group Human Rights Watch on Saturday called for an independent investigation with UN participation of the brutal murders of three UN humanitarian workers in West Timor.

"The alternative is relying on the 10-person team composed entirely of Indonesian army and police set up Friday by the provincial police command in West Timor," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement recieved here.

"There is a real danger of a cover up if this investigation is left to the same people who have let the miltia run rampant for the last 12 months," the statement quoted HRW Asia director Sidney Jones as saying. "The question is not just who committed these savage murders -- it's who is responsible for the systematic intimidation of aid workers and refugees that escalated into outright murder."

Survivors of the grisly attack on Wednesday, in which three staff members of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were hacked to death, say Indonesian police there did nothing to try to stop the machete-wielding militia entering the office. "Given the record of local authorities in dealing with the militias, I think there will be scepticism about every aspect of this case unless respected outside investigators are part of a fact-finding team," HRW added.

The statement came after reports and UN officials in Indonesia said the same pro-Jakarta militia blamed for the murders had again gone on the rampage and massacred between 11 and 20 villagers in West Timor.

The second attack reportedly took place in the Betun area, 65 kilometers southeast of the border town of Atambua, where the aid workers were killed. Local police denied knowledge of that attack and refused to confirm reports that militia gangs had set fire to 65 homes on Thursday in the town of Besikama, about 15 kilometers from Betun.

Atambua residents on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the miltia -- who were raised as an auxiliary force by the Indonesian miltiary during their occupation of East Timor -- were marauding through Atambua hunting down families of local humanitarian workers.

The UNHCR and other UN agencies have been helping repatriate and care for the remaining 100,000 or so refugees who were forced out of East Timor last year in the wake of the independence vote there.

Human Rights Watch said in its statement that "a comprehensive policy is needed to protect the East Timorese in West Timor and the humanitarian workers who assist them." Among the recommendations it made were an extension of the mandate of UN peacekeeping forces now in East Timor "to provide protection for humanitarian workers in West Timor unless a credible alternative is found."

The statement also proposed that the "international community consider economic sanctions against Indonesia unless a serious effort is made to protect the rights and security of the refugees and those who work with them."

A multi-national force of thousands of peacekeepers has been in East Timor since the miltia rampaged through the territory after its people voted for independence from Indonesia on August 30, 1999.

The Human Rights Watch statement was issued after the UN Security Council in New York Friday condemned the murders of the aid workers and insisted that Indonesia act immediately to disarm and disband militias there.

The 15 council members voted unanimously for a resolution which also underlined that the United Nations peacekeeping force in East Timor should "respond robustly" to cross-border threats by the militia.

The resolution stressed that "those responsible for the attacks on international personnel in West and East Timor must be brought to justice." Before the vote, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, told reporters "the Security Council will send a mission to Indonesia and East Timor."

Timor militias stage show of force

Irwan Firdaus, Atambua -- Hundreds of gun-toting militiamen staged a show of force Friday in a West Timor village where UN officials fear the militants killed 20 people despite Indonesia's promises to impose control in the territory.

Reports of new slayings came as Indonesia's embattled president tried to reassure world leaders at the United Nations about the situation in West Timor, where UN workers said militiamen were terrorizing the populace and refugees.

UN officials in East Timor said there were reports that militiamen went on a rampage in Betun village on Thursday that left 20 people dead. The reports of 20 dead could not be confirmed independently.

All UN workers fled West Timor after a militia-led mob stormed UN offices in Atambua, 30 miles north of Betun, on Wednesday, slaughtering three foreign relief workers and three other people.

Indonesian army officers said only that 11 people had died in a clash between militiamen and villagers near Betun, 18 miles from the border between West Timor and UN-administered East Timor.

The UN Security Council insisted Friday that Indonesia immediately disarm and disband the militias who killed the UN workers and bring those responsible to justice.

In a unanimously adopted resolution, the council condemned Wednesday's attacks and said it was outraged at reports of further attacks. "We have ample evidence that the threat is increasing," US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said before the vote. "We must face facts. The Indonesian military, or to be more precise, elements within the Indonesian military, are directly or indirectly responsible for these outrages."

In New York, President Abdurrahman Wahid said his government had sent a battalion of troops to West Timor and that he had asked the United Nations for funds to relocate militamen from the province to other parts of Indonesia. "Everything is under control," Wahid told a news conference Friday on the sidelines of the UN Millennium Summit. "The situation now is going very well."

The militias are the same gangs that, with backing from elements in the Indonesian military, wreaked destruction in East Timor after residents there voted for independence in an August 1999 referendum. Militiamen were pushed into the western part of Timor island when UN peacekeepers took control in the east.

On Friday, about 1,000 militiamen, some dressed in Indonesian military uniforms and brandishing guns and machetes, gathered in Betun for the funeral of one of their commanders killed earlier in the week.

Militia chiefs at the gathering demanded East Timorese leaders allow the militiamen to return to East Timor or face all-out war. "I think it is quite evident that Indonesian authorities are not in control in West Timor," said Norwegian Col. Brynar Nymo, spokesman for UN peacekeepers in the East Timorese capital, Dili.

On roads throughout the region, militiamen set up blockades, extorting money and cigarettes from passing motorists and searching cars for any remaining foreigners.

In Dili, UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Bernard Kerblat said West Timorese locals and refugees from the east were living in fear in areas under militiamen's control. "There are 120,000 individuals in a hostage-like situation" because of the militias, he said.

Brutality brings prosperity for Guterres and other ringleaders

David O'Shea -- On the balcony of their new home in Kupang, West Timor, her fingers covered in gold rings, Mrs Guterres watches her children play in front of the office that publishes her husband's anti-independence newspaper, Timorfile.

For her family, opposition to East Timor's independence has proved lucrative. Her husband is Eurico Guterres, the notorious militia leader whose military-backed thugs laid waste to Dili after last year's independence vote and who, far from being on the run, is now richer, more powerful and better politically connected than ever.

In an indication of the high-level support he enjoys, the latest addition to Guterres's CV comes courtesy of Indonesia's Vice- President, Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri, who a month ago appointed him head of her youth wing, the Banten Pemuda.

Her PDI-P party has always recruited influential street thugs for what is essentially a private militia but to select Guterres, even before the results of the Indonesian human rights investigation into the East Timor violence are released, is a disturbing development in a country where committing barbaric crime is cause for promotion. The Vice-President has shown her support for Guterres before, impressed by the blind allegiance he has shown to the Indonesian state.

As he called for Guterres's arrest on Thursday, Australia's Foreign Minister, Mr Downer, must have been aware of the militiaman's new role and that not one of those responsible for last year's destruction and violence has faced justice.

In fact, all the masterminds of the "scorched earth" campaign are still free, many of them promoted for their good work. Colonel Tono Suratman, the then chief of Indonesia's military (TNI) in East Timor, is now a brigadier-general working at TNI headquarters in Jakarta.

His counterpart, police chief colonel Timbul Silaen, was also rewarded. He, too, is now a brigadier-general, heading the police's internal corruption investigation unit in Jakarta.

General Feisal Tandjung, under whose command as co-ordinating minister for politics and security the blueprint for the destruction of East Timor was formulated, is now happily retired.

General Wiranto, head of TNI at the time, is the only one to have faced a slap on the wrists when he was suspended, but it went no further than that.

There are others, blamed for funding and arming the militia groups, who are now working in the Indonesian public service. One of them -- Mr Francisco Lopes da Cruz, whose office distributed aid money to fund militia activities -- is now ambassador to Greece.

In the year since the vote Eurico Guterres has faced the law only once, after he shot at the tyres of a car in Kupang. At the ensuing trial, the judge ruled that it was unclear whether Guterres carried out the act as a civilian or a military man, and the case was sent to a higher court.

The next day Guterres was filmed by Indonesian SCTV in Jakarta, leading a pro-Megawati rally, after consistently ignoring demands to come to the capital to face questioning by an Indonesian human rights investigation team.

A law unto himself, Eurico Guterres obviously faces a bright future with political patronage coming from the highest powers in the land.

[David O'Shea has just returned from Kupang, where he filmed a profile of Eurico Guterres for SBS's Dateline program.]

Twenty killed in refugee camp bloodshed

Keith Loveard, Vaudine England and Agencies -- The United Nations said 20 people were killed in renewed fighting in Indonesian West Timor yesterday, two days after the murder of four aid workers.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the East Timor capital, Dili, said the latest clashes occurred at the refugee camp of Betun, which had been taken over by pro-Jakarta East Timorese militias the night before. The identity of the dead -- and the number of wounded -- was unknown, UNHCR operations manager Bernard Kerblat said. Near Betun, the Indonesian army recovered the charred bodies of 11 West Timorese killed on Wednesday hours before the UN workers were murdered.

Betun is a stronghold of the militias which razed East Timor after it voted in August last year to end Indonesia's military rule and which fear returning to their homeland now under UN rule. The camp is 55km south of Atambua, where militias butchered three foreign UNHCR workers on Wednesday, mutilating their bodies before killing a local UN staffer.

In a show of force, about 1,000 militiamen in army uniforms attended the funeral in Betun yesterday of a militia leader whose murder on Tuesday was believed to have triggered the violence. "The funeral was tense because the mob, mostly in trucks and motorcycles, roamed the town first, forcing shops to close and residents to stay inside," an army intelligence officer said in Atambua. But he denied there had been any clashes. "Many of the militias walk around with guns and machetes," a West Timorese government official said.

Outside Atambua, armed gang members set up roadblocks and extorted money and cigarettes from passing motorists. Others scoured the countryside for foreigners.

The UN pulled more than 240 workers and dependants out of West Timor after Wednesday's killings and pulled out a further 90 yesterday. Nine crossed the southern border from Betun to Suai late on Thursday.

The UN withdrawal leaves more than 120,000 East Timorese living in refugee camps in West Timor without outside help. Mr Kerblat said: "There are 120,000 individuals in a hostage-like situation." The refugees were among more than 300,000 people the militias forced across the border from their homes in East Timor in a rampage that followed the territory's independence vote. Authorities have arrested 15 people over the murders.

Provincial military chief Colonel Jurefar said a company of reinforcements -- about 90 men -- had arrived in West Timor and the rest of the battalion was due yesterday.

Colonel Jurefar said UN staff in Atambua had been warned twice by police and military officers to evacuate their office before Wednesday's attack. After the first warning, 13 staff had stayed behind and after the second -- when a demonstration began to take shape in front of the regional government office nearby -- three had insisted they must stay to continue their work, he said. Those were the three who died.

Yesterday, security forces guarded the gutted office where the three UN staff -- from Puerto Rico, Croatia and Ethiopia -- were murdered while officials checked files in the office. At a local hotel that had housed many of the aid workers, blood was splattered on the ground where the UN staffer was cut down.

Colonel Jurefar reiterated the Indonesian authorities' claim that Tuesday's death of militia leader Olivio Moruk was the result of a local West Timorese trying to extort money from Moruk's driver. A rumour spread that Moruk had kidnapped local residents, and he was taken away by a group of people who stabbed him to death and mutilated his body.

The day after the killing of Moruk, refugees mounted a reprisal attack at 3am on a local village and six villagers were killed. Later that day Moruk's family and supporters carried his headless corpse to the local government building at Atambua.

The majority of the 3,000 in the crowd then talked to government officials, but a part of the crowd on the edge of the gathering broke off and rushed to attack the UNHCR building, Colonel Jurefar said. He "could not comment" on witnesses' claims police failed to intervene.

He said the military had made efforts to disarm militia groups but added: "Our problem is that most of our troops have been busy patrolling the border."

The colonel said it would not be easy to stop refugees believing that violence was the way to solve their problems. "Our difficulty is that we now have a risk of conflict between the refugees and local people. We are trying to persuade the locals not to be provoked," he said.

Militia chief armed youths days before murders

Joanna Jolly, Dili -- An Indonesian aid worker now in hiding in West Timor believes notorious East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres started arming youths in the provincial capital, Kupang, days before this week's murders in Atambua.

The man also linked the murder of another militia leader, Olivio Moruk, to the Indonesian military. It was Moruk's death that sparked Wednesday's deadly attack on UN staff and subsequent killings of West Timorese.

Speaking yesterday by telephone, he said: "Eurico has been re- establishing the preman [youth defence gangs] in Kupang, giving them food, alcohol and money." Since the weekend, West Timorese youths had been carrying weapons openly on the streets of Kupang, he said, but conceded: "We have no proof of who has given them the weapons." He and his colleagues were extremely concerned about reports that truckloads of militia from Atambua were heading towards Kupang.

The aid worker linked the violence directly to Moruk's death. "Two TNI [Indonesian military] commanders arrived in Kupang on Tuesday. I believe they are connected to the killing of Moruk. I am absolutely certain he was killed by the TNI, probably Kopassus [special forces]," he said.

Sources in West Timor say that Moruk, who was originally trained by Kopassus troops in East Timor, was threatening to return to East Timor and give information on militia activities. On Tuesday, the day he died, he and 18 other militiamen, former military and civilian officials were summoned for questioning by Indonesia's Attorney-General in connection with last year's bloody militia rampage in East Timor.

Moruk was the former commander of the Laksaur militia. Witnesses to the Suai massacre in East Timor a year ago say Laksaur was responsible for killing 150 refugees hiding in a church compound, and that militiamen acted under the orders of Indonesian military and government officials. At least six Suai-based officials, military officers and militiamen were among the suspects named on Tuesday in Jakarta.

Survivors tell of raid by 'beasts'

Barbie Dutter, Dili -- Survivors of the savage militia rampage through a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in West Timor told of fleeing for their lives as colleagues were murdered and mutilated by a mob armed with machetes.

Several were injured as they scrambled down a ladder, scaled a two-metre wall or clambered over the roof to escape the marauding pro-Jakarta militiamen in the border town of Atambua.

The mob gave chase with axes, knives and broken bottles. Some escaped only after being pulled to safety by local people who risked their lives to shelter the UN workers.

Jessie Bonce, a Filipino aid worker, was one of the last to flee the building, and found himself surrounded after all escape routes were blocked. He was stabbed in the stomach by a militiaman who chanted: "I've got one." Mr Bonce escaped by dropping to the ground and pretending to be dead, before being dragged away by a resident to hospital.

He said the three murdered foreigners -- Samson Aregahegn from Ethiopia, Pero Simundza from Croatia and Carlos Caceres, an American originally from Puerto Rico -- had been hacked to death and their bodies set on fire.

"I was told that Samson, who treated me like his own son, was beheaded. Pero, my very good friend, was shot in the forehead," Mr Bonce said.

Toney Aniwari, an Indonesian security assistant with the UNHCR, suffered a fractured wrist during a brutal beating, and cuts to the head after being hit by stones during his attempt to flee.

"When they came into the office they were reckless, they were beasts, they were like animals. The militias were shouting: 'You people go. You are dogs. We don't want you here.' I hid in a room and heard three gunshots, so ran outside and climbed over the wall. But I was caught and beaten by three or four militias.

"As I was lying on the ground screaming for help, with all these people punching and kicking me, I saw a truck of TNI [Indonesian military]. They only slowed down, they didn't do anything. Luckily two locals asked me to hide in their house. That's how I survived."

The UN was yesterday hastily evacuating remaining aid workers from West Timor, alarmed by reports that militias were descending on the main city of Kupang.

The survivors of Wednesday's attack in Atambua gathered alongside hundreds of UN troops and locals at Dili's airport on Thursday evening as a helicopter flew through the dusk, bearing the victims' bodies in three steel coffins. A banner carried by red- eyed UN workers stated: "Carlos, Pero and Samson. Thanks for your helping and for our new nation."

Coffins, draped in UN flags, were set on trestle tables on the airport tarmac. Baskets of frangipani and bougainvillea, borne by weeping colleagues of the dead, were handed to senior UN officials who placed them gently on top.

A chronology of events since the independence vote

Jakarta -- A chronoloy of major events since East Timorese voted for independence from Indonesia on August 30, 1999.

Aug 30, 1999: East Timorese vote for self-determination in record numbers in a UN-supervised ballot.

Sept 4: Announcement of the vote results shows 78.5 percent of East Timorese voted for independence from Indonesia.

Sept 5: Militia attacks begin, most press and UN staff evacuate as Dili burns, population flees.

Sept 6: Hundreds are slain by militia in the border town of Suai including two priests. Refugees forced out to West Timor in their thousands at gunpoint. Nobel laureate Bishop Carlos Belo's refugee-packed house is attacked. Belo escapes.

Sept 9: The UN announces it is reversing its decision to evacuate UNAMET headquarters in Dili, citing a revolt by staff who refuse to abandon the refugees in their compound.

Sept 13: Indonesian government reverses opposition to dispatch of UN authorized peace keepers.

Sept 15: UN authorizes use of foreign peace-keeping force.

Sept 20: An Australian-led force (Interfet) arrives in East Timor to quell the militia violence.

Sept 21: Financial Times journalist Sander Toenes is killed in Dili by uniformed men.

Sept 22: Nobel Laureate Ramos Horta meets then Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas to plead for the protection for some 250,000 refugees forced into West Timor and now threatened by the militia who followed them there.

Sept 24: The UN Commission on Human Rights calls a special session on East Timor, sets up an inquiry.

Sept 29: Indonesia says it will not be bound by any UN Human Rights tribunal.

Sept 30: UNHCR says militia are terrorizing refugees in West Timor.

Oct 8: Indonesia's Komnas-HAM launches its own inquiry into the East Timor violence, which eventally holds then-armed forces chief Wiranto as "morally responsible."

Oct 11: Indonesia accuses UNTERFET of border violation, shooting a policeman during a border skirmish.

Oct 18: Independence leader Xanana Gusmao says 50 people massacred in the enclave of Oekussi.

Oct 22: Gusmao, president of the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), makes a triumphal return to East Timor after being freed from years in Indonesian jails.

Oct 25: UNTAET (the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor) created by the UN Security Council.

Nov 3: Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas- Ham) condemns militia violence and urges the military to disband them.

Nov 19: UNAMET chief Ian Martin finally leaves Dili.

Feb 21: 2000 Interfet completes handover to the UN peacekeeping force in East Timor.

Jul 15: A transitional cabinet is sworn in in East Timor.

Jul 24: New Zealand soldier Leonard Manning becomes the first UN peacekeeper fatality, shot by suspected militiamen amid an upsurge of militia activity in both East and West Timor. A Nepalese soldier is killed shortly after.

Aug: CNRT holds its first congress, Gusmao retracts on his refusal to stand for president. Militia step up attacks against UN workers, forcing a halt to operations.

Aug 30: East Timorese celebrate the first anniversary of their independence.

Sept 1: Indonesia names 19 people including three generals as suspects in the Timor violence.

Sept 6: Militia attacks UNHCR workers in Atambua, killing three.

Sept 7: The United Nations evacuates all its workers from West Timor.

East Timorese militia - trained to kill then abandoned

Jakarta -- When East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia last year, feared militia leader Eurico Guterres made his displeasure known by sending his armed followers to the airport to block any East Timorese from leaving.

His followers, members of the Dili-based Aitarak (Thorn) militia, met no resistance from the Indonesian military, nor did it attempt to stop Guterres when he turned up at Dili airport's departure lounge, bound for Jakarta himself.

At the airport, Guterres, 28, a colorful but feared figure, who favors military fatigues and cap, dark glasses and long hair tied back in a pony tail, regaled journalists with a mixture of anger against the Indonesian military, the United Nations and the world in general.

The top pro-Indonesians in East Timor, he fumed to an AFP reporter, were leaving, abandoning their responsibilities to loyal people like him. Asked why he too was leaving so suddenly -- only one day after the UN released the overwhelmingly pro- independence result of the vote -- Guterres said simply that was a different matter. He was just going to see his wife in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, he said.

Guterres's followers meanwhile were blocking -- with the simple menacing prod of a rifle -- any other East Timorese from escaping. The Indonesian military watched.

The same day, the Dili-based Aitarak and fellow militia groups -- the Besi Merah Putih (Red and White Iron), the Mahidi (Live or Die for Indonesia) and others -- started a campaign of arson, that was to turn within hours into a territory-wide reign of terror. Again the Indonesian miltiary watched as Dili burned, saying that the people who voted against independence were angry and that Timorese were by nature a violent people.

The military had long augmented their troops with the militia -- a motley collection of paid spies, thugs, defectors from the independence movement, and press-ganged youths. Each of the 13 districts of East Timor, when it was still Indonesian territory, had its own militia group.

As an irregular force, Indonesian authorities were able and did paint the militia as fervent Indonesian loyalists and gave them a political status as such. Despite frequent denials, the Indonesian army also provided them with weapons and paramilitary training.

Independence supporters, speaking in the months ahead of the vote, said their own spies in Dili banks had detected huge amounts of counterfeit money being paid out to the estimated 10,000 militia. Not that spies were needed.

Along the roadsides journalists could see the new recruits being drilled, and in shops they bought up huge supplies of the local stimulant "Kratingdaeng" and black beer -- the combination of which was reputed to put them in a crazed killing mood. The militia often roared, armed to the teeth, through the city in new jeeps, in a show of power.

They publicly distributed signed leaflets, marking pro- independence followers for death -- then followed up their threats with attacks as the Indonesian military, widely believed to be their paymasters, again stood by. One year later and Guterres is still publicly strutting his stuff.

Now stranded in West Timor, the king of nothing but squalid refugee camps, whose inmates are said to be held virtually to ransom by the militia, Guterres continues to appear regularly on Indonesian national television. He continues to rail angrily against his fate, and suggests that if anyone should be blamed for the post-Timor violence, it should be former Indonesian president B.J. Habibie, who allowed the vote to go ahead.

He turns up at public functions, welcomed UNHCR chief Sadako Ogata at the Atambua refugee camps when she first visited them, flies back and forth between Jakarta, Bali and Kupang, and shows up regularly at National Day functions alongside Indonesian officials. And he continues to urge that East Timor -- already half an island -- be divided again to give the militia a home -- and in the most fertile western parts too.

But the question raised by the brutal killings of three UN aid workers Thursday was whether militia leaders like Guterres might have decided that they had been "too soft" in East Timor by not killing foreigners. Hounded on all sides, apparently abandonned by their paymasters, their bases in West Timor shrinking as the refugees return, the militia seem cornered and determined not to move.

Army hardliners blamed for attack

Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta -- Indonesia promised to send two extra battalions to the West Timor border where militia killed up to six United Nations staff on Wednesday, as speculation arose that the chain of command in the country's armed forces had broken down.

Dr Harold Crouch, an Australian expert on Indonesia's armed forces, said the fragmentation of the military had "reached the point that they have difficulty controlling the situation in Timor and elsewhere".

President Abdurrahman Wahid told the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, he feared the attack may have been timed to coincide with his appearance at the UN world leader's forum to maximise the political embarrassment. Diplomats in Jakarta are also speculating that the violence was orchestrated by army hardliners.

Dr Crouch, who works for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said one likely explanation for the latest Timor violence was that it was "manipulated from Jakarta".

Western diplomats in Jakarta said they doubted the boosting of troop numbers would help end violence along the border unless militia leaders like Eurico Guterres are arrested and their groups disarmed and disbanded.

UN officials and aid agencies have documented many attacks on Timorese and foreigners in West Timor in the past 12 months while Indonesian police and soldiers stood by and watched.

Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Mr Alwi Shihab, yesterday promised the attack would be a "turning point" in ending violence along the border with East Timor.

"We have to act more decisively and more effectively to solve the problem once and for all. We decisively took measures and we sent 2,000 personnel -- two battalions -- to the area to safeguard the office of the UN." The attack has forced the abandonment of international aid programs supporting more than 100,000 Timorese living in squalid refugee camps along the border. UN officials leaving West Timor yesterday described the situation as highly volatile.

The official Indonesian newsagency Antara quoted Mr Wahid as saying in New York that the killers of the UN staff would be brought to justice.

Killed were Carlos Caceres-Collazo, a Puerto Rican-born American, Samson Aregahegn of Ethiopia, and Pero Simundza, a Croatian. They were stabbed and dragged on to the street before being set alight. The remaining three were thought to be Timorese.

Indonesia's Attorney-General, Mr Marzuki Darusman, has ordered increased protection of militia members named as suspects in last year's violence in East Timor. The murder of one of the named militia members -- Olivio Mendoza Moruk -- on Tuesday night in West Timor prompted Wednesday's rampage.

The Co-ordinating Politics and Security Affairs Minister, Mr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said 15 suspects had been arrested. An Indonesian military analyst, Mr Salim Said, said a conspiracy against Mr Wahid could not be ruled out, and it was "quite a coincidence" that the violence broke out while Mr Wahid was overseas.

Rampage became a certainty after militia leader's murder

Lindsay Murdoch -- The plan was simple and savage: kill Olivio Mendoza Moruk and the pro-Jakarta militia roaming West Timor would go berserk, as they did when they left East Timor last year.

The killers left nothing to chance: they sliced his throat and cut off his testicles. Moruk became a martyr among the thugs of the militia.

The 45-year-old was one of the militia leaders responsible for orchestrating death and destruction on a grand scale in East Timor last year.

Only last week the office of Indonesia's Attorney-General listed him among 19 suspects facing prosecution over the violence. Even the most notorious militia leader, Eurico Guterres, was not on the list.

It was probably no coincidence that Moruk was murdered on the eve of the anniversary of the Suai massacre. On September 6 last year members of the Laksaur militia he led, backed by soldiers and police, attacked about 100 people who had taken refuge in the grounds of the church in the town of Suai in East Timor.

According to a report by Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission, Moruk's thugs shot dead one priest then stepped on his body. Another priest was stabbed to death. Other attackers shot people as they tried to flee. With the blood of at least 50 unarmed people on his hands, Moruk had walked tall among the militia for the past 12 months.

When his mutilated body was found on Tuesday night in the small border town of Atambua in West Timor, anger quickly spread among the militia, who have become a law unto themselves in the Indonesian province. Somebody started a rumour that United Nations peacekeepers in East Timor had killed him.

Within hours, truckloads of militia from across West Timor were rampaging through Atambua, venting their anger at the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Like almost everything else bad that happens in Indonesia, speculation is rife in Jakarta about what sinister plot was behind Moruk's killing. Few if any people believe the explanation of Major-General Kiki Syahnakri, the regional Indonesian military commander, that Moruk was killed after an argument between former militia members over gambling.

The Attorney-General, Mr Marzuki Darusman, expressed suspicion about a political motive. "I think it was too coincidental that Olivio was killed right after he was named a suspect," he said.

The timing of the death and its brutal aftermath could not have been worse for President Abdurrahman Wahid, who was in New York for the UN millennium summit. Mr Wahid said he feared the attack may have been timed to coincide with his appearance at the UN to maximise the political embarrassment to him.

Who was behind the plot? Strong suspicion immediately fell on Kopassus, the elite special force of the Indonesian army which is among the worst culprits in the East Timor bloodbath. Other speculation centred on militia leaders and high-ranking Indonesian officers who are, so far, absent from the Attorney- General's list of suspects.

Deaths a tragedy waiting to happen

Vaudine England -- Tension had been escalating in the refugee camps of Indonesian West Timor for several weeks before yesterday's attack on the UN office in Atambua, in which three staff, all foreigners, were burned to death.

Pro-Jakarta militia who ravaged East Timor last year after its vote for independence -- and abused many of the 90,000 East Timorese refugees they control -- have attacked international aid staff at will.

It has also been clear that the Indonesian Government is unable to control the militiamen and their patrons in the security forces. Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab promised several weeks ago to close the camps but has since produced no details of when or how that will be accomplished, other than to say overseas aid organisations would need to help.

Increasingly frustrated, UN officials have sought safety guarantees for their staff in Kupang, the West Timorese capital, in accordance with treaties signed with Indonesia, but Jakarta remains helpless. This combination of inertia, lack of political will and militia-led lawlessness made the vicious deaths of the UN staff who died yesterday a tragedy waiting to happen.

"We have been in meetings all this week with Untas [the pro- Indonesian group Uni Timor Aswain], trying to facilitate a dialogue with them for a meeting between all East Timorese groups in early October. The talks were difficult, but we thought we were making some progress. And then this happens -- it's awful," said a UN staffer waiting last night in Kupang for evacuation to safety.

In a series of incidents, pro-Indonesian militia gangs, using East Timorese refugees as shields, have attacked, threatened, beaten and intimidated staff of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Several times, it and other aid agencies have suspended operations to repatriate the remaining refugees to East Timor while they sought assurances from Jakarta.

Only last week, UNHCR work in the camps resumed after a six-day shutdown caused by attacks by militia thugs. A violent rampage occurred last week in which militiamen attacked a local legislature building and beat up several journalists. At the same time, a hunger strike was mounted by Untas, fronted by 13 "grassroots" people -- that is, refugees goaded on by Untas.

The violence is aimed at forcing international groups out of West Timor so that Untas can manipulate refugees at will. The larger goal appears to be to partition of an independent East Timor, and to force the United Nations out of its role as administrators there, reducing the battle for East Timor to "domestic" status once more. "I think they want all the internationals out," said the UN source in Kupang. "The mob is now getting out of control and they could trash Kupang."

Just before the beating and burning to death of the three UNHCR staff in Atambua, another angry demonstration got under way in the capital, Kupang, yesterday. Kupang youths and militia infiltrators chanted "Untaet Out! Untaet Out!" Untaet is the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor.

A threatened mass protest against Untaet in Kupang was called off on Monday. The protesters, led by notorious East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres, had sent a letter last week promising a massive demonstration unless Untaet closed its office in Kupang. "Eurico was seen in Atambua this morning," another UN staff member said yesterday..

In Jakarta, too, a small group of pro-Indonesia East Timorese protested outside UN headquarters, demanding the world body "acknowledge" it had rigged East Timor's independence vote. This view remains widespread in Indonesia, where a nationalistic backlash against East Timorese and their foreign supporters has grown since the August 1999 vote for independence after 24 years of occupation by Indonesian troops, in which 200,000 East Timorese -- nearly one in three -- were killed or starved to death.

Grim e-mail from Militia attack

David Crary, United Nations -- Six hours before he and two colleagues were murdered in West Timor, an American relief worker e-mailed a friend at a UN security office with a warning that a mob was en route to destroy his compound. "We sit here like bait, unarmed," he wrote.

The message was sent by Carlos Caceres of Puerto Rico, one of three employees of the UN refugee agency who were mutilated and burned in Wednesday's onslaught by a mob of militiamen opposed to independence for East Timor. West Timor remains under Indonesian rule. "These guys act without thinking and can kill a human being as easily [and painlessly] as I kill mosquitos in my room," Caceres wrote.

UN officials said Caceres sent the message to a friend at a security office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Skopje, Macedonia, which was assigned to help coordinate safety measures for the faraway UNHCR workers in the West Timor town of Atambua.

A Security Council statement said the UNHCR had received advance warning of possible trouble and was assured by the Indonesian security forces that agency staff would be protected.

"I was in the office when the news came out that a wave of violence would soon pound Atambua," wrote Caceres. "We sent most of the staff home. I just heard someone on the radio saying that they are praying for us... You should see this office," Caceres continued. "Plywood on the windows, staff peering out through the openings in the curtains hastily installed a few minutes ago. We are waiting for the enemy."

Caceres added that he was due to start a three-week trip on Thursday -- "I just hope I will be able to leave tomorrow." Despite his fears, Caceres told his friend in Skopje he would keep working. "As wait for the militia to do their business, I will draft the agenda for tomorrow's meeting..," he wrote.

According to information provided to the Security Council, militiamen armed with homemade and semiautomatic weapons overran the UNHCR compound in Atambua, chasing away nine local policemen on guard. "Most UNHCR staff fled over a rear wall," a UN statement said. "However, three of them were apparently unable to do so."

Robin Groves, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said Caceres, 33, attended the University of Florida and later received a law degree from Cornell. He had worked with the UNHCR since 1987. Groves did not know his home town in Puerto Rico.

The Security Council discussed the attack in an urgent session Wednesday afternoon, then issued a statement expressing condolences and condemning "this outrageous and contemptible act." "As a result, the essential international assistance to an estimated 100,000 East Timorese refugees has been suspended, putting that vulnerable population at risk," the council statement said.

The council urged Indonesia to end militia violence, ensure security at refugee camps and work with international agencies to ensure that refugees can return home.

Groves said Caceres' e-mail was read aloud to the Security Council by Sadako Ogata, the UNHCR's head. "They were all profoundly moved," Groves said. "You could see the reaction was very intense."

'Remember the past, look to the future'

Mark Dodd, Suai -- They gathered by the thousand, many bringing tributes of flowers to mark the single worst act of militia violence in East Timor -- the Suai Cathedral massacre one year ago.

Outside the chapel where Fathers Hilario Madeira, Francisco Soares and Dewanto were hacked and shot to death and their bodies burnt, hundreds wept, laid flowers and placed candles.

About 4,000 people, many of whom had walked from remote areas, gathered yesterday to attend mass and commemorate the September6 army-backed massacre of as many as 200 independence supporters.

Dili's Nobel peace laureate, Bishop Carlos Belo, acknowledged in his sermon the huge sacrifice made, "In Suai, many people died in the cause of freedom for East Timor," he said. "It is important to remember our martyrs and heroes but it is also important to look to the future with new hope and enthusiasm. "We must start out from the ashes to build up this new country, Timor Lorosae."

Before the mass, the bishop blessed a huge reconciliation hut built in traditional style of thatch and freestanding poles. It houses an exhibition of local culture and craft.

The ceremony was also attended by senior United Nations staff and representatives of aid agencies based in Suai. Trevor Reece- Jones, the former bodyguard of Princess Diana, was present in his capacity as deputy UN security chief for Suai.

The huge grey, unfinished cathedral stood overlooking the central market area, its concrete facade still showing bullet holes from last year's violence. "People were terrified; they had been attacked and they had no protection. The militia were growing stronger and stronger and obviously supported by the Indonesian military," Mr Patrick Burgess, the United Nations head of human rights for East Timor, said.

Witnesses reported seeing trucks stacked with bodies driving over the border to West Timor. One militia leader involved in the slaughter, Igidio Manek, is also sought by UN human rights investigators for child kidnapping and rape.

Senior UN officials said that before fleeing East Timor, Manek kidnapped a 15-year-old girl as a "war prize". She is now pregnant and has been paraded at the border surrounded by armed militia. High-level requests have been made to Indonesian authorities about her repatriation, a UN official said.

The other side of the divide

Stewart Taggart -- Walk down any street in East Timor's capitol of Dili and the scene is the same: blackened, roofless buildings and heaps of rubble. Severed telephone lines dangle from exposed walls, charred satellite dishes point skyward, and traffic lights stare blindly at intersections. Only a tiny fraction of the city's 60,000 residents have running water or electricity. Pigs and chickens pick rubbish from drainage ditches while a few children play trampoline on bits of corrugated roofing. Emaciated dogs trail clouds of flies.

The devastation is complete. Little escaped the political violence of last September after a popular vote ended 24 years of brutal military rule by neighboring Indonesia. For weeks afterward, anti-independence militias, Timorese thugs with rumored ties to the Indonesian military, roamed the country furiously burning everything in their path, leaving only scorched earth behind them.

Now East Timor, the world's newest nation, must build an economic, political and physical infrastructure from little more than ashes.

The work has already begun. On one street corner, an elderly entrepreneur sells powdered milk and candles from a wooden shack. On another, workers tap nails into wooden beams or dab new concrete onto the walls of buildings that a few days before looked a total loss. And just a short walk from the docks that were once the economic heart of this harbor city is the nucleus of East Timor's reconstruction: the government administration building.

The fresh white paint and unbroken windows of its porticoed flanks are alone enough to make the building stand out. But its true significance is signaled by the rack of functioning satellite dishes on its roof, the braids of orderly telephone and power cables that wrap its sides and the loud talk of people on mobile phones in the parking lot.

Inside this Iberian architectural treasure, the United Nations has taken on the role of interim government while the fledgling nation prepares to elect its own government next year. From a generator-powered control room, borrowed bureaucrats run makeshift ministries -- agriculture, trade, fiscal affairs -- using hastily wired computers. Operatives buzz back and forth, setting tariffs, planning roads and budgeting aid programs. E- mail, Internet access and a high-powered intranet lubricate the wheels of an ad hoc bureaucracy in a country with no reliable electricity, little phone service and virtually no PCs.

Away from the administrative fray, though, toward the back of the complex, is where East Timor's future is really being laid out. Behind tinted windows that eclipse the midday sun, Pedro Braga sits at a corner desk in a tightly packed office. The head of the UN interim government's IT telecommunications division, Braga's job is to bring East Timor into the digital age.

Half Portuguese and half Chinese, Braga was born 66 years ago on Macao -- an island that, like East Timor, was once a colony of Portugal. Right now, he's talking on one of the few functioning desk phones in the country. It's a short call. Braga has things to do, and an engineer's economy with words.

He picks up a sheaf of papers he's been working on mornings, evenings and weekends for months. "Here it is," he tells me, "the future of the country." Specifically, it is an outline of the series of herculean tasks required to rebuild East Timor's telecommunications system. It's pretty bleak stuff.

Last September, before the violence, this nation of 770,000 people had only 8,000 fixed telephone lines. Now it has 2,000. Of 28 telephone structures nationwide, including buildings and telephone towers, only one remains undamaged, the central switch in Dili.

The relative numbers are even more disturbing. In the United States, there are roughly 64 phones per 100 people, or a "teledensity" of 64 percent, according to the International Telecommunication Union. In middle-income countries like the Czech Republic, teledensity is generally around 32 percent, while lower-income countries like Guyana and Jordan may have teledensities as low as 6 percent. In East Timor right now, teledensity is estimated at 0.26 percent.

As for computer ownership, the gap is even more dramatic. More than half the people in developed regions of Asia like Singapore own some kind of personal computer, according to market-research firm Roper Starch Worldwide. The proportion is roughly the same in North America. In East Timor, there are essentially no computers, at least outside the UN compound. If you need to communicate with someone here, you just have to walk around until you find them.

Which is not to say that Braga has given up hope. This fall, he and his staff will award a multimillion-dollar contract to overhaul the nation's telecom system, providing East Timor with all the communications accoutrements of a more developed economy -- mobile telephony, fixed-line telephony, data carriage and international access. Braga's not sure who will step up to bid, although Australia's Telstra and Portugal Telecom appear interested, as do a few private consortia. Ideally, Braga says, he'd like to see the results of East Timor's first national election late next year beamed around the country over a fully functioning telecom system.

Braga is painfully aware of how ambitious that timeline is. He is also aware that some may ridicule such an ambition for a nation that can barely feed, clothe or educate its people, much less provide a dial tone. But the UN sent him here to make sure that East Timor has the best possible chance of recovery. If he gets telecommunications right, he says, the synergies of the information age will form a tailwind, blowing East Timor out of the horrifying present and into the prosperous age enjoyed by so many in the West.

Out on the streets, it's easy to see the raw material from which an East Timorese Internet Economy might take root. On street corners, teenagers will sell you single cigarettes from a pack. On the road to the airport, street hawkers will top off your gas tank from plastic jugs of gasoline, undercutting the city's one gas station. Outside Dili's few cafes, kids sell you newspapers and keep an eye on you, hoping they can retrieve the paper later to sell again.

Braga's dream is to provide the means to link this street-level hustle to the crankshaft of modern communications. He is not alone. International organizations like the G8 and the World Bank increasingly cite entrepreneurship and technology as the twin engines that will drive Third World nations out of their misery. And as the UN convenes its 55th General Assembly on September 5 in New York, such issues are at the top of the agenda. But what can the Internet, or even a working telephone, do for a nation with no new economy, with no economy at all?

Narrow and mountainous, the 300-mile-long island of Timor lies at the southern end of the Indonesian archipelago, a few hundred miles north of Australia. Portugal first established settlements on Timor in the 1500s, eager to profit from the island's abundant sandalwood forests. In 1859, Portugal and Holland, which had colonized what is now Indonesia, agreed to split Timor roughly in half, with West Timor going to the Netherlands. When Indonesia gained independence from Holland in 1949, West Timor fell under Indonesian rule.

In 1974, Portuguese dictator Marcelo Caetano was overthrown by a group of leftist generals who pledged, among other goals, to relinquish control of Portugal's remaining colonies, including Angola and East Timor. Several Timorese independence parties arose, and interfactional squabbling quickly followed. Indonesia, taking advantage of the opening, invaded East Timor in December 1975 under cover of support from one of those factions.

East Timor was, to say the least, never a good fit for Indonesia. The country's roughly 770,000 people are devoutly Roman Catholic, while Indonesia's 200 million people are overwhelmingly Moslem. Guerrillas fought the Indonesian army as well as other independence factions. Famines, forced mass relocation into "resettlement camps" and harsh military rule, including the massacre of hundreds of unarmed independence protesters in Dili in 1991, made East Timor one of the world's most hellish regions.

Amazingly, though, things got worse. In 1998 Indonesian President Suharto was forced to resign after 32 years in office, and Interim President B.J. Habibie agreed to a popular referendum in East Timor. The alternatives presented to East Timorese voters were greater autonomy within Indonesia or outright independence. Despite months of violent intimidation, including alleged incidences of torture, rape and mass killings by militias favoring autonomy, nearly 80 percent of the population voted in favor of independence. Following that outcome, a violent backlash raged unchecked as the Indonesian government ignored the destruction. An international peacekeeping force led by Australia later replaced the Indonesian army in East Timor, and progressively chased the militias into the mountains or into West Timor. The United Nations now runs the government, the first time the UN has played such a comprehensive governing role for an entire country.

Indonesia remains politically unstable, and a recent spate of clashes between UN peacekeepers and Timorese militiamen (two UN soldiers were killed recently in separate battles) make an open question of whether the worst has yet passed.

If East Timor is to enter the digital age, it will first require electricity. Large areas of the country have none. Other areas have it for just a few hours a day. Each night in Dili a different part of the city is blacked out to prevent the entire grid from collapsing. On nights when the lights go out and the equatorial stars twinkle above the darkened city, the scene is hardly pastoral as a chorus of chugging generators crank out a head-pounding din.

When electrical power is switched on, fluctuations in current can destroy equipment, including desktop computers. Australian electronic-goods retailer Harvey Norman opened a shop in Dili in June and has sold about five desktops thus far. None came with any kind of warranty, says Victor Rustam, the Sumatra-born New Zealand citizen who manages the store.

As a goodwill gesture, Rustam swapped out one customer's hard drive after the local power supply cooked it. But he says he can't do that for everyone: "The manufacturer isn't going to wear this, and we certainly can't." The best surge protection in East Timor is to use a laptop, since electrical current passes into a battery, which in turn provides power to the sensitive components. Thus laptops have a kind of built-in buffer against the power supply.

A mobile-phone system of six towers provides limited coverage to parts of metropolitan Dili. But the service is expensive, and only expatriates, UN personnel and soldiers paid in foreign currency can afford to use it. Local Timorese generally have no telephone of any kind.

There's no banking system, either. Everything is paid for in cash, preferably US dollars. But with Australian dollars and Indonesian rupiah also circulating and no way to monitor transactions, UN officials acknowledge they have little idea of such fundamental macroeconomic variables as East Timor's money supply, rate of inflation or balance of payments.

Many commercial banking records were either destroyed or carted off to Indonesia after last September's vote, leaving many depositors and businesses with commercial transactions still in limbo nearly a year later, according to Fernando DePeralto, an official in the UN's Central Payments Office in Dili. Similarly, many municipal records were destroyed. For any unit of property here, the issue of ownership largely remains unresolved. All of these are solvable problems, of course. But who will solve them and when is an open question.

Robert Cooksey, a venture capitalist, pulls his rented SUV into a narrow, dusty alley on the outskirts of Dili. The local pigs and chickens scatter. Cooksey, an Australian, is here to visit a Catholic mission school, one of the few places in East Timor offering any kind of computer training. Among his other projects, Cooksey is working to provide the school with more computers in the hopes of developing East Timor's human capital.

"It's amazing what they've achieved," he tells me, sweeping past a snoozing dog as we enter the school grounds. In a room containing four donated computers, a Portuguese music instructor is teaching students in their 20s the basics of Windows: how to open files, close files, create documents. She instructs in Portuguese and her words are translated into the local language, Tetun, to help the students navigate the English menus.

For Cooksey, it's a start. "Late last year, the highest priority was to provide security, food and shelter," he tells me as we walk around. "Now we're moving on to a second phase, getting the country moving again." Cooksey believes East Timor has huge potential. As a tourist resort, it could one day rival Indonesia's islands of Bali or Lombok. As a low-cost labor center, it could provide electronic back-office services to developed countries. And if oil and gas revenues pour in from the Timor Sea later this decade, the country could be set for, if not an economic takeoff, at least happier times.

Earlier this year, Cooksey put together a consortium of Australian and European investors to bid on Pedro Braga's project of rebuilding East Timor's telecommunications system. "This will be perhaps the most important commercial decision the new country will make," Cooksey tells me. "It's a small market, but if you work with all the segments -- government, education and health -- you can do something that's both commercially profitable and really beneficial to the people." With more deeply integrated communications among schools, health facilities and government, Cooksey says services might be delivered to the poor in rural and remote areas at low cost. These could include special school lessons delivered digitally, or medical opinions delivered to regional clinics, saving patients a trip to the city. Could the technology pay for itself? It's still unclear.

What is clear is that in a country as dysfunctional as this, every bit helps. For his part, Cooksey believes that if East Timor is going to join the 21st century, it needs three things: English, computer literacy and a decent telecom network. Cooksey says the Timorese will have to teach themselves English, but he might be able to help with the other two. At his most ambitious, he suggests that East Timor can turn its near-total lack of infrastructure into an advantage.

The constantly falling price of telecom equipment, he says, could enable the country to install one of the world's most sophisticated telecommunications networks, fresh off the shelf and cheaply. These days, he says, an IP-based data router costs almost the same as a voice-based central telephone switch. By avoiding the kluges of legacy systems and building from scratch, East Timor could bypass decades of costly development and skip right to a state-of-the-art, nationwide IP network that efficiently carries voice and data simultaneously.

Later, I ask Braga about Cooksey's vision, and he nods slowly. State of the art is fine, he says, but he's not convinced the time is right for it. East Timor's communications infrastructure may be largely destroyed, but it isn't completely gone. "Of course, I'd also prefer to put in an IP-based network. Who wouldn't?" Braga says, "But we do have some existing circuit- switch infrastructure, and we need to work with that."

At what point do you make the disruptive jump to new technologies? And is East Timor -- a nation with little indigenous expertise in new technologies - the right place to try it? Braga hasn't made up his mind.

"I touched a computer for my first time in March," says 30-year- old graduate engineering student Jose Gusmao, shaking his head as if revealing an uncomfortable truth. "When I was at university I saw computers, but they were only for the faculty." When East Timor gets wired -- and that's still at least a year off -- Gusmao wants to be among the first to savor the fruits. Gusmao and five colleagues now share two Pentium IIs donated earlier this year by the World Bank. He and the other members of the Association of Engineers of East Timor have set up the PCs in a burned-out office complex that once housed the local Indonesian secret police.

It's a largely roofless, one-story hulk that still smells of smoke. In the center of the complex, an open courtyard bakes in the midday sun. From there, the engineering students' office is easy to find. It's the only place in the building with a roof: a lacework of palm thatch. Gusmao and the others bought the material from a nearby village and installed the roof themselves.

Every hour of the day, someone stays with the computers. Two people sleep with them each night. During their waking hours, Gusmao and the others teach each other AutoCAD and other engineering programs. Gusmao believes that in all of Dili there are less than 50 PCs outside the control of the UN or other international aid organizations.

Gusmao and his classmates are now drawing up architectural plans to reconstruct Dili. They've already completed one project, a residential renovation on the outskirts of Dili funded by the World Bank. They're hoping for other jobs from multilateral agencies, as well.

For Gusmao, the telecommunications and computer revolution can't arrive fast enough in East Timor. He points down the road to the city's sprawling and chaotic central market, where largely illiterate East Timorese hawk everything from second-hand clothing to gasoline of dubious origin. The market operates from a massive accretion of tin shacks and makeshift shelters under plastic tarps.

Gusmao has ascertained that such sprawl results from imperfect buyer-seller information. "Prices are not stable from place to place in the market -- they jump all around," Gusmao says. "With computers we could compare, and tell some merchants their prices are too high." Well, yes. It's difficult to decide if such a revelation is hopeful or heartbreaking. Any marketplace that had advanced to the point of real-time pricing over the Internet would long ago have ditched commerce by sidewalk blanket. But it does indicate an intuitive grasp of the power of networked computers, even by one who has never used them.

Gusmao is at the vanguard of East Timorese Internet consciousness. He speaks English, which few Timorese do, and he has at least the semblance of an education. Right now, though, lack of education in computers is holding back people like Gusmao. Gusmao estimates that only two or three out of every 100 people in Dili have even heard of the Internet. Only a few more have heard anything about computers. Clearly, there's a long way to go.

While the 24-hour bakery next door struggles to meet demand, 30- year-old Australian computer technician Daniel Zich has time on his hands. Since he opened the Big Byte, a computer sales and service shop, three months ago, few customers have come around -- despite the prime harborside location and air conditioning.

Slow demand has done him in. He's heading back to his native Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory, hundreds of miles south across the Timor Sea. As possibly the only independent computer technician in all of Dili, his departure will set back the arrival of the digital age in East Timor substantially. "Would I return?" he says. "Perhaps. Maybe I was just too early." Bread definitely has the competitive edge in East Timor. Just down the road, Kirk MacManus, an American food-catering executive, has opened a low-tech but well-stocked supermarket. Located on Dili's main commercial thoroughfare, his store is one of only a few dozen proper retail establishments in the capital.

MacManus has named the store Hello Mister, the two words generally known here in Portuguese, English, Tetun and Indonesian, and the local children's favorite phrase to shout at foreigners. Inside Hello Mister, frozen goods and assorted nonperishables are for sale, and the bright white lighting would do a police interrogation room proud. The highly numerate salesclerks can instantly figure prices in US dollars, Australian dollars and Indonesian rupiah, and make change with equal ease. MacManus has the shop's interior white walls repainted every three to four days to cover up dust marks and handprints. In all, it's dimly suggestive of a "retail experience." The alternative remains the chaotic outdoor market up the street.

His efforts appear to be working. In addition to shopping there, many locals congregate in front of Hello Mister to socialize. MacManus says his next big challenge will be getting checkout scanners. Online shopping and home grocery delivery, on the other hand, are far down the road.

Many of East Timor's problems are common to the Third World: degraded infrastructure, low educational attainment, high levels of illiteracy, poor communications, bad overall health, poverty. It also has a lot of problems all its own: a 500-year colonial legacy, a total lack of trained administrative elites and the lingering social trauma caused by years of wanton murder and displacement.

But the country has taken at least the first steps toward creating a democratic government that will enhance political stability and lay the groundwork for economic growth. From there the native resources of the country -- the entrepreneurialism of its people -- may find a springboard. If the current microscale trading in cigarettes, gasoline and newspapers is anything to go by, there's little reason to think East Timor can't move up the business chain. Given, that is, political stability and half a chance.

Already, the country has a symbolic stake in cyberspace. In 1997, East Timor quietly registered the top-level domain name .tp -- two years before the country's independence vote was held. The domain's official administrative address is in the scenic coastal town of Manatuto, just outside Dili. The settlement now is without any form of telecommunications, and has only sporadic electric power. Even so, it's a sign of the future.

As is the fact that East Timor has been assigned its own international dialing code -- 670 -- even though it has few fixed-line phones to connect. All this is in place now, before the country has even decided on a national anthem, an official national language or a domestic currency. If the totems of nationhood are changing, East Timor already has a national flag planted where it increasingly counts -- in cyberspace.

As the physical foundations for an Internet Economy are laid in East Timor, one can at least hope that it is the Timorese themselves who will ultimately decide their fate. For them, external domination began with the arrival of Portuguese sailing vessels, the state of the art in globalization circa 1500. The 21st century equivalent of those ships -- telephones and the Internet -- may have a more positive impact on the nation.

If their native hustle is any measure, the Timorese have the entrepreneurial software. Now they need the hardware. For Braga, the question is what kind of hardware. Building a gold-plated telecommunications system in a desperately poor country makes as much sense as building an eight-lane highway through Dili, where few people have the money to buy a car. Ultimately, Braga says, the people must pull the technology, not the other way around.

"There are three ways you can feed the pigeons: by tossing grains and allowing them to pick them up, by throwing lots of grains all at once and watching the birds scatter, or by catching them and then force-feeding them," Braga says. "I say let's proceed cautiously, allowing the birds to pick up the grains."

[Stewart Taggart is a writer in Sydney, Australia]

PST in dispute with UNTAET

Dili -- Members of Timorese Socialist Party (PST) around East Timor have been occupying buildings left by the Indonesian government in order to establish offices for their work with the grassroots.

In order to claim right to use empty buildings, groups have to inform the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor that they are taking possession.

After completing this formality, however, the PST in Los Palos was informed by UNTAET that it had other uses for the building and could not allow the occupation. The PST sign and flag were confiscated by UNTAET.

During a visit to the town on August 31, PST secretary-general Avelino da Silva was told by UNTAET that the building was required by a Portuguese NGO which was already occupying a considerably larger building next door. Although the PST's sign was returned, the dispute remains unresolved.

CNRT holds national congress

Philippa Skinner and Jill Hickson, Dili -- From August 21-29, members of East Timor's seven political parties participated in the congress of the CNRT (National Council for Timorese Resistance), which debated a wide range of recommendations and proposals for the development of Timor's political system between now and the elections to be held in 2001.

The congress involved, for the first time, political parties such as the Socialist Party of Timor (PST) and the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) that had not previously been members of the CNRT. It was reported that Xanana Gusmao had insisted that this congress involve all the pro-independence political parties.

Each political party -- Fretilin, PST, Timorese Democratic Union (UDT), PDC, KOTA, Apodeti/Pro-Referendum and Timorese Labour Party -- had 10 delegates at the congress. Only the PST, Fretilin and PDC elected their delegates; the other parties appointed theirs.

There were another 382 delegates who represented Timorese NGOs, women, youth and the regions. Foreign NGOs were excluded from participating in the congress. After an address by Pat Walsh from the Australian Council for Overseas Aid, a number of delegates expressed anger at the role of NGOs and the lack of resolution of the situation of refugees still in West Timor.

On the first day of the congress, five commissions were set up to discuss issues such as the constitution and the economy. Following extended all-night sessions, each commission presented recommendations to the final session of the congress which were voted on by delegates.

Other topics discussed included the transitional administration; national politics including reconciliation, economy, environment, restructuring, investment and natural resources; security and national defence; international cooperation and relations; and a new constitution and system of government.

The congress recommended that diplomatic relations be established with Indonesia. It also recommended that the transitional government lobby for an international tribunal to bring to trial those responsible for the human rights atrocities. At the ceremony marking the anniversary of the referendum the following day, Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer said that the most important task for an independent East Timor was the establishment of good relations with Indonesia.

Observers of the conference included representatives from the World Bank and the IMF.

An afternoon session was devoted to allowing delegates to put questions directly to the representatives of the parties. One woman raised the issue of domestic violence, but was frustrated by the answer that there were more serious questions of violence to be resolved before the question of violence against women could be dealt with.

On the first day of the congress, a motion was passed to disband CNRT and elect a presiding committee for the congress. During the congress discussions took place to decide what new structures should replace CNRT. A new name was also proposed, Timor National Congress. In the end a compromise was reached, namely CNRT/National Congress. Two new leadership structures were established, a presidency and a permanent council.

Debate erupted over the proposal for a presidency, comprising a president and two vice-presidents, not members of any political party, to be elected by the congress.

The recommendation for two vice-presidents was seen by many as a way of accommodating differences in the political spectrum of East Timor. Fretilin put a proposal that there be no vice- presidents.

As debate grew heated, Xanana Gusmao resigned as head of CNRT, followed by the resignation of Jose Ramos Horta. After a furore, these two were persuaded to withdraw their resignations, and the debate continued, the proposal for two vice-presidents eventually being accepted.

At the end of the congress Gusmao was elected president. Jose Ramos Horta and Mario Carrascalao, formerly governor of East Timor under Indonesia rule, were elected vice-presidents. Fretilin offered no candidates, while the PST nominated its president, Pedro da Costa Martires.

The Congress also agreed to the establishment of a permanent council comprising the leaders of the seven political parties. Several commissions were established to provide support to the council in implementing decisions of the congress.

The roles of the president and vice-presidents will be consultative and not decision-making. At the end of the election, Gusmao stepped forward and read out the names of the seven parties, asking their representatives to step to the front of the congress. He then asked them to link hands in friendship and unity and asked the congress to take note of the new leaders of the country.

Before the congress, Horta and Carrascalao had indicated that they would set up a social democratic party. It is not clear what will happen now to this idea.

All is not well in East Timor - American doctor

Matthew Rothschild, Dili -- On August 30, a huge crowd in Dili, East Timor, gathered to celebrate the first anniversary of the independence vote for this tiny nation. But all is not well in East Timor.

The leadership is lacking in vision, the Indonesian military lurks, the United Nations' interim government is short on funds, and the World Bank and US corporations are sinking their claws into the economy.

That, anyway, is the perspective of Dan Murphy, a fifty-five-year-old Iowa doctor who has been busy running a clinic in Dili over the last two years.

"It's peaceful. That's good. We're not being shot at," says Murphy, who visited The Progressive's office on August 30. "But it's going to be just downhill from here. People don't see much that looks good in the country."

Murphy says that independence leader Xanana Gusmao "is not Nelson Mandela by any means. Many people have been discouraged by the way he's been acting."

Gusmao, says Murphy, is inconsistent, he is not showing people respect, he is compromising too much, and he is not offering people a vision of what a free East Timor should be like, other than saying that everyone should reconcile with the militias.

"And it's way too early for that," Murphy says. "The militias were shooting and killing people I was trying to save. Little kids were shot by machine guns. Little kids were hacked by machetes. If I never see another machine gun wound, that would be fine by me."

East Timor may not be free from the clutches of the Indonesian military and its affiliated militias yet. For one thing, the militias are still crossing into East Timor for raids, "but you don't hear anything about it, even though it could be considered an act of war," he says. For another, "Indonesia seems, day by day, to be less stable, and the military benefits from that."

Murphy doesn't discount the possibility that the military may even want to take East Timor back. "They have many, many options," he says. "If they can cause chaos or corruption, they can have a playground in East Timor."

The UN peacekeepers are timid, Murphy says, and the UN administration of the interim government is scaling back. "The UN has no money," he says, and it's constantly saying there need to be more cuts in spending.

This frustrates Murphy, who sees the urgency of establishing a village-based community health system to fight tuberculosis, malaria, sexually transmitted diseases, and malnutrition. But the money is just not there.

Nor is the United States helpful, he says. USAID is concentrating its efforts on the coffee industry; it is not lending money for health care. Murphy worries about the direction the economy is going in. "Timor has to come up with a law for foreign investment," he says. But at the moment, "the World Bank is saying the free market economy should be in every paragraph."

Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta has been looking at the economic question. "Jose Ramos-Horta should know better," says Murphy, "but he's jumping right in with the World Bank. And the East Timorese oil official gets most of his information from Phillips Petroleum."

The key to East Timor's future is "empowering village women," Murphy says. "Women are standing up for the first time." He singled out a couple of Maryknoll sisters who have dedicated their lives to this cause, and these women inspire him to carry on. He has faith in the Timorese. "The people are so great," he says. But the problems they face are steep, he warns: "The Timorese people are not through suffering yet."
 

Government/politics

The season of scandal

Jose Manuel Tesoro and Dewi Loveard, Jakarta -- Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri's sunny smiles at the August 26 induction of Indonesia's new cabinet made it seem as if the past three days had never happened.

It was easy to forget that she had been absent at the August 23 announcement of the line-up, furious because President Abdurrahman Wahid, despite a public promise to share power with her, had shut her trusted aides and party members out of it. Her grin quashed the rumors, which had rocked the rupiah and the stock market, that she might resign to show her anger. And if she felt any misgivings about Wahid's August 25 presidential decree, which puts her in charge of managing a cabinet not of her choosing, her beaming face gave no sign of it.

Despite Wahid's treatment of her, Megawati has apparently decided to stick with him. "Who says I want to resign? I am staying where I am," she told gathered journalists. It certainly had not looked that way the evening of the cabinet announcement, when Megawati had been in such a hurry to leave the palace that she drove herself home to her private residence. (It was the second time Megawati had left Wahid in anger. The first was in October 1999, when the wily, half-blind Muslim cleric pipped Megawati, leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle or PDI-P, in the race for the presidency despite appearing to back her.) A friend quotes her as saying after the cabinet debacle: "I feel betrayed by the person I protected. Again, he cheated me at the last minute."

So why the change of heart? Well, Megawati is a politician. As are most of the 500 members of the Indonesian parliament, or DPR, which on August 28 voted overwhelmingly to use its right of investigation to uncover the truth behind two Wahid-linked scandals. Wahid's willingness to flaunt political convention has often served him well. But now perhaps enough of Indonesia's elite have been burned to jeaopardize Wahid's survival as president. So while Sukarno's daughter is at the president's side, and the DPR politicians against him, both may actually share the same eventual goal -- to find a way, somehow, to a future without the stubborn president.

How stubborn is evident in his cabinet choices. First, he sidelined everyone from the PDI-P and its newfound ally, ex- ruling party Golkar, which together dominate parliament after having won over half the popular vote in the June 1999 parliamentary elections. Then the president appointed to the key post of finance minister his friend Priyadi Praptosuharjo, a lightning rod for scandal. Priyadi had already flunked the central bank's "fit and proper test" when he was proposed earlier this year to lead Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), a state institution.

Wahid's defense of his choice of Priyadi: "I've known him for 16 years." At BRI, Priyadi, who does not have a degree in finance but in fisheries, had been considered too lax in disbursing credit, especially to large corporations, at favorable interest rates and often in the absence of adequate collateral. Among the borrowers was the textile-and-machinery concern Texmaco, which now owes some $2 billion to the government. "Almost all of the funds he channeled got stuck and could have bankrupted BRI," says ex-BRI manager Martono, who last year exposed hundreds of millions of dollars lost in loans to large companies by BRI, which is supposed to focus on small- to medium-size businesses and ordinary depositors.

Soon, the president may be too preoccupied with protecting himself to defend his ministerial choices. The DPR plans to spend the next two months investigating a $4-million swindle by Wahid's masseur Suwondo of the onetime state food monopoly, as well as the $2-million Wahid "gift" he said he received from the Sultan of Brunei but had not reported to the government. Wahid, also known as Gus Dur, and his aides are already busy fending off a sordid story in local media that alleged he had an extramarital affair while still chair of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama.

Those are just Wahid's political problems. Later this year, he has to face the potentially explosive implementation of fuel subsidy reductions. His cabinet must format the first budget under expanded regional autonomy, which is expected to reduce central government income from the resource-rich provinces, and fulfill expectations of economic recovery. His defense establishment must control the continuing violence in eastern Indonesia and declining law and order. Says Teten Masduki of Indonesia Corruption Watch: "I don't think he can handle this."

Little surprise then that Megawati has chosen to bide her time. Insiders in her office say she has opened discussions with former armed forces chief Wiranto, another Wahid rival, while planning her own government should Wahid's collapse under a mountain of controversy and failure. "Just let Gus Dur keep going as he is and we will see where we stand in three months' time," says an MP close to the vice president. "We do not believe his style will change, and that means she will become the next president." No matter how many vultures circle the president, the unpredictable Wahid may remain his own worst enemy.
 

Regional conflicts

Firearms seized in Kalimantan

Jakarta -- Military police in the West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak raided a factory that was manufacturing firearms illegally and confiscated several long-barrelled rifles, ammunition and machines.

Major Agus Zulkarnain, commander of the Military Police unit in Sambas, said that since 1999 his personnel have raided many machinery and repair shops where poor-quality rifles were manufactured. But the guns seized on Friday were all of good quality, the Indonesian Observer quoted him as saying.

The owner of the factory, who has managed to avoid arrest, has been identified as Ruski. Police say he has made thousands of firearms and added that not only was Ruski's factory efficient, his system of delivery to Maluku and Aceh was also well- organised. Fearing the illegal weapons trade will lead to more crime and riots, police in West Kalimantan have frequently launched raids this year.

Bin Laden `linked to Indonesian militants'

Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta -- The Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden has established links with Muslim radicals in Indonesia who are behind attacks on Christians in the Maluku islands, according to Western intelligence sources in Jakarta.

The link has alarmed the United States, whose Ambassador to Indonesia, Mr Robert Gelbard, has been criticised for accusing Indonesia's intelligence agencies of failing to stop foreign terrorist groups setting up networks in the country.

"Unfortunately, Indonesia's so-called intelligence agencies have continued to try to argue that the real enemies in Indonesia are the United States and Australia as opposed to, once again, looking at ... the real potential threat to national security," Mr Gelbard told The Washington Times.

"We are very concerned about the opportunities which exist in Indonesia, now that it has become such an open society, for extremist groups -- including extremist groups from outside -- to burrow in and implant themselves in Indonesia. We believe that has begun." The US State Department says bin Laden is a significant financial sponsor of Islamic terrorism.

Indonesia's parliamentary Speaker, Mr Akbar Tanjung, said the Foreign Ministry should summon Mr Gelbard to clarify his comments. "There is a possibility that the US has information that Indonesia does not have, given the fact they have a more sophisticated intelligence system."

But the chairman of the Parliament's defence, security and foreign affairs committee, Mr Yasril Ananta Baharuddin, said most of what Mr Gelbard had said could be regarded as intervention in the internal affairs of Indonesia.

Western intelligence sources say bin Laden's terrorist network has regular contact with at least one leader of the Laksur Jihad, a group of Muslim radicals who trained openly in a camp outside Jakarta early this year then went to the Maluku islands to launch a "holy war" against Christians.

Maluku residents say calm is deceptive

Marianne Kearney, Jakarta -- As the Indonesian government considers extending a civil emergency for the strife-torn region of the Malukus, local groups warn that fresh violence could erupt at any time.

Although violence in the territory has subsided in the past few weeks many of the residents of Ambon, South Maluku, say the two- month civilian emergency has had minimal impact on the conflict.

On Sunday President Abdurrahman Wahid ordered his new co- ordinating Minister for Security and Social Affairs, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and Regional Autonomy Minister Suryadi Sudirja, to consider whether to extend the civilian emergency, which was implemented in order to stem the escalating violence in the region.

While violence in the province continued unabated with several people being killed in the fighting for the first six weeks of the emergency, clashes have subsided recently.

And Muslim groups have been more confident the civil emergency will reduce the likelihood of further violence. Amir Hamzah, a Muslim leader who heads a Muslim-Christian reconciliation team, said that violence had largely subsided. "If there are attacks, they are due to miscommunication," he said.

However, an aid worker said nobody was reassured by the relative calm in Ambon city. "There is very little illusion or doubt about what has happened, everybody believes the calm is temporary," said the aid worker who feared further outbreaks of fighting because both sides had become increasingly well armed over the last few months.

Lawyer Semmy Weileruny of the Maranthea Church in Ambon city said that violence had subsided since August 7, but this was not due to the civilian emergency, but because of international pressure.

Analysts have speculated that Maluku's relative calm over the past month has been due to the armed forces' quiet campaign to send the Muslim radicals, Laskar Jihad, back to Java. However, Mr Semmy said Christians still feared more attacks from Muslims as the leader of the Laskar Jihad on Sunday called for Muslims to continue fighting and had also threatened fresh attacks last Tuesday. Christian groups say that while 300 Laskar members have been expelled, at least 1,000 Laskar Jihad members had arrived in Ambon, in the last two months.

Meanwhile, the removal of troops has also failed to reassure locals that those remaining will be neutral in the face of strong fighting, said the aid worker. Diplomats say that unless the cost-saving practice of billeting troops with both Christian and Muslim families is stopped they will continue to fight for whichever group feeds them.

At the start of the civilian emergency military leaders' claims that troops were behaving more neutrally were embarrassingly disproven when an American television journalist filmed the armed forces supporting an attack on a village. Meanwhile, Christians are still calling for international intervention while Jakarta has firmly rejected the possibility.
 

Aceh/West Papua

Aceh ceasefire extension ruled out

Jakarta -- The Indonesian government has ruled out extending a peace deal in war-torn Aceh province beyond December, news reports said on Saturday.

Defence Minister Mahfud M D accused rebels of using the ceasefire, officially known as a humanitarian pause, to stockpile thousands of weapons and strengthen its forces. "The humanitarian pause is extended only until December. There will be no extensions for the Free Aceh Movement," he said as quoted by The Indonesian Observer daily.

He was referring to the separatist group that has been fighting for 25 years for an independent Islamic state in the province, located on the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island.

In May, government officials and representatives of the insurgents signed a three-month truce in order to enable negotiations on the future of the province of 4.1 million people. It went into effect on June 2.

The two sides have since met on several occasions in Geneva, Switzerland, but there has been no information about progress in the talks. The ceasefire has since been extended for an unspecified period.

Rebels reacted to Mr Mahfud's statement by threatening a return to full-scale war in the region. "If the humanitarian pause is not extended we will take up arms again to return the sovereignty of the Acehnese people," Abu Sofyan Daud, a Free Aceh leader in northern Aceh, said on Saturday.

While the deal has stemmed the worst of the violence, at least 87 people have been killed since its implementation. On Thursday and Friday, an upsurge in the fighting left 12 dead, including three policemen.

On Saturday, local people found the decomposed and mutilated bodies of a man and woman in Lamno in the western part of the province. At least 5,000 people have been killed in the past decade in the oil-and natural resource-rich region.

Twelve die in latest Aceh violence

Banda Aceh -- At least 12 people, including three policemen, were killed in an upsurge of violence in the Indonesian province of Aceh, police and rebels said Friday.

The three special force police officers were shot when about 10 gunmen attacked a police van in central Aceh on Friday, said Supt. Yatim Suyatno of the local police. Two other officers were injured in the ambush in Serambang village, Suyatno said. He said the attackers were members of the Free Aceh Movement.

Earlier in the day, Supt. Abadan Bangko, chief of North Aceh police, said 14 soldiers and police officers were wounded in five separate clashes Thursday with the rebels. Abu Sofyan Daud, a rebel leader in northern Aceh, said six civilians died and 11 other were captured by Indonesian security forces during Thursday's fighting.

Also Thursday, police found the bodies of three civilians, including a village chief, who had been abducted earlier by unidentified gunmen in central Aceh. Police said another civilian was still unaccounted for after Wednesday's abduction.

Separatists in Aceh, a gas- and oil-rich province, have been fighting since 1975 for independence from Indonesia. At least 5,000 people have been killed in the past decade. The latest deaths brought to 87 the number of people killed in Aceh since a truce went into effect June 2.

Three officers killed, two bodies found in Aceh

Banda Aceh -- An Indonesian officer and two non-commissioned officers were killed on Friday when their jeep was hit by a grenade in Indonesia's restive Aceh province, police said here. Two other non-commissioned officers were seriously wounded in the attack, in the Bandar sub-district of central Aceh, Superintendant Yatim Suyatmo told

Suyatmo said the attack came during a mobile police patrol. Four soldiers in the jeep retaliated with fire, but there was no indication of casualties among the attackers, he said. The dead officer was identified as Inspector Rudi Wicaksono.

The attack came as Jakarta was debating whether to extend a three-month truce signed with Aceh separatists, which expired September 2, but has been provisionally extended to September 16.

A spokesman for the separatists in central Aceh, Commander Ali Geurgeul Pirak, denied that the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) was involved in the attack. "GAM is not responsible for this incident," Pirak told AFP. "All our troops are in their jungle bases to respect the truce." Pirak said he was worried that as a result of the attack police would take their anger out on the local population in Rambong, as they often did when they suffered casualties.

Meanwhile in Gunong Geurutee, West Aceh, some 55 kilometers from Banda Aceh, villagers found the unidentifed bodies of a woman and a man in a roadside ravine, Lamno sub-district head Bukhari said. Bukhari said the bodies were badly decomposed, and appeared to have been in the ravine for about two weeks. They were transported to the main hospital in Banda Aceh.

Mobil sees its gas plant become rallying point for rebels

Jay Solomon, Lhokseumawe -- A small plane circles to land at the massive Arun gas facility on the northern tip of Sumatra island. Below, pipelines shimmer in the tropical sun. "It's a beautiful sight," says an executive from Mobil Oil Indonesia Inc., looking out the window.

Suddenly, gunfire breaks out on the ground, followed by a few rocket-propelled grenades. The Indonesian military is skirmishing again with the Free Aceh Movement, which is waging a guerrilla war for independence for Aceh Province. The plane's radio crackles: "Get out of the area!"

The gas field here is so big that in the early 1990s it produced nearly a quarter of Mobil's global revenue before the company merged into Exxon Mobil Corp. Today the facility is caught in the middle of a bloody secessionist conflict. In May, armed assailants held eight Mobil workers hostage for an afternoon and threatened to blow up a well, before releasing them unharmed. In recent months, two of Mobil's private security guards have been killed. Two other employees were shot and wounded in March. The fighting in nearby villages between the guerrillas and Indonesian soldiers has driven several thousand Acehnese into makeshift refugee camps among Mobil's wellheads.

Good works and resentment

Like most major investors in developing countries, Mobil has sought good relations with the locals by creating jobs and contributing toward schools, roads and other projects. But the company remains a target of violence and deep resentment because of its association with the Jakarta government. Secessionist pressures are mounting in Aceh and elsewhere, even as many Indonesians look for justice in the trial that just began of former President Suharto, who is charged with illegally diverting nearly $600 million from state charities into the businesses of his children and cronies -- charges his lawyers deny.

Indonesians are also angry at their former leader for a string of lucrative deals signed with foreign investors. Mobil's contract is typical. Most of the revenue from it goes directly to Jakarta without any benefit to Aceh, although proposed legislation would amend this. And the same military accused of atrocities against the rebel movement and local population provides Mobil with security services. Some locals say the troops even use a perceived threat against the US company to go after rebels.

Mobil says it doesn't know who is responsible for the violence. "Despite the difficulties experienced by our employees, we're trying to move ahead with our work," says Ron Wilson, who heads Mobil's operations in Indonesia. "We don't get involved in the politics, but we, of course, are highly concerned with the violence."

To the guerrillas and many Acehnese, Mobil and its production contract represent Indonesian politics at its worst. During his 32-year rule, Mr. Suharto's government granted many natural- resource contracts to multinationals, such as Mobil, Caltex and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., in which almost all revenue flowed straight back to Jakarta -- bypassing local governments and sustaining Mr. Suharto's military-backed regime.

In 1998, a popular uprising swept Mr. Suharto from power, unleashing a wave of separatist sentiment across Indonesia's 17,000 islands. The West is familiar mainly with East Timor's long struggle for independence, and that conflict continues to claim victims: Wednesday, pro-Indonesian rioters killed three United Nations refugee workers in West Timor. But one of the prime targets of the new rebels has also been these old business contracts.

On the island of Sulawesi, where Colorado-based Newmont Mining Corp. operates a gold mine, a local regent recast Newmont's tax agreement with the central government to steer more money into local coffers. Then he sued Newmont this year to enforce the changes. The case was settled when Newmont paid about $500,000 in disputed taxes.

In Riau province, Caltex -- a joint venture between Chevron Corp. and Texaco Inc. -- is being pressured to transfer management of a major oil field to the local government. The order to do so came from none other than Indonesia's current president, Abdurrahman Wahid, in the face of a well-organized local campaign demanding greater autonomy, if not outright independence, for Riau. Tribal groups in Indonesia's easternmost province of West Papua, where Louisiana-based Freeport-McMoRan mines the world's largest copper and gold deposit, are demanding that contract be reworked.

These conflicts not only have a bearing on future foreign investment in Indonesia; they also fuel growing concern in the government over how long Jakarta can hold together this far-flung and populous nation. At the heart of that concern is Aceh's secessionist drive and whether it could spark the disintegration of the world's fourth-largest nation.

One of Indonesia's richest provinces, Aceh produces roughly a third of the country's liquefied natural gas, as well as substantial amounts of oil, timber and minerals. In 1999, the Arun gas fields produced two billion cubic meters of natural gas daily, making it one of the region's major suppliers.

"Resource allocation is among the most important issues facing Indonesia today, as the provinces' demands have to be balanced with Jakarta's financial needs," says Rizal Ramli, Indonesia's chief economics minister. Oil and gas revenue alone will make up 30% of the country's total revenue this year.

Mosques and roadblocks

Aceh province is, like most of Sumatra, lush and underdeveloped. Small villages made up of wooden huts and mosques are linked by narrow meandering roads and a fervent adherence to the Muslim faith. But on these same roads, military trucks carrying Indonesian troops and the regular interruptions of roadblocks offer reminders of the continuing battle for control of the province.

Aceh endured a brutal operation by Indonesian forces throughout much of the 1990s, leaving thousands of citizens dead in a campaign to wipe out separatist sentiment, according to human- rights groups. The Free Aceh Movement, known as GAM, is seeking to make the province a Muslim state.

Renewed hostilities during the past year between GAM and the military have left at least 500 soldiers and civilians dead, according to the armed forces. Mobil came to Arun in 1971 as part of Mr. Suharto's campaign to fortify an Indonesian economy damaged by mismanagement and by the 1960s bloodshed that elevated the former general to power. His strategy: exploit Indonesia's natural bounty in oil, lumber, gold and natural gas. Indonesia quickly became the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, a position it retains today. During the past decade, Indonesian exports of natural gas have garnered more than $40 billion in revenue for Jakarta.

Arun and other projects provided jobs, strengthened Mr. Suharto's grip on power, and kick-started the economy's 30-year drive toward modernity.

Jewel in corporate crown

Mobil won't comment on how much money it has earned from Arun. But Lance Johnson, ExxonMobil Production Co.'s vice president for Southeast Asia/Australia, says the facility was for a time "the jewel in the company's crown." Here in the coastal town of Lhokseumawe, Mr. Suharto's youngest son and others built petrochemical complexes, entrepreneurs developed supply industries, and Mobil helped locals construct schools, water systems, roads and health facilities.

Mobil also built a luxurious housing compound for its expatriate staff. Called Bukit Indah, today it is home to 20 engineers and managers who inhabit a surreal cocoon. Behind walls and guard posts and nestled on tidy lawns stands a cluster of villas that might look at home in Palm Springs.

There's an 18-hole golf course nearby, two Western-style food markets, and an international school, although all the expatriate children were evacuated last fall due to the violence. Perched on a bluff, the villas overlook the fiery flares and white storage tanks of Arun's refining operations and the dusty shops and government offices of Lhokseumawe.

One evening recently, a senior Exxon Mobil official watches a rerun of this year's National Basketball Association playoffs in a cozy living room in Bukit Indah. The cheers of Los Angeles Lakers fans from his TV mingle with the rat-tat-tat of machine- gun fire outside the window; the Indonesian military is conducting another sweep of GAM in nearby villages. "This could go on all night," the executive says.

Military's dual role

The military has a dual role around Arun that exacerbates Mobil's image problem with locals. Mobil's contract obliges it to rely on the Indonesian military for on-site security -- the same military that has been implicated in a string of high-profile human-rights abuses in its decade-long campaign against GAM. For the 10 years starting in 1989, troops have killed more than 1,000 civilians in the crackdown, according to a Human Rights Watch report. "Many women whose husbands or sons were suspected of involvement with the guerrillas were raped," the report says.

Earlier this year, an Acehnese court convicted 24 soldiers of massacring 57 villagers in an Islamic boarding school last year. On May 3, 1999, according to Amnesty International, troops killed 38 Acehnese "as they took part in a demonstration against military violence." A military spokesman in Aceh confirms the incident, but says the troops fired in self-defense.

One result of the bloodshed is a refugee crisis on Mobil's land. In late July, about 3,000 refugees from nearby villages were living in camps in and around Mobil facilities. Women in Muslim headscarves cooked vegetables in the shadow of gas lines. Children used pumps as a jungle gym. The refugees expressed an intense hatred not only of the armed forces, but in many cases of Mobil, too.

"Mobil is responsible for the Indonesian military being here," says Rusi Samad. The 32-year-old farmer lived for a while in one of the many makeshift tarp-and-bamboo huts that have sprouted among the pipes and pressure controls. Mobil says many refugees in this area returned to their villages recently. Mr. Samad believes the military uses a perceived threat to the gas fields as justification for cracking down. "For us, the presence of Mobil only gives the benefits to the military," he says.

Claims of abuse

Some villagers claim they were physically abused by soldiers assigned to Mobil duty, particularly by troops from A-13, a barracks across from a Mobil gas well. One man, 24-year-old Iskandar, claims that three years ago he and seven friends were at a food stall when A-13 troops picked them up, alleging they had robbed a bank. The eight men were taken to the barracks, he says, where they were kicked, tortured with electric shock and held overnight. Mr. Iskandar lifts his shirt to reveal scars he says resulted from the torture.

While it's impossible to verify individual claims, human-rights and legal-aid groups in Lhokseumawe say they have received numerous reports of abuses by troops in and around Mobil facilities. People "suspected of being GAM were brought and tortured" in A-13 and other sites, says Yusuf Ismail Pase, a lawyer who helped lead a provincial fact-finding team looking into military and GAM-related violence in Aceh.

Local police and the military say their sweeps are justified by GAM provocations. A spokesman for the Indonesian armed forces, Graito Usodo, says he hasn't heard any specific charges that troops at A-13 were involved in abuses. He confirmed, though, that troops in the area had been involved in "excesses," and that it was conceivable some may have occurred at A-13 "and at other camps in the area."

Mobil Oil Indonesia says it isn't aware of any incidents of Mobil-assigned troops harassing villagers. It also says it knows of no cases of people being tortured in facilities used for Arun operations, and stresses that the A-13 barracks is controlled by the Indonesian military, not Mobil. The company adds that Arun is an Indonesian state asset and that, therefore, the government "makes the decisions regarding the protection" of the field. Mobil also notes that it has been providing food, water and medicine to refugees.

The March 31 shooting of the two Mobil employees occurred when a gunman stepped out of the jungle and opened fire on their Beechcraft as it was taxiing after landing. Police blame GAM, while the guerrillas deny involvement.

In the hostage-taking on May 27, six armed men broke into the command center at Mobil's Pase A-1 gas field and seized eight engineers, demanding the equivalent of $500,000 in ransom. After a four-hour standoff -- during which the assailants allowed the engineers to keep working -- the incident ended with the assailants slipping back into the jungle. Again, the police blame the incident on GAM. The rebels deny involvement in the kidnapping and take credit for rescuing the Mobil employees.

Mobil plays down the incident, saying it doubts that the assailants, whoever they were, actually meant to kidnap the employees. But in this atmosphere, the productive life of Arun could be shortened. The operation has contracts that extend until 2018, but the field is facing depletion in coming years and two of its six gas-production plants have been closed. Further exploration could extend its life, but that would be difficult if the current instability doesn't abate.

Hoping for the best

A spokesman for Exxon Mobil says it is the parent company's understanding "that any change in the provincial government arrangement would not compromise or breach existing contractual agreements." Although the company doesn't offer any contingency plans if such a breach occurs, it clearly expects the jobs and public services it has brought to the region to count strongly in its favor. In recent weeks, the situation in Aceh has become bleaker. In early August, Indonesia's Parliament surprised many Indonesians and human-rights officials by passing a constitutional amendment that could shelter military officers from trial for past human-rights abuses. And while Mr. Wahid's government is seeking to extend a three-month-old cease-fire, the period saw little easing of violence as more than 60 people were killed.

On a recent drizzly afternoon, a trip through the jungle to a guerrilla camp is punctuated by stopovers at mosques and cafes, where GAM sentinels inspect the travelers. At the isolated camp an hour's drive from Mobil's gates, a GAM regional commander, Tengku Darwis Jeunieb, puts 40 recruits through marching drills.

In Commander Jeunieb's camp, many of the recruits are women, which isn't unusual, he says, because Acehnese women have been "important to our fight for independence" since the province took a leading role in the fight to overthrow Dutch control. One of the trainees, 25-year-old Haswananda, describes a firefight with Indonesian troops earlier this year. "They came out of nowhere, and I started firing," she says, cradling an AK-47. "I remember some of them went down."

A recruit named Rosmanidar describes how her grandfather was tortured in the rice paddies by soldiers 10 years ago. "I've vowed to myself I'd take revenge one day," the 20-year-old says, wearing military fatigues and a green Muslim headscarf, and holding a grenade launcher.

Toward Mobil, however, Commander Jeunieb and his troops don't express vengefulness so much as dogged determination. They've never attacked the plant, they say, despite their conviction that Mobil embodies Jakarta's abuses here. The rebels don't plan to kick Mobil out of the province if GAM gains control, but they'll change some things. Noting that revenue from the gas fields would be key to developing the province, Commander Jeunieb says simply, "We'll renegotiate the contract."

[Puspa Madani contributed to this article.]

24 dead in two days of killings in troubled Aceh

Banda Aceh -- At least 24 people were killed in two days of violence in Indonesia's restive province of Aceh, rebels and reports said Thursday.

The first incident claimed the lives of 15 soldiers and policemen on Thursday when their truck was hit by a grenade during a skirmish in North Aceh, a deputy leader of the Free Aceh (GAM) rebel group told AFP.

"One military truck was blown apart by a grenade launcher killing 15 personnel and wounding dozen others," Abu Sofyan Muda told AFP from Pasee in North Aceh.

Muda said the incident happened after "an early morning raid in Matangkuli, Kotamakmur and Meurah Meulia sub-districts by 28 truckloads of police and military officers. "They initiated the attack, we were forced to defend ourselves. If they continue raiding on our headquarters, we will also carry out similar retaliatory attacks," Muda said.

However North Aceh police Senior Superintendent Kusbini Imbar, quoted by the Detikcom online news service on Thursday, denied there had been any casualties on the government side. "One thing for sure is that the attack was carried out by armed rebels," Detikcom quoted Imbar as saying.

The GAM deputy leader said he had obtained reports and details of the incident from "GAM people who were on the field and from GAM-linked military contacts."

Approximately two hours after the gunfight six people, including a woman in Beureugang village, were "arrested and taken away to Keude Amplah area in Nissam. "They were shot dead there," Muda said.

In a separate incident in Central Aceh two men were abducted on Wednesday evening in Bukit sub-district and were found dead on Thursday morning, the district's police chief, Superintendent Misik Nabari, told AFP.

Meanwhile, a resident of Bandar subdistrict in Central Aceh was shot point-blank in the head by unknown assailants on Thursday, residents there said.

Slain activist to be given hero's burial

Chris McCall, Jakarta -- Troubled Aceh prepared a hero's burial for its slain son Jafar Siddiq Hamzah yesterday as fellow human rights activists around the world condemned his murder. They said the killing was part of a pattern of growing intimidation of rights workers in the Sumatra province.

As his family waited in a Medan hospital for doctors to release his body, the New York-based pressure group he founded and led vowed to continue his struggle to expose human rights abuses.

"The International Forum for Aceh will continue the work which Jafar guided us in doing: the documentation of human rights violations occurring in Aceh and the steadfast defence of the people of Aceh and of Indonesia from the terrorist tactics of militarised groups which are increasingly targeting innocent civilians and human rights activists," said spokesman Robert Jereski.

Jafar vanished on August 5 in Medan, Sumatra's main city and entry point to Indonesia for visitors heading for Aceh to the north. This week, five mutilated bodies were found in woods west of the city and family members suspected that one of them was Jafar. The United States yesterday urged the Indonesian Government to track down Jafar's killers.

He is to be buried in his birthplace, Lhokseumawe -- Aceh's main economic centre and one of the most violence-riddled areas of the province.

Thousands have died in Aceh's long-running separatist war -- with reports of at least 24 more killings within the past 48 hours. Amnesty International cited a series of other recent disturbing cases in Aceh as it called for a thorough investigation of the murder.

The London-based group said there had been increased threats and intimidation towards rights workers in recent weeks. It cited a 24-year-old volunteer named Amrisaldin who it said had been arrested by the military this week. It accused security forces of breaking laws they were supposed to defend.

"His arrest is apparently connected to his work in South Aceh with people displaced by ongoing violence between the security forces and the armed opposition group," said Amnesty. "Anonymous telephone death threats have been received by activists in Banda Aceh and three Acehnese staff members of an international humanitarian agency were assaulted by members of the Police Mobile Brigade [Brimob] on 28 August."

Sidney Jones, who until recently headed the United Nations' human rights team in East Timor, paid a personal tribute. "Jafar was a friend, a colleague and one of the most dedicated human rights defenders I've ever known," said Ms Jones. "The most fitting honour to his memory will be to bring to justice not only his killers but those responsible for the thousands of disappearances that have taken place in Aceh over the past decade."

Ms Jones, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said the Indonesian police must be incompetent or implicated for failing to solve so many disappearances.

A guerrilla's story

Tom Hyland -- His childhood was spent in the jungle, where his family had fled an invading army. By the age of 11 he was leading a unit of independence guerrillas. He endured a decade in Indonesian prisons where he celebrated the fall of President Suharto with Jose "Xanana" Gusmao. In a miraculous escape, he fled to Australia a year ago today, on the plane that brought Bishop Carlos Belo to safety.

Jacob Rumbiak has a story to tell, one that in many ways defies belief. He is a West Papuan, born in 1958 in the village of Ayamaru, in Sorong district, in the Bird's Head area of the territory that is still officially known as Irian Jaya. His story reflects the recent history of his homeland.

When he was born, the vast western half of New Guinea island was under the control of the Netherlands, which had refused to surrender it in 1949 when the rest of the Dutch East Indies won independence as Indonesia. The Dutch, keen to maintain a foothold in the region, were preparing West Papua for independence. At the same time, President Sukarno was keen to "regain" West Papua in line with the Indonesian nationalist dream of uniting the entire former colony from Sabang, in Aceh in the far west, to Merauke, in West Papua in the east.

By the time Rumbiak was three, Indonesian troops were infiltrating West Papua. They claimed to come as liberators but many behaved as conquerors. Resistance grew. Encouraged by the Dutch, the West Papuans had declared independence on December 1, 1961.

To escape the Indonesian troops, Rumbiak's family (his father was a Protestant pastor and teacher; his mother a teacher) fled to the highlands. "In the jungle, conditions were bad. The enemy was not only the Indonesian military, but also malaria," Rumbiak says.

By the age of six he was carrying water and providing food for the guerrillas. Later he was used to spy on army positions. "The army thought we were just little boys, children, not the enemy."

At 11, he was appointed commander of a guerrilla company armed with arrows and a few rusty rifles, relics from World War II. "It was hard for a boy to give orders to men ... We fought for defence and survival, not for attack. In the jungle, sometimes we would move all the time. People would leave food for us. Sometimes we would stay in one place for two days. A long time would be a week, then we would hear of a military operation so we would move again."

One of his worst ordeals was when the army closely pursued his unit for five days and nights. They had no food or water. He has two bullet wounds on his right thigh, reminders of one close encounter, and another bullet wound on his left knee.

In pursuit of his campaign to wrest control of the territory, Sukarno had Soviet support. The Cold War was at its height and the United States, alarmed at Moscow's influence, pressured the Netherlands to reach a settlement. A 1961 agreement signed in New York by Indonesia and the Netherlands (the West Papuans were not consulted) handed control of West Papua to an interim United Nations administration and then to Jakarta for a further six years, when the people would decide their future in an "act of free choice".

In one of the great diplomatic frauds of the 20th century, about 1000 "representatives", hand-picked by Jakarta, "voted" to join Indonesia in a series of votes between July and August, 1969. With bitter humor, West Papuans refer to the "act free of choice" and the "act of no choice".

Rumbiak and his family moved in and out of the jungle until 1977, as Indonesian efforts to win over the West Papuans alternated between persuasion and repression -- a pattern that has continued.

In 1977, as part of the persuasion policy, the government sent Rumbiak to high school in West Java. He went on to obtain degrees in mathematics and geography in Bandung, where he later taught. While in Bandung, Rumbiak played for the national soccer team, striking the winning goal for Indonesia in the Asia Championship Cup in 1984.

By 1987, Rumbiak was back in West Papua, lecturing in geography at Cendrawasih University in the capital, Jayapura. It was a time of intense nationalist foment. In December 1988, to commemorate the anniversary of the 1961 declaration of independence, the scholar and nationalist Dr Thomas Wainggai again proclaimed independence at a ceremony at which the Papuan Morning Star flag was raised in the main sports stadium. Wainggai was sentenced to 20 years jail and died in prison.

In December 1989, Jayapura was again in upheaval. On December 7, Rumbiak made a speech to his students, urging them to to carry on the struggle for independence peacefully. Warned that his name was on a list of nationalist leaders to be kidnapped and killed, he and three companions sought refuge in the Papua New Guinea consulate.

"I went there first for protection, but also to attract international attention. I hoped for international pressure on Jakarta to enter a dialogue with the West Papuans," Rumbiak says.

An extraordinary 15-day stand-off ensued, with Rumbiak and his companions resisting pressure to leave or cross the border into PNG. PNG Prime Minister Rabbie Namaliu sent an envoy to urge them to abandon the consulate. In Jakarta, Foreign Minister Ali Alatas told the foreign press he was trying to persuade the men to leave "on the understanding that they were not being pursued and there will be no action taken against them".

What wasn't disclosed at the time, according to Rumbiak, was the level of pressure applied. On Christmas Eve, 1989, Alatas, the then defence minister, Benny Murdani, and the armed forces chief, General Try Sutrisno, travelled to Jayapura to deliver a Christmas hamper to the activists and, as Rumbiak puts it, "to try to correct my false thinking". He laughs as he tells the story. "It was a big basket of wine, beer, biscuits, cigarettes, soft drinks, Christmas candles, clothes."

Rumbiak feared that crossing into PNG would end options for negotiations with Jakarta while severing his links with students and young people who regarded him as a leader, but eventually they left the consulate, with the promise they could safely return home. But with persuasion having failed, repression was now applied. He was arrested, tortured, and ultimately tried and sentenced to 17 years in jail for provocation and subversion. He served nine years and eight months. His companions got 12 years.

The list of the detention centres and jails in which he was held traces the air routes from eastern Indonesia to the capital -- Jayapura, Biak, Morotai, Ujung Pandang, and on to Surabaya, Tangerang and Jakarta in Java.

He was tortured to repudiate his nationalist views and inform on other independence activists. "They put me in a special room, with a metal floor. They threw water on the floor and then switched on the electricity. It was very strong and I was thrown against the wall."

Twice he was told he would be killed. Once, he was trussed up in a military Hercules aircraft. The rear ramp was lowered in mid- flight and he was told he would be thrown out. He sang a spiritual song and the soldiers relented. Another time he was told he would be shot.

Rumbiak tells the story: "I said give me time to pray to my Lord. If you kill my body, you won't kill my soul. I will move from my body and I will wait for you. My soul will pray for you. Jesus loves you and I love you, too, because you don't know what you are doing, because you are following the command of your leaders. But one time the Lord will ask what did you do in the world for human rights." He laughs. "And you know, they're confused when I talked like this. And they lowered their guns and two soldiers, they cried."

Rumbiak spent four years in Kalisosok prison in Surabaya, where he studied for his third degree, in theology. In 1995, he was moved to Tangerang prison and kept in isolation in a stone tower for two years and four months. It was the worse period of his ordeal. "I was sick, very sick. I had no exercise, no sun. I could not walk."

In October 1997, he was sent to Cipinang jail in Jakarta, home to the most important political prisoners, which Rumbiak describes as a "first-class Javanese jail". His companions in Block 2A included East Timorese leader "Xanana" Gusmao. Gusmao appointed Rumbiak "coordinator of the garden" and he grew vegetables, kept a fish pond and raised chickens and rabbits. "We changed the jail's dry and suffocating atmosphere into a pleasant and peaceful environment," Rumbiak wrote in the foreword to Gusmao's autobiography. In May 1988, on a day of joy, hope and apprehension, the prisoners in Block 2A feasted on the produce of Rumbiak's garden and toasted the fall of Suharto with rice wine.

In August 1998, Suharto's successor, President B.J. Habibie, released Rumbiak into house arrest in Jakarta. Despite restrictions on his movements, he immediately returned to West Papuan affairs, travelling twice to Jayapura and once to Japan.

In August last year, in an act that seems both foolhardly and courageous, he flew to East Timor on an Indonesian military aircraft with the unsung heroes of last year's independence referendum -- Indonesian students and democracy activists accredited as UN monitors. In the anarchy let loose by the Indonesian army after the vote for independence, militiamen attacked and burned the car he was in. He reached Baucau and sheltered in the UN police compound as it came under fire from Indonesian troops. "I thought this was the end, we were finished." He doesn't laugh when he tells this story.

On September 7, an RAAF evacuation Hercules arrived. Indonesian soldiers checked all going aboard. Bishop Belo, forced to flee Dili after his house was destroyed, had someone else's passport. The army tried to stop him but militiamen ("they had a heart", says Rumbiak) pushed him through the check point. Rumbiak, who had no passport, pretended not to speak Indonesian, saying he was from PNG. He said his passport was with the chief of immigration in Dili, a city now in flames, "and they believed me". This time he laughs. In February he was granted an Australian protection visa.

There are signs that the West Papua saga is entering a perilous and unpredictable chapter. In May and June this year, a congress of West Papuan representatives in Jayapura re-affirmed the 1961 declaration of independence. President Wahid has made conciliatory gestures -- the persuasive policy -- allowing the Morning Star flag to be flown and the territory to call itself West Papua.

But the repressive policy is being applied as well, with or without Wahid's approval. In an ominous development, pro- and anti-independence militia groups have been formed, while shadowy figures linked to the old Suharto regime funding both sides. Extra troops, including the notorious Kopassus special forces, have been sent in. All the signs point to a "special operation" with all the danger and duplicity that involves.

Yet Rumbiak remains confident. Freedom is inevitable, he says, if the people unite and remain disciplined. Despite, or because of , all he has endured, he believes freedom will be won through dialogue, persuasion, argument and logic. He has faith in those who back democracy in Indonesia and who want their country to regain its self-esteem. "I want this for Indonesia's dignity and I want this for West Papua, Melanesian dignity, too. Both sides will win, when West Papua wins its independence."

Rumbiak has learnt about realpolitik the hard way. You tell him that Jakarta will never let West Papua go; that the UN recognises Indonesian control; that the United States and Australia have gone out of their way to reassure Jakarta they recognise its sovereignty; that the West Papuans are being swamped by Indonesian settlers and will soon be a minority in their own country; that the obstacles are so many. He acknowledges all this, and says: "Ah, but they said the same about East Timor."

[Tom Hyland is The Age's foreign editor.]

Irian Jaya police get tough on rebel flags

Jakarta -- Irian Jaya Police Chief Brigadier General S.Y. Wenas yesterday ordered his personnel to continue a crackdown on separatist flags flying in the country's troubled easternmost province.

West Papuans are no longer allowed to have T-shirts, caps, bags or any other belongings featuring separatist slogans, Wenas told Antara in the Irian Jaya town of Fak Fak. He claimed the decision was taken at the request of locals who do not want security conditions to become unstable in the province, also called West Papua.

Wenas made the statement following Tuesday's violence by pro- independence supporters who rampaged through a village after police pulled down separatist flags. At least one woman was wounded when police fired in the air to disperse the rampaging mob, Aloysius Renwarin of Institute for the Study and Advocacy of Human Rights (ELSHAM) was quoted by AFP as saying in the province's capital of Jayapura.

"The housewife was about to close the door when she was hit on her arm by a stray bullet," Renwarin said, adding the woman, a settler from Sulawesi identified as Zainab, was still being treated in hospital. Earlier reports of Tuesday's incident said there had been no casualties.

ELSHAM leader John Rumbiak said Tuesday the clashes broke out around midday after 30 Mobile Brigade (Brimob) police personnel pulled down the separatist "Morning Star" flag in several villages in Manokwari. "More than 100 Papuans reacted by going into the streets and burning tires, smashing bottles, breaking trees and blocking the roads," Rumbiak told AFP.
 

Labour struggle

Nike workers upset over allegations

Jakarta -- The worker's union of one of the 11 Nike subcontractors in Indonesia on Friday denied the allegations aired by antiexploitation activists at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

In a statement made available to The Jakarta Post, the worker's union of PT Pratama Abadi Industri said the accusations were groundless since none of the firm's 8,000 workers are currently facing such unfavorable conditions.

"Salaries, health protection and work safety have been properly guaranteed by the company," said the statement, which was signed by the union's chairman, Marjuli and its 11 other executives. "It would definitely be different if our salaries here were to be compared with those [people working in the same field] in the United States because the cost of living is totally different.

In other words, the union said, an American like Jim Keady, who leads a comfortable lifestyle in the States, would of course face difficulties trying to survive here on the basic salary of an Indonesian worker.

The union executives were referring to a former soccer coach in America, who urged athletes competing in the Olympics on Monday in Sydney, to visit Nike factories in Indonesia to see the apparent failure of the world's giant shoe producer in protecting workers' rights in its Indonesian factories. Keady claims to have visited Indonesia last month and tried to live on the wages of a Nike worker -- which he said was about Rp 10,000 (US$1.20) a day.

"You can survive, but you cannot live," he said. "It's a starvation wage. I know, I starved on it. I lost 25 pounds and spend most of the month painfully hungry and exhausted," said Keady, who left St. John's University in the United States over a dispute about his refusal to wear Nike products and is suing Nike with regards to his resignation.

Keady said workers in Indonesia were "absolutely flabbergasted" when they found out how much athletes were paid for endorsements. "They begged us to bring these athletes to their homes to see how they are forced to live, to see how they are forced to survive, how they don't make enough money to feed their children," he said.

Keady and other antiexploitation activists also released a report which documents claims of intimidation and harassment of union workers and women in the 11 factories, which has a total workforce of 70,000, contracted to make Nike shoes in Indonesia.

The Community Aid Abroad-Oxfam Australia report, based on interviews conducted with industrial union organizers in Indonesian factories, said workers were threatened with violence if they tried to join unions, that union members were fired for small mistakes and that women were intimidated into not applying for menstrual leave by being required to undergo humiliating examinations.

But the union workers of PT Pratama Abadi Industri, one of the 11 subcontractors, emphasized that none of the allegations are true of their plant. "Female workers taking leave during the menstrual period don't feel threatened because of the trust between the employees and the company," the union said.

Globally, Nike has 708 factories operated by contract companies and employing about 550,000 people. In Indonesia, it has been operating for almost 12 years with most of its subcontractor factories, which includes PT Astra Graphia, PT Hardaya Aneka Shoes Industry and PT Nagasakti Parama Shoes Industry, are located in Tangerang, west of capital Jakarta. No statements from workers or managements of the other factories could be obtained.

The 11 factories produce between 45 million and 55 million pairs of shoes per year with only 2 percent going to the local market. The rest are shipped to overseas markets, particularly the US.

Newmont Minahasa resumes its mining operations

Jakarta -- Gold mining firm Newmont Minahasa Raya in Minahasa, North Sulawesi, resumed operations early on Friday after a blockade of the company's ore crusher by protesters ended.

Company manager for government and community relations Tri Harjono said on Friday the protesting locals and former landowners agreed to leave following a meeting with the management and local authority, during which they accepted the firm's proposal to hold a discussion to review their demands.

"The protesters left our site in the wee hours on Friday. They agreed to sit down later for a one-on-one discussion to review their demands on a case-by-case basis," he told The Jakarta Post. He said the discussion was scheduled for Monday.

He said the group, which numbered about 40 people, went to the company's ore crusher on Wednesday and blockaded the site, demanding Newmont pay additional compensation for the land they sold to the company in the early 1990s.

Tri said the company stood by its statement that it would not meet the protesters' demand for additional payment because it had already properly compensated all 400 former landowners from whom it bought the land.

"We believe that we did everything right," he said. "However, if we really did so something wrong here, for instance an error in land measurements, we would be responsible," he added.

The land dispute is the latest in a series of problems experienced by the company. Last year, the Minahasa regency filed a lawsuit against Newmont, demanding the company pay Rp 62 billion (US$7.5 million) in overdue taxes on building materials and insisting the local district court order the closure of the firm's operation.

Newmont refused to pay the taxes, arguing that the taxes were not included in the contract of work it signed with the Indonesian government in 1986. The tax dispute was resolved in April through an out-of-court settlement, in which Newmont agreed to pay the regency $500,000 in overdue taxes plus some "compensations".

In June, Newmont was involved in a land dispute with locals who blockaded the company's mining site for a week, demanding additional compensation for their land. The week-long blockade cost the company about 2,000 metric tons of lost gold production per day.

Tri said the company was relieved the ore crusher blockade was over and it could immediately recommence operations. The company also expressed appreciation for the local authority's help in negotiating with the protesters and persuading the latter to end the blockade.

Tri said the blockade, although only lasting for three days, caused Newmont losses because it had to stop operations for a while. He said Newmont was expected to stop its gold production in Mesel in the next two or three years because the gold deposits in the area were depleted due to fast and extensive production activities in the early years of operation.

The company is currently pondering the possibility of working on a new mining site in the nearby village of Limpoga, on which it found possible gold deposits, he said. The company estimates both Mesel and Limpoga have a combined gold deposit of about two million ounces.

Newmont Minahasa Raya, which began its commercial operations in mid-1996 after conducting exploration projects at the Minahasa mining site from 1986 to 1988, is 80 percent owned by Denver- based Newmont Mining Corp. and 20 percent by Tanjung Sarapung, a firm owned by local businessman Yusuf Merukh.

Newmont Mining Corp. also operates a mining site in Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara, as well as China, the Philippines, Kazakhstan and Mexico.
 

Human rights/law

Jakarta police abducted four activists

Aulia Andri/Swastika & Ari P, Medan -- The abduction of four activists from the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA) while protesting outside the General Assembly in early August remains a tug of war between the Jakarta City Police and the KPA, with the KPA believing that the abduction was committed by police officers.

KPA Secretary General, Ervan Fariadi, told reporters after delivering a session at a national seminar on land conflict resolution held at the Sumatera Utara University (USU) complex in Medan, North Sumatra on Tuesday.

Ervan said it is extremely odd that the Jakarta City Police summoned the four victims of abduction, since it was the police who abducted them. "They [the four activists] are victims. But now they are being treated as if they were suspects. It was the Jakarta City Police who abducted them," said Ervan.

He added that the KPA had submitted a report with the National Police Headquarters in an attempt to solve this case. The KPA will also continue to apply pressure until this case is resolved. The four activists are currently under protection by the Commission for Disapperances and Missing persons (Kontras) and the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI).

Ervan also consideres the House of Representatives (DPR) and the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) partly responsible for the abduction. "They were abducted in the ground of the House building. As the Speaker of the Assembly, Amien Rais is supposed to be responsible [for this abduction]," Ervan said.

The four activists disappeared after being evacuated by police officers after staging a 6-hour hunger strike in front of the House of Representatives building, during the Annual Assembly Session earlier last month. The activists were demanding that agrarian reforms be included in the Assembly's meeting agenda. They were eventually returned to Jakarta on Sunday after going missing for two weeks.

Abdurrahman appoints 16 new judges

Jakarta -- Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid yesterday appointed 16 judges to the Supreme Court in support of reform of the country's judicial system.

They include legal expert Bagir Manan and Mr Benjamin Mangkudilaga, the former head of the Jakarta state administrative court and member of the National Commission on Human Rights, a presidential statement said. The 16 were fielded from 17 candidates provided by the People's Representative Council (DPR), the parliamentary Lower House.

The law requires that 40 candidates be proposed by the DPR for the 20 seats at the Supreme Court, but the Lower House had been able to field only 17 candidates. One candidate was not appointed because of a legal clause.

"To accelerate the tasks of the Supreme Court in settling cases and to support the reform in the judicial system, the President appoints 16 from those who have passed the fit and proper test," the presidential statement said.

The appointment of the new judges came in the wake of reports that Indonesia's justice system had been rated as one of the worst in the world. The government has established a panel, headed by Mr Adi Andojo Soetjipto, to eliminate corruption in the judiciary. The team is expected to expose and remove corrupt members.

The panel last month announced that two Supreme Court judges and a former judge had been declared suspects in a bribery case. The Indonesian Observer quoted the National Law Commission as saying that it was surprised that only three judges from the country's highest judicial institution had been named as suspects in a corruption probe.

Commission chairman J.E. Sahetapi said almost 80 per cent of Supreme Court judges in Indonesia were tainted by bribes. "We hope the Attorney-General will take more action to clean up the Supreme Court," he said.

Wiranto, Zacky should be on the suspect list: Solidamor

Jakarta -- The joint team set up by the Attorney General's Office to investigate rights violations in East Timor has ignored the real offenders, a watchdog said on Saturday.

Solidarity for Peace in East Timor (Solidamor) slammed the announcement of the 19 suspects on Friday, saying the then Indonesian Military chief Gen. (ret) Wiranto, former intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Zacky Anwar Makarim and Jakarta-backed militia leader Eurico Guterres should also be named suspects.

Former Udayana Military chief Maj. Gen. Adam Damiri, former East Timor Military chief Brig. Gen. Tono Suratman, former East Timor Police chief Brig. Gen. Timbul Silaen and former governor Jose Abilio Osorio Soares are among the 19 suspects.

The watchdog's campaign manager Tri Agus S. Siswowiharjo said that the team had only targeted 19 people who were in charge on the ground during last year's violence and left the generals in Jakarta, who were the real decisionmakers, untouched. "They [the generals] were aware of the serious human rights violations, but they failed to stop them despite their authority."

Agus also warned that if the joint team failed to take the real actors to court, the generals could continue their illicit operations, by, for example, aiding civilian militia on the East Nusa Tenggara and East Timor border. "This which will tarnish Indonesia's image," he warned.

"If the Attorney General's Office hasn't the ability to send for the rights violators -- for the sake of nationalism -- an international tribunal must be set up to try Wiranto and his subordinates for crimes against humanity," he said.

In a related development, former minister of human rights Hasballah M. Saad said in Jakarta on Saturday that taking Wiranto to court was a legal matter, not an emotional one. "Legal fact is different from emotional demand. But whether or not the investigating team has worked according to the law is another question," Hasballah said.

According to the Attorney General's Office, the 19 suspects should be responsible for the East Timor violence before and after the August 30 ballot last year.

The probe followed the recommendations of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) inquiry team, which said that 33 people, both military and civilian, were implicated in the terror.

The US-based Human Rights Watch welcomed on Saturday the naming of suspects but believed that the whole prosecution would be on "shaky" legal ground, judging from the fact that the team had failed to include military top brass on the list.

"The failure to list Wiranto and Zacky doesn't mean they're off the hook, it may just indicate that, for the moment, the attorney general doesn't have a case against them that would hold up in court," Joe Saunders, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post.

Separately in Bandung, West Java, former chief of Dili Police Precinct Lt. Col. Hulman Goeltom denied on Saturday any involvement in rights violations in the province.

Goeltom, now chief of East Bandung Police precinct, is one of the 19 suspects. "I just carried out my duties based on the rules during the ballot and refugee evacuations. The security measures I took were in accordance with the procedures and the instructions issued by National Police Headquarters in Jakarta through the East Timor Police chief," he told the Post.

"I don't know in which case I have been implicated in. But I don't want to guess. I will respond to the summons and answer all questions," he said, adding that he had yet to receive an official summons from the Attorney General's Office.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI) reminded that Indonesia could still face the prospect of an international tribunal if it treats perpetrators of crimes against humanity in East Timor as ordinary crimes.

In a statement on Sunday, PBHI pointed out that despite establishing an ad hoc tribunal for the case, the UN security Council can still set up an international tribunal. "The 'double jeopardy' principle can be disavowed if the national tribunal tries perpetrators under ordinary criminal law," read the statement, signed by PBHI's Chairman Hendardi.

Former Tapols demand soeharto be tried in international court

Jakarta -- Dozens of older men and women belonging to the Victims of New Order Human Rights Abuse Association (Pakorba HAM) met French human rights activist, Danielle Mitterand, here today. In the two-hour meeting held at the Utan Kayu Theater in East Jakarta, some members of Pakorba asked the wife of the late former French president Francois Mitterand to support the trial of former President Soeharto in international court.

Danielle welcomed the idea. The founder of the international human right organization, the Danielle Mitterand French Liberation Foundation, established in 1986, said that Soeharto's corruption-collusion-nepotism (KKN) case has little meaning for her. "It is more important for me that he be tried for human rights violations. All of us attending this meeting have the same desire," she said in French and interpreted by her friend, Edlina Eddin.

However, Danielle asked the victims for their patience while they wait for justice. "If Soeharto or his cronies leave Indonesia and stay abroad, human rights abuse victims living overseas can report to the file a complaint with the police," she suggested.

Danielle, a mother of two children, is visiting Indonesia at the invitation of her close friend Sulami. Sulami, the founder of the 1965-1966 Murder Victims Research Foundation (YPKP), is a former political prisoner. She was arrested for her activities as secretary-general of Gerwani -- a woman's organization allegedly affiliated with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Danielle, looking spry at 76 years of age, will stay for another eight days in Indonesia. She will meet other human rights abuse victims during visits to the Central Javanese cities of Yogyakarta and Klaten, and other cities in Java and East Timor.

When the meeting ended, some members of Pakorba requested a firm commitment support from the first winner of the Elie Wiesel Foundation Human Rights Award. When the request was interpreted, Danielle just smiled. "I hide nothing in my smile," she said. She then added, "I will definitely mobilize my staff and other organizations that have cooperated with us for a long time. I make this commitment to myself and to all my comrades here." Participants gave warm applause to her final statements.
 

News & issues

Jakarta `seems to have lost control of country'

Marianne Kearney, Jakarta -- Wednesday's killing of the three United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) workers in West Timor illustrates some disturbing trends in Indonesia.

The fact that one year after the initial militia rampage in East Timor, Jakarta was not able to contain the increasingly violent militia, shows very clearly, as one diplomat said, "that Jakarta no longer controls Indonesia".

The militias in West Timor had attacked, threatened or intimidated UN staff on dozens of occasions. Just two weeks ago, when the militia attacked UN staff in West Timor, they were arrested for the first time. But instead of being prosecuted, the militiamen were given a warning and allowed to go free.

Western analysts point to a breakdown in government as well as in the military as one of the causes of Wednesday's incident. "There is no command and control structure. No one is completely in control of anything," said one diplomat.

Diplomats have expressed concern that while Jakarta might claim to be trying to control areas such as West Timor or Maluku, it is in fact not doing so and sees little urgency in bringing these areas under control. "The control of the government has been eroded by the militias, as in Maluku. It is a third force which the TNI are not fighting, which is causing them to lose their sovereignity over West Timor," said another diplomat, lamenting the inability of the Indonesian military to respond to the crisis.

"This is an opportunity for them to dominate West Timor. If they can, they would like to wrest control and establish themselves as a force," said the diplomat, who said there were reports the militias planned to rampage through Kupang as well as Atambua to destroy international installations.

Jakarta's vow to take action in the wake of the West Timor incident is eerily reminiscent of Indonesia's reaction to massacres of Christians in North Maluku in June.

It took a series of massacres in the Malukus, culminating in a particularly gory week which brought the death toll to over 300, plus the threat of international intervention, before Jakarta finally decided to impose a civilian emergency.

President Abdurrahman's international humiliation at the United Nations summit, along with the fact that one of the UN workers killed was a US citizen, has forced Jakarta to launch an investigation. But even that is viewed with some scepticism.

"It will be an investigation like any other Indonesian investigation, in that it will only go so far. They may or may not identify culprits, who may or may not be picked up and then who may or may not be charged," said the diplomat.

Analysts say that the inability to deal with the militias in West Timor also stems from Indonesians' ambivalence about taking action against the Timorese militias whom they see as brothers defending Indonesia's honour, rather than criminals who were sullying it.

But this week's discovery in Sumatra of the body of the Acehnese activist, Jafar Siddiq, who was also a US resident, will place extra pressure on the Indonesians to conduct a credible investigation into the West Timor killings.

Mob destroy Sampang parliament

Budi Sugiharto/GB, Sampang -- An angry mob has destroyed around 85% of the local legislature in Sampang on the island of Madura, East Java. Tensions have been mounting all week as protests rejecting the election of a new Regent have steadily grown larger and more confrontational. The mob ran amok on Wednesday night determined to stop the induction of Fadhilah Budiono set take place on Thursday.

Fadhilah Budiono, of the Indonesian Armed Forces/Police (TNI/Pol) faction, won the election over the candidate from the National Awakening Party (PKB). The mob which attacked the legislative complex are believed to be supporters of the PKB. The mob set upon the parliamentary complex at 5pm local time. The main building, housing the main meeting hall and the various commission's chambers, was gutted by fire and many of the ceilings collapsed. All the equipment, chairs, fittings and files have been destroyed.

Besides the main building, the mob also attacked the TNI/Police faction facilities on the grounds. Three rooms of the eight-room mess were burned to the ground. Other rooms were burst into and destroyed, windows broken, chairs overturned, equipment smashed. The office of the leader of the TNI/Police faction was broken into and a telephone and a television stolen.

Head of the Sampang legislature, Moh Hasan Ansari, admitted they have yet to fully assess the damage when contacted by Detik on Thursday. He said around one hectare of land had been affected by the fires.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered last Monday and brought the town to an utter standstill closing down the subdistrict's administrative offices, the Regent's offices, the office of the regional government, as well as all branches of the national and Islamic courts. The protesters also blocked the city's entrance and exit in the western area of the town. Nevertheless, the appointment and induction ceremony were endorsed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

With the destruction the buildings, the mob has at least managed to postpone the induction of Fadhilah Budiono, who they accuse of misappropriating rice and aid for refugees from Sambas, West Kalimantan, living in Madura. A meeting is scheduled for next Sunday between leaders of the PKB and the largest faction in the parliament, the United Development Party (PPP).

Malaysian businessman kidnapped in Medan

Kuala Lumpur -- A Malaysian businessman working in the North Sumatra capital of Medan has been kidnapped for ransom, reports said yesterday quoting his wife.

The New Straits Times newspaper quoted Sakinah Hassan as saying that her husband Basir Ismail first called her on August 21 to say he was being held by unknown persons but was safe. She said Basir (34) called again four days later, saying he had been taken to Lhangsa in Aceh and that the kidnappers had demanded more than US$26,316 for his freedom.

Sakinah said the kidnappers themselves had called her almost daily in the past week to demand the ransom and gave her until yesterday to transfer the money to the Military Police office in Aceh.

Sakinah said she had sought help from the Malaysian Foreign Ministry and the police. The Malay-language Utusan Malaysia daily quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying they were still investigating and could not confirm if Basir had really been kidnapped or was just "temporarily missing".

The couple from Malaysia's northern state of Kedah have four children. Basir works for a forex trading company, PT Dana Trikarya Indonesia, which he started in Medan with a local partner a year ago.
 

Environment/health

Jakarta proposes a ban on log exports

Marianne Kearney, Indonesia -- In A bid to halt rampant illegal logging, Indonesia's Forestry Minister has announced a proposal to put a ban on all log exports from Indonesia until it can guarantee a sustainable logging industry.

The proposal comes amid increasing pressure from Indonesia's international donors to curb illegal logging which has decimated national parks from Kalimantan to Sumatra to West Papua. If allowed to continue, Sumatra and Kalimantan's prime forests will be destroyed by 2010, according to a recent World Bank study.

But in order to curb illegal logging, log exports will have to be stopped completely, because, "we are not able to monitor who exports legal logs or illegal logs," said Minister Nurmahmudi Ismail.

The proposal of the ban by Mr Nurmahmudi is an open challenge to Asia, in particular Malaysia whose pulp and paper industry relies on buying illegal logs from Indonesia.

He charged that the illegal timber industry was supported by international companies exporting to Malaysia, Singapore and Japan. "Ask the international community how they will respond, whether they are responsible in the illegal logging practices or not? If they are serious in supporting us, they have to accept it." He said he hoped such a ban would reveal who is conducting the large-scale illegal trade of timber between Indonesia and Malaysia.

The Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr Luhut Panjaitan, has confirmed that Indonesia's economic team would decide by next week whether to impose the ban which would mean a loss of around US$1 billion a year from legal timber exports.

Enforcing the ban, however, could damage Malaysia's million- dollar pulp and paper industry, said commodities analysts and forestry officials who charge that Malaysia's pulp industry relies on buying illegal logs.

Indonesia's pulp and paper industry could also be affected as it also consumes vast amounts of illegally logged timber as well as timber cut from natural forests, said forestry experts.

Analysts are unsure exactly how much timber is smuggled between the Kalimantan-Sarawak border or from Sumatra but they estimate the trade to be worth as much as US$600 million per year.

Environmentalists doubt the ban will lessen the brisk timber trade across the Kalimantan-Sarawak border as smuggling was rampant even during the 1980s when a log export ban was in place.

"People will still be motivated to export because the price in the international market is higher than here, so there is still a lot of incentive to smuggle," said Mr Togu Manurung, a forest economist from the Natural Resources Management Programme.

"The problem of illegal logging is the problem of KKN and non- enforcement," he added, referring to the Indonesian acronym for corruption, collusion and nepotism.

Commodities experts said the ban may be more of a boost to the Indonesian pulp and paper industries rather than a solution to the problem of illegal logging. They said local pulp and paper industries will stand to benefit as timber prices drop.

Banning log exports also means there will be a generous supply of cheaper logs for the local pulp and paper mills. Mr Nurmahmudi has admitted that much of illegal logging was aided by corrupt forestry ministry officials as well as corrupt police and soldiers.
 

Arms/armed forces

Ex-army chief Nasution dies

Jakarta -- General Abdul Haris Nasution, an Indonesian independence hero who narrowly escaped assassination in 1965, died yesterday at 81.

The retired five-star general, former army chief and Cabinet minister died in Jakarta's Gatot Subroto military hospital, Antara reported. The cause of death was not specified, but Gen Nasution went into a coma after a recent stroke.

He was the only survivor of a round of assassinations of top generals on Sept 30, 1965, which the army claimed was part of a coup attempt by Indonesia's Communist Party.

Gen Suharto, the only senior officer not targeted, crushed the attempt quickly and moved to seize power from President Sukarno, who was accused of leftist sympathies.

As many as 500,000 trade unionists, Communist Party members and others were murdered in an army-inspired backlash that lasted into 1966. Hundreds of others were jailed and sent off to faraway penal colonies.

Gen Nasution was a leading figure in Indonesia's four-year fight against the return of Dutch rule after WWII. Arguably his greatest legacy is the policy of dual function adopted in 1958, in which the military adopted a direct role in national politics.
 

Economy & investment

Indonesia gets more leeway in IMF new deal

Robert Go, Jakarta -- Indonesia yesterday signed its latest set of reform pledges with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to obtain US$400 million in fresh funds. But this time, the country has more say in the programme and will tailor it to changing conditions.

Coordinating Economics Minister Rizal Ramli, who signed the letter of intent with acting Bank Indonesia governor Anwar Nasution, hailed the new deal as more comprehensive than the one signed at the end of July.

While there was no drastic revision to the IMF's US$5 billion loan programme, Dr Rizal and his team appeared satisfied with the inclusion of their 10 priority points. These included greater support for small and medium-scale businesses, direct measures to alleviate poverty and a stronger focus on rural development. IMF progress reviews -- scheduled every two months previously -- will now take place every three months.

The initiative for these changes came from Indonesia, said Dr Rizal, referring to last week's series of emergency meetings with senior IMF officials including Asia-Pacific deputy director Anoop Singh and country representative John Dodsworth.

This agreement also allowed the use of Budget surpluses to finance projects that would benefit people directly, he added at a press conference.

President Abdurrahman Wahid, who is attending the United Nations summit in New York, told reporters that Indonesia would have greater input in future agreements with the IMF or other aid agencies. The IMF had agreed that Indonesia will, from now on, determine the programme's terms, he said. Under the agreement, Indonesia was still required to speed up bank and debt restructuring as well as the sale of assets under state control.

But the IMF's role is now more focused on macro-economic management and maintaining fiscal balance. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, already key partners in the current deal, will take a greater role in supervising agricultural and rural development, and provide more credit to the country's burgeoning small businesses.

The IMF led a US$43 billion rescue package to Indonesia at earlier stages of the economic crisis and agreed to open a US$5 billion credit line, to be disbursed in installments over three years.

The latest loan tranche was due last Thursday, but Indonesia asked for a delay and further talks with top IMF officials. The IMF's executive board is expected to discuss the reform pledges and to release US$400 million to Indonesia before its annual meetings in two weeks.

IBRA to restructure 70% of major loans this month

Simon Montlake, Jakarta -- The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency plans to restructure 70% of its major debt cases by the end of this month, Irwan Siregar, a senior IBRA executive, said Wednesday.

IBRA is managing loans with a nominal value of about IDR260 trillion, which it has taken over from the devastated banking sector.

The agency has targeted an initial 21 big debtors for loan restructuring before pushing ahead with smaller creditors. Currently, the agency has restructured 40% of the debt owed by the top 21 debtors, Irwan said.

Later this month, IBRA hopes to conclude debt workouts with four large debtors: PT Texmaco Jaya TBK (P.TJY), and unlisted Bahana Securities, PT Timor Putra Nasional and PT Cipta Bumi.

IBRA's loans involve around 150,000 debtors, of which 2,000 account for a massive IDR216 trillion of the total. The agency also manages assets totaling a nominal IDR113 trillion, which it took over from failed bank owners last year.

IBRA is tasked with raising IDR19 trillion this year to help reduce the government deficit.

Indonesia anti-monopoly law may hit listed firms

Soraya Permatasari, Jakarta -- An Indonesian commission said there were signs that some listed firms, including noodle giant Indofood and some cement companies, might be in violation of an anti-monopoly law that took effect on Tuesday.

The new law imposes limits on market share and stipulates other fair competition measures in an economy dominated by a number of conglomerates -- many of which may have to reorganise or spin off profitable units to comply, analysts say. Many of those conglomerates had close ties with disgraced former President Suharto, who stepped down in 1998.

The Business Competition Supervisory Commission, known by its Indonesian initials KPPU and which also started work on Tuesday, has the power to conduct investigations and punish businesses which have violated the anti-monopoly law.

Officials had previously said the law would take effect on June 1. It was unclear why there has been a delay. "The commission's decision is legally binding, but a company can appeal to the Supreme Court if it does not accept our decision," KPPU Chairman Bambang Purnomo Wiyoto told reporters.

Wiyoto said the commission would start investigating a company by conducting a preliminary examination for 30 days. "Afterwards, there would be a further investigation which could take up to 90 days before the commission reaches its final decision," Wiyoto said, adding the company then has 14 days to consider it and another 30 to execute the decision.

The commission already has some firms in its sights, including PT Indofood Sukses Makmur, which controls around 90 percent of the country's instant noodle market, and 70-80 percent of the flour market through subsidiary PT Bogasari Flour Mills.

Didik Rachbini, a member of the commission, told reporters Indofood was among a number of companies that might be in violation of the anti-monopoly law. Indofood closed up five rupiah on Tuesday, at 4,110 rupiah.

Cement firms were also targeted. "We have early indications that some companies such as cement producers have the power to control price and distribution of products along with supply, therefore creating unhealthy business competition," Rachbini said.

PT Semen Gresik, PT Indocement and PT Semen Cibinong control more than 90 percent of the domestic market. Under the Indonesian Cement Association, they have the power potentially to control the price and supply of cement.

Analysts have previously said Indofood could be hit by the law due to its vertically integrated business activities, from producing flour to noodles, the end product.

Paper and stationary firm Tjiwi Kimia and its parent the Sinar Mas Group and tobacco firm Gudang Garam were other companies the commission said might be in violation of the law due to dominant market share. Non-clove cigarette maker PT BAT Indonesia was also mentioned because of its power to determine tobacco prices among farmers.

The commission has also been referred to accusations by the country's tempe and tofu federation, Inkopti, that foreign trading companies were dumping soybeans in the local market.

Crossed connections

David Liebhold, Jakarta -- Stephen Dowling is afraid to start his car these days. The director of AriaWest International has received death threats over a dispute between his company-35% owned by AT&T-and state-controlled Telkom Indonesia. As the quarrel heats up, Dowling, 44, is constantly watching his back.

"Everywhere I go I'm on the lookout for bombs or suspicious characters in the crowd," he says. "Any threat in Indonesia is a real threat."

For Indonesia, too, the stakes are high. Of Telkom's five strategic partners, at least three of them-joint ventures led by AT&T, France Telecom and Australia's Telstra-are running out of patience with the way Telkom and the government have handled an ambitious venture, begun in 1996 at the height of Indonesia's economic boom, aimed at modernizing the country's telecom business with help from the private sector. More than two years after the 1997 economic crash, however, the scheme is teetering on the brink of collapse. AriaWest, which says Telkom breached its side of the contract "from day one," is poised to terminate its agreement and seek compensation. If all five partners go the way of litigation, AriaWest calculates, the bill could be more than $5 billion-crippling Telkom and further damaging Indonesia's reputation as a place to invest. Says Andrew Sriro, a lawyer for AriaWest in Jakarta: "Everything is pointing toward complete and total disaster." Under the original plan, the partners were required to lay a total of 2 million lines and then manage most of Indonesia's fixed-line network for 15 years. Telkom was to be paid 30% of net revenue plus a monthly fee for use of its existing infrastructure. The plan also envisioned granting the foreign-led consortia management control over Telkom personnel and operations. But AriaWest, which has responsibility under the scheme for West Java, claims that Telkom never relinquished authority over staff.

"Risk is O.K., as long as you have control over the operation and management," says AT&T's John Vondras, president director of AriaWest. "Otherwise it's like trying to swim with a 10-pound weight on your feet, with your hands tied behind your back." Moreover, an audit by Arthur Andersen found that Telkom misappropriated revenue in excess of $40 million from accounts that should have been under AriaWest's control.

Since April, Telkom has blocked AriaWest's access to project revenues. In consequence, AriaWest has stopped making payments on its $284-million loan portfolio. The 43 international lenders that are getting burned include Chase Manhattan Bank, Credit Lyonnais and Sanwa Bank -- the kinds of institutions that Indonesia doesn't want to offend as it seeks help in restructuring and privatizing a host of debt-ridden state-owned industries.

Telkom, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, concedes that there have been "misunderstandings" but denies breaching the contract. It points out that big concessions have been made- including lowered line targets and reduced revenue requirements- to the venture partners to cope with the aftereffects of the 1997 crash. President director Mohammad Nazif says that, with good will on both sides, the differences can still be resolved. "The world has to understand that conditions in Indonesia are difficult," says Nazif. "Don't make things worse!" Yet AriaWest and others complain that Telkom has compounded their problems by repeatedly advising the government against raising Indonesia's call tariffs, which are among the lowest in the world.

While Telkom and its partners trade accusations, there has been no substantial investment in Indonesia's fixed-line telecommunications infrastructure for more than two years. The country is falling behind as its neighbors innovate and expand, and the quality of the existing network is deteriorating. The government, which was a signatory to the Joint Operating Scheme agreement and holds a 66% stake in Telkom, seems too preoccupied with political infighting and provincial insurrection to help solve the dispute. Because Telkom accounts for roughly 10% of Jakarta's stock market capitalization, a resort to litigation could tip investor sentiment-already finely balanced-against Indonesia. "If they're willing to destroy their own stock exchange and the image of the country as a place to invest, then Indonesia will end up as the Nigeria of Asia," says Frederic Thomas, head of research at ABN AMRO Securities in Jakarta.

To avoid that fate, there may be no choice but to divide Telkom into several joint-venture companies, says Munotoyo Hadisuwarno, a former Telkom executive. He predicts that the dispute will not go to international arbitration, but will be solved through high-level political intervention. For AT&T's Dowling, meanwhile, life at the center of the storm is beginning to take its toll. "It's stressful," he says. "I'm worried that things are going to get worse before they get better." If so, Indonesia's list of woes is about to get even longer.

[With reporting by Zamira Loebis/Jakarta]