East Timor

Repatriation of Timorese refugees resumes after year

Reuters - March 2, 2001

Geneva -- An international resettlement group said on Friday that it had restarted repatriating East Timorese refugees from the Indonesian west of the island after nearly a year-long hiatus due to insecurity.

A ship carrying 495 refugees left the port of Kupang for Dili after the East Timorese were interviewed to ensure their return was voluntary, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). "This is a big breakthrough," spokeswoman Niurka Pineiro told Reuters.

The Geneva-based group said it hoped to win UN security clearance to resume twice weekly ferries from West Timor, where 80,000 East Timorese are thought to remain in camps. They fled violence by pro-Jakarta militias in the wake of an August 1999 ballot in favour of independence from Indonesia.

The IOM helped return home 120,000 East Timorese between October 1999 and March 31, 2000, when operations virtually halted due to threats against aid agencies -- culminating in the murder of three UN refugee workers in West Timor in September.

But the IOM, which said 73 people had registered for the next ferry on Sunday, expressed concern over the presence of a former militia deputy leader as Friday's ship prepared to leave.

IOM staff recognised Elizariou Perreira, deputy head of the Aitarak pro-Jakarta militia, a group "largely responsible for the destruction of Dili and the deportation of its inhabitants," the spokeswoman said. He had a list of the registered refugees.

When IOM staff asked the Indonesian East Timor Refugees Taskforce, which organised the repatriation, about the presence of Perreira, he was identified "as a member of Indonesian military intelligence attached to the provincial command," Pineiro told a news briefing in Geneva.

"Having this person is going to be a deterrent for others to go back. If word gets back to the refugees in camps, they may fear reprisals later if he has their names," she told Reuters.

Perreira is close to Aitarak boss Eurico Guterres, now on trial in Jakarta on charges of inciting violence in the West Timor border town of Atambua last year, the IOM said.

Respect Gusmao, general tells ex-soldiers

Sydney Morning Herald - March 3, 2001

Mark Dodd -- An Indonesian Army commander has told a group of East Timorese who served with the Indonesian military they should renounce violence and return to East Timor respecting the new independent nation's leadership.

Major-General Wilhelm da Costa, eastern region (Udayana) commander, told returned former soldiers they should now obey the East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao, who spent more than two decades either waging a guerilla war against Indonesia's occupation of East Timor or in Indonesian prisons.

The soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians aligned with Jakarta fled or were forced to leave the former Indonesian province after the bloody UN referendum of 1999 which gave East Timor its independence.

"There should be no more revenge," General da Costa said. "We are brothers. It makes sense to go back. Xanana is a very good man. That's why I did not kill him when he was caught. Now God has blessed him as the new leader so please obey him."

General da Costa's speech was notable for its emphasis on reconciliation between East Timorese supporters of independence and former supporters of integration with Indonesia.

He told 40 demobilised Indonesian soldiers of Timorese descent who were heading home yesterday that Indonesia and East Timor were in the process of normalising relations, and he predicted it would not be long before people on both sides of the border could cross freely.

Despite General da Costa's reconciliatory comments, officials of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said intimidation in the camps was virtually unchecked.

Many refugees returning to East Timor have friends and relatives on the other half of the island in West Timor but are concerned that once they leave the Indonesian side they will not be able to return.

Meanwhile, the International Organisation for Migration said yesterday that more than 700 refugees, including 240 former soldiers and their families, had registered for repatriation.

Sexual violence as tool of war: pattern emerging in East Timor

New York Times - March 1, 2001

Seth Mydans, Ermera -- There is one happy thing -- one glorious thing -- in the shamed and broken life of Loren a Martins. Far from her family, hidden away from her neighbors, she lives in poverty in a tiny hillside house where the loud buzz of cicadas fills her loneliness.

Her past is too traumatic to think of and her future too uncertain. To almost every question, Miss Martins, 24, replies that her only thoughts now are of her beaming 5-month-old baby, Rai, the child of the man who raped her.

"I think I'm just like any mother," she said as she nursed her child. "The only thing that's important to me now is my baby."

As East Timor recovers from the violence and destruction that followed its vote for independence from Indonesia in 1999, more and more stories are emerging of women like Miss Martins -- dozens, even hundreds of rapes, often involving torture and egregious humiliation.

Investigators say it has become clear that the crimes of the Indonesian military and the local militias it commanded -- opponents of independence -- include not only massacres, widespread destruction and mass deportations but also rape and sexual slavery on a wide and possibly systematic scale.

"Many of these acts were planned, organized and sustained," says a carefully researched report by East Timor's leading women's aid association. The report says militia members and soldiers connived "to abduct women or share them like chattel, or in some cases forcibly taking women across the border into West Timor where the women were raped daily and made to perform household chores."

It is only recently that rape has been recognized as a war crime and as a crime against humanity. This month, in the first such conviction, an international tribunal in The Hague sentenced three Bosnian Serbs to long prison terms for such sexual violence.

As a newly created tribunal begins its work here in East Timor, its first dozen cases will include one charge of rape. More may follow.

As of late last year, the aid group had documented 165 cases of "gender-based violations" in 1999, including 46 cases of rape. The chief investigator of sex crimes for the United Nations, David Senior, said the full total is probably "in the hundreds," with violations still continuing in camps in West Timor where approximately 100,000 people remain under the control of the militias.

"We are coming up with new cases all the time," said Mr. Senior. "I don't think we've scratched the surface on the incidents of rape. With more confidence, I think these cases will continue to be reported at a staggering rate."

But numbers alone do not tell the story, he said. "How do you put a number on 5 women being raped by 12 guys?" he said.

"How do you put a number on a woman being raped daily for six months? How do you put a number on one girl being raped by three guys for five nights? For me, numbers don't describe the impact that rape has had on the women of East Timor."

As with Miss Martins, who has been told by one local leader to leave this remote town 50 miles from the capital, Dili, the victims have often become outcasts.

Some have been shunned by their husbands and their communities as "dirty," said Olandina Alves, a Timorese social worker who has counseled victims here and in Dili. In some cases, family members have threatened to kill the babies born of rapes, Mr. Senior said.

In one town, Roman Catholic church workers refused to allow baptisms for the babies or confessions for their mothers. The shame of victimhood is so strong that some victims, hearing of investigations and possible court proceedings, fear it is they who will be brought to trial for their "relationships" with members of the militias, according to the women's aid association, Forum Komunikasi Untuk Perempuan Loro Sae, which is known by the shortened name Fokupers.

"I think these women suffer unbearable silence in their lives as to what they have been through," said Samantha Aucock, a South African aid worker in the southern city of Suai, where dozens of women were reportedly raped or transported to West Timor to serve as sexual slaves.

Mr. Senior said the reports he had gathered suggest that some instances of mass rape coincided with massacres that occurred both before the independence vote -- in April and May 1999 -- and in the three weeks of destruction that followed the August 30 vote. The territory, once a colony of Portugual, was annexed by Indonesia in 1975 after Portugual withdrew.

Ms. Alves said it was possible that the rapes were part of the destruction of East Timor that investigators are now piecing together as an orchestrated scorched-earth policy commanded by Indonesia's military.

"They had a plan to destroy all of East Timor," she said. "Rape is one way to ruin a people too. And so, I wonder, was it a part of their plan of destruction to rape and torture the women?"

Based on survivor accounts, she said, it appeared that militia units and Indonesian soldiers had sometimes carried out the rapes in an organized fashion. "Many times, the young girls were raped by high-ranking officers," she said. "Those who were married or were not young any more were raped by lower ranking people."

But the cruelty of many of the rapes seemed to go beyond any systematic policy, she said. She told the story of a 21-year-old woman named Angelina who was raped by 11 men in the town of Gleno, where Miss Martins had also lived. "First they asked for everything in the house, money and everything, and they said they would kill her father," Mrs. Alves said. "So the family gave them everything. Then they still threatened the father, so Angelina agreed to be raped just to save her father. But after they got the money and raped her, they killed her father anyway. When they did that, she ran around and screamed, and so they killed her too."

It was a member of the militia named Maximu who took Miss Martins to be his sexual property in December 1999, in a West Timor refugee camp near the town of Atambua. When he abducted her, he was wearing a black T-shirt bearing the name of his militia group, Red Blood.

"He never said anything to me," Miss Martins said. "He just said he would kill me if I did not have sex with him. He always acted angry. And I always had to smile at him in public. I didn't smile at him because I liked him but because I was afraid of him."

When she tried to flee, she said, he locked the door and threatened her with a pistol. Already pregnant, she made her escape back to East Timor a year ago. She never learned his last name.

The story she tells could be the story of a woman named Maria da Costa, 26, who, according to court documents in Dili, was raped in Atambua by a man named Leonardus Casa, 27.

In an interview at the Dili courthouse, Mr. Casa put forward a defense that Miss Martins's tormentor might also use: He knew his victim. She belonged to him. The sex was consensual.

Beyond that, Mr. Casa said, he knew less than just about anybody else in East Timor about the violence occurring around him. "I never saw any massacre or any destruction," he said. "I never even left my house."

If the man named Maximu ever returns from West Timor and if he is ever brought to court, Miss Martins said she would be willing to face him and testify against him. And what would she say to him when she sees him?

Miss Martins smiled and cracked her knuckles nervously. "I wouldn't say anything," she said. "I have nothing to say to him. I just want him to suffer the way I did."

Hatred of Indonesian troops remains among Timorese

Jakarta Post - March 1, 2001

Ati Nurbaiti, Dili -- Indonesians, who grew up believing they helped East Timor out of a civil war, must wake up to the fact that they are perceived as former colonizers. On the other hand East Timorese are convincing Indonesians that they can be good neighbors.

A visitor to Dili finds that although the language is the same, separate identities, separate citizenships, have been established.

"So when are you going back to Indonesia?" an Indonesian is asked, who finds increasingly that the reference "to Jakarta" in earlier days was only appropriate in "the Indonesia era." After a year of separation, the anti-Indonesia feeling has toned down, as people distinguish their hatred: "It was what the military did; we're fine with the people." New and old Indonesian pop songs are heard everywhere in turn with Timorese pop songs from albums produced in Surabaya, East Java.

It will be some time before local artists can again produce their work, when families can be reunited and when people can resume trade with neighboring Indonesia.

A farmer in Tutubesi village in Maliana said family members must now help more in cultivating the fields because he has lost access to the usual workers from Kupang.

The Timor Pos media group is pondering plans to publish a tabloid in Indonesia as print and delivery costs from Darwin have been too costly.

Ex-students get into nostalgic yarns of beloved Yogyakarta, where they studied -- and where some were driven away from -- "mie baso" noodles and meatballs, and "the [Yogya] girls." Tension colors relations with the ongoing trials of those charged with war crimes in Dili and for illegal possession of weapons in Jakarta; while in Timor, people say they want "good relations." "We need to see our families, and to travel," said trader Americo Hudino in Dili. His friend Dominic Alves Cabral said he wants to resume his agricultural studies in Magelang, Central Java.

An Indonesian journalist is greeted warmly: "Tell my relatives I'm alive," says a Maliana school principal, Mateus Bere Maia.

Vendors in Dili also ask whether it is safe for families to return; some members of the militia have asked relatives visiting them at the border of the possibility of coming home.

Strained relations bring many problems. The main bank is the Portuguese Banco Nacional Ultramarino, and people say payment transfers to and from Indonesia take "forever." To visit renown dukun, Timorese also need to travel to the town of Atambua, across the border in West Timor.

"I need to get my teeth fixed and my spectacles changed," a Dili resident said. The two dentists in Dili only handle extractions; while eye check-ups are possible only when the US marines come, and the spectacles are provided when they return a few months later.

Hopes for "good relations" with Indonesia will in part be determined by the continuous resentment among Indonesians against the "ungrateful Timorese." The feeling was evident in a heated meeting between authorities of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and legislators on February 23.

UNTAET had asked for Indonesia's aid for development in East Timor, which was met by a legislator's question on why Indonesia was now being "dragged in" while before it was "treated as an imperialist."

Meanwhile the Timorese now also face demands for security and good relations from their minority, most notably the Muslim community in Kampung Alor, Dili. Their area, comprising a few dozen families from Sumatra and other islands, bustles with activity every lunch time as patrons visit their foodstalls.

The mosque complex where they stayed was the target of a riot on January 1. Three were injured, a mosque window was shattered and many of their foodstalls were torn down. Following the incident the Indonesian consul reportedly received many requests from them to return to Indonesia.

The civil police came too late, community leader Arham told Radio UNTAET, saying they had requested protection before New Year's Eve, following rumors that they were to be attacked.

He denied views that they were "exclusive," saying they were forced to live around the mosque because other people were occupying their homes.

"Please note that the freedom that you have now, we would also like to share. We wish to feel free, to be free to speak, to do business and live in peace," Arham said in tears.

Refugee camp closure approved

The Age - February 28, 2001

Mark Dodd, Dili -- The head of the UN mission in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, has given the green light to Indonesia's armed forces to forcibly close militia-controlled refugee camps in West Timor to break the repatriation stalemate.

During a meeting with donors in Jakarta last Friday, Mr de Mello outlined a radical plan giving support to a forced camp-by-camp closure involving Indonesian security forces, according to a diplomat at the meeting.

The plan is similar to the forced-closure tactics used by the Thai army to empty Cambodian camps in 1992 that resulted in the repatriation of 500,000 people. During that time Mr de Mello was in charge of UNHCR operations in Cambodia.

Final approval is being sought from UN headquarters in New York and from former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers, the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

"Sergio [Vieira de Mello] is daring UNHCR to say no. We want nothing to do with this plan. It will be very interesting to see their (UNHCR) response," the diplomat said by telephone from Jakarta.

UNHCR, along with other international aid organisations, ceased operations in West Timor after three international staff were murdered by a militia mob in the border town of Atambua last August.

A second key figure involved in the proposal is the UN transitional administration's Malaysian chief of staff, N. Parameswaran, who will travel to Kupang, capital of West Timor, with senior officials from UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration. IOM has given its support to the plan.

Refugee returns to East Timor have slowed to a trickle although estimates of numbers still living in militia-controlled camps in West Timor range from 80,000 to 100,000, most of whom want to return home.

There are encouraging signs of greater Indonesian cooperation to help in the repatriation of the refugees. This weekend more than 600 people, including 400 refugees and 200 former army personnel and their families, are expected to return to Dili on board the IOM-chartered ship Patricia Anne Hotung. The refugees have been registered by Indonesian authorities and will board the ship in Kupang.

Mr de Mello believes decisive action is required to break the militia hold over the camps if the majority of refugees are to return home by June 20, the final date for voter registration in East Timor's forthcoming national elections.

He now believes the current policy of refugees returning piece- meal is a failure because of continuing militia control of the camps. Under the new proposal, Indonesian soldiers backed by riot police will secure individual camps, starting with refugee centres around Kupang.

Refugees will then be registered and handed over to UNHCR and IOM when they will be asked to chose between staying or leaving West Timor.

According to reliable sources, the proposal has the backing of Indonesia's Foreign Ministry and the commander of eastern military region, Major-General Willhelm da Costa.

Meanwhile, the number of East Timorese refugees returning home doubled this month compared to January, said a senior UNHCR official. Jake Moreland said yesterday that 1157 East Timorese returned home this month, double January's figure of 544. Mr Moreland said the trend was likely to continue.

Life in the squalid militia-controlled camps was becoming increasingly hard while news of better opportunities in East Timor was filtering into the camps, he said.

East Timor leader: Won't help others break from Indonesia

Associated Press - February 26, 2001

Regan Morris, Singapore -- East Timor's Nobel peace laureate Jose Ramos-Horta says he understands the suffering, humiliation and struggles of people fighting to break free from Indonesia, but he said his newly independent homeland cannot support their cause.

"We cannot support," Ramos-Horta told The Associated Press during an interview late Sunday when asked why East Timor was not taking a philosophical stand in support of bloody independence movements in Indonesia's Aceh, Irian Jaya and the Maluku archipelago.

"Can you imagine if the international community supports independence for Aceh and Irian Jaya, what would be the repercussions elsewhere around the world with countries not only in the developing world, but in Europe, facing similar problems?" "It would be a colossal disaster," he said.

East Timor voted for independence in 1999 after a UN-backed referendum. The territory is now being run by the UN, but should have full independence this year. He said East Timor's case is different from other territories in Indonesia because it was a Portuguese colony and was never part of the Dutch East Indies.

Ramos-Horta said it would create a diplomatic mess if other countries supported independence movements in "the Basque country in Spain or Canada and Quebec" or "Tibet, Kashmir, and even Bangladesh."

"Latin America is the only fortunate continent that doesn't have secessionists," he said, during a trip to Singapore where he attended a meeting on UN peacekeeping efforts with academics.

In 1975, Ramos-Horta, who was then in exile, successfully lobbied the UN Security Council to condemn the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.

Although Ramos-Horta agrees that warfare has been on the rise since former dictator Suharto was ousted in 1998, he doesn't believe Indonesia will break apart. He said people were not giving Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid enough time to sort out the countries problems.

For decades, Suharto used his security forces to crush any dissent or unrest, suppressing tensions between Indonesia's many diverse ethnic and religious groups.

"The abuses perpetrated by the army, the humiliation the suffering of these people in Aceh and Irian Jaya are the same ones we shared and we suffered in the past," he said.

Thousands have been killed in combat between troops and separatist rebels in Aceh province. About 5,000 people have died in two years of warfare between Christians and Muslims in the Maluku archipelago. In Irian Jaya, an upsurge of separatist violence has claimed dozens of lives since December.

Labour struggle

Defiant Indonesian labour leader forges ahead

Far Eastern Economic Review - March 8, 2001

John McBeth -- In jumper, skirt and sandals, Dita Sari looks more like a rural schoolteacher than a trade unionist. But working out of a converted house in the backstreets of east Jakarta, the 28- year-old former political prisoner and university drop-out is rapidly emerging as a key figure in Indonesia's fledgling labour movement as it struggles to emerge from three decades of stagnation and oppression.

For a woman who found her calling in Indonesia's underground and now goes about her work with missionary zeal, the big pink and white Amnesty International poster on her office wall probably says it all: "Hands Off Dita Sari." It was printed back in 1996 when Sari was beginning a six-year jail term for organizing what was then an illegal strike in the Tandes industrial district of Surabaya, Indonesia's second-biggest city.

Two years before, at the tender age of 21, Sari had formed the National Front for Indonesian Workers' Struggle in defiance of then-President Suharto's laws forbidding independent labour movements. Using the same secretive methods she learned as a pioneering member of the left-leaning People's Democratic Party, she now set about running the National Front from her cell -- initially at a detention centre in the East Java city of Malang and later at the Tanggerang Women's Prison on the outskirts of Jakarta. In the end, Sari served only half of her sentence, thanks to the collapse of Suharto's New Order regime in mid-1998.

But her time behind bars steeled her resolve. Today, her union has 22,000 members (about half of whom pay dues) in 14 provinces across Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Bali. Most are women working in factories producing textiles, shoes, food and beverages. But she's just taken maritime workers into her fold and she makes no secret of her ambition to build as big a union as possible.

Born in Medan, North Sumatra, to middle-class parents, Sari moved in 1988 to Jakarta to finish high school and studied law at the University of Indonesia.

Her political activities, starting with small campus discussion groups, and her prison sentence ensured that she never completed her degree. But she doesn't seem to have any time for regrets.

Although then-President B.J.Habibie embraced freedom of association and other International Labour Organization resolutions in 1998, it was another two years before she got around bureaucratic roadblocks and finally succeeded in registering the National Front. First it was the Manpower Ministry's refusal to allow the union to base its constitution on social democratic principles, rather than Pancasila, the state ideology. Then the bureaucrats complained about the "political words" in the manifesto. "It took three ministers before we were recognized," she says.

Sari claims to have no political ambitions and says that two years ago her union made a conscious decision to stay away from party affiliations.

But those attitudes could change if the labour movement is able to consolidate over the next five years and become a force for change. "Running a union is not going to be enough for Dita," says a Western labour analyst, who has followed her career. "I think she can probably look forward to being a leader in the political field."

In some ways, Sari says, things were simpler under Suharto -- "there was no horizontal conflict then, everything was the state or the military against the people." Now she points to a confusing picture: remnants of Suharto's New Order, what she calls "false reformists," President Abdurrahman Wahid and his political manoeuvrings and a divided student movement. But, there is also the sense that she wouldn't have it any other way.

Clarification sought over abuse of Nike workers

Jakarta Post - February 27, 2001

Jakarta -- The Indonesian Footwear Association (Apresindo) was cautious on Monday in responding to reported labor abuses in Nike's Indonesian partner factories.

Apresindo chairman Anton J. Supit said the association was seeking clarification both from Global Alliance and Nike production companies over reports that nine of the American footwear giant's contract factories in Indonesia had seen verbal and physical abuse of subordinates perpetrated by supervisors.

Anton said that as far as he knew Nike was quite strict on labor standards. "We want Global Alliance to be more transparent in its survey so as to ascertain whether verbal and physical abuse is rampant in the factories. And the factories should admit their wrongdoing if their workers have been abused," he said at a press conference here on Monday.

He said Apresindo would support any measures taken to uphold the law and that legal proceedings should be taken against any companies found guilty of violating labor law, industrial relations norms and the applicable regulations.

"If the Global Alliance report is true, crimes have been committed and the companies abusing their workers should be brought to justice," he said. He suggested that workers report any mistreatment they saw or suffered in the workplace.

The management of companies affiliated with Asperindo would not prohibit their workers from protesting poor labor conditions in the nine factories concerned, as long as such protests were conducted peacefully. He said it was impossible for Nike's Indonesian partner companies to pay their workers in line with the remuneration paid to workers in the United States because the Indonesian companies received only 30 percent of the Nike selling price for their products.

"It's impossible for us to give more to the workers to improve their standard of living because we receive only 30 percent from every pair we produce while the greater part goes to the brand holder," he explained.

He said the 10 factories producing footwear for Nike were paying their workers at least Rp 700,000, far above the monthly minimum wage in Tangerang which was only Rp 426,000.

Aceh/West Papua

Seven killed in Aceh, rebels occupy city for 14 hours

Agence France-Presse - March 3, 2001

Banda Aceh -- Seven people were killed in Indonesia's troubled Aceh province, three of them when government troops retook a town held for 14 hours by rebels, police and residents said Saturday.

Two fishermen and an unidentified man were killed, apparently in the crossfire, when the troops retook Idi Rayeuk, a town of some 15,000 people in East Aceh on Friday.

Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels had held the town from Thursday evening until early Friday morning without incident, said Sulaiman, a resident of Idi Rayeuk.

"The two fishermen shot were certainly not GAM members. It isn't clear when the two were killed, but their bodies were found after the shooting when the troops came in," he said.

Three other people, two of them women, were wounded in the fight to regain control of the town, he said. Police sources said only one person was wounded in the action.

Nearer to the province capital three unidintied bodies were found Saturday. The body of one unknown man bearing torture marks was found in the grounds of the Syiahkuala University seven kilometers from Banda Aceh.

The two other bodies, those of a man and a woman with their heads crushed, were found in Lam Teuba in the greater Aceh area Saturday afternoon, police and witnesses said.

According to residents, Idi Rayeuk township was peaceful during the rebel occupation, but when the government reinforcements arrived after dawn it turned into a battlefield with gunfire on all sides.

"During the GAM occupation, hundreds of flags were flown along a four-kilometer stretch of the main Medan-Banda Aceh highway, between Tanoh Anoe and Teupin Batee villages," one eye-witness said. "During that time, the security forces stayed holed up in the commando headquarters [in the town]," he said.

During the GAM occupation a police dormitory and a jail, both empty, were burned to the ground, residents said, and the main Medan-Banda Aceh highway running through the area blocked with felled tree trunks. By Friday night however, the town was firmly back in government hands.

Police operations spokesman Chief Commissioner Kusbini Imbar told journalists in Banda Aceh late Friday that GAM had burned down eight police barracks in Idi Rayeu.

The local GAM spokesman, Ishak Daudm, said his troops had taken the action because men wearing military uniform had been harrassing the population of the town.

Meanwhile a youth was shot dead by security forces during a sweeping operation in Cot Baroh, in the district of Pidie Friday night, a resident there said.

GAM, which has been fighting Jakarta rule since the mid-1970s, entered into talks with the government last year in Geneva, the results of which have been consecutive shaky truce periods.

But the death toll has continued to mount, with some 200 killed in the violence so far this year.

The two sides remain politically far apart, with the GAM demanding independence, and Jakarta saying it will grant only limited autonomy.

Five judges named to Nazar trial

Jakarta Post - March 3, 2001

Jakarta -- Five judges have been appointed to the trial of Central Information for Aceh Referendum (SIRA) chief Muhammad Nazar in the Banda Aceh District Court, which will begin on Thursday, Antara reported.

Azis Syarif from the Medan District Court has been named the presiding judge, with NK. Simatupang, M. Taufik, also from Medan, Farida Hanoem from Banda Aceh District Court and Alimusahadi of Sabang District Court appointed as panel members.

"We will continue with the legal processing of Nazar's case, we are ready for it," Judge Simatupang told Antara in Medan on Friday. He said the dossiers for Nazar's case had been transferred from the Medan court to its Banda Aceh counterpart.

The new Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Baharuddin Lopa, issued decree No. M.05.AT.01.10/2001 stipulating the relocation of Nazar's trial to the Aceh capital after the defendant failed to appear at the opening session on February 21 in Medan.

Lopa's predecessor Yusril Ihza Mahendra had previously ordered the trial be held in Medan due to security concerns and the fact that only one judge was available in Banda Aceh, namely Farida.

"Whatever happens we will carry out our duty ... we have nothing to be afraid of," Simatupang said. Many fear that the trial could heighten tension in the strife-torn Aceh province.

Nazar was charged with exhibiting hostile intentions against the state, or treason, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in jail, after organizing a mass congress to demand a referendum for Aceh's freedom in Banda Aceh last November. He has been detained since November 20 last year.

Amid the latest violence in Aceh, a group of alleged rebels from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) stole Rp 52 million in cash from the entourage of the Meukek district chief and other local officials in Alue Meutuah village in South Aceh on Tuesday.

"The district chief of Meukek along with several officials were passing a TVRI transmitter in the village when gunmen riding motorbikes intercepted them and raided the car," police said in a statement on Friday.

The civilians were left unharmed, but were threatened not to report the incident to police.

In Bireun regency, police raided a house believed to be a GAM base on Thursday morning and seized various police and military items such as uniforms, 18 rounds of SS-1 bullets, dozens of revolver bullets, GAM documents and two bayonets.

Three men, identified as M. Yunus, Syamsuar and Tukul were arrested following the raid, local police officer Comr. Hari Sutjahjono said in a statement on Friday.

Some of the items belong to the Aceh Tengah Police chief, and were stolen from his house, the officer said. The goods were taken to the Jeumpa Police subprecinct office in North Aceh as evidence.

Violence escalates in Aceh, 11 found dead

Jakarta Post - March 1, 2001

Banda Aceh -- Violence has again escalated in Aceh with at least 11 people being killed in various incidents on Wednesday, while talks continue between government representatives and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) separatist rebels regarding security arrangements.

The closed-door meeting took place at Kuala Tripa Hotel here discussing details about the security arrangements.

"Some of the breakthroughs include field commanders from both sides being linked by mobile satellite telephone hotlines, the introduction of a special joint force uniform and a planned joint operation between security forces and GAM to expel third parties disrupting the Aceh situation," said Oemardi, director of public information for the humanitarian pause in Aceh.

He further said that the closed-door meeting will probably be completed on Thursday.

The meeting was attended for the first time by two Indonesian Army representatives, Lt. Col. Ayardi, Teuku Umar Military chief of staff, and Lt. Col. Iskandar, Lilawangsa Military chief of staff.

Also present were government representatives Sr. Comr. Manahan Daulay and Sr. Comr. Ridwan Karim, while three deputy operational commanders from GAM, including Tengku Amri bin Abdul Wahab and Tengku Saiful bin Moh. Ali. Two members of the monitoring team were also present.

Meanwhile, incidents were reported in East Aceh, Aceh Besar and South Aceh. Five bodies were found in the town of Langsa, East Aceh, one in Birem Bayeun district and one more was evacuated from Peurelak, also in East Aceh, on Wednesday.

Among the seven fatalities was human rights activist Effendi Malikon, 40, deputy chief of the Human Rights Care Forum (FP-HAM) in the Simpang Ulin district of East Aceh. "His body was found near a market in Langsa town riddled with gunshot wounds," said FP-HAM East Aceh chief M. Yusuf Puteh.

The other six victims were all between 20 and 40 years of age. Five were identified as Abubakar, Alfian, Idris, Yunus and Jubaili, while the remaining victim was unidentified.

Chief of Langsa General Hospital Azwan Halim Lubis said that the victims suffered gunshot wounds and lacerations to their bodies. "All victims are estimated to have died some time since last night [Tuesday]," Lubis said.

Yusuf Puteh said that in recent weeks he has received threats from anonymous callers saying that "members of FP-HAM will be murdered if they continue to record residents' reports on violence in Aceh". "Even though the calls have been made several times, we are not afraid and we will continue with our mission," Yusuf said.

The police, however, claim that only two alleged rebels were killed on Tuesday and Wednesday. Adj. Sr. Comr. Yatim Suyatmo said that Suwardi Hasyim, 37, was shot dead in Langsa on Tuesday, while another man named Mahdi, 35, was killed during a raid at his house on Wednesday. Tension also rose in Langsa as troops increased security patrols in the area.

In Aceh Besar, a GAM rebel named Rusli Yusuf was arrested in a police raid at around 11 p.m. on Tuesday in Lampo neuheun village. During the raid police seized a rifle, revolver, military-style uniforms and several bullets for FN and M-16 weapons. Two other bodies were also found in Aceh Besar on Wednesday morning.

The body of Ashari, a high school student, was found with severe cut wounds in Darul Imarah district, while another unidentified body was unearthed from a field in Kampung Jawa village, local police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Sayed Husaini said. "The unidentified body had already started to decompose. Dogs uncovered the grave and bit the body's thumb before locals found it," the officer said.

It was also reported on Wednesday that the Lilawangsa Military Command Intelligence Section chief, identified only as Maj. JP, was named a suspect in the murder of three RATA humanitarian activists on December 6 last year in North Aceh.

In Jakarta, the House of Representatives (DPR) established on Wednesday a special committee to consider a bill for special autonomy in Aceh titled "Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam".

Earlier on Tuesday, Coordinating Minister for Political, Social and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the government would conduct a limited military operation early in March so that the strict measures planned against separatist activities will be accurate and civilians will not be hurt.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Adm. Widodo A.S. said that security disturbances in Aceh cannot be handled by the police alone. "Strict action against armed separatist activities must be conducted through military operations," Widodo told a hearing with the House special committee on national unity.

Elite power struggle

Indonesian parties in a huddle ahead of Wahid's return

Agence France-Presse - March 3, 2001

Jakarta -- Leading Indonesian politicians met at a Jakarta mosque for what media reports said Saturday were talks on dumping President Ambdurrahman Wahid, now overseas, and replacing him with Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

But the politicians, who met Friday and included arch-Wahid foe and national assembly speaker Amien Rais, all made it clear at the meeting they were not planning a coup.

At the meeting in Jakarta's Al Azhar mosque, the "unspoken conclusion" was that any change of leadership should be constitutional, Rais was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post.

Wahid, who has been under fire since being censored by parliament on February 1 over his alleged role in two corruption cases, is on a Haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. He is due back in Jakarta on Tuesday.

"I guess the people of this nation should mentally prepare themselves to face another change of leadership," Rais said.

Among those present at the mosque talks were Megawati's husband, businessman Taufik Kiemas, and leaders of her Indonesian Democracy Party Struggle (PDIP), the Muslim- oriented United Development Party (PPP) and the Golkar Party.

The PDIP and the Golkar Party hold the largest and second-largest blocks of seats in parliament and the national assembly.

Wahid -- a clinically-blind Muslim scholar -- became Indonesia's first democratically-elected president in October 1999 with the stated goal of freeing the country from the legacy of 32 years of Suharto dictatorship.

He won early kudos for taming the all-poweful militiary, but his popularity quickly nosedived, with whiffs of scandal tainting the palace, clashes with parliament and his engmatic style of governance.

His frequent jaunts overseas and refusal to return home despite the massive bloodshed in Borneo while he was touring the Middle East and North Africa, brought the criticism to a head.

The main obstacle to Megawati assuming the presidency, the rejection by Islamic parties in this Muslim-majority country of having a female president, appeared to have been swept aside in Friday's meeting.

"Muslim people would never have a problem with with a female leader ... since Mega is a true Muslim, we do not see any problem in supporting her to replace Gus Dur (Wahid's nickname)," the Post quoted the Islamic-oriented Justice Party chairman Hidayat Nurwahid as saying.

But on Saturday, the president's National Awakening Party (PKB) hit back with a lengthy statement, a copy of which was recieved by AFP, warning that politicians such as Rais were not to be trusted.

It was the PKB alone, which had fought in the October 1999 elections, for the right of a woman to be president. But it lost the battle because of "bulldozer-like opposition" by the Muslim- oriented parties, it said.

The Muslim parties now meeting with Megawati's PDIP must have a "hidden agenda," the statement said, as they had never withdrawn their opposition to a woman being president, and in fact had reaffirmed it at a recent congress.

"They are not sincere," it said, in a warning apparently aimed directly at Megawati, whose support is seen as crucial in keeping Wahid in power.

Megawati, a daughter of Indonesia's founding president Sukarno, has remained silent on her possible rise to power. But earlier in the week she said publicly for the first time that she had never backed Wahid for the presidency.

The military, whose parliament faction backed the censure of Wahid on February 1, warned on Thursday that they would not tolerate a coup.

"It's up to the people to decide whether Gus Dur should resign or stay. But the Indonesian military will always uphold the Constitution in observing all attempts to unseat or express support for the President," army chief of staff General Endriartono Sutarto said.

Politicians seen using religion for politics

Indonesian Observer - March 3, 2001

Jakarta -- The closed-door meeting between some of the nations top politicians at Al-Azhar Mosque in South Jakarta yesterday was an attempt to use religion for political purposes, says a loyalist of President Abdurrahman Wahid.

Taufikurrahman Saleh, a member of Wahids National Awakening Party (PKB), said there was definitely a political agenda behind the meeting.

Although he stopped short of saying the event was used to discuss efforts to oust Wahid, he emphasized that discrediting the president has become a standard part of maneuvering and bargaining between certain political parties.

Taufikurrahman said a certain group is now actively pushing for Vice President Megawati to take the presidency. But it remains questionable whether she has sufficient support to take over, he added.

He said current political maneuvers are far more dangerous than the controversial behavior of Wahid.

Among those attending the meeting at the mosque were Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Amien Rais, Megawatis businessman husband Taufik Kiemas, legislator Sophan Sophiaan of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), and House of Representatives Speaker Akbar Tandjung.

Also present were leaders of the Crescent Star Party (PBB), Justice Party (PK), National Mandate Party (PAN) and Golkar Party. Wahids PKB was excluded from the meeting.

Despite coming to power with considerable support in October 1999, Wahid is now finding himself increasingly isolated. Many politicians and analysts believe he should step down before his term ends in 2004 because he has failed to overcome the nations many problems.

Political scientist Afan Gaffar yesterday said upholding the national interest is far more important than efforts to maintain power.

He said the meeting at the mosque was presumably an effort to shore up long-term support for Megawati, adding that if she takes over from Wahid, she will remain in power until 2004.

I assume the meeting aimed to ensure that if Megawati takes power, she won't end up as Indonesias Benazir Bhutto. On the contrary, MPR Speaker Amien Rais would give her his full support, he said.

Rais told reporters the meeting was held to discuss the national political situation, specifically to strengthen solidarity among political leaders from various backgrounds.

The brotherhood meeting was very good. It did not discuss nothingness, but discussed national problems, he said, adding that politics was the agenda behind the meeting.

Wahid was propelled to power by the Central Axis, a loose coalition of Muslim-based parties led by Rais, in order to prevent Megawati from becoming president. But it now appears that Rais and most of the Central Axis parties are now trying to strike a deal with Megawatis PDI-P in order to oust Wahid.

If togetherness is maintained, it could result in bright prospects to resolve the nations problems, said Rais.

Wahid's hold on power in doubt

Financial Times - March 1, 2001

Rohit Jaggi and Tom McCawley, Jakarta -- Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid's hold on power grew increasingly tenuous on Thursday after his vice-president broke her silence to stress that she did not support him.

Mr Wahid's predicament was highlighted by Fahmi Idris, parliamentary chairman of Golkar, the second-largest party, who said: "The clear solution to this nation's problems is that Gus Dur [Mr Wahid's nickname] had better quit."

Mr Wahid is under pressure to resign after parliament last month issued him with a formal warning over his alleged involvement in two financial scandals. If Mr Wahid fails to give a satisfactory response to parliament, a special session of the country's highest legislative body could be called to oust him and install his deputy in his place.

"In August the special session will happen," Mr Fahmi said on Thursday.

Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri emphasised to a Muslim organisation this week that she had been co-operating with Mr Wahid only because of her position as vice-president, and that she did not support him. Her statement was echoed by Akbar Tandjung, chairman of Golkar.

Mrs Megawati "is being more forceful", Arifin Panigoro, vice- chairman of her party, the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P), said on Thursday. "Before she only disclosed [her lack of support for Mr Wahid] to her closest allies. But now she is more open. She is ready to become president."

The comments by Mrs Megawati and Mr Tandjung followed a claim in Cairo by Mr Wahid, who is on a 15-day trip to Africa and the Middle East, that they supported him. Mr Tandjung warned on Thursday that "Mr Wahid's position may be in jeopardy if he stays overseas".

The president has faced sharp criticism for refusing to return to Indonesia despite the eruption of an ethnic conflict in Kalimantan that has claimed more than 400 lives. Mr Arifin said his absence "is outrageous. It's unbelievable".

The PDI-P, the largest party in parliament, is working with the other main factions, including Golkar, on how to form a formal coalition to support Mrs Megawati's presidency.

Mr Arifin said the vice-presidency could be offered to the military, which "very strongly supports her", or be left vacant until the next election in 2004 to avoid diluting the presidency.

Protesters raised the temperature in Jakarta on Thursday with a demonstration calling for Mr Wahid to resign. Police scuffled with students outside the state palace.

Mr Wahid has denied any part in financial scandals and has refused to step down.

Wahid's survival plan may be too late to save him

South China Morning Post - March 3, 2001

Vaudine England, Jakarta -- Anger is growing over the continued absence of President Abdurrahman Wahid at a time of ethnic slaughter on the island of Borneo and alleged corruption charges against him.

But government sources say the beleaguered leader's decision to stay in the Middle East and go on the haj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca is a key part of his political survival campaign.

"It is speculation but I hope Mr Wahid will say he's done some soul-searching and that God whispered in his ear to make some changes," a cabinet source said.

Mr Wahid faces growing pressure to resign or face impeachment over the graft allegations, and his apparent lack of concern for the brutal deaths of hundreds of Madurese migrants in central Kalimantan in the past two weeks has only added to the indignation. Mr Wahid says he has the right to rule and cannot be toppled by an angry Parliament.

But sources close to him admit he knows he needs to offer some concessions to Parliament to stay in office. He has a survival plan, they say.

"He is playing to buy time. The closer he lasts until [the next scheduled elections in] 2004, the more people will realise they may as well wait," said the cabinet source.

Among the damage control mechanisms Mr Wahid hopes to use will be an attempted cabinet reshuffle and a new version of the old idea of sharing power with Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, perhaps through a council of ministers.

The source said Mr Wahid plans to appoint a candidate offered by Parliament to fill the vacant post of chief justice of the supreme court, namely Bagir Manan. He has fought against Parliament's chosen candidates for the job, including Mr Manan, for four months. "It's an unnecessary delay, but the appointment will help blunt opposition to him in Parliament a little bit," he said.

"He also wants to meet Laksamana Sukardi," another cabinet member said. Mr Sukardi was a minister in Mr Wahid's first cabinet but was sacked when the President found his stand against compromise with corrupt conglomerates to be inconvenient.

Sources outside Mr Wahid's Government say even these damage control efforts will not save him. Mr Sukardi is a loyal lieutenant to Ms Megawati, and would not respond to any peace offering from Mr Wahid, claimed one of his friends.

Mr Wahid's chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is also beginning to distance himself from the President amid continuing rumours of his desire to resign.

Ms Megawati is unlikely to accept a newly drawn version of power sharing given her frustration with unfulfilled promises from Mr Wahid. This week, she told members of the Muhammadiyah, a Muslim organisation in competition with Mr Wahid's Nahdlatul Ulama, that she supported only the office of the President, not the President himself.

The armed forces are also making their views plain. They already refused a request from the President last month to dissolve Parliament when it was about to start impeachment proceedings. Now its leaders say only it can help restore order.

Major factions oppose questioning over Bulog scandal

Jakarta Post - February 28, 2001

Jakarta -- Five major factions at the House of Representatives will recommend that faction members, who were on a special committee investigating two financial scandals allegedly linked to President Abdurrahman Wahid, defy summonses for questioning.

Legislator Hamdan Zoelva said after the factions' closed-door meeting here on Tuesday that the Attorney General's Office had no right to summons 50 members of the House committee because the investigation was done on behalf of the House and it was therefore the legislative body as an institution that ruled that the President was implicated in the scams.

"The 50 legislators cannot testify because no suspects were declared in the House's report. The Attorney General's Office could only learn the committee's investigation result in its investigation into the two financial scandals," Hamdan said.

The factions represent the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), the Golkar Party, the Crescent Star Party (PBB), the United Development Party (PPP) and a coalition of National Mandate Party (PAN) and several tiny Muslim-based parties.

Separately, House Speaker Akbar Tandjung said the Attorney General's Office had no adequate reason to summons the former special committee members because besides being illogical, the House provided only a report on the two scandals to be followed up in accordance with the law.

The joint statement issued by the major factions came after Attorney General Marzuki Darusman said on Monday that resistance displayed by the legislators against the planned questioning was baseless.

Marzuki said on Monday the questioning was a prerequisite for a legal proceeding, and insisted that the legislators meet his office's summons because their testimony was necessary in order to complete the investigation into the cases. "We need to take their clarifications over their inquiry report as the ones who filed complaints," he said.

Abdurrahman gave consent last week to the state prosecutors to summons the legislators.

The House alleged that the President played a role in the scams after its four-month inquiry into the fraudulent withdrawal of Rp 35 billion belonging to State Logistics Agency (Bulog) employee foundation and of US$2 million in humanitarian aid he accepted from the Brunei sultan.

The inquiry result provided the House with a basis to censure the President and to recommend that a legal process follow its report. The cases are currently being tackled by the Attorney General's Office and the National Police.

Marzuki said his office did not plan to summons the House members in the immediate future, but said they would be the first to undergo questioning. "We will summon the former special committee members only if necessary, so just take it easy. Please don't be preoccupied with this or anxious," he said, adding that no suspect had been named in the case.

The state prosecutors questioned on Tuesday Teti Nursetiati, the wife of the main defendant in the Bulog scandal, Muhammad Alip Agung Suwondo, as a witness.

Teti told journalists that she went to the office to also clarify her husband's position in the case. "Media reports on the case have zeroed in on my family, so now I want to clear everything before the prosecutors," she said.

Her lawyer, Denny Azani B. Latief, said he would ask the prosecutors to question the House legislators. "If the state prosecutors have not yet questioned those who filed the case, then the case should be considered nonexistent," he said.

Motherly figure survives to fight ultimate battle

South China Morning Post - February 26, 2001

Vaudine England -- Megawati Sukarnoputri's father founded independent Indonesia and was its first president until deposed in 1966. Her constituency relies on her emotional allure to the masses and her family name.

But though the masses may love her, Ms Megawati secures low regard from intellectuals. They do not count on her to solve the country's problems because, they say, she lacks vision or is too much the housewife. Student groups blocked her recent visit to Central Java, aligning her with other elite politicians.

Analysts agree the only reason President Abdurrahman Wahid still has his job is that few believe Ms Megawati could do better.

In a world of tawdry and corrupt power plays, it is Ms Megawati's distant poise and motherly style that attract. In a speech in Singapore last week, she displayed more concern about the state of the nation than ever, saying the country had not been in worse strife since its foundation.

In her elusive way, Ms Megawati is edging ever closer to the presidency.

She travels every week, usually within her country, opening care centres or companies, waving enigmatically at adoring crowds. And all the time she refuses to reach out and snatch Mr Wahid's job.

This is to be expected. Indeed, it is the key to her appeal. This woman has survived decades of political intrigue with a reputation for honesty and courage. Even her enemies admit she is not corrupt. Unfortunately, even her friends roll their eyes about her husband, Taufik Kiemas, labelled "Mr Bhutto" for his dubious business style.

Ms Megawati was born into a world of privilege on January 23, 1947. Her mother, Fatmawati, left with eldest son Guntur, in umbrage at Sukarno taking a second (and later a third, fourth and fifth) wife, leaving Megawati and her three younger siblings with their father.

After dropping out of agricultural science classes when her father was deposed in 1966-67, Ms Megawati married an air force lieutenant, Surindro Supjarso, had one miscarriage and bore two children. Her father died in June 1970. Seven months later, her husband died in a plane crash.

A year later, she developed an attraction for an Eqyptian diplomat, Hassan Gamal Ahmad Hassan. Under family pressure to break off the relationship, Ms Megawati instead eloped with him to Sukabumi. That "marriage" lasted about 90 minutes, and was annulled a fortnight later.

In 1973, Ms Megawati married Mr Taufik, then an activist, now a powerful businessman. She concentrated on raising her children -- until 1986 when the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) made her a candidate.

Suharto's interference in the PDI gave Ms Megawati the chance to take the chairmanship in 1993, a brave move given the dangers of free expression in those days. Her hastily compiled political statement focused on the "little people" disadvantaged amid Indonesia's fast growth.

Even then she had to battle criticisms of her elusive political style. "Silence does not mean not thinking," she said in November 1993. Her mute depiction of victimhood during years of harassment by Suharto's political machine became a potent opposition symbol. Now her advisers are suggesting she speak out more. After all, once again the presidency is within her reach.

Government/politics

Clash over book scandal

Jakarta Post - February 26, 2001

Makassar -- A skirmish erupted between student demonstrators and members of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Banser civilian guards at the Makassar Islamic University compound on Saturday.

The incident took place during a local launching of a book titled Menegakkan Kebenaran (Uphold the Truth) published by the National Awakening Party (PKB) to establish President Abdurrahman Wahid's innocence in the Bulog and Brunei scandals.

The book launching was held at the Nahdlatul Ulama hall in the university compound about 11 a.m. local time.

About 50 students, grouped in the Front Mahasiswa Pondokan Tamalanrea protested the event, describing the book as "a tool to cover up Gus Dur's mistakes" and urged the President to resign.

About two hours later some 100 Banser members entered the campus on Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan and pushed away the protesting students.

The students fled the scene but came back shortly after in larger numbers, making a clash inevitable. Riot police, however, quickly dispersed the two warring camps by firing warning shots into the air.

Two students, Anwar and Alam, were injured in the fray and later detained by police along with two others named Sahid and Wahyudin.

The book launching and discussion had to be briefly suspended but was continued later in the afternoon.

Abdurrachim Assegaf, PKB chairman in Makassar, brushed off the incident, saying minor clashes are "considered normal due to the fact that the two groups are emotionally involved and they are in the process of learning democracy."

Regional conflicts

Sampit riot plotters arrested: Police chief

Jakarta Post - March 4, 2001

Jakarta -- National Police chief Gen. Surojo Bimantoro said on Saturday that police had arrested 158 people in connection with the killings of Madurese settlers, including the three people who allegedly provoked the riots.

Surojo did not identify the suspects but said the three had been transferred to the National Police Headquarters for further questioning.

"We suspect the three were the provocateurs. They allegedly gave Rp 20 million to certain people to perpetrate the violence," he told reporters in Surabaya, the capital of East Java province.Surojo was meeting with elderly figures from Madura.

The media would be allowed to interview the suspects after the police have completed their questioning scheduled for Tuesday.

At least 469 people have been killed in the 13 days of unrest in the town of Sampit in East Kotawaringin regency, Central Kalimantan.

Surojo also said that police had yet to come up with other motives for the killings and lootings except that it was purely a communal conflict and not based on religion. "But our officers on the ground are continuing the investigation," he added.

Separately, a Madurese senior figure, Mohammad Noer, aired his concerns over refugee evacuations from Sampit to East Java, saying the steps will not solve the problem and will only justify the belief that the Madurese migrants had no right to live in the island.

"We want the evacuations to be stopped. The local government can shelter the refugees in safe places, and in the meantime try to solve the problem," said Mohammad who was a former East Java governor.

`I just stabbed and slashed and cut off their heads'

Straits Times - March 3, 2001

Palangkaraya -- "I felt so strong; so powerful." These are the words of a 21-year-old Dayak as he narrated his experience in chopping off the heads of his Madurese victims last week amid the bloody ethnic violence in Kalimantan.

In the courtyard of a village headman's house, a dozen Dayak headhunters sat smoking pungent clove cigarettes on Thursday, revelling in mass murder and plotting more, The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday.

"For seven days, I didn't sleep or eat. In the first fight, the Madurese threw bombs at us, but none of us was hurt. Then we attacked. I just stabbed and slashed and cut off their heads. I don't know how many I killed, but it was at least 10."

The wild man of Borneo is alive and flourishing in the 21st century.

If the minority Madurese refuse to leave their homes, they will be decapitated, the headhunters insist. But to foreigners, the killers display a timid charm. "Would you like to come along?" they asked. All but two of the group were new recruits.

Another Dayak, who asked not to be named, had returned recently from fighting in Sampit, where an estimated 400 migrants from the distant island of Madura were slaughtered last week. Most were beheaded.

The uninitiated listened intently, their brows wrapped with red headbands symbolising courage, as the young man recounted his killing spree.

He did not follow the ancient Dayak custom and bring home any of his victims' heads as souvenirs, but some of his brethren did, and buried them with their ancestors" bones to act as their servants in the afterlife. "Some acted like this, but for me the heads are a bit heavy," he said.

The young warrior, who comes from a remote settlement, only travelled to support other Dayaks when he saw on television that they were under threat in Sampit.

For the next proposed attack on a small village, two hours downriver, a shaman with special skills will be required as the 50 Madurese there have two guns, said the village headman. "Our fighters will need a spell to make them immune to bullets," Tiel Jelau, the 73-year-old chieftain said.

Resented Chinese driven out of Sumatran town

South China Morning Post - March 1, 2001

Jake Lloyd-Smith, Batam/Vaudine England, Jakarta -- Shirley Lau says she fled her home in fear of her life, clutching just a handful of possessions.

Her family joined hundreds of other ethnic Chinese aboard a flotilla of boats to escape the near total destruction of Selatpanjang, an island town southwest of Singapore. The two-day riot, which broke out early in the week, reduced most the settlement to a mass of smoking ruins.

"When we left there weren't any soldiers. We heard afterwards that they had come. We packed just enough for the kids," she said yesterday, sitting in Maha Vihara Duta Maitreya, a Buddhist monastery on Batam island. "I am scared," said Ms Lau. "But where else can we go? It was our village."

Amid the bloodbath on Borneo, the fate of the Riau province town went almost unnoticed. But the episode, which may have spawned a 5,000-strong wave of refugees, underlines the fear and vulnerability of Indonesia's minority Chinese population.

Resented by jealous locals for their industriousness and relative wealth, Chinese are often targeted as scapegoats by politicians or the military.

A trigger for the carnage is hard to pin down and accounts of the violence differ widely. Refugee and local reports say the spark may have been a dispute between gambling syndicates.

Representatives of the Batam branch of the Indonesian Chinese Social Association offer a darker theory, saying the violence was a co-ordinated bid to terrorise ethnic Chinese. The say agents provocateurs may have been acting for players on the national political stage, with Selatpanjang simply a sideshow in the drama swirling around President Abdurrahman Wahid.

Whatever the truth, it is clear that security forces could have moved to restore order more promptly, although police themselves were the target of much of the mob's fury.

Yohannes, head of the Batam chapter of Chinese association, said: "The mob burnt down the police station and a police dormitory, hundreds of shop-houses, and at least four schools."

Reports said that on Sunday a group of locals confronted Johan, an alleged ethnic Chinese gambling lord who was said to enjoy police protection. In the stand-off that followed, police panicked and shot and injured at least three people, which set off the rampage. Observers add that systematic looting occurred before much of the town was torched.

As the violence intensified, the mainly Chinese refugees took to boats and headed for the Sumatran mainland, or Batam and other islands in the Straits.

Most of those fleeing were women, children and the elderly, with one group of 84 crammed into a cargo vessel, a local press report said. Up to 2,000 people had arrived in Batam by midweek. Those who had nowhere to go -- like Ms Lau and her family -- were installed in the monastery, with food and provisions arranged by local volunteers.

Is the problem as simple as gambling, then? "No, it's more complex," Mr Johannes said. "Gambling is just the scapegoat."

Borneo backwater's clashes draw little notice

New York Times - February 28, 2001

Calvin Sims - Jakarta -- The ethnic violence that erupted 10 days ago in the Indonesian section of Borneo, where hundreds of people have been decapitated and thousands more left destitute, might seem a likely candidate for a major deployment of government troops or international peacekeepers.

But this part of Borneo, a backwater region of lush jungles and indigenous tribes, carries little clout in Indonesia, a country so plagued by religious, ethnic and separatist conflicts that the government has come to prioritize its many crises based on their political and economic worth.

Human rights groups estimate that between 3,000 and 4,000 people died in separatist, religious and ethnic violence last year in Indonesia and that more than one million people are now homeless because of those conflicts and natural disasters.

In the province of Aceh, for example, where there are daily gun battles between security forces and guerrilla separatists, rights activists said that at least 200 people are killed each month, despite a cease-fire agreement.

But the government placed a higher priority on resolving conflicts in provinces like Aceh and Irian Jaya, which are rich in natural resources.

While there were widespread reports that the conflict in the Kalimantan section of Borneo was out of control, it took the central government a week before it sent additional troops there, and once they arrived, most did little to stop the violence.

Behind the government's lethargy was a strong feeling that the ethnic clashes in Borneo were longstanding and not of its making. Kalimantan has been the scene of recurring ethnic violence in recent years. At least 3,000 people are believed to have died in 1997 clashes in the Sambas district of West Kalimantan that also pitted Madurese migrants against local Dayaks.

Last year, similar fighting claimed dozens of lives in Central Kalimantan in December and in the West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak in October.

So far, there has been little or no reaction by foreign governments to the killing of at least 300 people, mainly Madurese settlers.

Although there were no new reports of killings today, the police in Central Kalimantan Province said they had discovered about 100 new bodies, many headless, which could push the death toll to more than 400. Caravans of machete-wielding Dayaks were still searching villages for fleeing Madurese and burning their abandoned houses and businesses, the police said.

Human rights activists and opposition politicians have sharply criticized President Abdurrahman Wahid, who departed on a two- week overseas trip as the conflict unfolded, and the Indonesian military and police, which witnesses said stood by and watched as Dayak mobs unleashed a campaign of terror against their longtime rivals, the Madurese.

Rejecting calls for him to return to Indonesia and take charge of the crisis, President Wahid, who was traveling in Egypt, said reports of the violence were greatly exaggerated, despite widely televised scenes of headless bodies in the streets of Kalimantan and widespread burning and looting.

Mr. Wahid, a Muslim cleric, said that government security officials had assured him the worst was now over in Borneo and that he would continue his tour of the Middle East and North Africa, which is scheduled to conclude with a pilgrimage to Mecca on March 7.

"How can we expect the international community to care about the tragedy in Borneo when our own national leader would rather go sightseeing than stop this bloodshed," said Munir, director of the Committee on Missing Persons and Victims of Violence, a human rights group known as Kontras. "The two warring parties, the Dayaks and Madurese, don't matter to most Indonesians because they have nothing that would benefit anyone politically," said Mr. Munir, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

The political opposition and the Indonesian military are seen as using the situation in Borneo to their advantage.

While far more ghastly than many other conflicts currently in Indonesia, the ethnic fighting in Kalimantan seemed to cause little concern at first, mainly because there had been similar outbreaks of violence in Borneo in recent years and the number of fatalities was initially low.

But when Mr. Wahid announced that he would embark on his overseas tour, despite the rising death toll in Borneo, the political opposition seized the moment and publicly denounced the trip, focusing unprecedented attention on Borneo. Opposition leaders have vowed to impeach Mr. Wahid, who was censured by Parliament last month over corruption charges.

Ikrar Nussa Bhakti, a political scientist for the National Institute of Sciences, said that the Kalimantan violence was "tailor made" for the opposition leaders and that Mr. Wahid played right into their hand.

"Borneo was a completely preventable and solvable conflict, but there was simply no political will by anyone, the government, the military, or the participants, to resolve it," Mr. Bhakti said.

The military has become disillusioned by the government's highly publicized plans to prosecute soldiers for past human rights abuses.

Increasingly, Indonesia's armed forces are allowing ethnic, religious, and separatist conflicts to escalate as a way of justifying their return to power.

"When people think of Borneo, they envision primitive people running around chopping off each other's heads, and there's a disconnect," said an official of a prominent nongovernmental agency operating in Indonesia. "The world is viewing this as the war of the headhunters, and people are not requiring the same level accountability that they would if this were taking place in a more developed land."

The ethnic conflict dates back half a century to the government of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, who instituted a program of transmigration to relieve overcrowding in the country's most populated provinces. Settlers from densely populated islands like Java, Bali, Lombok and Madura were offered incentives to relocate to empty, largely undeveloped provinces in West Papua, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Kalimantan. Thousands of Madurese moved to Kalimantan, where they gained control of local markets, transport and government jobs.

Deep cultural differences between the Madurese and native Dayaks, who resented the economic success of their new neighbors, led to frequent clashes. Both groups are known to be fierce fighters, although the Dayaks are perhaps more feared because of their ancient tradition of headhunting.

Exactly what set off the latest round of violence on February 18 remains unclear.

The police have detained three suspects who they said incited the violence because they were angry at being passed over for lucrative administrative jobs in a provincial restructuring. The police said the suspects, who they identified only by their initials, paid six local men about $2,000 to provoke the clashes in an effort to retain their civil service jobs.

But some political analysts and foreign diplomats said there was a strong likelihood that other parties had a hand in fanning the flames. The clashes began shortly after prosecutors announced that former President Suharto's daughter was a suspect in a major corruption case. Moreover, the fighting started only days before Mr. Suharto himself was scheduled to undergo a medical test to determine if he was medically fit to stand trial on corruption charges.

Government prosecutors have accused Mr. Suharto, his family and friends of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the country during his administration. But efforts to bring the Suharto clan to justice in recent years have resulted in incidents of violence and public disorder, underscoring the difficulty of this impoverished country to forge a democracy.

Security officials said last night that the conflict, while not over, had begun to subside, mainly because no more Madurese are available for the Dayaks to hunt. The police estimate that about 20,000 Madurese have taken refuge in government buildings and jungle areas, while another 6,000 are being evacuated by Navy ships. But the exact death toll will not be known for some time and could reach as many as 500 people, the officials said.

Police and soldiers exchange fire in Kalimantan

South China Morning Post - February 28, 2001

Agencies in Sampit, Palangkaraya and Jakarta -- Security forces called in to quell ethnic violence on Borneo instead turned their guns on each other yesterday while thousands of desperate refugees scrambled to board ships taking them to safety.

The news came as police revealed that more than 100 Madurese settlers massacred and beheaded by Dayak tribesmen in Borneo late on Sunday were refugees seeking safety in a police-protected convoy.

Some 600 "crazed" Dayak tribesmen armed with spears and axes attacked the convoy of 300 refugees in Parenggean town, overwhelming up to 15 police escorts, said national police spokesman Dede Widayadi.

"The Dayaks were crazed, running amok. It was total panic. The police were outnumbered, so they fled to Sampit to get help."

The police were escorting the Madurese from remote settlements around Parenggean to Sampit, four hours away, so they could be evacuated by ship.

Mr Widayadi earlier described the Dayak attackers as "hysterical, in a kind of trance."

Almost 200 of the frantic refugees managed to flee with the police, but the others were cut off, he said. The deaths brought the official toll to 421, although residents say thousands have probably been killed.

There were sporadic exchanges of gunfire between soldiers and police officers yesterday morning in the crowded port area of Sampit, said Wahwudi Anwar, the mayor of the town in central Kalimantan province.

One refugee was killed in the crossfire and at least 10 policemen and soldiers were injured, hospital officials said.

The reason for the skirmishes was not immediately clear. However, in the chaos of the evacuation, many refugees have complained that troops and police demanded payment for allowing people to board the vessels.

Despite the gunfire, a passenger ferry capable of carrying 5,000 people left for the port of Surabaya on Indonesia's main island of Java. Plans for a second sailing were abandoned because of the shooting, officials said. Thousands of refugees have so far made it to Surabaya.

In Palangkaraya, the provincial capital, armed Dayak youths continued their campaign of terror, burning houses abandoned by the Madurese and vandalising others as police looked on. A Dayak man leading one attack said they were determined to rid Borneo of all Madurese by force. "If the provincial Government doesn't support our campaign by expelling Madurese peacefully, we will drive them out of the entire Kalimantan [Borneo] by force in three months," he said.

Police in the city said they had begun disarming Dayaks. A spokesman said hundreds of swords and machetes had been confiscated since Monday night.

Dayaks have declared victory after a 10-day campaign to drive the Madurese migrants from the region. In Sampit, those claims rang true.

Tens of thousands of terrified Madurese have abandoned their possessions and fled. In several towns and villages, the only Madurese remaining have taken shelter near police stations, waiting to be evacuated.

As police and soldiers guarded an overcrowded refugee camp in Sampit, Dayaks armed with spears stood by. Dr Kamaruddin Sukhami, a health official in Sampit, said about 13,000 people were being relocated from hiding places in nearby jungles to the town's makeshift refugee camp. About 30,000 others were already in the camp.

Earlier in the day, scuffles broke out between people frantically trying to board trucks bound for the port area.

Police fired warning shots and beat the refugees to restore order. "I am desperate to leave but there are no places on the ship," said Mis Nari, who has been at the camp with her five children for 10 days. Others were begging for food and medicine from reporters.

Chief Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Vice- President Megawati Sukarnoputri would soon go to southern Borneo. President Abdurrahman Wahid is on a two-week visit to Africa and the Middle East and is due back next Tuesday.

Mr Wahid said he would continue his tour. "My visit abroad shows that everything is fine in the country," he told state news agency, Antara. He said the death toll in Borneo was exaggerated.

He has been criticised by lawmakers and the media for pressing on with his travels. "If he was a wise president, he wouldn't have left the country at all," said legislator Tjandra Wijaya.

[On February 28 the Jakarta Post reported the Coordinating Minister for Political, Social and Security Affairs, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, as saying that more than half of the National Police (Polri) and Indonesian Military (TNI) personnel are being deployed in conflict areas. The police have around 200,000 personnel while TNI has around 300,000 people - James Balowski.]

Madurese tells of grisly Borneo massacres

Agence France-Presse - February 26, 2001 (slightly abridged)

Surabaya -- Masudi Muali said he ran as fast as he could after seeing many of his friends beheaded by indigeneous Dayak tribesmen outside his college in Sampit on the Indonesian part of Borneo island.

"I jumped into a river as they threw spears at me. I'm thankful to be alive," said the weary-looking Muali, 27.

Muali said he and 26 of his friends were dragged out of Sampit's Miftahul Ulum Islamic boarding school by the Dayaks, who were armed with traditional mandau swords and spears, and told to stand in line.

"They told us that if we didn't resist we wouldn't be killed," he said, speaking in Tanjung Perak port in the East Java city of Surabaya after disembarking from a refugee-packed ferry evacuating him him from Sampit.

But a few metres from the school, the Dayaks hacked his schoolmates to death one by one, and chopped their heads off, he said. "Some of us managed to slip through their fingers and run off. I don't know if they were caught again," he said.

Muali is one of thousands of refugees who fled the savage attacks on settlers from Madura island by gangs of Dayaks in Sampit, a small industrial city in Central Kalimantan province. A seven- year-old boy, who arrived in Surabaya with his mother, had fingers cut off both hands by the Dayaks.

Thousands of Madurese settlers are still sheltered at government offices in Sampit, scared and hungry, their numbers swollen by more than 10,000 new arrivals Monday as people filtered out of the jungles where they had been hiding.

When the first refugee-crammed navy landing craft arrived in Surabaya on Sunday, reporters there said many were crying "water, please give us water," from the decks.

Officials said 270 people have been confirmed killed in the massacres in and around Sampit, which involved decapitations and instances of cannibalism, according to local reporters.

Locals scoff at the official total, saying no one had yet counted the decomposing beheaded corpses in the streets of Sampit and the surrounding villages.

The Sampit violence has spread to nearby areas, including the provincial capital of Palangkaraya, 220 kilometres northeast, where armed Dayaks rampaged unchecked Monday.

In Palangkaraya though most Madurese had already fled, and the Dayaks, armed with swords and axes, looted, burned and vandalized houses and shops abandoned by their occupants. They have vowed to rid the province of the Madurese.

Troops fly in to stop headhunters

Sydney Morning Herald - February 27, 2001

Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta -- Indonesia is rushing hundreds of special force troops to its Borneo province in an attempt to end the slaughter of migrant settlers by mobs of headhunting Dayaks who on Sunday expanded the areas they control.

Officials fear that attacks on Madurese settlers are about to spread from the central Kalimantan town of Sampit, the scene of gruesome killings over the past week, to outlying towns and villages.

As two Hercules planes flew in 650 Strategic Command (Kostrad) troops, mobs of headhunters set off into the jungle on Sunday in search of migrants who had fled the carnage.

Mobs also took charge of the streets of the provincial capital, Palangkaraya, setting fire to some of the homes and businesses of Madurese who had fled.

The chief security minister, Mr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said that while Sampit was now under control, "there are indications that the problem may spread to more remote places which are difficult to reach ... because of that we will deploy an additional battalion to strengthen the situation there".

The Kostrad battalion will back up another 2,000 non-resident police who have been sent to the province.

Observers are describing attacks on Madurese by the majority Dayaks that started seven days ago as an attempt to force tens of thousands of them from the island despite them having lived and worked there for decades.

A Dayak leader, Mr Tahunjung Aji, denied reports that yesterday was the deadline for the Madurese to leave. "We understand that it takes time to leave the area," he said. "The most important thing to us is for them to leave central Kalimantan as soon as possible."

A Madurese leader, Mr Marlinggih Kaka, said about 1,000 of his people had been killed, and accused police of taking sides with the Dayaks. After arriving on a navy ship in Surabaya with other evacuees from Sampit, Mr Kaka said: "They allowed the Dayaks to carry all their weapons and did nothing to stop them attacking our neighbourhood. But they searched and seized our weapons."

With their faces painted to depict traditional warriors, Dayak men have mutilated almost all of their victims, including children. Some of the heads were paraded around Sampit on sticks.

The inability of Indonesia's security forces based in Kalimantan to quell the violence underscores Indonesia's disarray during its transition from autocratic rule to democracy.

Observers say underpaid police and soldiers have been reluctant to put themselves between fighting groups and have confined themselves to guarding refugees at makeshift camps.

Some unconfirmed reports claim the Dayaks' hatred of Madurese has been exploited to provoke the violence as part of an attempt to topple President Abdurrahman Wahid, who has refused to cancel a 15-day tour of Africa and the Middle East to return home to oversee the crisis.

Mr Hidayat Nur Wahid, the leader of the small Justice Party, said Indonesia was facing a time bomb, and called on Mr Wahid to return home immediately.

Witnesses on Sunday reported seeing the bodies of several more victims on roads between the provincial capital, Palangkaraya, and Sampit, a four-hour drive away. One victim's heart had been ripped out.

Gangs of Dayaks wielding swords and knives were seen riding around Palangkaraya hunting Madurese. Police and soldiers stood by and watched as the homes of some of the Madurese were looted and trashed.

About 9,000 Madurese have been evacuated by navy ships from Sampit while another 20,000 remain in government compounds awaiting transport to other parts of Indonesia.

Head-hunting revival a gruesome legacy of Soeharto's failed experiment

Sydney Morning Herald - February 26, 2001

Louise Williams -- At the turn of the century a convention of tribal head hunters gathered beneath the towering canopy of the rainforests of Borneo and reluctantly agreed to end their practice of resolving territorial disputes by snatching each others heads.

For as long as anyone could remember the competing tribes had maintained "head houses" beside the communal long houses where families lived side by side. There they displayed the trophies of their forest skirmishes, the evidence of the strength of their young men in wars fought with poison darts and arrows in jungles so dense the Dutch colonial rulers of the time had failed to effectively govern.

The head hunters descendants, called Dayaks by the Indonesian Government which now controls much of the island of Borneo, still retain the terms in their local languages for the severing of heads.

"It means that if you can bring back a head then you are a strong man, that you can still disperse the enemy from the village," said Bangun, a tribal chief from the remote district of Kelam, deep in the interior.

"The young men had to look for a head -- a man, a woman or a child -- because after you took it the spirit of that person came to you and gave you courage," said a local Catholic priest.

Dutch colonial records show that head hunting continued, despite the treaty, until the 1930s, and then disappeared altogether as missionaries persuaded the tribes to embrace Catholicism.

But, this weekend the pile of corpses stacked behind the hospital in Sampit, in central Kalimantan, and the bodies strewn through the streets told another story. The practice of head hunting has been well and truly revived in this latest gruesome outbreak of ethnic violence sweeping the province.

The story of Kalimantan is part of the tragic story of modern Indonesia, which is being played out in violent clashes across the archipelago and is arguably one consequence of a massive social engineering policy of the former Soeharto regime.

The Dayaks are the indigenous people of these sparsely populated tropical jungles. Traditionally they live in communal long houses with each family allotted the same amount of space and decisions being made democratically within the community. Visitors to a long house must always leave their weapons outside to ensure harmony.

The Dayaks survived as shifting cultivators, carefully moving in a large circle through the jungle in a 10-year pattern which allowed the rainforests to regenerate and protected the delicate soil from erosion. But in the 1950s the Indonesian Government began to ship in Muslim Madurese from the hot, dry island of Madura, off eastern Java, to begin building the roads which would open up the rainforests. Huge logging operations followed which have devastated the environment, caused massive soil erosion and displaced the tribespeople.

The Soeharto government, which came to power in the mid 1960s, adopted a policy of "dragging the Dayaks out of the stone age", ending shifting cultivations and taking control of the land. The Dayaks believed the land belonged to all, and most importantly that the spirits lived within the rainforest.

But, as the Soeharto administration saw it, the resource-rich tracts of Borneo forest were a bonanza for logging companies linked to the ruling political elite. Beyond that planners saw the potential to ease population pressure on the main island of Java by moving millions of people under a program known as transmigration. Since 1950, nine million people have been moved under the transmigration program, and with their descendants make up 8 per cent of Indonesia's population.

In Kalimantan, as in other regions, the indigenous tribespeople were reduced to living in poverty on the edge of towns, their traditional lifestyle destroyed but their communities unable to compete in commerce or for government jobs with the Muslim migrants. In Kalimantan the Madurese controlled local markets and transport and animosity was compounded by deep differences in cultural practices between the animist and Catholic Dayaks and the staunchly Muslim Madurese. The current war is, says one Dayak priest, "a matter of culture".

"The Dayaks believe that an offence against an individual is an offence against the tribe and must be paid back. What I really worry about is that the Dayaks believe they must destroy everything of their enemy -- their people, their home and even their trees.

"For Dayaks, killing is something unusual, but if you insist on bringing your weapons into their homes you must be punished under their laws."

[Louise Williams is a former Herald Indonesia correspondent, and has travelled extensively in Kalimantan.]

Human rights/law

Indonesia human rights picture in tatters

Reuters - February 26, 2001

Sonya Hepinstallm, Washington -- The human rights picture in Indonesia has steadily deteriorated as Jakarta loses control over ethnic, social and religious strife in its most unstable provinces, the State Department said on Monday.

Despite the efforts of the government of President Abdurrahman Wahid to build on Indonesia's democratic transition of 1999 and expand basic freedoms, violence by security forces as well as by separatist groups and others in 2000 resulted in widespread human rights abuses, it said.

"The government was ineffective in deterring social, interethnic and interreligious violence that accounted for the majority of deaths by violence during the year," the department said in its annual human rights report.

That ineffectiveness could be a factor again in the latest ethnic violence in Borneo in which 400 people have already been killed, said Michael Parmly, acting assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.

"I think you'll see two phenomena ... that are most troubling, and I don't know to what extent one is seeing that in the events in Borneo over the past several days," Parmly said at a briefing on the report.

"One is impunity ... The other is simple weakening of control and of the elements of control by the central government over events like this. It's an absence of government more than a misbehaving of government," he said.

The killings in Borneo erupted over a week ago when indigenous Dayaks, once feared headhunters, began attacking immigrants from the island of Madura in some of the most savage bloodshed to hit the archipelago, racked by three years of violence.

Chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Jakarta would send extra troops and support a state of civil emergency in the state if local officials deemed it necessary.

Report is a bloody portrait of 2000

The State Department report, issued every year to assess human rights in aid recipients and UN member states, painted a violent picture of 2000.

"Security forces were responsible for numerous instances of, at times indiscriminate, shooting of civilians, torture, rape, beatings and other abuse, and arbitrary detention in Aceh, West Timor, Irian Jaya [also known as Papua or West Papua], the Moluccas, Sulawesi and elsewhere in the country," it said.

For example, East Timorese pro-integration militias in West Timor, armed and largely supported by the army, were responsible for many acts of violence in West Timor and in cross-border raids into East Timor, the report said.

However, the Jakarta government has not prosecuted anyone in connection with the militia-related crimes, it said.

East Timor's 800,000 residents voted overwhelmingly in August 1999 to break with Indonesia, which invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975 and subsequently annexed it.

At the same time, the report said most of the killings in 2000 were caused by citizens' attacks on other citizens.

In resource-rich Aceh, one of Indonesia's most rebellious provinces, dozens of low-level civil servants, police, and military personnel were murdered and abducted during the year, the report said.

"It generally is believed that separatists carried out many of these, and other, killings," it said.

The government enacted a series of human rights protections during the year, including an amendment to the 1945 constitution modeled on the UN

Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ratification of an International Labor Organization convention on the worst forms of child labor.

Enforcement of such laws, however, remained the greatest problem, the report said. It is available on the State Department's www.state.gov Web site.

News & issues

Anti-Communist Front set up

Jakarta Post - March 3, 2001

Bandung -- Around 100 West Java politicians and public figures at a ceremony at the Panghegar Hotel here on Friday signed up to the establishment of the West Java Anti-Communist Front in their efforts to curb what they called "the emergence of new Communism movements".

The front chairman, Ali Rohman said that the new Communist movements had been clearly seen in mass deployments allegedly instigated by political elites. Citing as an example the East Java huge mass rally which turned violent, Ali said that the now banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) had used similar tactics before its abortive coup in 1965.

According to Ali, the political uncertainty in this country might cause Communists to infiltrate and profit from the chaos.

Recommended US policy for Indonesia and Maluku crisis

Jakarta Post - February 26/27, 2001

[The following is excerpts from a report prepared for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom which held a hearing on the Maluku Islands on February 13 in Washington D.C. The report is by R. William Liddle, an expert on Indonesia of The Ohio State University in the United States.]

Washington D.C. -- Many of the problems that President Abdurrahman Wahid, or Gus Dur, faces are not of his making, and solutions are not readily available due to decades of authoritarian rule and other factors with deep roots in modern Indonesian, Dutch colonial, and even traditional Indonesian history.

Examples include: finding common ground with the many Acehnese and Irianese who for good historical reasons now totally reject membership in the Indonesian nation; decentralizing administrative authority to incompetent and venal regional officials; building a modern justice system after 50 years of government neglect of the police, lawyers, prosecutors, and judges; creating well-organized and accountable political parties; and asserting political control over an armed forces whose leaders have no professional control over their own junior officers or troops in the field.

Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri may replace Gus Dur within a few months, which makes it necessary to speculate about the prospects for her presidency.

In brief, I expect that she will attempt to be a strong president who will: (1) try to reverse governmental decentralization of authority to the regions; (2) deploy the military as her chief instrument of policy implementation toward separatist movements in Aceh, Irian Jaya, and elsewhere; (3) ignore local conflicts, such as in Maluku, which do not threaten national integrity; (4) have less respect for democratic institutions at home, and rely more on the military for political support; and (5) promote a more nationalistic foreign policy which may have negative consequences for economic reform.

Megawati is similar to Gus Dur in that she feels that she is entitled, by virtue of her parentage and her party's electoral success, to be president.

She is thus likely to be similarly impatient with the need, imposed by the 1945 Constitution, to build a parliamentary system-like coalition of supporting parties in the legislature and Assembly. Neglect of her legislative base combined with vulnerability to charges of corruption, also a Gus Dur problem, may make her hold on her office similarly tenuous.

High-level corruption will continue, but may be more motivated by the desire for personal gain among individual officials of her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) and those of the government who cannot be controlled by Megawati or a party hierarchy than by the organizational need to build a war chest for the 2004 election campaign.

While Nahdlatul Ulama (traditionalist Muslim organization) is preparing for 2004 by planning a vast and expensive cadre and patron-client leadership, leaders of PDI Perjuangan believe that their success will depend primarily on the effective projection of Megawati's personal image, which can be achieved more cheaply through both government-controlled and private broadcast media in an election-year campaign.

The red thread that will run through Megawati's policy differences with Gus Dur is a narrower, more conservative conception of the national interest and of the primary role of the central bureaucratic and military state apparatus in achieving that interest.

In 1999 she opposed then president B.J. Habibie's offer of a referendum to East Timor, asserting that the Indonesian national territory was indivisible. In recent statements, she has opposed financial demands by regional politicians that she deems excessive and contrary to the common national interest, and reiterated her commitment to keeping Aceh and Irian Jaya within the Republic at all costs.

She has shown little interest in Maluku, where separatism is not an issue, even though Gus Dur sent her there on three occasions to help negotiate peace. She has deplored the tendency of the Jakarta press to exaggerate and sensationalize conflict among elite politicians.

This suggests that she may have a less sanguine view of the role of the press in a democracy than does Gus Dur (although Gus Dur has also been critical of the press lately). She has publicly praised and defended the military, which she claims has a special historic role in national political life.

Finally, like Gus Dur, Megawati is largely ignorant of economics and shares in the elite culture's trust in the state and distrust of markets and of the intentions of foreign economic actors.

She is thus no more likely than Gus Dur to restart the growth process in a way that will eventually benefit most Indonesians and promote democratization.

But where Gus Dur is an instinctive pluralist, as is reflected in his attempt at opening a dialogue with Israel, Megawati is an instinctive monist whose foreign policy is likely to be built on suspicion of outsiders, particularly the capitalist West that was her father's bte noire from the beginning to the end of his political life.

What are the implications for the United States policy of Abdurrahman Wahid's present and Megawati Soekarnoputri's prospective presidencies? How should the US respond to the continuing crisis in Maluku? The US should more actively engage the present democratic regime than we did Soeharto's authoritarian New Order, when our policy was influenced largely by Cold War considerations and our appreciation for Soeharto's record of economic success.

Indonesia is an important country regionally (and potentially globally) whose new leaders are committed to achieving national unity, democracy, and shared prosperity, key characteristics of modern societies.

The obstacles to their success are enormous, and the opportunities for outsiders to make a difference are also greater than ever before.

With regard to separatist movements and other regional demands, we should support peaceful efforts by the Indonesian government to negotiate differences in regions such as Aceh and Irian Jaya.

We should also provide technical assistance to help the government create viable provincial and district/municipality governments. We should oppose military or police action -- currently being contemplated by the Abdurrahman, or Gus Dur, government and strongly supported within the Megawati camp -- which is almost certain to be counterproductive, increasing the hostility of the people of Aceh and Irian Jaya to Jakarta and to Indonesia.

We should work toward restoration of programs of assistance to the Indonesian armed forces to help them become a professional force whose basic mission is national defense.

While the police must eventually take over the responsibility for maintaining public order, the military will for many years still be called upon in emergency situations -- such as the current Maluku crisis -- and must be able to intervene as a neutral, unbiased force to restore order.

Our assistance should be predicated on a clear understanding that the armed forces have given up their pretension to being an autonomous political actor. Accordingly, the territorial system should be dismantled.

Implementation of this recommendation may be more difficult to achieve under a Megawati government, which may be less sensitive to the requirements of civilian supremacy than is Gus Dur.

We should support a massive program to rebuild the justice system, including assistance in training and developing police, lawyers, prosecutors, and judges to a high performance standard.

The new Indonesian democracy cannot succeed in meeting the basic needs of its citizens, and will probably not even be stable, if it is not undergirded with a modern system of justice.

Because the roots of the Indonesian legal system are in continental Europe, this should be a multi-national program. This recommendation may also be harder to implement under a Megawati government more protective of the privileges of the state over society.

We should support the development of a modern party system, responsive and accountable to citizen demands and as free as possible of corruption, which delegitimizes democracy.

The core institutions of modern democracy, parties are especially weak in Indonesia because of the legacy of four decades of anti- party authoritarian rule.

International non government organizations, like the US-based National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute and the German party foundations are probably best equipped to help in this area. We should continue to press the Indonesian government to adhere to its agreements with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other international creditors and donors and in general to keep the economy open domestically and internationally.

Market-oriented economic growth, with appropriate government intervention, produces prosperity, as has been amply proved by the East Asian, including Indonesian, experience of the last half-century.

It also creates the social and cultural basis for a stable and effective modern democracy. Unfortunately, Megawati and Gus Dur are probably equally reluctant supporters of free markets.

Strict enforcement of the rule of law by a neutral police and an impartial judiciary is the ideal resolution of the Maluku crisis, according to most outside observers. Unfortunately, this approach does not work in much of Indonesia, for reasons already discussed, and has been particularly problematic in Maluku since the initial outbreak of violence in January 1999.

Nonetheless, it needs to be stated at the outset, and in conjunction with the general recommendations above, that it is the goal toward which the Indonesian government and interested outside parties should be working.

In the short run, two approaches seem most promising. One is to keep US and international pressure on the Indonesian government to find and prosecute the militia leaders most responsible for the violence.

International human rights groups can help by identifying those leaders and documenting their actions. Sanctions against the Indonesian government for failing to take action can include continued embargoes on arms sales and isolation of the Indonesian military, accompanied by reminders that the long term goal is restoration of military-to-military assistance under the terms laid out in the general recommendations.

The second approach is to maximize the international presence in Maluku, as a means of keeping a spotlight on the militias and providing a continuing flow of information about their activities to the outside world. This can be accomplished by programs such as those currently being carried out by the UNDP and USAID, most of which provide humanitarian assistance or sponsor Christian- Muslim mediation activities.

When the need is for justice, mediation is not likely to be effective, but at least the participants are continuously made aware of the presence of foreigners. These programs also help to encourage the "moderate middle" leadership strata to take control of local society back from the militia.

Finally, while it is true that the Indonesian police and military have proved themselves completely incapable of restoring order in Maluku, an international peacekeeping force does not seem to be a feasible alternative.

There is too little backing outside Indonesia and too much hostility in the country to the idea. The domestic hostility has two sources: the extreme sensitivity concerning Christian-Muslim conflict at the center and in many regions of the country; and the 1999 traumatic experience with foreign troops in East Timor.

To quote the careful and balanced report of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, Indonesia: Overcoming Murder and Chaos in Maluku, published in December 2000, "Foreign military intervention in Maluku would be counter-productive, could easily lead to further destabilization in Indonesia, and should not be sought." The report also suggests offering foreign observers, however, and recommends maintaining and increasing sanctions on the Indonesian military and police.

Environment/health

Rich nations helped deforest Indonesia

Inter Press Service - February 22, 2001 (online February 26)

Danielle Knight, Washington DC -- Indonesian pulp and paper facilities, supported in the 1990s by financial institutions in Europe, Japan and North America, have caused widespread deforestation and human rights abuses, according to a new report released here.

Hundreds of thousands of hectares of Indonesia's remaining forests were clear-cut in order to feed the nations rapid expansion of pulp and paper production during the last decade, says a report released this month by Bioforum, an Indonesian environmental group, and Environmental Defense, based in New York.

Export credit lending agencies based in industrialized nations that backed these production facilities failed to require even minimal environmental standards, says Stephanie Fried, a scientist at Environmental Defense that co-authored the report.

Most of the internationally financed pulp and paper mills in Indonesia have been accompanied by destruction of local peoples' rights to land and livelihood and the armed suppression of dissent, she says.

"As a result, massive public protests occurred against the forced seizures and clear-cutting of community forests, against air pollution, and against the pollution of major waterways by paper and pulp mills and factories," she says.

The report is part of an international campaign by human rights and environmental organizations to get government-backed export credit agencies that are designed to promote investment overseas to develop social and ecological guidelines for project funding.

Most of these institutions do not have environmental and human rights standards and therefore end up competing with each other to fund destructive projects, which other institutions that have such guidelines will not touch, say activists.

The report describes the environmental impact of several large Indonesian pulp and paper manufacturing plants, such as one facility known as the Tanjung Enim Lestari pulp mill, or TEL, located in the Benakat region of the island of Sumatra.

TEL's sister company, Musi Hutan Persada, was designated to prepare massive pulp plantations to feed the mill. According to the report, however, in 1992 Persada began illegally logging, despite protests by local villagers.

"Inhabitants of Benakat were threatened by local authorities and security forces who insisted that they give up 1,250 hectares of their productive rubber gardens, upon which their livelihoods depended," says the report.

Local officials, according to the report that was partially based on testimony by villagers, threatened protesters with being accused of "hindering development" a charge of subversion that could lead to a prison sentence.

Despite outcries from the local community, in 1994 a $1.5 billion finance package was approved for the mill by Canadian, Finnish, German, Japanese, and Swedish export credit agencies. Three years later, an additional $ 1.3 billion finance package was approved for the mill by the same governments.

Last year, the authors of the report visited a village located on a portion of a river near the mill's wastewater disposal site. They said that adults and children who bathed in the river developed skin ulcers after TEL had started its operations.

Villagers "described the forced land seizures carried out by the company under military guard and the heavy-handed way in which the security forces had terrorized them when they had dared to voice their opinions," says the report. Another pulp mill in Sumatra, known as Indah Kiat consumes 200 square kilometers of old-growth tropical forest per year because its accompanying tree plantations are not yet mature, it says.

Over the past 12 years, Indah Kiat has deforested 278,000 hectares, an area the size of Luxembourg, according to a recent report by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), an organization based in Bogor, Indonesia that is part of the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research.

"It is clear that Indonesian pulp and paper producers have assumed a high degree of financial risk by developing large-scale processing facilities without first securing a legal and sustainable fibre supply," says Chris Barr, a researcher with CIFOR.

The Bioforum and Environmental Defense Report says the mill has been "embroiled" in conflicts pertaining to the sources of its timber for pulping and was fined $1.4 million for using illegal timber.

Indonesia's main environmental coalitions, WALHI, documented the mill polluting a river downstream, noting dead fish near the factory's waste outlet and complaints of skin rashes by local villagers.

The Indah Kiat mill, which is owned by the company Asia Pulp and Paper, was financed through a $500 million investment package supported by Canadian, Finnish, Swedish, and Spanish export finance institutions, according to the report.

German and US agencies also provided million-dollar loans and guarantees to the project under separate financial arrangements.

Export credit agencies "must begin to correct their shameful record of environmental and social negligence," says Bruce Rich, senior attorney with Environmental Defense.

He says wealthy countries have failed so far to adopt common environmental and social guidelines that are at least as rigorous as existing standards for other publicly-backed lending institutions, like the World Bank. "This is financial and environmental folly," he says.

Forest concession holders urged to foil forest fires

Jakarta Post - February 27, 2001

Jakarta -- A regulation has been issued specifically aimed at preventing forest fires by holding more parties, including forest concession holders, accountable for fires breaking out in their areas, even if they are not directly responsible the fires.

State Minister of the Environment Sonny Keraf said that with Government Regulation No. 4/2001, concession holders can no longer shirk responsibility when a fire occurs.

"It's been very difficult to ask for the concession holders to be accountable. With this regulation, hopefully it will get easier," Sonny said of the regulation, which was signed by President Abdurrahman Wahid on February 5.

"It stipulates that everyone is obliged to prevent any damage and or environmental pollution connected to forest or land fires," Sonny said.

Article 12 and Article 13 underline the "obligation" attached to preventing forest fires.

Article 13 specifically states that businesspeople whose ventures may effect or cause environmental damage through forest fires "must prevent" such fires from occurring. Article 14 requires such ventures to be well equipped in preventing forest fires, such as early warning systems, fire prevention equipment and establishing standard operating procedures to anticipate the event of a fire.

Owners of such ventures are also required to conduct regular monitoring and file regular reports every six months.

Article 21 stipulates that owners of the ventures also have the obligation of conducting restoration programs on the burned forest area.

Separately, the ministry's Director of Land, Forest and Watercourse Degradation Control Bambang Setyabudi said that it has been difficult to find evidence of certain parties' involvement in forest fires, including those of concession holders.

"Therefore, we will coordinate with experts and other departments in the use of technology," Bambang told The Jakarta Post recently.

The urgency of endorsing the new forest fire regulation has been pushed by many parties, including the International Monetary Fund, since the impact of major forest fires has transboundary effects, particularly in heightening pollution.

An international forest monitoring group, Forest Resources Assessment, has revealed that an estimated 1.2 million hectares of Indonesian forests were cleared annually between 1981 and 1990, accounting for 8 percent of the world's annual forest loss.

It further noted that during the major fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra in 1997 about two million hectares of forest went up in smoke.

According to Deputy Minister on Environmental Policy Development Daniel Murdiarso, calculations by several international institutions estimate that the 1997 forest fires resulted in US$8 billion to $10 billion in health costs.

"The fires eliminated one giga ton of forest carbon, which causes pollution," he said. Normally, he added, forests are naturally damaged within 15 years. But fire speed up the process to only two days.

The minister's office has also recorded that 55 percent of natural forests, about 22.7 million hectares, managed by forest concession holders have been logged or damaged.

Government to hike prices of generic drugs

Jakarta Post - February 27, 2001

Jakarta -- Head of the Food and Drug Control Agency Sampurno revealed on Monday that the government would increase the prices of generic drugs by some 15 percent starting April this year. The increase, he said, was in line with the rise in the cost of pharmaceutical raw materials and fuel prices.

"The increase is also due to a decrease in the government subsidy," Sampurno told journalists on the sidelines of a meeting with House of Representatives' Commission VII on population and welfare affairs. In 1999, the subsidy was Rp 168 billion (US$16.9 million) while last year's subsidy was Rp 105 billion ($10.6 million).

"So, we're expecting a lower subsidy this year," Sampurno said. "We're still discussing the [exact] percentage of the increase with Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, though. Just give me around two more weeks to give you the details. But the increase is more or less 15 percent," he added. The discussion, he said, also involved the drug companies.

Sampurno said that the government had not increased the prices of generic drugs, which were 40 to 80 percent cheaper than proprietary drugs, for the last five years. He also called on patients to continue asking doctors to prescribe generic drugs as these were cheaper while their contents were basically the same.

According to Sampurno, drug stocks in the country were sufficient at least until the end of the year. "I would also like to urge the regional governments to use up their entire budgets allocated by the central government for the purchase of drugs, so that the regions won't run short," he said.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Consumers' Foundation (YLKI) expressed its regret at the government's decision to increase the price of generic drugs.

"Other prices may be increased, but not drugs, because this would only burden the people. Drugs are very important, so like it or not, people have to buy them," said YLKI researcher Ida Marlinda.

"Besides, many drugs stores disobey the regulations and sell drugs at higher prices than those set by government," she said, adding that, based on the findings of YLKI price surveys, such pharmacies were mostly located in Jakarta.

Economy & investment

Rupiah falls to lowest level in two years

Jakarta Post - February 27, 2001

Jakarta -- The rupiah dropped on Monday by 2 percent to its lowest level since October 1998 amid worsening ethnic violence in Central Kalimantan and problems with the International Monetary Fund. The rupiah ended at Rp 9,830 per US dollar late on Monday from Rp 9,685 on Friday, foreign exchange dealers said.

Bank Indonesia senior deputy governor Anwar Nasution pledged that the central bank would intervene in the market to help prevent the local unit from exceeding the Rp 10,000 level.

"We will continue to intervene in the market but we should also address the main problems, the unrest and political problems," Anwar was quoted as saying by Reuters. "Of course we hope we can stabilize the rupiah below 10,000."

Around 270 people have been killed in ethnic violence in Sampit, Central Kalimantan. The week-long violence has added jitters to a financial market already edgy by reports of worsening relations between Indonesia and the IMF.

Dealers said that the drop in the local currency was also driven by strong corporate demand on dollars to repay overseas debt.

Dow Jones news wires quoted dealers as saying that genuine corporate demand early in the day emerged around Rp 9,725 to Rp 9,775, prompting other participants to cover their short dollar positions. This triggered stop-loss dollar buying around Rp 9,800, which pushed the dollar to as high as Rp 9,865, they added.

The rupiah had dropped to as low as Rp 9,865 earlier on Monday, but found temporary respite when state banks sold dollars, probably on behalf of the central bank, and as commercial banks locked in profits, dealers said.

Dealers also said that the market was nervously awaiting for the result of last week's high-level talks between Coordinating Minister for the Economy Rizal Ramli and the IMF in Washington.

Relations between the government and the IMF had dropped to its lowest level after the Fund delayed the disbursement of its next US$400 million loan installment to Indonesia. The delay was made due to concerns over several issues including the government- proposed amendment to the central bank law, a poorly-designed fiscal decentralization policy, and delay in the sale of government ownership in Bank Central Asia and Bank Niaga.

The disbursement of the IMF money is seen as a key factor to help maintain investor confidence in the economy, and to open the way for other multilateral donors to provide their assistance to Indonesia.

Rizal said in a press conference late on Monday that the government and the IMF had reached an "agreement" over the difficult issue of the central bank law amendment, paving the way for the Fund to proceed with the review of the country's economic reform program and the disbursement of its loan.

The rupiah had been relatively steady in the past month despite increasing political uncertainty triggered by the legislature's censure of President Abdurrahman Wahid over alleged involvement in two financial scandals. The censure could lead to a process of impeachment.

The new foreign exchange ruling introduced by Bank Indonesia in the middle of January helped to maintain the stability of the local currency.

The new forex ruling basically bans rupiah transfers to nonresidents and cuts down the limit of forward transactions between onshore banks and nonresidents from Rp 5 million to Rp 3 million in a bid to help curb speculation against the rupiah.

But experts said that the restrictions had only served to slow down the rupiah's descent -- and not halt it -- as onshore dollar demand remains strong, and domestic economic and political problems persisted.