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Indonesia News Digest No
14 - April 1-8, 2000
Indonesian Observer - April 6, 2001
Jakarta -- Violence marred an anti-Soeharto protest held by the
City Forum (Forkot) group in Central Jakarta yesterday. Police
had to disperse the protesters with tear gas. Four protesters
were wounded after being beaten by the police.
The anti-Soeharto protesters of Forkot were involved in the clash
with police after they were not permitted to hold their
demonstration in front of Soehartos residence on Jl. Cendana,
Menteng, Central Jakarta. Police managed to turn back the
protesters on Jl. Suwiryo, the last road before Soehartos house
later yesterday.
Realizing that they would not be allowed to hold the protest near
Soehartos house, the angry protesters then made allegedly turned
their anger against the police. The police retaliated with
practiced brutality and at least two students were seen caught
and beaten ruthlessly by the police.
A number of private security personnel, who guard Soehartos
compound could not resist a little action and soon joined their
police brothers in attacking the unarmed and defenseless
demonstrators.
After failing to hold their protest in front of the Soeharto
compound many students of Forkot marched back to the nearby
Megaria junction in Jl. Diponegoro, Central Jakarta where their
colleagues were already prepared with Molotov cocktails along the
way.
The demonstrators then blockaded the road into the evening.
Shortly after nightfall, two police trucks loaded with Police
anti-riot shock troops were passing through Jl. Diponegoro to
curb another riot in Matraman, Central Jakarta where people were
attempting to set fire to the Hotel Mega Matra is run by a rival
neighborhood gang.
The Forkot protesters mistook the anti-riot troops intentions,
they were under the impression that the troops were there to nab
them, so Forkot proceeded to pelt the anti-riot trucks with
Molotov cocktails, when in fact, they were merely commuting to
work. Just another day in Jakarta. The police retaliated by
shooting tear gas at them. Many of the police troops jumped off
the truck and chased them.
Two perpetrators who threw the Molotov cocktails were nabbed and
viciously beaten by the police. A policeman named First Brigade
Wahyudin suffered a minor head wound from a rock presumably
hurled by one of the Forkot members.
In separate protest earlier in the day, at least a hundred
students from the radical group People and Student Action Forum
for Democracy (Famred) held a protest in front of Pertamina
Central Hospital (RSPP) in Jl. Kyai Madja, South Jakarta where
Ginandjar Kartasamita a suspect in corruption case is undergoing
medical treatment.
Through a joint protest with dozens of other student groups named
Entire Indonesia Forum (FIS) which arrived earlier at the
hospital, they urged Ginandjar to give up and comply with the AGO
order to detain him.
During their protests, they spread and then burned the banner
depicting a photo of Ginandjar and Indonesias most feared jail
compound of Nusakambangan, where the other ex-state official and
Soehartos chum Mohamad Bob Hasan has recently been sent. Bob
Hasan was sentenced to six years in prison after being found
guilty in a corruption case for misusing the reforestation fund.
High tension loomed as the joint student protesters screamed at
Ginandjars supporters when the students tried to break through
the hospitals gate. The police who oversaw the demonstration did
not take any steps to cool down the parties. They were just
overseeing the situation from where they stood.
Ginandjars supporters come from West Java. They claimed that they
are there in support and to express their concern over Ginandjars
arrest which they said is tainted with a political agenda and law
discrimination. Ginandjar is originally from Tasikmalaya, West
Java.
Detik - April 2, 2001
Nuruddin Lazuardi/HY, Jakarta -- Around 300 student from various
universities in South Jakarta, who call themselves the Southern
Students Forum (FMS) are holding a demonstration at the fountain
in the Hotel Indonesia Roundabout. They demand Golkar be
disbanded.
The FMS arrived around 2.10pam local time on Monday after their
long march from the Atmajaya Univeristy. As soon as they reached
the roundabout the orations began.
Aside from the calls to disband Golkar, the FMS also call for
Suharto to be brought to justice as well as to abolish the
territorial and legal institutions of the Military/Police,
welfare for the labourforce and education for the people.
Several students were seen sat casually on the edge of the
fountain, wearign their alma mater jackets. Yellow of University
Indonesia (UI) light blue of the Pancasila University, dark blue
of the Political and Social Sciences Institute (IISIP) grey of
the Universitas Guna Dharma and the green of the Bunda Kandung
Polytechnic.
East Timor
Labour struggle
Aceh/West Papua
Elite power struggle
Regional/communal conflicts
Human rights/law
News & issues
Environment/health
Economy & investment
Democratic struggle
Four activists wounded in anti-Soeharto protest
300 students rally to demand Golkar be disbanded
PRD blockades house believed to be the new Golkar office
Detikcom - April 2, 2001
Budi Sugiharto, Surabaya -- Around 200 People's Democratic Party (PRD) activists blockaded a house in Jl. Darmo Kali, Number 28 in Surabaya, East Java which is believed to be the new headquarters of Golkar in Jatim after the previous offices was burnt down by the masses.
The blockade started with a "long-march" from the Pandegiling market in Surabaya which started at around 10.30am on Monday. By 12.50pm, the PRD were still blockading the house. The gates of the house were tightly closed and padlocked from within. As a result the PRD activists were only able to stand in front of the gate. The house remained silent and there were no vehicles parked in the grounds.
The spokesperson for the action, Thumpal Nainggolan, was not able to say exactly who owned the house, he was only able to explain that the house is often used as a place for Golkar activities after their headquarters on Jl. Ahmad Yani was burnt down by the masses.
Meanwhile, according to a member of the security forces who was guarding the action, the house is owned by a leading Golkar Jatim member.
During the action, the PRD again demanded that Golkar be tried for its economic, political and human rights crimes during the period of Suharto, Habibie and Gus Dur [President Abdurrahman Wahid].
[Slightly abridged translation by James Balowski.]
| East Timor |
South China Morning Post - April 6, 2001
Reuters in United Nations -- Xanana Gusmao, the popular East Timorese resistance leader, said overnight he would not be a candidate for president when the former Portuguese colony achieves independence next year.
Instead, Mr Gusmao said he could do more good from outside the government to help East Timor make the transition to an independent democratic country. The territory, now under UN administration, was invaded by Indonesia in 1974 after Portugal withdrew.
"It is only a myth that a leader of the resistance has to be the first president," he told a news conference with his Australian- born wife and six-month son by his side. "I commit myself to help the process but not from the inside."
Referring to his years as a guerilla leader against Indonesian rule, Mr Gusmao quipped: "I am not an expert at anything -- except perhaps how to kill enemies."
Associates said he had never aspired to the presidency since his release in 1999 from seven years imprisonment in Indonesian jails, believing he could do more to unite people from outside the system than within.
But as leader of the resistance, he emerged as a hero to most Timorese. Mr Gusmao, citing political disagreements, last month resigned as head of East Timor's National Council, a legislative and consultative body appointed by the United Nations. The council is to be dissolved in June ahead of August 30 elections to choose a new legislative body that will draw up a national constitution. Presidential elections will then be held and East Timor is expected to achieve independence in the first half of 2002.
Mr Gusmao said he was critical of the UN Administration in East Timor, known as Untaet, for not focusing enough on "capacity building" or preparing East Timorese for independence. But he said he was aware it was the first time the world body was involved in such an extensive undertaking.
His wife, Kirsty Sword Gusmao, explained later that a Timorese government would not have much room to maneuver in the early years of independence. Politics, she said, would be determined by financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, whose help is badly needed in the impoverished half-island.
Although there was pressure on Mr Gusmao to become the country's new leader, he felt he could urge people to be patient and calm if he were outside the system. "If he says it from the inside, he can be accused of enjoying privileges and not be taken seriously," she said.
As Mr Gusmao held his press conference, the UN Security Council, one floor, below conducted an open briefing on East Timor. British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock said Mr Gusmao's resignation was "of some concern" but it was "very important" he continued contributing to national affairs.
Hedi Annabi, the assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping who just returned from a trip to East Timor, said the schedule for elections could only be kept if voter registration was completed by June 24.
An estimated 100,000 men, women and children will not be in East Timor for the poll. Many are still in captivity in neighboring Indonesian West Timor. They were taken there by armed gangs organised by the Indonesian army after East Timorese voted for independence in a UN-organised poll. Mr Annabi said he was pleased by recent increases in the number of returning refugees. But he noted 100,000 people were still subject to intimidation and propaganda by militia across the border in West Timor.
UN News - April 5, 2001
Civil disturbances in East Timor, the forthcoming elections and the resignation of Xanana Gusmco as president of the National Council dominated discussions in the Security Council today as members heard a briefing by a top United Nations peacekeeping official.
Describing East Timor's internal security situation as the territory prepares for independence, Assistant Secretary-General Hedi Annabi called attention to the recent disruption of a rally held by the Popular Council for the Defence of the Democratic Republic of East Timor, as well as a riot in Baucau District that led to the burning of some 40 houses.
Regarding security on the border with West Timor, Mr. Annabi said multiple incidents had occurred in the past seven days, despite the generally quiet situation over the past few weeks. Smuggling across the borders was also continuing, he said, highlighting an incident on 3 April that had resulted in the shooting death of a young woman, and a clash today during which Fijian UN peacekeepers had come under fire.
Mr. Annabi also said that the new East Timor Defence Force had begun training this week at a centre established by Australia with the assistance of Portuguese instructors. A special programme supported by the World Bank will help former combatants not included in the new force to return to civilian life, he added.
Turning to the question of refugees, the UN official said there had been an increase in the number of East Timorese returning home from West Timor. To date, more than 180,000 refugees had returned, although an estimated 100,000 were still in West Timor. Those remaining reportedly continued to face intimidation and lacked access to information about the real conditions inside East Timor, he said, adding that a proposed security assessment mission for West Timor was still under discussion.
In other news, the UN peacekeeping operation in East Timor today announced plans to conduct a special training next month for 100 potential East Timorese women candidates to the Constituent Assembly.
The training, to be carried out by the Mission's Gender Affairs Unit in conjunction with the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), follows an earlier announcement by the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) of a series of measures aimed at encouraging female participation in the 30 August elections. The plan was made public by the Mission's head, Sergio Vieira de Mello, in connection with the signing of the regulation on elections and registration of political parties on 16 March.
Antara - April 5, 2001
New York -- Asking the international community to try those involved in criminal actions in East Timor is not a priority to the East Timorese at the moment, East Timorese Resistance Council`s (CNRT) former president, Xanana Gusmao, said here Tuesday night.
"We cannot even think of the international tribunal because we have so many things to do," Gusmao told students, lecturers, lawyers and non-governmental organization activists at Columbia University`s School of Law in New York.
The East Timorese' priorities at present are community health, education and job opportunities, he said.
Gusmao, who was accompanied by his wife Kirsty Sword Gusmao and his one-year-old son, urged the international community to make donations to the newborn state. In the total destruction of the territory in September 1999, East Timor had lost many buildings and facilities, he said.
He noted that some US$ 14 million has recently been spent to provide educational facilities in East Timor. "Yet so many children going to school still do not have tables and chairs," he pointed out.
Gusmao also asked the international community to support political reconciliation in East Timor. Political reconciliation is needed to develop the country, he stressed, adding that an international tribunal could not help the East Timorese fulfill their needs.
"What we want to do now is to boost political reconciliation, and this is one of the reasons why I resigned as president of the council," he added.
Two weeks ago, Gusmao sent a letter to the chief of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), Sergio Vieira de Mello, regarding his resignation from the council. De Mello later installed Jose Ramos Horta to replace Gusmao.
Asked whether he sees Aceh and Irian Jaya as its allies (the same as East Timor), he said what has been happening in Aceh and Irian Jaya is completely different from East Timor`s experience.
Agence France-Presse - April 5, 2001
Sydney -- East Timorese independence leader Xanana Gusmao will inevitably become his country's first president, even though he says he does not want the job, Nobel laureate Jose Ramos Horta said.
Ramos Horta, who for almost three decades campaigned in exile for East Timor's independence from Indonesia, said Gusmao will become his country's first president despite stepping down as leader of its UN-appointed National Council.
In an interview screened late Wednesday here by the specialist ethnic broadcaster SBS, Ramos Horta, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomatic campaign against Jakarta's occupation of his homeland, said Gusmao would re-enter the fray to guide the infant state.
Gusmao stepped down from the National Council last week, citing his frustration with the bickering among East Timor's political factions as the reason.
The man, who led armed guerrillas against the Indonesian army and who was later captured and imprisoned in Jakarta, returned to East Timor as a hero in 1999.
In August that year, more than 75 percent of East Timor's voters indicated they wanted independence from Jakarta in a UN- supervised ballot.
The United Nations later sanctioned the deployment of an Australian-led peacekeeping force to the former Portuguese colony after pro-Jakarta militias launched a brutal scorched-earth rampage across East Timor.
Ramos Horta told the SBS Dateline program that Gusmao has "the legitimacy, the moral and political authority" to lead what will become the world's newest independent state, probably sometime next year when the UN withdraws.
"So I'm not too worried -- he will be our first president," Horta said. "He owes it to his people. He cannot just now walk away. And I know how to persuade him."
The UN will supervise East Timor's first democratic elections on the August 30 anniversary of the independence referendum, when the population of 800,000 will elect an embryonic parliament that must draft a constitution before issuing an independence proclamation.
When he resigned from the National Council last week, Gusmao told the UN authorities running the territory that he refused to be part of a "politically irresponsible process". He was referring to the way in which East Timor's political parties were approaching the drafting of a preliminary constitution.
"There have been numerous attempts to find ways to clarify and debate one of the most important moments in this process with the population: the constitution and how to draft it," Gusmao said in a letter to the United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor.
"I feel, as president of the National Council, that any attempt to overcome the deadlock is in vain due to the lack of willingness by members of this body to advance the process." "As I refuse to be part of a politically irresponsible process, I hereby tender my resignation."
Associated Press - April 3, 2001
Dili -- New violence broke out along East Timor's border with Indonesia when unidentified gunmen threw grenades and fired shots at UN peacekeepers and villages in five separate clashes, officials said Tuesday.
No peacekeepers were injured in Monday's incidents. However, an East Timorese woman was wounded when attackers fired at her house.
Peacekeeping spokesman Australian army Capt. John Liston said it wasn't clear whether the attacks on Monday were carried out by pro-Jakarta militia, that were responsible for devastating East Timor after it voted to break away from Indonesia in 1999.
However, he said the incidents all took place along the border with Indonesian West Timor. He said Fijian soldiers stationed near the East Timor town of Suai were shot at five times. The peacekeepers returned fire, but the gunmen escaped.
In another three incidents, unidentified assailants threw grenades into villages and fired shots at houses, Liston said. He said the grenades were of the same type used by militiamen in past border attacks.
On Monday morning, an Australian member of the UN peacekeeping force fired on two suspected militiamen near the West Timor border.
Groups of armed pro-Indonesian militia have infiltrated East Timor since the arrival of international peacekeepers in 1999. Last year, two peacekeepers were killed in militia attacks close to the border.
[On April 3, Associated reported that East Timor's UN administrators said they have asked Indonesia to hand over militiaman Yakobus Bere, who allegedly killed New Zealand UN peacekeeper Private Leonard William Manning last July. Bere is currently being detained by Indonesian police in West Timor for the killing. However, officials said they could not hand him over as there was not an extradition treaty between Indonesia and East Timor - James Balowski.]
Associated Press - April 3, 2001
Jakarta -- Attorneys for East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres Tuesday demanded that weapons charges against him be dropped on the grounds that he was an Indonesian patriot, not a criminal.
Lawyer Suhardi Somomoeljono said state prosecutors had failed to prove Guterres' guilt during the course of the three-month trial.
"We urge the judges of this court to acquit our client because he was struggling for the red and white flag in East Timor," Somomoeljono said. Red and white are Indonesia's national colors. Guterres and his militiamen "were not criminals, but were defending Indonesia's interests," he said.
Guterres is accused of ordering his followers last year to take back weapons they had earlier surrendered to police in Indonesian-controlled West Timor as part of a disarmament program. The incident happened soon after three UN foreign aid workers were slaughtered by a militia mob.
Last week prosecutors asked the court to sentence Guterres to one year in prison. Many observers have criticized the proposed punishment as being too lenient, noting that, if convicted, Guterres would be released by the end of the year as he had already spent several months in custody.
Six bodyguards in military fatigues escorted Guterres to the North Jakarta District Court, which was ringed by some 200 police officers. Around 30 of his supporters crowded into the courtroom.
Guterres' gang and other militia, aided by the Indonesian military, destroyed much of East Timor in September 1999 after the territory voted in a UN-organized ballot to break free of Indonesian rule.
When international peacekeepers arrived to restore order, he and hundreds of other anti-independence fighters fled to West Timor where they seized several border camps and terrorized thousands of refugees from East Timor.
Associated Press - April 2, 2001
Singapore -- The United Nations' transitional government in East Timor is still struggling, leaving much to "sheer luck" despite 18 months in power, the head of the UN mission running the new nation said Monday.
"We're only just coming to terms with the reality of government. While we do much that is right, there is still far too much left to improvisation and to sheer luck," Sergio Vieira de Mello said.
East Timor's medical facilities and judicial system, for example, need urgent attention, Vieira de Mello said at a conference in Singapore.
In trying to get the country running, the UN leadership in East Timor is dealing with severely under-trained surgeons and judges "whose experience is confined to a university library," he said.
Vieira de Mello was delivering the opening speech at a conference on how to implement the findings of a report released last year by an international panel, which called for a total overhaul of UN peacekeeping.
He said the UN must learn from its past mistakes. In 1999, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan apologized for the organization's failure to halt the 1994 Rwandan genocide after it pulled its peacekeepers out of the African nation.
"We need to avoid the mistakes of the past and ensure that the departure of a peace operation does not lead to a vacuum in the country in question, or a sense of abandonment," Vieira de Mello said. "This is what we are trying to avoid in East Timor."
East Timor has been under UN rule since November 1999, after the former Indonesian territory voted for independence. The UN took over from an Australian-led international peacekeeping force that quelled a violent anti-independence backlash by Indonesia-backed militias.
Vieira de Mello said the recent worldwide proliferation of peacekeeping activities has highlighted the UN's limitations in conducting such operations. "The organization remains the best option available, but it could be much better," he said.
The front line of peacekeeping operations have moved from mainly military and policing tasks to governance, he added.
The delegates at the two-day Singapore conference, including UN and government representatives and nongovernment organizations, were drawing up a list of recommendations on peacekeeping based on lessons learned from recent experiences. The list will be submitted to the UN security general and the Security Council.
Jakarta Post - April 1, 2001
Ati Nurbaiti, Dili -- The rains finally poured in late December, too much in some areas for a good corn harvest. Emergency operations over the past year have alleviated fear of widespread starvation as crops and cattle had been abandoned by farmers who fled the violence with their families.
In the regions of East Timor, now called districts, some villagers are banding together to make life easier, and by working with local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Now it is safe to work the fields but farmers would have to raise at least Rp 1 million each for seeds and fertilizers, and seek help, which is scarce, to work the fields. Workers in Memo, Maliana regency used to come from across the mountain in neighboring Atambua in Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara or West Timor.
Carpenters, weavers, fisherfolk and farmers in Maubara and Maliana in the western region, which is one of Timor's main rice producers, are new to their work and unsure where their products or produce will be marketed. A Japanese Catholic NGO is helping by buying bamboo furniture from the carpenters in Maubara. Women are selling their woven tais on the beach for the occasional passer-by. The Dili-based human rights group, Hak Foundation, which is helping some of these NGOs get aid says it is picky about which NGOs it assists.
In Kailoku village in Maliana, farmer Joao Soares says farmers here are getting worried. "UNTAET promised to lend us a tractor," he said, referring to the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor. He said it was time to plow, but there was no sign of the tractor.
Women in Suai, near the southern coast, and Liquica and Ermera in the west, sell cloth to traders who peddle the handicraft in Dili's market -- these traders themselves are waiting for their coffee crop to bear fruit.
"Coffee is only harvested once a year," said a trader from Ermera, one of Timor's highland coffee producers. The price of coffee has dropped to about half the price from Rp 5,500 per kilogram of coffee beans before the 1999 UN-sponsored referendum.
Gambling
To enhance farmers' income, Minister of Economic Affairs Mari Alkatiri says the new elected government should first aim to break the monopoly of America's cooperative association NCBA, which formerly cooperated with a company run by Indonesian military personnel.
Annual yields have not much increased the welfare of the people. "Even before the harvest, men have raised debts and thrown away money by gambling," says one Dili resident.
Sociologist George J. Aditjondro, in a book which debunks the myth of Indonesia's contribution to East Timor, says coffee growers in the former Indonesian province have instead contributed billions of rupiah to Indonesia, given the lower price of coffee here compared to other parts of Indonesia.
Quoting reports, George points out that in 1988, the market price of coffee in neighboring East Nusa Tenggara was Rp 4,000 per kg, while the state-run cooperative in East Timor paid coffee growers only Rp 1,200 per kg for Robusta and Rp 1,500 per kg for Arabica coffee.
A micro credit scheme is key to building the economy, says leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao, but first the banking infrastructure must be established.
In the meantime, East Timorese hope international NGOs would help. "We're being very careful, consulting people on what they need," says an activist of the Japanese Catholic NGO, perhaps aware of the stigma of NGOs plunking in irrelevant projects.
The East Timorese are also trying their best on their own. Small fields yield just enough for households, not worth the high transportation costs needed to sell the produce. In Dili, fields are also essential for a subsistent supply of vegetables, even if a family member works at a hotel. Goats and chickens are precious investments.
Scavenging is another occupation, involving a few hundred people at the Tibar dump outside Dili, but only aluminum cans are of value at Rp 3,000 per kg. Children must also pitch in their share of household work, such as fetching firewood and water. The town folks say they are seeing more children, who say they are helping their parents, on the streets. Reports also say many of the children are orphans of the violence in East Timor.
In Liquica, former civil servant Deflina Lim is now a restaurant owner. Of Chinese descent, she said was not entrepreneurial, "but I had to survive." One cannot afford a cook, she says, as they want salaries of Rp 1 million per month like the salaries of the lowest paid jobs at the UN offices, while patrons are limited to international staffers in the area.
Survival has also driven Maria, a mother of five, to become a vendor at the Dili market. From her hilltop home in Becora, she travels to Mercado every morning, with Rp 25,000 to purchase five small cans of coffee to resold.
She said her husband looked after their children at home and tended to their nearby field because he was "too embarrassed" to be seen as a vendor by his friends who might drop by at the market. "Besides the children are afraid of him, so they'll do the chores at home," she said.
Associated Press - April 2, 2001
Dili -- An Australian member of the UN peacekeeping force in East Timor fired on two suspected militiamen near the border with Indonesian West Timor, a force spokesman said Monday.
The incident occurred early Sunday morning about eight kilometers east of the East Timorese town of Balibo, said Australian army Captain John Liston. Australian soldiers observed two unidentified men moving through a forest near a UN sentry point.
"When one suspected militiaman, armed with a rifle and dressed in camouflage fatigues, attempted to open fire at a peacekeeper, he responded by firing three rounds in self-defense," Liston said. The suspects then withdrew. Peacekeepers later informed Indonesian military officers stationed on the other side of the border.
Groups of armed pro-Indonesian militia have infiltrated East Timor since the arrival of international peacekeepers in 1999. Last year, two peacekeepers were killed in militia attacks close the border. But since the onset of the rainy season in October, the number of militia incursions into East Timor has decreased.
Agence France-Presse -- March 31, 2001
Jakarta -- The Indonesian government has rejected as unacceptable the trial in the United States of an Indonesian general accused of gross human rights abuses in East Timor in 1999.
A foreign ministry press statement issued late Friday rejected the trial in Washington of General Johnny Lumintang because it contravened the "lex locus delecti" principle, under which a trial should be held in the same place as the crime occurred.
"The application of US law for a crime that took place in a different country and filed by a non-US citizen will be difficult to accept by the international community," the statement said.
"It must be through an Indonesia ad-hoc human rights court which has been approved by the UN human rights commission." "The process to formulate the ad-hoc court for human rights cases in Indonesia is proceeding at this moment after the commission was approved last year," the statement said.
It added that the training of prosecutors and judges to stage the court would commence in the near future with the support and technical assistance from the UN high commissioner for human rights.
However Lumintang, who is remains on active service, has already been declared innocent of the charges by the Indonesian Attorney Generals Office.
The office examined more than 20 dossiers filed by the Komnas-HAM (National Commission on Human Rights) fact-finding team who investigated rights violations in East Timor, the ministry said.
The general was brought to trial in absentia in Washington DC earlier this week. He was charged with monitoring and supervising East Timor's pro-Jakarta militiamen to rape, kill, burn and forcibly evacuate East Timorese to neighbouring Indonesian West Timor.
Summing up the case in the US District Court on Thursday, lawyer Steven Schneebaum called for a large damages award against Lumintang to send a signal that no-one could escape judgment for crimes against humanity.
Lumintang was vice chief of staff of the army at the time of the 1999 East Timor vote for independence from Indonesia, which triggered a rampage by pro-Jakarta militias that launched massacres, forced tens of thousands from their homes and burnt the capital, Dili, to the ground.
The case was brought under US legislation which allows American jurisdiction over acts of torture committed outside the country.
A lawsuit can only proceed if defendants are served with legal papers while in the United States. Lumintang was presented with the civil suit during a visit to the US in March 2000. A judgment is expected in the next few months.
Straits Times - April 2, 2001
Yeoh En Lai -- Almost two years after the independence referendum in East Timor, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is bracing itself for another crisis.
As word spreads among refugees in West Timor that UNHCR plans to scale back its repatriation operations by mid-year, a massive influx could be on the cards, said the agency's outgoing regional representative Rene van Rooyen.
An estimated 100,000 displaced East Timorese are still in West Timor, said the official, who left his post last week. About half of the refugees want to return home. The UNHCR is working with at least 20 non-government organisations to build more homes for the returning refugees. It estimates that about 27,000 new homes have already been built in East Timor with its help. However, that may not be enough.
"Over 250,000 moved over to West Timor in 1999 and some 150,000 have returned to East Timor. But UNHCR does not know what is happening over there anymore after the murder of our staff," said Mr van Rooyen, who is returning to UNHCR headquarters in Geneva.
Since the murder of three UNHCR workers in Atambua, West Timor, more than 400 staff have left the Indonesian province in a "climate of fear".
"The UNHCR pulled out after the murder of our staff in Atambua in September; and since then, no one knows what has happened to the refugees there," added Mr van Rooyen. "No names, no numbers, no idea what happened or what is happening to the people who fled to West Timor after the referendum."
Without a proper head count and identification of the refugees by the Indonesian authorities, some separated families still have no idea of what has happened to their loved ones.
Many East Timorese families are now headed by women who have no clue as to the whereabouts of their husbands and fathers. And then, there is the problem of the militia riding the refugee wave home to cause trouble back in East Timor.
UNHCR plans to stop its reintegration activities by mid-year and close five offices, leaving just the main office in Dili open.
"The refugee crisis remains the major problem in the region. But until we get an assurance from the Indonesian authorities that our staff will be safe in West Timor, we cannot do anything," said Mr van Rooyen.
| Labour struggle |
Jakarta Post - April 6, 2001
Jakarta -- An 18-year-old migrant worker said on Thursday that she had been taken hostage by a labor export company for a month because she failed to pay the compensation demanded by the firm after she was sent home by her dissatisfied employer.
Ucu Sumarni said that PT GWJP sent her to Johor, Malaysia, last December to work as a housemaid, but she was sent home on January 4 as her employer complained that she was not capable.
PT GWJP asked Ucu to pay Rp 4.5 million in compensation, and refused to let her go before she made the payment, Antara reported on Thursday.
Ucu, who was from Karawang, West Java, told the news agency in the office of the Legal Aid Institute for Indonesian Migrant Workers (LPBH TKI), that there are still 10 other migrant workers who are being held by the company, located on Jl.Cipinang, Cempedak II, Polonia, East Jakarta, for a similar reason.
Ucu's mother, Yoyoh, said that she managed to collect Rp 1.5 million and took the money to the company. But the firm refused to release Ucu as it was less than the sum demanded. Yoyoh then went to LPBH TKI, which reported the case to the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration.
PT GWPJ finally freed Ucu at the request of Director-General of Manpower Placement Soeramsihono, according to the director of LPBH TKI, Munir Achmad.
The owner of the labor export company said she suffered losses because Ucu only worked for such a short time in Malaysia.
Munir alleged that the company had violated the regulations, which require that a labor export company should train the workers before sending them abroad, and insure them. Had Ucu been insured, the company could claim compensation as she was sent home before completing her term, Munir said.
Ucu said that she had never been given any training as she was sent to Johor only one day after she arrived at the company's office. Munir believed that there are many other cases which are similar to Ucu's.
Meanwhile Yunus M. Yamani, chairman of the newly-established Association of Indonesian Migrant Worker Suppliers (Himsataki), said that manpower officials are often involved in the exploitation of migrant workers.
He said that the government should take stern action, not only against any errant labor export company, but also against the manpower officers involved in the case.
He also revealed that he had repeatedly reported a number of cases that involved manpower officials, but so far there was no follow-up from the authorities, Antara reported.
"It is time for the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration to radically reform itself by implementing strict action for all," he said.
Otherwise, the migrant workers export program, which has been running for about 20 years, will be marred by dreadful stories about the exploitation of workers, including extortion against them, cheating, torturing and rape of the laborers, he said.
Yamani also blamed the Association of Labor Export Companies (Apjati) for the dire situation. He said that the association had failed to guide its members.
Apjati had earlier complained to the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration about the establishment of an association outside Apjati. This could hamper the efforts to improve the labor export program made by Apjati and the government, according to a letter dated March 28, signed by Apjati chairman Husein Alaydrus and Secretary-General Anthon Sihombing.
Yamani said he set up the association because he felt concerned about the poor conditions of migrant workers.
Detik -- March 2, 2001
Khairul Ikhwan D/HD & HY, Medan -- Around 300 workers of PT Cipta Prima staged a demonstration at north Sumatra Provincial Legislative Council (DPRD Sumut) office, Monday. They demanded the DPRD Sumut be the mediator in resolving the problem between them and PT Cipta Prima.
Meanwhile, hundreds of farmers from Tani Wonorejo village, Bandar Pulau, Asahan, Medan also staged demonstrations demanding the return of their land from an oil palm company, PT Gunung Melayu.
Starting from their office on Jl PLTU, Pulo Sicanang, Belawan, the workers, who work in the timber industry, arrived at the DPRD's office located on Jl Imam Bonjol, Medan, north Sumatra by three buses. In their statement, they demanded a review of the working agreement and that the suspension of their colleague to be lifted.
They brought several banners. "We demand a review of the working agreement," said Ali Imron, coordinator of the action in his oration. Ali said that since August 2000, a normative agreement between the workers and the company, in place since the 1970's had suddenly stopped.
"By this demonstration, we demand the DPRD be mediator between the workers and the company. Besides mediating in regards to the working agreement, we also request the company lift our colleague's suspension, Hasudungan Siringo-ringo as the working unit head of All-Indonesia Workers Union (SPSI) in this company," Ali said to the press.
The workers, wearing their brown office uniforms sang songs and shouted their demands at the DPRD Sumut. When it began to rain, they moved into the building and joined hundreds of farmers who were also staging a demonstration there.
Those farmers, from Tani Wonorejo village, Bandar Pulau, Asahan, Medan, represented 200 head of families from their village. They demand some 700 hectares, taken by the palm oil company, PT Gunung Melayu, be returned to them.
Many women also took part in the demonstration. They threatened to stay overnight at DPRD if the members of the council do not help them get back their land. These are clearly not empty threats as they had brought along not only food and such provisions but also firewood and cooking utensils.
As reported, No DPRD representative had met with these demonstrators. The workers and farmers flooding the entrance of the building sang songs and yelled their demands to get the council members to come out and meet them.
Detik - April 2, 2001
Nuruddin Lazuardi/Heather, Jakarta -- Around 600 Postal workers from PT Pos Indo (Posindo) staged a rally outside the Ministry of Communication and Telecommunications (Dephubtel) office on Jl Medan Merdeka Barat, central Jakarta on Monday. They demanding a rise in pay.
The peaceful demonstration also demands that the workers union sit down with the management of PT Posindo to discuss pay, for example that take home pay must be raised by at least Rp 500.000. They demand transparency and "good co-operation governance".
The demonstrators held up banners reading "[We] demand lunch money and over time", "[We] demand health benefits" and "[We] demand housing benefits". The demonstration blocked Jl Medan Merdeka Barat, disrupting traffic. The demonstrators then moved to the edge allowing two lanes of traffic to flow.
The grey and white uniformed workers are from 150 post offices in the Jabotabek area (Jakarta, Bogor and Bekasi). Some representatives have entered the office to negotiate with the Department of Communication and Telecommunication.
Asia Pulse - April 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Indonesia is the largest labor supplier contributing 50 per cent to foreign worker requirement in a number of countries, the association of labor suppliers said.
Association chairman Sysferi said a few years ago Indonesia supplied only 10 per cent of workers needed by Singapore, Hongkong, Malaysia and Middle East, but now Indonesia has become the market leader.
Sysferi said Indonesian domination could still be increased with 40 million Indonesians in productive age could not find jobs or lost jobs as a result of the continued malaise in the country.
He said the Indonesian goverment and its parliament have done little to boost the sending of workers abroad although the government earned substantially in levies from every worker sent abroad.
Indonesian Observer - April 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Student and Labor organizations have joined with the May 1st Action Committee to stage a major demonstration at Jakarta Police Headquarters today.
The coalition will demand the police to conduct a thorough investigation over the deadly attack by an unidentified mob on laborers of PT Kadera Indonesia, who staged a strike last Thursday in the Industrial compound of Pulogadung in East Jakarta. The attack killed a laborer who was hit by bomb shrapnel.
The coalition will demand the police to conduct a thorough investigation to bring the perpetrators along with the mastermind of the attack to justice. According to a press release sent to the Observer, the coalition which named itself the 2001 May 1st Action Committee, will depart from the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) office in Jl. Diponegoro, Central Jakarta, and make their way to Jakarta Police Headquarters before noon today.
The organizations that have formed the coalition are National Front for Indonesia Labor Struggle (FNBI), Jakarta Legal Aid Institution (LBH), National Student League for Democracy (LMND), Maritime and Fishery Labors Union (SBMNI), Network for People Culture Workshop (Jaker), Jabotabek Labor Union (SBJ), Shangri-La Hotel Labor Union, Independent Labor Union (SBM) and Indonesia Independent Labor Association (GSBI).
The coalition will protest the violence that took place during the laborers strike when at least 500 unidentified people without warning besieged the 300 laborers who were peacefully appealing for a salary raise.
The attackers were brandished with machetes and other sharp weapons. Tens of laborers were wounded when the attackers swung their machetes and weapons at the laborers who could only retaliate the attack with their bare hands.
Eyewitnesses said that shortly after the attack was launched, explosive matter which allegedly failed to pass through the factory fences, exploded outside the fences.
A short time later, the explosion claimed a laborers life. Kimun Efendi (21) suffered fatal wounds after shrapnel from the explosion lacerated several parts of his body. Two of Kimuns colleagues suffered the similar wounds as well as burns. They remain in critical condition.
On Friday, PT Kaderas lawyer Amir Syamsuddin announced the companys remorse over the violence that marred the protest, and strongly denied the allegation that the unidentified mob was organized by the company.
Syamsuddin said PT Kadera will consider withdrawing its investment in Indonesia if such violence and riots continue. The company closed its operation soon after the incident on Thursday.
Around 90% of PT Kadera Indonesia shares are owned by a Japanese investor. The company provides supplies to furnish Toyota cars for the Indonesian market.
Detik - April 1, 2001
Arifin Asydhad/Heather, Jakarta -- The National Front for Indonesian Labour Struggle (FNPBI) is planning a demonstration for workers from PT Kadera-Ar. They demand justice for the attack by hoodlums which killed one worker and injured others.
The demonstration is planned for 10am local time in front of the police station at Jl Gatot Soebroto. According to Tussie, the secretary of FNPBI in the Jabotabek area (Jakarta, Bogor, and Bekasi), the demonstrators are planning to gather in front of the Legal Aid institute, Jl Diponegoro, Jakarta.
After that, they will take a bus directly to the police station. She estimates that around a hundred people will take part. "Our group will not be large, as the action is just to show solidarity; so maybe about a hundred people," she said.
Tussie explains that the action is to stand against the attack on demonstrating workers by a gang of hoodlums at the PT Kadera-Ar factory in Pulogadung on Thursday and that the police have done no follow-up of the incident; they just calmed the situation at the time. "There were police there, but why did they only calm the situation? Those hoodlums had knives.
The police ought to have acted fast to confiscate those weapons," she says. The FNPBI also protests against the factory management, who she says don? care about their employees.
After the demonstration, the workers plan to visit the grave of the worker killed in the incident.
| Aceh/West Papua |
Indonesian Observer - April 6, 2001
Jakarta - A human rights commission has formally accused ten police officials in Irian Jaya are suspected of involvement in human rights abuses that took place after the Abepura incident on December 6 last year.
Albert Rumbekwan, a member of Papuas Human Rights Abuse Inquiry Commission, said that one of the ten police is a policewoman and member of the Jayapura District Police. The commission is an authorised government agency and, while it does not have judicial powers, its reports are said to be very influential in bringing the accused to justice.
He predicted that the number would increase as the investigators continue to examine evidence. The ten police officers were observed by independent eyewitnesses as perpetrating a series of human rights abuses.
However Albert refused to name the identity of the ten police. I cannot name those held responsible in the incident but I will say that they were responsible when at least three people were killed. He added that his team has been coordinating with Jayapura Police Chief Daud Sihombing and his Deputy Alex Sampe in their investigation.
The human rights violations took place when police chased and attacked demonstrators, allegedly members of the Papuan separatist group.
Agence France-Presse - April 5, 2001 (abridged)
Jakarta -- The government must shoulder its share of the blame for any consequences of a military deployment in restive Aceh province, a general has said quoted Thursday.
"The issuer of the orders should also be willing and dare to take responsibility," the head of the army's elite Kostrad strategic command, Lieutenant General Ryamizard Ryacudu said according to the Kompas daily.
Ryacudu, speaking at the command's headquarters here on Wednesday, said his soldiers were always ready to be sent to Aceh where the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has been fighting for a free Islamic state since the mid-1970s.
But the government, which orders the deployement of troops in Aceh, must also take responsibility for any casualties resulting from such operations.
"Let us say that Kostrad troops are deployed in Aceh and then a lot of people are killed. The soldiers should not then be quick to be blamed and dragged to the court for legal matters," Ryacudu said.
Soldiers only followed orders and blaming them for any casualties was "immoral," he said. "We are instructed and ordered to defend the country and we are prepared to die for it, so we should also be protected. If not, then do not sent Kostrad troops," the general said.
Agence France-Presse - April 5, 2001
Jakarta -- At least four people have been killed in the latest violence in Aceh, a report said Thursday, a day after the latest peace initiative in the troubled Indonesian province collapsed.
The bodies of two civilians, both with gunshot wounds, were found in separate locations in Langsa, East Aceh, on Wednesday, the province's main daily, Serambi, reported.
The two other casualties, identified by police as separatist rebels, were killed while trying to set a landmine on a road in Banda Sakti, North Aceh, it added.
Representatives of the government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) agreed on Wednesday to discontinue a pilot project that declared the districts of North Aceh and Bireun part of a "Security Zone" where both sides had pledged to avoid violence.
One of the bodies found in Langsa was found wrapped in plastic sheets on the side of the road in western Langsa while the other was found with a gunshot wound to his head on the side of another main road in western Langsa.
North Aceh's police chief, Adjunct Senior Commissioner Wanto Sumardi, said the two suspected rebels were killed when the landmine they were installing in Mon Geudong, in the subdistrict of Banda Sakti, blew up, the daily reported.
On Wednesday government and rebel representatives concluded three days of talks in the Aceh capital of Banda Aceh by agreeing to scrap the experimental peace zone.
"Because of wide differences in opinion between the two sides, the model security area in North Aceh and Bireun district is discontinued," a statement issued at the end of the talks said.
Both camps on March 18 agreed to declare the two districts part of a "security zone" where government and GAM forces would refrain from violence.
The zone was declared a pilot project in halting violence starting March 22 and lasting until April 3, and both sides had agreed to reevaluate it after the expiry of the test period.
The government delegation to the talks wanted the project discontinued and blamed GAM for continuing violence in the zone. The Indonesian delegation said that in the 13 days the zone was active, the GAM had ambushed troops 12 times, attacked military command headquarters three times and engaged in several shootings, killings, bombing, burning and other acts of violence.
The GAM delegation, however, wanted to continue the scheme citing "response from the people from several circles," but also said both sides should first promote the plan to their respective forces as well as the population and set up a strengthened security monitoring team.
North Aceh is home to the huge Arun oil and gas field where ExxonMobil halted its operations on March 9, citing security reasons, dealing a devastating blow to Indonesia's liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.
Records show that at least three people have been killed and six injured in clashes in North Aceh since it was declared part of the security zone. Twenty-seven other people have been killed in other districts of Aceh during the same period.
The government and the GAM, which has been fighting for a free Islamic state in Aceh since the mid 1970s, have been holding talks in Geneva since last year. They have signed a series of shaky truces but so far failed to stem violence which has left more than 300 people dead this year.
Far Eastern Economic Review - April 12, 2001
John McBeth, Jakarta -- President Abdurrahman Wahid and the Indonesian military are engaged in a renewed contest of wills, this time over the rapidly deteriorating security situation in westernmost Aceh province, which could put another nail in the president's political coffin.
Army generals want to mount limited offensive operations against thousands of well-armed separatist rebels. Wahid is baulking, insisting that any new security measures should only be aimed at restoring production at Exxon Mobil's onshore gas fields, which have now been idle for nearly a month.
Only recently, the government officially classified the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, as a separatist organization -- a move that was widely seen to clear the way for tougher measures. But little has happened since then. "There's always a tug of war between negotiation and military operations," a senior palace official told the Review.
"The president prefers negotiation. He doesn't believe in military actions. He refuses to use the word 'operation' and the word 'military'." The official says Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri has been pushing for Wahid to sign a presidential instruction on a multi-faceted action programme "because she likes the president to be committed."
With the rift between Wahid and the military widening and the ailing president under increasing pressure in parliament to step down, senior generals have been gravitating around the vice- president, a fervent nationalist who shares the army's hard-line stance on separatist issues.
If the halt in production at Exxon Mobil may have served as a convenient national-interest pretext for military action, Wahid isn't budging -- at least not yet. Three weeks ago, four territorial battalions -- drawn from among the 30,000 soldiers and police now stationed in Aceh -- were moved into defensive positions around the company's facilities southeast of the industrial town of Lhokseumawe.
But the president hasn't allowed a specially trained anti- guerrilla unit -- still waiting to be sent to Aceh -- to launch what Political Coordinating Minister Bambang Yudhoyono calls a "highly targeted" campaign across the Aceh hinterland. Asked if the military intended that this unit carry out sweep operations around the North Aceh installations as well as other parts of the province, a senior Indonesian military official responds: "Anywhere it is considered necessary to restore law and order." The police, he says, will be responsible for law enforcement, while the military will hunt down "armed bandits" -- a task the police have proved incapable of handling.
With the government refusing military requests to declare a state of emergency, the army has to secure presidential approval before it can carry out peacetime operations. Analysts believe Wahid is hesitating to deploy the anti-guerrilla unit because of memories of a series of brutal military crackdowns in the 1990s, which traumatized Aceh's population and fuelled the move for independence from Jakarta's heavy-handed rule.
"If anything goes wrong," says one Western diplomat, "then the blood will be on his hands." Plenty has gone wrong already in a province where the military and the police have yet to demonstrate they have learned the lessons of the past.
Yudhoyono insists the military operations are only one part of a comprehensive six-point programme, now being drafted, focusing on political, economic and social approaches. But efforts to find a peaceful solution remain bogged down, in part because GAM itself is divided into eight different factions, and there is little confidence in the ability of the Indonesians to coordinate an effective civil-action plan on the ground.
Indeed, Western diplomats say they detect signs of a strategic drift. "What we don't know is if the game is to find and destroy Aceh Merdeka [GAM] or if it is to restore government control," says one. "That would seem to require two different approaches." More than 370 soldiers and police have been killed since the start of a ceasefire in June 2000 that was meant to be a springboard for a negotiated settlement.
Although there are now 2,000 troops guarding Exxon Mobil's facilities, they have done little to improve security for the company's 800 employees and more than 2,000 contractors who normally commute between the three fields, which are strung out over a distance of 50-60 kilometres.
"The real problem is the ability of workers to go to and from work and to live in a safe environment," says a company executive. "This is about the overall security situation in Aceh, not the situation behind the fences."
Indonesian and Western intelligence reports indicate an estimated 2,000 armed guerrillas -- some from as far away as the traditional hot spot of Pidie on the northern coast -- have moved into North Aceh district in recent weeks in a calculated move to boost rebel tax collections and to bleed the state of much-needed revenue by forcing the shutdown of the fields.
The subsequent cut-off in supplies to the giant Arun liquefied- natural-gas facility is costing the government $100 million a month in lost LNG shipments, not counting losses from the shutting down of related industrial plants.
Industry experts say the longer production is halted, the longer it will take Exxon Mobil to get its gas fields up and running again. That in turn will deal a further blow to the country's reputation as a reliable LNG exporter.
The state-run Pertamina oil company says Bontang, the country's second LNG production facility in East Kalimantan, will only be able to take up the slack until July or August. Under pressure from Japanese and South Korean buyers to come up with a timetable for re-opening Arun, officials have been issuing conflicting statements about when operations might resume. Exxon Mobil, for its part, continues to say that there have been no improvements in security since it shut down its fields.
Wahid at one point claimed Exxon Mobil had halted its operations in an effort to renegotiate its contract. The company responded by dispatching two senior executives from Houston to disabuse him of that notion and to explain its security concerns in detail. Exxon Mobil has had 50 vehicles stolen since pressure on the company was intensified in mid-1999. But much more troubling have been recent efforts to target vehicles with command-detonated landmines and the lobbing of a mortar round into a supposedly secure compound. Like the president himself, Exxon Mobil is finding it can be very lonely in the middle.
Straits Times - April 3, 2001
Derwin Pereira, Jakarta -- Aceh could split from Indonesia within a year if the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) does not step up operations to crush the rebel movement in the restive province, a top security official said yesterday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was a need for troop reinforcements as the current four battalions of 3,000 soldiers were "weak" against increasingly assertive rebels from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
"There is a need for at least another three battalions who can fight a counter-insurgency campaign against the separatists," he told The Straits Times. The TNI top brass are planning to add another 2,000 soldiers from the elite Special Forces and the Army Strategic Reserve Command units.
His comments came against a backdrop of increasing violence in Aceh where GAM and security forces continue to battle.
Yesterday, both sides clashed in North Aceh, which had been designated a "security zone" for a two-week period from March 22 following an agreement between Jakarta and GAM during talks in Geneva.
The zones are supposed to be gradually expanded if they are found to be successful in stopping violence. No casualties were reported from the early morning gunfight near the town of Lhokseumawe. Government representatives believe that it could be a precursor of more violence in the area.
At least two people have been killed in clashes in North Aceh since it was declared a security zone. Twenty-seven others have died in violence in other districts since March 22.
On Sunday, three non-governmental organisation personnel involved in the peace process were murdered, adding to the more than 300 casualties in the area over the last year.
There does not appear to be any chance for peace despite several truces signed by Jakarta and GAM in Geneva since last year. The TNI blames it on the rebels failing to abide by these agreements. Said the security official: "They are becoming increasingly aggressive and confident that they can do whatever they want because we do not have the firepower to confront them.
"They are intimidating locals to join their cause." The source added that given the prevailing climate in Aceh in which GAM has virtually free rein to move around with impunity, it is very likely that the province could separate from Indonesia within a year.
But the main obstacle to that will be prevailing concerns at home and abroad on whether the troops will operate beyond their mandate, which could lead to more accusations of human-rights abuses. Already, some believe the military may be sabotaging peace efforts by engineering violence, and thereby justifying the use of force.
Newsweek - April 9, 2001
Ron Moreau -- Soldiers dressed in combat fatigues and black hoods would normally inspire fear in an Acehnese village. But not these commandos. As nearly a dozen fighters approach the edges of a hamlet some 30 kilometers southwest of the town of Bireun, their hoods are revealed to be jilbab-the Muslim head scarves worn by women.
"I have no fear of fighting or dying. All that matters is our freedom." They display gold costume jewelry and very real AK-47s. They wear both red lipstick and red shoulder patches that say live together, die together in Acehnese. They are a reconnaissance force from the all-female Cut Nyak Dhien unit of Aceh's militant Free Aceh Movement (known by its Indonesian acronym, GAM), and they are not just playing soldier. "I have no fear of fighting or dying," says a preternaturally cool 21-year- old named Rosmiati. "All that matters is our freedom." Those are tough words-and familiar ones in Aceh, where a decades-long separatist movement has led to more than 10,000 deaths and the destruction of countless homes and villages. In the heavily Muslim Indonesian province, though, they would normally be spoken by the men who lead and fill the fighting ranks of GAM. Women have too often been silent victims in the struggle, either widowed by the bloodshed or targeted themselves. (Two human- rights activists and their driver were killed last week after lodging a complaint about rapes allegedly committed by police officers.) The fact that some of them have taken up arms underscores how few alternatives Acehnese feel they have left-how thoroughly violence has come to dominate life in the province. "We Acehnese women have seen so much death, rape, kidnapping, arson and looting that we feel like fighting back," say Siti Maria, 35, a teacher in the capital of Banda Aceh.
GAM commanders claim, fancifully, that they have hundreds of women under arms and 10,000 more women reservists ready to respond at a moment's notice. (They also purport to have several thousand armed male combat soldiers in the field, but experts put their numbers at not much more than 1,000. The women's combat wing, known as Ingong Bale (children of widows), more likely numbers around 100.
Despite their small numbers, however, the female soldiers are critical to certain operations. "My men are stronger and better fighters. But our women are more versatile," says a mustachioed, broad-chested guerrilla commander named Darwis, who oversees all GAM forces in the Bireun district, including the Cut Nyak Dhien unit. When Indonesian soldiers conduct village sweeps, he sends one or more of his female soldiers dressed in civilian clothes into the area to collect intelligence. They are also used to plant mines and booby traps.
Some female recruits sign up with GAM after their families are caught up in anti-guerrilla operations. Rosmani Dar was 12 back in 1991 when Indonesian soldiers burst into her family's hut at 4 a.m. and dragged her father away. She found his corpse the next day. "His eyes had been burned out of his head," she says. Aswan Nanda, 23, says her grandparents were executed in her village by troops in the early 1990s. Eka Susanti, a painfully shy 20-year- old who nervously rubs her AK-47 as she talks, says she saw soldiers kidnap her 16-year-old brother in 1992. He was never seen again.
Many other volunteers are being driven to take up arms by the violence directed against women in Aceh. When Indonesian soldiers raid Acehnese villages, most able-bodied men quickly flee into the jungle. Women are left alone and vulnerable, and ill- disciplined Indonesian troops tend to shoot at anything that moves.
Many Acehnese feel that women are targeted deliberately. "Indonesian soldiers shoot and rape our women to terrorize and humiliate us," says Aswan. Rosmiati joined up with GAM after a unit of paramilitary police came into her village in the mid- 1990s and forced all the women to strip naked, including her grandmother, her mother, her sisters and herself. One of her cousins was raped by the troops.
Such experiences have not only alienated and traumatized the Acehnese. They have forged a generation of men and women for whom violence is the only answer-both to their fear and to their aspirations for autonomy.
The women who volunteer for GAM in effect remove themselves from "normal" society: they undergo three months of rigorous physical training, including shooting firearms, running through burning barriers and scrambling over exhausting obstacle courses. Comforts and supplies are scarce, and they frequently move between crude encampments.
Aswan says that by now she treats her AK-47 better than she does her boyfriend, who lives in a nearby village. The harshness of the life, though, is testimony to just how much harder life has become outside of uniform.
Sydney Morning Herald - April 3, 2001
Jacqueline M. Koch in Banda Aceh and Lindsay Murdoch in Jakarta -- Soldiers patrol villages, their high-powered weapons ready to fire. Tanks rumble along rutted roads. Entire villages suspected of supporting separatist rebels are razed, forcing thousands of men, women and children into crude refugee camps.
Human rights activists are found shot dead, the latest targets in what appears to be a campaign of intimidation and murder against unarmed civilians.
Aceh, the resource-rich Indonesian province at the northern tip of Sumatra, is under siege even before an imminent military operation aimed at wiping out the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), a group with wide support among Acehnese which has been fighting since the 1970s for an independent Islamic state.
Indonesia's parliament last week gave its support to a government decision to launch what President Abdurrahman Wahid calls a "limited military operation" in the province to protect "vital installations".
But human rights groups fear that troops will use the operation to kill civilians opposing Jakarta's rule and destroy villages harbouring rebels.
Government officials argue they had no option but to approve the operation because of the March 13 closure of one of the world's largest natural gas fields, operated by ExxonMobil near Aceh's main industrial city, Lhokseumawe. The fields bring $US2 billion ($4 billion) each year to the government in Jakarta.
Gunmen had fired on the company's aircraft and hijacked the company's vehicles. Buses carrying workers were stopped and burned. Landmines were planted along roads to blow up company buses. The military blames GAM rebels for the attacks and the escalation of violence.
The GAM's spokesman, Abu Sofyan Daud, denies the claim. "If we were to make a threat, it would have been carried out in 24 hours," he says.
Human rights activists, themselves the target of increasing attacks, point to the existence of a shadowy so-called "third force" they believe is behind much of the violence. They believe the group has links to the military, possibly involving recently discharged soldiers now acting as rogue units.
The announcement of the new operation has dramatically heightened tensions in the province, where more than 300 people have been killed so far this year.
As night falls near Lhokseumawe, residents retreat to their homes as truckloads of heavily armed officers with the Police Mobile Brigade speed off to patrol the countryside wearing black balaclavas. Three additional battalions of Indonesian troops have already arrived ahead of the operation that is expected to be launched within days. Warships are stationed off Aceh ready to disgorge hundreds of combat marines.
GAM's leading field commander, Abdullah Syaffi'i, told the Herald: "We are not afraid to defend ourselves. Death is a certainty, but we will take it for our country and our nationality." Civilians in Lhokseumawe and its surrounding area are in the grip of panic.
"This kind of military presence is greater than normal, but with the call for military operations, it will be like DOM, only worse," says M. Rizwan, a 27-year-old resident.
DOM, or Military Operations Area, is the term used to refer to the brutal 10-year military campaign against GAM that Indonesian forces conducted until the 1998 fall of president Soeharto.
Cut Syamsulniati is the Lhokseumawe field co-ordinator of Rehabilitation Action for Torture Victims in Aceh (RATA). In a subdued voice she describes the incident last December that forced her office to suspend its work.
On a routine run to a hospital, four young volunteer staffers, including one woman, were abducted, beaten then driven to a remote location outside Lhokseumawe. Three of the four were executed with gunshots to the head. One escaped. The survivor later identified the killers as 10 soldiers in civilian clothing and five government informers known as cu'ak.
The killings profoundly rattled humanitarian aid agencies throughout Aceh, especially in Lhokseumawe. The local Red Cross says only one organisation is now supplying aid in the area. The international agencies Oxfam and Midecins Sans Frontihres as well as RATA have been forced to suspend their work.
A young lieutenant in the Police Mobile Brigade named Putuh, stationed on a lonely stretch of highway 90 minutes south of Lhokseumawe, takes exception to claims of police brutality. "Our job is to make it safe for civilians, but if they [GAM] shoot at us, we have to defend ourselves."
Jakarta Post - April 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Police and Irian Jaya's rebels were involved in a shootout Saturday when the rebels attacked a base camp of PT Dharma Mukti Persada logging company in Wonggema village, Wasior district, Manokwari regency. o casualties were reported in the clash, Antara reported.
Members of the Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) guarding the camp fired back at the attackers, who fled to the jungle, chief of Manokwari Police precinct Adj. Snr. Comr. Bambang Budi Santoso said Sunday.
He said the police had deployed 12 additional Brimob troopers to the site to reinforce the security guards there. More troopers would be flown in there Monday, said Bambang.
No information was available on the motive of the attack. Sources meanwhile speculated that it might have been related to a dispute on land compensation between the company and local villagers.
Last August the company paid Rp 143 million in landcompensation to three tribal chiefs representing the Mere, Toroar and Maerasi tribes in the regency.
Earlier the people demanded Rp 9 billion in compensation, but after negotiations both sides agreed to settle for Rp 143 million. The amount was further reduced by Rp 13 million as payment for a debt the people owed the company, sources said as quoted by Antara.
Indonesian Observer - April 2, 2001
Jakarta -- The Information Center for Aceh Referendum (SIRA) will soon file lawsuit against the Indonesian Police Chief General Surojo Bimantoro over the murder of three human rights activists in South Aceh on March 29. We will file lawsuit against the Police Chief, said SIRA Presidium Ridwan in Jakarta on the weekend.
The murder of three human rights activists Teungku Al Kamal (member of South Aceh Monitoring Team), Suprin Sulaiman (a lawyer), and Amiruddin (driver of the monitoring team) is widely seen as an indication that the government is unwilling to protect human rights activists. Aceh-based SIRA and Jakartas chapter of SIRA strongly deplored the murder of the three activists. They said the incident strongly indicates that the central government in Jakarta is not committed to protecting human rights defenders and human rights workers.
Furthermore, the murder of the three human rights workers was a complete betrayal of the human rights declaration. It also means an increase in the number of casualties. The incident is very damaging to efforts for a peaceful solution to Aceh conflicts, he said.
A report from the coalition of Aceh-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) revealed that the murder took place on March 29 shortly after midday. On that day, Suprin was accompanying Teungku Al Kamal to a testimony at the South Aceh District Police over the rape of five girls.
Both were picked up by the monitoring team driver. At about 4pm the car of the monitoring team went to Blang Pidie, meanwhile a car driven by security forces was also sighted. A moment later, locals heard gunshots from a hilly location in Meukek, South Aceh.
A farmer confirmed that he saw a car driven by security forces around the same time he saw the monitoring teams car, which had stopped at Jambo Tuak, nearby Meukek, Ridwan said. Locals later found the three men dead inside the car.
In a press release on Friday, US embassy in Jakarta deplored the senseless and brutal murder of the three Indonesians involved in the peace process in the restless Aceh province. The US embassy has demanded the Indonesian government to investigate the killings.
Straits Times - April 2, 2001
Devi Asmarani, Aceh -- A simple bus trip at night can turn deadly in this violence-wracked province, where residents live in constant fear of being caught in vicious clashes between Indonesian troops and separatist guerillas.
I learned this the hard way during a road trip back to Medan, North Sumatra, from Banda Aceh on Saturday night. The bus set off with 16 passengers. Halfway through the 12-hour journey, only 15 of us were left.
During one of the road searches, a young man was taken away by armed members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) who suspected he was a cuak ("military informant"). He is now feared dead, like many other young men captured in road blocks set up by either GAM or the Indonesian troops.
The potentially deadly road checks at GAM's strongholds along the east coast of the province start typically with an ID search conducted by guerillas in military fatigues.
They look for suspicious targets -- mostly young and healthy -- looking men who could be a member of the military or the police. They also target passengers of Javanese ethnicity who they believe have been colonising them for decades.
I was among the three people who fell into these categories in our bus. My ID card was issued in Jakarta and I do not speak the Acehnese dialect.
The three of us were summoned out of the bus where we were interrogated at rifle point. I told my interrogators that I could not a get a plane ticket to Jakarta and had to leave through Medan.
One rebel, tapping his AK-47, responded coldly: "This is the ticket." The other woman, an academic from Jakarta who was doing some social work in the area, fared worse than me. While my South Sumatra origin helped soften them up, the fact that she was a Javanese almost made her a shooting target.
But a courageous Acehnese woman travelling with her came to her aid. The woman, who declined to be named, claimed that the Javanese woman was her sister-in-law and said she would rather have her throat slashed than let them take her away.
She was slapped by the rebel leader for "inviting people from Java to the land of the Acehnese". But she managed to save us. The third suspect, the 25-year-old man, was beyond help.
One of the rebels ordered his comrades to step aside and, cocking his rifle, started to get into a firing position with his weapon aimed at the man. They did not execute him there, but he was not released back to the bus along with us.
I went through two such terrifying checkpoints in the districts of Bireun and Sigli, and managed to stay alive both times, not because I was a journalist but because of my Sumatra ethnicity. One rebel even asked me to stay and join GAM's all-female guerilla unit.
Two hours later, at another checkpoint in Lhok Sukon, where thousands of troops guard major industrial facilities, members of the Police Special Forces (Brimob) made all the men in the bus step outside for a regular weapons check.
This episode of road checks illustrates what being an Acehnese feels like, constantly in fear of looking the wrong way or speaking the wrong language. In villages, troops sweeping through the villages beat up or execute young men, loot the houses and vandalise property.
At a GAM village I visited last week, a woman still suffering from the shock of having her village raided by troops told me: "Whenever the ba'i ['Indonesian military'] arrives here, I tell my husband to hide in the mountain. "I have more of a chance to survive than him."
Another young man said: "The troops always suspect people who look good and dress nicely as a GAM member; now I dress like a farmer." A mental patient in Banda Aceh who suffered psychological trauma after being tortured severely by troops, along with two other mental patients, said he would rather stay in the hospital than return to his village. In his village, he said, the lives of people like him are expendable.
| Elite power struggle |
Jakarta Post - April 6, 2001
Surabaya -- Pledges to defend President Abdurrahman Wahid to the death continued to pour in here on Thursday, with claims that over 20,000 people were ready to die for the President in a holy war.
Despite public criticism and Abdurrahman's own criticism of talk of a holy war, Wiro Sugiman, the coordinator of the Truth Defenders Front, said at the National Awakening Party (PKB) office here his group would continue to register people willing to die for the President.
"Thus far there has been no order from Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) or PKB to stop our activities," Wiro said. "As for the criticism, well that is their right."
He claimed pledges of support for the President continued to flow in, with most of the 20,000 pledges coming from East Java. He also said many people had telephoned from Central Java and Lampung. "But unfortunately we could not accommodate them because they have to appear in person to sign their names on the form," he said.
The political fighting raging around the President in Jakarta has seeped through to the grassroots level, where support for the President is often colored with strong religious overtones.
The NU's law-making body discussed on Wednesday whether efforts to topple Abdurrahman could be considered bughot, or rebellion, thus allowing supporters of the President to take extreme measures to counter these efforts. The results of the discussion were not disclosed. Abdurrahman chaired NU for 15 years before being elected president.
Wiro said on Thursday he was "awaiting instructions from PKB or NU" before taking further steps. "If necessary, we are ready to leave at any time for Jakarta to defend Gus Dur's leadership until the end of his term in 2004," he said, referring to the President by his nickname.
Separately, M. Rofik, the head of the East Java branch of Ansor, the youth wing of NU, questioned the criticism of shows of support for Abdurrahman. Rofik, who is also a provincial councillor, alleged there was a prejudice against NU. He said NU members were condemned for expressing their support for Abdurrahman, but there was only silence when other groups used religious symbols for their own purposes.
"It is not fair. What our friends our doing is merely filling out forms and signing them. It is simply a sign of their commitment to the Constitution and the legitimate president," he said. "It is nothing more than that. We will not engage in violence."
Solution
In Purwokerto, PKB deputy secretary-general Chotibul Umam said the actions of the President's political opponents could not be considered bughot, and to answer these actions with a holy war would be out of all proportion.
"What has been taking place in the House of Representatives is part of the democratic process. It belongs in the political domain; we cannot mix politics with religion," Chatibul told The Jakarta Post.
In Jakarta, the chairman of the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI), Adi Sasono, urged the People's Consultative Assembly, the state's highest legislative body, to take the initiative in finding a resolution to the dispute between the House and the President.
"Declaring bughot is not a solution. In a democratic country, criticism is usual," Adi said during a media conference that was also attended by Solahuddin Wahid, Abdurrahman's brother and the NU deputy chairman.
ICMI deputy chairman Jimmly Assidiqie decried the use of religion for political interests. "It is acceptable to discuss bughot as part of an intellectual discourse. But we must denounce such discussions if they are being used to legitimize the killing of those who want to unseat the President.
"NU continues claiming our country does not follow Islamic law because of the country's pluralism. But then NU proposes recognizing bughot, which is only recognized in Islamic states that follow Islamic law," he said.
House Deputy Speaker Muhaimin Iskandar suggested the controversy was the work of elements from former president Soeharto's New Order regime, who were attempting to pit proreform groups against each other.
"There are still supporters of the [New Order] regime around [Assembly Speaker] Amien Rais, the President and [Vice President] Megawati, and they have a lot of money," he remarked.
Muhaimin also slammed talks between Amien and Crescent Star Party (PBB) chairman Yusril Ihza Mahendra about possible successors to Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri if she replaces Abdurrahman. "We [the National Awakening Party] know these two people have long harbored presidential and vice presidential ambitions," he said.
Associated Press - April 3, 2001
Jakarta -- Indonesia's foreign minister Tuesday denied claims reported by a local newsmagazine that President Abdurrahman Wahid accepted a $4 million aid donation from Kuwait in exchange for abandoning plans to visit Iraq last year.
The allegations, published in Forum Keadilan magazine Sunday, were made by an unnamed source within Indonesia's parliament, which is currently considering whether to push for Wahid's impeachment for corruption.
The magazine said Wahid failed to declare his receipt of the money, which is required under Indonesian law.
"It is not true," Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab told reporters at Jakarta's state palace. "It is just a new rumor that's being blown around to discredit the president." The Kuwaiti Embassy in Jakarta also denied the claim.
"We have never given any money for such a purpose to the president or anyone else," an embassy official said. Last August, Wahid raised international eyebrows when he announced he would visit Iraq's capital, Baghdad, and called on the UN to lift sanctions imposed after the invasion of Kuwait in the 1990 Gulf War. Wahid dropped his plans for the trip late last year.
The Indonesian president is currently fending off graft allegations, including a claim that he accepted a $2 million aid donation from the ruler of neighboring oil-rich Brunei, but failed to declare receipt of that money officially.
Straits Times - April 4, 2001
Marianne Kearney, Jakarta -- Clerics supporting Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid will decide today whether it is justifiable under Islamic law to kill those who have been attacking his presidency and attempting to unseat him.
The meeting of more than 500 Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) clerics from all over Indonesia has been called to decide whether to label attempts to overthrow the President a bughot, an Islamic term meaning rebellion against a legitimate government.
Clerics from NU, the largest Islamic organisation in Indonesia which Mr Abdurrahman once headed, are calling for the ruling as they fear Indonesia's stability is under threat.
"A bughot means we must go to war," said Mr Achmad Sujonu, the NU vice-secretary in East Java. Killing enemies was justified in the name of protecting a legitimate government, he added.
Political opponents within Parliament, including the party of Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri and an alliance of Islamic parties, have taken steps to impeach the President. Parliament will decide later this month whether to pursue impeachment.
Mr Achmad said: "The kiyai [Muslim teachers] of Java say that whoever becomes President of Indonesia through an election is the representative of the people, so he must complete his term." NU deputy secretary-general Masduki Baidlawi added that Islamic law sanctioned the killing of those involved in bughot. "The blood ... is halal," the Jakarta Post quoted him as saying.
Mr Abdurrahman has often said that Indonesia would fall apart if he was unseated. He maintains that he is the only leader capable of keeping Aceh, Irian Jaya and Madura -- where some of his most fanatical supporters live -- from declaring independence.
But other Muslim leaders have criticised NU's attempt to define attacks on the President as a rebellion. Professor Malik Fadjar, vice-chairman of the Muslim organisation Muhammadiyah, said: "It has to be a critical situation such as a war and NU is just pretending Indonesia is at war." He cited Iraq's invasion of Kuwait as a legitimate declaration of bughot.
South China Morning Post - April 4, 2001 (abridged)
Vaudine England, Jakarta -- The Marine Corps is to investigate the death of one of its own in a shootout in central Jakarta which arose after East Javanese supporters of President Abdurrahman Wahid were involved in a dispute over payment of hotel bills.
Details of Sunday's shooting suggest that the trip to Jakarta by the East Java demonstrators was well planned with the costs to be met by Muslim groups aligned to the President. This is in contrast to claims that a spontaneous decision was made to travel to the capital.
"The Marine who was shot was trying to settle some debts. I have ordered the Marine Corps chief to verify what happened and to take stern action," navy chief of staff Admiral Indroko Sastrowiryono said. "It was the Marine's personal problem. The incident has nothing to do with the Marine Corps as an institution," he added.
Reports say that chief sergeant Aliman was was shot dead by a police officer while firing his gun during a scuffle at the Ansor Youth Movement's offices. He had gone with his brother and a friend to the Ansor offices to try to get money to pay a hotel bill. Ansor is affiliated to Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the Muslim organisation President Wahid has headed for 15 years.
Many pro-Wahid demonstrators bussed into the capital in recent weeks are connected to Muslim groups and the Central Java leader of Banser, a paramilitary youth wing, has been questioned in connection with the incident. Banser is also affiliated to the NU.
President Wahid denies having called the demonstrators to the capital, but claims he cannot send them home. The demonstrators say they were acting out of personal, even "mystical" conviction, and are prepared to pay their own way. But when the bills fall due, their claims prove hollow.
The shooting lends credence to the belief that the arrival in Jakarta of street-fighting men from President Wahid's heartland is no coincidence, and is likely to have been arranged and paid for by NU-related groups.
The threat of violence from East Java if President Wahid is ousted is also giving many parliamentarians cause to reconsider their willingness to depose him for alleged corruption.
Some senior NU leaders are privately wondering how far their near-tribal backing of President Wahid should be taken, as the threat of violence risks discrediting the organisation. Analysts say this concern is probably behind the meeting today to discuss the permissibility in Islam of killing President Wahid's opponents.
Agence France-Presse - April 4, 2001
Jakarta -- The third-largest faction in Indonesia's national assembly yesterday did an about-face and called on President Abdurrahman Wahid to consider resigning if this would help to solve the country's political stalemate.
The Regional Representatives faction, one of the principal groups that propelled the President to power, said it hoped he would consider its proposals, given the 'weakening trust of the people in the government'.
Faction leaders handed a statement to the President for him to study. It included a suggestion that he resign 'if this could improve the situation'. It said that, among those calling for him to resign, were several friends who were only trying to find an honourable way for his exit.
Straits Times - April 4, 2001
Derwin Pereira, Jakarta -- President Abdurrahman Wahid yesterday cast doubt on Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri's ability to run Indonesia as he fought to hold on to power.
With impeachment proceedings looming in the background, his public criticism of his deputy -- saying he doubted if she could do the job any better -- signalled a deepening rift with Ms Megawati which could backfire on him, analysts said.
"The President questioned whether Ms Megawati controlling the government will actually make the government better," Mr Siswono Yudohusodo, a People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) legislator, told reporters after meeting Mr Abdurrahman.
There was no comment from Ms Megawati to what was a clear sign that the President was in no mood to give up his position to her.
But members of her Indonesian Democratic Party-Perjuangan (PDI-P) hit out at Mr Abdurrahman for "making comments that will fuel further fire".
Mr Heri Achmadi, the PDI-P secretary told The Straits Times: "There are little grounds for him to have made such remarks. What is his proof that she is not good enough? Like previous remarks he has made on other Cabinet members, his comments on Megawati will do little to improve the general political climate ... His relationship with Megawati will only get worse." This is not the first time he has criticised her.
On several occasions -- in private meetings with aides, Muslim scholars and businessmen -- he has reportedly questioned her ability to lead the country out of its current crisis. He has also commented on her personal life, alleging close links to an adjutant.
This has not gone down well with Ms Megawati, her influential husband Taufik Kiemas -- who at one time supported Mr Abdurrahman -- and with PDI-P members in general. Sources said that the relationship continued to fray after several recent meetings Ms Megawati had with Mr Abdurrahman.
She has also reportedly refused to strike a political deal to let him stay on until 2004. His opponents have not made things easier for him: they have made Ms Megawati their leading candidate to replace him.
Ms Megawati might be cautious about going for the political jugular, preferring that he resigned voluntarily. But observers noted that as ties soured, it would be easier for her to dump him.
Said an influential Golkar legislator: "Mega wants things to proceed in a constitutional manner. But with the President trying to undermine her credibility repeatedly, she will sooner or later support legislators to oust him. "Gus Dur has shot himself in the foot."
Agence France-Presse - April 2, 2001 (abridged)
Jakarta -- More than 600 people signed up on Monday to join a death squad aimed at preventing beleagured Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid from being ousted, a group leader said.
The Front for the Defenders of Truth is preparing 20,000 registration forms to be filled in by those who wish to "die as martyrs by defending President Abdurrahman Wahid," group coordinator Wiro Sugiman said.
"This is just the first step of efforts to accomodate people who wish to defend Gus Dur [Wahid] as a legitimate president," Sugiman told AFP by telephone from Surabaya, the capital of East Java province. He said the registration drive would be expanded to cover the whole of East Java.
East Java is Wahid's political heartland and home to millions of members of the 40-million strong Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest Islamic group Wahid once led for more than a decade until he became Indonesia's first democratically-elected president in October 1999.
The forms carry a vow which reads "I hereby declare I am ready to die as a martyr to defend President Abdurrahman Wahid in his duties to uphold the Constitution and the integrity of the Republic of Indonesia." Sugiman said the volunteers would travel to Jakarta if Wahid's opponents in the parliament continued their drive to unseat the nearly-blind president.
Reuters - April 2, 2001
Jonathan Thatcher, Jakarta -- The speaker of Indonesia's top legislative assembly on Monday said President Abdurrahman Wahid should quit, accusing him of being stupid, corrupt and of leading the nation to ruin.
Wahid's 17 months as Indonesia's first democratically elected leader have been plagued by violence and economic crisis and he faces increasingly formidable political opposition which could force him from office within months.
"Wahid was very stupid in taking all the problems so easily. He was not serious," said Amien Rais, who has played a key role in the downfall of one president and the election of another.
"I believe that if he does not resign he will be impeached, that's for sure," he told Reuters in an interview. Rais heads the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), which has the power to impeach the president.
Quickly disillusioned
Rais, who helped form a largely Muslim-based coalition which brought Wahid to power and kept Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri out, said he quickly became disillusioned with the Muslim cleric's ruling style.
"He wanted to have a crony cabinet and instead of addressing the problems, I think he is committing many, many disservices to the nation." Rais, not coy about his own presidential ambitions, was at the vanguard of popular protest which helped bring down long- serving autocrat Suharto three years ago.
That paved the way for what has turned out to be a turbulent transition and a far from complete transition to democracy that has been accompanied by ever louder political squabbling.
Rais supporters were central to last month's parliamentary censure of Wahid over two financial scandals which many analysts say is turning increasingly towards a process of impeachment that could push Wahid from office by August.
But the 57-year old former leader of the country's second largest Muslim organisation -- the biggest was headed by Wahid -- ruled out suggestions of some sort of power-sharing deal with Megawati so that Wahid stay in office until the end of his term in 2004.
"I don't trust him any longer and the shape of this republic is shrinking very slowly but very systematically too," he said in his spacious Jakarta home, a perk of the job, surrounded by mostly Islamic decorations and, in the entrance, two large photographs of himself.
"When we chose [Wahid] ... he seemed very moderate, very honest. It was almost unthinkable to imagine him as a corrupt leader ... there was not the slightest indication that he loved money and worldly things."
Megawati would be better
Rais struggled a little when asked whether Megawati, whom he had so vehemently opposed for president in 1999, would make a better leader. Under the constitution, she would automatically take over if the president leaves office.
"Of course it's very difficult to make a judgement and I don't want to make a judgement about the leadership. But at least she can see," he said, referring to the fact Wahid is almost blind.
"Megawati also listens to other people, while my brother Abdurrahman Wahid never listens to anybody. So at least based on these two things, there is a high probability that she will make a better president."
Megawati is hugely popular, leads the country's largest party and commands huge support among the poor, but is often pilloried for the silence that has marked most of her time in office.
Rais skirted the question of whether he was worried by allegations of rampant corruption in the Megawati camp, often concerning her husband's business interests.
"If it's true, of course, it'll become a liability to her, but for the time being I don't want to be trapped by this kind of rumour," he said.
But he dismissed fears Wahid supporters -- already up in arms over February's parliamentary censure and often focusing their fury on Rais -- would turn even more violent if Wahid was forced out. "[Wahid's supporters] are so subservient to the government," he said, adding they were only causing problems now because their leader was president."
Jakarta Post - April 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Claims that President Abdurrahman Wahid was medically unfit for office was just a political ploy by the President's enemies, an aide said on Saturday.
"The President noted that the issue of his health was always brought up to discredit him", presidential spokesman Adhi Massardi told reporters at Merdeka Palace. "I know the President is very fit."
Chief of Abdurrahman's medical team, Umar Wahid, has also denied media reports suggesting the President was medically unfit -- which constitutionally would allow him to face an impeachment.
Umar, who is the President's younger brother, also denied reports that the President's doctors had sent a letter to the House of Representatives (DPR) suggesting that Abdurrahman, who is under intense pressure to step down over his erratic leadership, was not well enough to run the country.
Umar also dismissed the validity of the medical reports now being studied by some lawmakers. He said the reports had been written by doctors who had never examined the President and were based on secondhand information.
Umar was referring to House Speaker Akbar Tandjung's statement on Thursday that the DPR would meet with a team of four doctors on Monday to hear their report on the President's health.
The report, copies of which are being circulated at the House, by the medical team suggests that from a medical perspective, Abdurrahman, who has been weakened by at least two strokes and diabetes, and is clinically blind, is no longer fit to carry out his presidential duties.
| Regional/communal conflicts |
Associated Press - April 5, 2001
Palu -- Police fired warning shots Thursday as a stone-throwing Muslim mob outside a court house where three Christians were sentenced to death for inciting a massacre and other religious violence that killed hundreds.
The Palu District Court in the town of Palu, in Central Sulawesi province, found the three guilty of training a gang of 700 Christians that attacked Muslim neighborhoods in May last year. In one incident, 191 Muslims sheltering in a mosque were massacred.
Hundreds more people were killed and several villages around the town, about 1,600 kilometers northeast of Jakarta, were destroyed when Muslim gangs retaliated. Fighting continued for one month.
The sectarian violence had spread from the nearby Maluku islands, where fighting between Christians and Muslims had left thousands dead since it broke out in January, 1999. It was not immediately clear if the defendants' lawyers would appeal the verdict.
Outside the courthouse, a mob of about 2,000 Muslims threw stones at the vehicles carrying the defendants to jail. Witnesses said at least one policeman was injured when he was hit by a rock. The crowd dispersed after security forces fired several warning shots.
Agence France-Presse - April 2, 2001 (abridged)
Jakarta -- The discovery of a headless corpse and the torching of houses have heightened tension in a district of Indonesia's Borneo island where at least 500 people were killed in over six weeks of ethnic violence, police said Monday.
"The corpse was found some 10 kilometres out of town yesterday [Sunday]," district police chief Petrus Hardono told AFP from the district town of Sampit in Kalimantan. He said that the victim was believed to be a Madurese migrant who had come out of his jungle hiding.
"I think he was like the others on Saturday, he must have been caught while sneaking out of the jungle in search for food," Hardono said refering to five other Madurese migrants who were killed in Sampit on Saturday.
But a local district official said that people did not venture outside their home once darkness had set in. "We are begining to get worried as rumours speak of armed Madurese planning to attack our town and exact revenge," said the official who declined to be named.
In Pangkalan Bun, the main town in the neighbouring district of Kotawaringin Timur, two houses left vacant by their owners were set on fire in the night of Saturday to Sunday, the district police chief Jusman Aer told AFP.
"Only two empty houses were burned," Aer said, adding that the local police and military forces have been reinforced by 100 policemen and 1,140 soldiers from outside the province.
"We now have 380 policemen and 1,289 soldiers," he said. "We have deployed them across the districts, including in the strategic areas in Pangkalan Bun. We hope that with their presence, people will feel secure," Aer said.
In the Central Kalimantan district of Kapuas, 44 empty houses were torched on Sunday near the town of Anjir Serapat, police said.
Jakarta Post - April 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Communal violence in Central Kalimantan which has left at least 500 dead since it first erupted six weeks ago has claimed another five lives, police said on Sunday.
"The bodies of five men were found on the main road to Kotabesi yesterday (Saturday), some 30 minutes from Sampit," Kotawaringin Timur Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Petrus Hardono told The Jakarta Post from the regency town of Sampit.
The five bodies -- believed to have been killed just a few hours prior to their discovery -- appeared to be Madurese men, he said. "Residents found the bodies early on Saturday but the police were only notified the following evening," officer Petrus said.
The victims are believed to have come from Jepaga, an area close to the border of Kotabesi subdistrict, and were probably part of a group who had chosen to remain in the forest, he said.
"The fatalities were probably Madurese who grew hungry and eventually came out of hiding but on their way encountered some Dayaks," he said. The bodies all bore slash wounds but their heads were not severed and remained intact, he said.
"We cannot tell who really killed them but we hope that none of these incidents will reoccur. I think there are still hundreds of Madurese hiding in the forests near Sampit ... we have urged them to come out and have offered them the assistance of the military to provide security but it seems that they want to remain in hiding," the officer said.
Petrus, however, said that in general the situation in Sampit has been calm over the past few weeks, and "markets, schools and shops have been busy." "The curfew in Sampit was lifted about three weeks ago though people have generally opted to stay at home and avoid nighttime travel," he added.
Tension also rose in Pangkalan Bun, capital of West Kotawaringin regency in Central Kalimantan, where acts of alleged arson towards Madurese-owned houses were still taking place late on Saturday, Antara reported. West Kotawaringin regency is about 229 kilometers away from East Kotawaringin regency.
The fires took place on Jl. Ahmad Yani in Baru subdistrict of Arut Selatan district, forcing security forces to fire warning shots in an attempt to disperse the anxious local crowds.
Residents have conducted intense neighborhood watch security schemes in their respective areas and built road blocks.
"The fires razed the houses of two Madurese, Haj Senah and Israel. We are still investigating the cause of the incident," Kotawaringin Barat Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Jusman Aer said as quoted by the news agency. No fatalities were reported in the blaze.
The officer further explained that there are a total of 1,669 personnel deployed in Pangkalan Bun, 1,289 of whom are members of the military while the remainder are from the police.
Officer Jusman called on locals to stay calm and not to be easily provoked by ambiguous incidents and rumors. "If people see something suspicious, they should report the matter to the police immediately rather than take the law into their own hands," he said.
Violence between the indigenous Dayak tribesmen and migrant settlers from Madura, an island off the coast of East Java, first erupted in Sampit on February 18 and quickly spread to Palangkaraya and Kualakapuas. Since then, more than 80,000 Madurese have fled or been evacuated from the province.
| Human rights/law |
Jakarta Post - April 6, 2001
Jakarta -- Attorney General Marzuki Darusman said on Thursday data processing was an obstacle in investigating alleged corruption cases involving conglomerates.
"There are no legal obstacles, only problems in processing data because there is so much data spread across so many institutions," Marzuki said.
Marzuki said there was data from Bank Indonesia, the Supreme Audit Agency and the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, some of which was different from data obtained by the Attorney General's Office. "We are trying to overcome the problems by consolidating the data from the different sources," he said.
Marzuki was responding to calls from the public, as well as from House of Representatives Speaker Akbar Tandjung, to bring conglomerate owners allegedly involved in corruption to court. Akbar mentioned three specific businessmen in making his demand on Tuesday: Marimutu Sinivasan, Prajogo Pangestu and Syamsul Nursalim.
Syamsul is the owner and founder of the Gadjah Tunggal Group, Prajogo controls PT Barito Pacific Timber and Marimutu is the owner of the textile firm Texmaco Group. The three businessmen have been accused of financial wrongdoings and are massively indebted to the government.
According to Marzuki, his office has summoned Syamsul twice. "We are waiting for his arrival. We heard that he has heart problems and is in Palembang right now. But there is still an official summons for him."
Marzuki said no action had been taken against Marimutu because President Abdurrahman Wahid had ordered a delay to the legal proceedings against the businessman. The President said he ordered the delay because of the Texmaco Group's importance to Indonesian exports. The attorney general added that Prajogo's case was being studied.
Marzuki also discussed the issue of the alleged misuse by banks of liquidity support they received from Bank Indonesia. Some Rp 144 trillion (US$14.4 billion) of this liquidity support was allegedly misused by private banks.
"And there are a number of state banks that allegedly misused some Rp 271 trillion [of liquidity support]. These banks have not yet been investigated," he said.
The House of Representatives and the Supreme Audit Agency, he added, had to treat state banks the same as private banks and audit them, adding that state banks had never been subject to audits.
Marzuki said his office had examined 23 of 48 banks that received liquidity support from Bank Indonesia. So far, only the now- defunct Bank Aspac has been brought to court.
Separately on Thursday, the head of the Supreme Audit Agency, Satrio B. Judono, questioned Marzuki's statements, saying the total amount of Bank Indonesia liquidity support for both private and state banks was only Rp 144.4 trillion.
"This is based on data from Bank Indonesia and Coordinating Minister for the Economy Rizal Ramli. So the attorney general has to clarify his statements," he said as quoted by Antara news agency.
Satrio also denied the Supreme Audit Agency only focused its efforts on private banks. The agency, he said, has examined over 48 banks that accepted the liquidity support. "Maybe it is too much for the Attorney General's Office to examine all of the banks at the same time," Satrio said.
According to Satrio, the investigation of bank liquidity support cases is a three-step process. Bank Indonesia officials must be examined, the usage of the liquidity support has to be traced and it has to be determined how much of the liquidity support has been returned to Bank Indonesia.
The Supreme Audit Agency has completed the first two steps for the banks it has examined, while the third step is ongoing, he said.
Agence France-Presse - April 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Indonesian corruption fighters on Monday slammed the Supreme Court's dissolution of an anti-graft team as an attempt by judges to protect themselves and a setback to efforts to clean-up Indonesia's judiciary.
The Supreme Court annulled a regulation that established the Joint Anti-Corruption Team -- which was targetting several Supreme Court justices -- on March 23, according to the Jakarta Post.
Defending the decision, deputy chief justice for administration, Paulus Lotulung said the regulation was annulled because it contradicted a 1999 law on corruption, the Post reported.
But Kastorius Sinaga, vice chairman of anti-corruption organisation Gempita, branded the court's move "political." "... because [former joint team chief] Adi Andoyo Sucipto was trying to bring some Supreme Court judges to court for corruption cases they were allegedly involved in," he told AFP.
"This is like an act of solidarity by the Supreme Court because Adi [Sucipto] had actually attacked the court as an institution." Sinaga also said the 48-member Supreme Court was acting out of its jurisdiction by annulling the regulation. "It is inappropriate for the court to cancel this team because it was originally set up by the attorney general's office (AG0), so it should only be the AGO that can dissolve it," he said.
The Indonesian Institute for an Independent Judiciary accused the court of feeling "threatened." The anti-graft team had been "prioritising efforts to combat the practice of corruption, collusion and nepotism in the Supreme Court," the institute's Rifqi Assegaf told the Post.
The regulation annulled by the court had empowered the team to coordinate the investigation and prosecution of difficult-to- prove corruption cases. Sucipto, who quit the team last month in protest at the lack of political support, condemned the court's decision.
"Corruption is an endemic disease which must be combatted with extraordinary methods," he said on Indosiar private television.
President Abdurrahman Wahid made the fight against corruption a key pledge when he was elected almost 18 months ago. Many of those efforts have been frustrated in the courts, where corruption cases have been thrown out on grounds ranging from technical to illness, or have been handed light sentences.
But new Justice and Human Rights Minister Baharuddin Lopa has signalled a tougher attitude. Within days of Lopa's appointment, former finance minister and close associate of ex-president Suharto, Bob Hasan, saw his home detention for corruption revert back to imprisonment, and he was last week transferred to a notoriously-harsh prison island south of Java.
Jakarta Post - April 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Legal experts have called on the government to take strict measures against judges whose verdicts spark controversy, instead of just giving them administrative sanctions.
National Law Commission member Frans Hendra Winarta and Todung Mulya Lubis from the Judicial Watch Indonesia both said that the minister of justice and human rights should suspend errant judges until their cases were settled thoroughly. They also asserted that the minister should publicize such cases.
"We have to be fierce when handling corruption cases," he said on Friday, referring to judges suspected of taking bribes.
Earlier this week, Minister of Justice and Human Rights Baharuddin Lopa announced that he had given administrative sanctions to 12 judges who had abused their authority. Five of the judges were transferred to other posts and were stripped of their authority to hand down verdicts.
Frans told The Jakarta Post by telephone that it was about time the government strictly punished errant judges in an effort to eradicate rampant corruption.
He said that a consensus to combat corruption among all members in the administration of justice was the first thing to do to foster an intolerance of corruption. Without such an effort, he said, corruption cannot really be eliminated.
Frans said he was still optimistic that the government could eradicate corruption, as long as it assigned clean judges to handle corruption cases. Meanwhile, Todung said that minister Lopa should consult the Supreme Court immediately to tighten supervision of judges in all courts in the country.
Todung, who is a lawyer, viewed that there were many lawyers who played roles in collusion between judges and defendants, making it more difficult to eradicate corruption. Therefore, he suggested that the minister cooperate with the Supreme Court to form an ad hoc team to probe controversial court verdicts.
Contacted separately, Benyamin Mangkoedilaga, a Supreme Court justice, indicated that not just judges, but also police officers and prosecutors were often involved in bribery while handling a case. The government should take measures against them as well, he said. He said he supported any effort to eliminate corruption involving judges, as long as the move did not violate any rules.
He criticized Lopa, who passed administrative sanctions on the 12 judges before consulting the Judges Honor Board. "It was a wrong move," said Benyamin, who was nominated by President Abdurrahman Wahid as a candidate for chief justice.
In contrast to Benyamin, Frans said the Judges Honor Board had nothing to do with the matter because corruption in the courts was a crime. He said the board was only authorized to handle ethical violations by judges.
In Bandung, a judge said in the 13th congress of the Association of Indonesian Judges (Ikahi) that the government should raise the salary of a district court judge to Rp 15 million per month, a high court judge to Rp 25 million per month and a Supreme Court judge to Rp 40 million. The congress agreed that the salaries should be increased, but did not recommend a figure. Judges are currently paid between Rp 3 million and Rp 12 million.
| News & issues |
South China Morning Post - April 5, 2001
Vaudine England -- The politicians presiding over Jakarta's latest political crisis, currency tumble and perhaps national disintegration are doing so from lavish homes and luxury cars. Many attend self-promoting seminars in designer batik and shoes, sign deals with gold-tipped pens, clock up VIP jaunts to Mecca, toying with excess food and mistresses all the time. Being a sophisticated lot, fluent in home-grown mythologies of national pride and privilege, this Jakarta elite has taken on the language of reform, democracy and "People Power" as they would a second or third facelift.
But the plight of the poor, for them seen only through frosted limousine windows, has merely deteriorated. Millions of Indonesians continue to subsist on 50 US cents a day. At least a third of Jakarta's people are homeless and lack the city identity card that would make residence in their own capital city legal. They face arbitrary eviction or dispossession as a daily reality. They experience no right to life, education, health and security as their leaders fritter away their wealth.
It is fitting, therefore, that the lowly becak, or cycle rickshaw, has become a symbol of the urban poor's power.
These attractive vehicles, on which the driver cycles behind a small carriage for two -- or 10 -- represent Indonesia's diversity through design and bring ease of movement to poorer neighbourhoods. Even the rich can recall how becaks took them to school in childhood villages. Only 15 years ago, it was possible to top off a night of partying with a becak ride home, trundling through hushed streets with a breeze on the face.
Nowadays, becaks survive with one vital difference: look carefully on the brightly painted backs of the becaks and a neat licence plate is visible, listing the driver's neighbourhood and number. This plate represents far more profound political change than all the hot air in parliament. It is a sign of a gradual politicisation of what Indonesians call the "little people". For these plates come not from a concerned or involved city administration but from a clever, colourful and challenging non- governmental organisation (NGO) called the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC).
The licence plate links becak drivers with colleagues nationwide and connects their daily struggle to protect their group. Drivers contribute what they can to a common fund, spent on welfare and political activities.
They know that when the next axe falls on their right to survive, they will not be alone. Five thousand have signed up so far, and weekly meetings at the UPC office are held each Monday.
On the scale of Jakarta's poor, becak drivers do moderately well, but Jakarta's politicians have never approved. Former president Suharto banned the becak, tossing hundreds of them into Jakarta Bay in the late 1980s, saying the sweaty labour involved in powering a becak was an insult to the dignity of the Indonesian people. Besides, he added, the submerged becaks would provide havens for the bay's alleged marine life.
As Suharto fell from power in 1998 and economic crisis mixed with a decline of government, becaks burst back on to local streets seemingly overnight. President Abdurrahman Wahid also tried to ban the becak, but such a good living cannot be denied. The law now allows them to function in residential neighbourhoods only, but Jakarta's Governor Sutiyoso is appealing this in a bid to ban the becak once more.
That is why savvy becak drivers carry their UPC identity plates and join colourful rallies, in the most visible sign of a stirring of grass-roots consciousness. These men can muster hundreds of becaks to block roads as they advance on the presidential palace.
By so doing, they have converted something the elite disdains as a hangover from a primitive, poverty-ridden past into a symbol of resistance. The becak campaign is the beginning of informed and focused community pressure on a profoundly corrupt elite and, as such, is one of this country's few hopeful signs for the future.
It is a characteristic twist from the UPC crowd. Led by the dynamic Wardah Hafidz, this group of funky designers, committed reformists and community organisers is giving a voice, an identity and a platform with which to fight for basic rights.
Ms Hafidz's staff dreamed up the idea of a gigantic billboard showing what an average city-dweller survived on, next to an empty space where the country director of the World Bank, Mark Baird, was to fill in his own salary. Mr Baird, a remarkably empathic banker, admits the barb was effective. He was brave enough to accept Ms Hafidz's invitation to the event but blushingly refused to fill in the blank.
On a recent visit to the bungalow on Jakarta's outskirts, which is the nerve centre of the UPC, dynamism was barely evident. A dozen or so people were strewn across the floor in varying stages of undress and sleep.
It was a motley crowd, including Slamet and Piah, a couple who normally live alongside a railway track but are facing eviction even from that humble abode. They and the others were recovering, Ms Hafidz explained, from an exhausting demonstration at City Hall that day against the latest city budget.
This is one of the more extraordinary documents seen in recent times. According to a breakdown dissected on eye-catching UPC brochures, this budget sets aside just 12.67 trillion rupiah a year for the poor of Jakarta.
Of that, about $1 million is set aside for "social rehabilitation" of beggars, prostitutes and other street dwellers. Another million is for street children. A mere $148,554 is earmarked for food at schools. Other special nutritional needs total $687,000, offering -- according to Ms Hafidz's calculations -- about 500 rupiah (37 cents) per person per year.
There are more than 10 million people in Jakarta, almost half of whom scrape livings from the so-called informal sector -- collecting rich people's rubbish, driving becaks, selling cigarettes and noodles or themselves at roadside stalls, begging, bothering and the like.
By contrast, the budget for the Governor's personal private medical scheme is $57,936, and his annual wardrobe allowance is $29,711. His personal furniture allowance for his free government house -- worth $356,902 -- is $74,277 a year. His office furniture allowance is $2,469,715 a year, and his travel budget is $130,000 a year.
The cost of entertaining members of the city's local parliament is $1,263,855, more than the entire budget for helping street children. City legislators also recently received new free homes and cars, thanks to their own democratic rulings.
"The Jakarta 2001 city budget must be revised," says Ms Hafidz. "It is notoriously unjust. Two-thirds of the money goes on their own routine budget, leaving only a third for the people."
The urban poor are those squatting on riverbanks, railway lines and public spaces. A family of up to five people will live on about 35,000 rupiah a week. The children often do not get to school, because although it is supposed to be free, school involves expenses for books, shoes and uniforms. Becak drivers do better, earning about that much per day. They can afford to eat twice a day and have a bit left over for the lottery.
"The main problem is health, and for these people, if they have to go to hospital, it is the end of the world," says Ms Hafidz. "We said: 'You have to revoke and revise the budget, otherwise we will start civil disobedience'."
Her demonstration techniques rely on novel forms of street theatre, marching bands, traditional costumes and dramatic visual displays. The medium is also the message, as the UPC aims to re- invigorate native cultural forms among the poor to spark some glimmers of self-esteem. A culture of informed resistance is also evolving. Guitars, drums and xylophones recently supported home- grown actors miming life on the economic tightrope, directly beneath the marble facade of the Grand Hyatt hotel.
Direct action seems only appropriate when the link between high- flying corruption and dispossession of the poor is so blatantly direct. The city budget increases land tax, for example, so the state railway is selling land beside its lines to cover the bill -- throwing Slamet and Piah out of the shack they call home.
Beaming widely as he watched a video of earlier protest actions by himself and friends, Slamet has become a different man since he became what Ms Hafidz calls a "community leader", the focal point of UPC's outreach to his railway-track neighbourhood. A couple of UPC community leaders are present in each of Jakarta's major neighbourhoods. When each new issue comes up -- be it the becaks, the budget or emergency rice distribution -- Slamet spreads the information and campaign details to his neighbours.
He manages the combination of UPC budget and personal donations that help pay for their transport fares to a rally, and gets a feeling, he says, of being able at last to control some aspect of his existence.
The community organisation techniques draw a lot on Ms Hafidz's own experiences in a small neighbourhood in West Jakarta from 1993 to 1996.
"The economy was booming, so there were evictions every day. Every day, the bulldozers were coming in, and there was no advocacy for the displaced; they had no way to stop it," she recalls.
"It took almost a year to be accepted by the local people. Their leaders had told them not to talk to us, saying we were communists or Christians. We had to spend a lot of late nights drinking with the residents to gain their trust," she says, laughing.
In fact, she hails from a high-ranking Muslim family from the same town as Mr Wahid -- Jombang in East Java. She is feminist and Muslim and admits to "problems with ritual".
Step by grinding step, Ms Hafidz's group brought a few improvements to the area, fixing small roads and utilities. Then she got hold of a plan to widen the roads, which if implemented, would have wiped out the community so painstakingly built. Her opposition made her a target of thugs routinely employed by local district heads.
Without strong backing or high visibility then, Ms Hafidz and her friends lost the argument and the developers had their way. Just as a major economic crisis hit in 1997, she founded the UPC, relying on her public profile and the growing masses of the disadvantaged to confront the elite with a force to be reckoned with.
"Elite politics here is a circus," she says. "The noise from parliament is deafening, but they're only fighting each other in their own interests." She refers to the parliamentary committee which found Mr Wahid guilty of involvement in corruption as a preliminary step towards his impeachment.
It spent 135 billion rupiah to find the president guilty in a scandal involving perhaps 56 billion rupiah.
With her subtle touch of class, Ms Hafidz manages to wrong-foot more officials than just the World Bank's benignly blushing Mr Baird. Senior diplomats and aid officials admit to the frequent sagacity of her arguments and say the shock value presented by her organisation's genuine connection with Indonesia's masses is little short of revolutionary.
"It's my absolutely favourite NGO here, no doubt about it," said a foreign aid expert, adding it was about time Indonesia saw some earthy "Poor Power", instead of the current elite-managed exhibitions of so-called "People Power".
Reuters - April 3, 2001
Indonesia's Bank Restructuring Agency (Ibra) yesterday rejected a local newspaper report that key officials, including the agency's chief, planned to resign.
But it confirmed however, one senior executive planned to leave and an Ibra source told reporters another had already submitted his letter of resignation, the latest changes in a series of shake-ups at the troubled agency.
"The report is not true ... they are still active and there is no sign of resignation," Ibra public relations chief Danang Kemayanjati told Reuters.
The leading Bisnis Indonesia daily reported yesterday that due to pressure from several unnamed groups Ibra head Edwin Gerungan, deputy chief Sumantri Slamet and other key officials would resign which could jeopardise the agency's 2001 revenue target of 27 trillion rupiah (S$4.7 billion).
None of the officials named were available for comment. But a source from the agency told reporters yesterday Mr Sumantri had submitted his resignation letter to Finance Minister Prijadi Praptosuhardjo. The source did not say when it was submitted.
Mr Danang also said head of asset management Hendro Santoso did plan to leave but he did not elaborate. But Indonesian finance minister Prijadi denied any such planned resignations. "No, there aren't any. Not even talk," he said when asked about the reports.
The powerful agency, controlling tens of billions of dollars in assets, has been hit by a series of personnel shake-ups, including the recent resignation of deputy chairman of the asset management unit Machmuddin Yasin and the deputy chairman in charge of the bank restructuring unit, Jerry Ng. Mr Machmuddin's resignation was rejected by the finance minister and he remains with Ibra.
There have also been frequent rumours Mr Gerungan, a career banker, would quit. Analysts fear the changes would hobble efforts to repair the heavily indebted bank and corporate sectors. In its 2001 budget (January-December), the government set Ibra a revenue target of 27 trillion rupiah to help plug the budget deficit.
Jakarta Post - April 2, 2001
Jakrarta -- Hoodlums, locally known as preman, have established themselves in every corner of the capital, "guarding" almost every public place, including bus terminals, traditional markets, shopping centers and even road junctions.
Data collected by the city administration reveals that several spots in the city's five mayoralties have been virtually controlled by the thugs for years.
They presently operate in many places in Central Jakarta, including the Senen area, Banteng field, junctions along Jl. Gunung Sahari, the National Monument (Monas) Park, Pasar Baru and the Tanah Abang area.
In East Jakarta, the hoodlums hang out at junctions in Cawang, Jl. Pemuda, Kramatjati, the Kampung Rambutan and Kampung Melayu bus terminals and the Jatinegara railway station.
Preman are also firmly established in many public places in North Jakarta, including Sunda Kelapa and Tanjung Priok harbors, Tanjung Priok railway station and bus terminal, and junctions in Pluit, Ancol and Plumpang.
They also operate in Glodok, Mangga Dua, Mangga Besar, and junctions in Cengkareng, Tomang, Daan Mogot, Hayam Wuruk, Tubagus Angke and Grogol, all in West Jakarta.
In South Jakarta, the preman hang out in the Blok M shopping area, Kebayoran Lama traditional market, Lebak Bulus terminal, and junctions at CSW, Kemang and Kalibata.
They usually extort illegal levies from traders in the markets, bus or public minivan drivers in bus terminals, or organize on- street parking.
According to the Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, (Unabridged Dictionary of the Indonesian Language), preman is defined as a petty criminal, robber or pickpocket.
Many linguists believe that the word preman originates from Dutch and means "a free man", a man who is free to go anywhere and at anytime without being bound by commitments to relatives.
Criminologist Adrianus Meliala of the University of Indonesia, however, disagrees with the definition provided by the dictionary, saying that preman are not really criminals, but rather they simply do not live and act as ordinary, law-abiding people.
"The definition is still unclear. The Preman are somewhere in the gray area between criminals and law-abiding people," Adrianus told The Jakarta Post over the weekend. He said the hoodlums were not always hated, but, in many cases, certain people or groups used them for their own ends.
The South Jakarta Public Order Office reportedly hired some thugs to evict street traders, and magazine and newspapers vendors from the CSW crossroads.
Several street vendors, accompanied by a number of legal and rights activists filed a complaint with the City Council last week, saying that they had been beaten and threatened by the hoodlums, who were armed with machetes.
South Jakarta Mayor Abdul Mufti has denied that his mayoralty hired the hoodlums, saying that those involved were public order officers.
As a multiethnic city, Jakarta is a place where many people from across the country come to try their "luck", and the same applies to the hoodlums.
Adrianus said hoodlums, who were socially and economically marginalized, normally associated based on primitive considerations such as ethnicity.
"They can easily communicate with and are emotionally linked to their friends from similar ethnic groups. It's different for middle-class people who associate and unite in organizations based on their professions or hobbies," he said. "This is why certain areas become the haunts of certain ethnic groups."
The Madurese are the "kings" in Senen and Tanah Abang markets in Central Jakarta, and in Kebayoran Lama market, South Jakarta. But Minangkabau youths (West Sumatra) and preman from East Timor also control other parts of the Tanah Abang area, including the former Bongkaran red-light district.
Last week, Madurese hoodlums were involved in brawls with native Jakartan (Betawi) youths in Kebayoran Lama and Tanah Abang markets, which claimed two lives.
In the Blok M shopping area and bus terminal, hoodlums from Surabaya in East Java, who are known as the Arek gang, and from Malang, also in East Java, who are known as the Arema gang, share control of the area.
In 1998, Betawi youths were involved in a brawl with security guards of Ambon, Maluku origin, who were hired by an amusement center in the Ketapang area of West Jakarta.
The brawl, which was triggered by a fight over a parking lot, turned into a religious clash, with several churches being burned down and a mosque damaged.
Many believe that the prolonged clashes in Maluku began after the Ambon youths, who had long lived in Jakarta, returned to their hometown.
People, however, are still dubious about the possibility of eradicating hoodlumism in the city, even though Governor Sutiyoso has recently declared war on the preman. "It's difficult to do, as long as the main problem, poverty, is incapable of being alleviated," Adrianus explained.
He said that it would soon be business as usual for the hoodlums, extorting money from vendors and public transportation drivers. "They are like an ailment in our body... we hate it, but we can't get rid of it," he said.
| Environment/health |
Jakarta Post - April 6, 2001
Palembang, South Sumatra -- The provinces of South Sumatra and neighboring Jambi are urging the Ministry of Forestry and Plantations to hand over reforestation funds amounting to more than Rp 15 trillion (some US$15 billion).
South Sumatra Governor Rosihan Arsyad and Jambi legislative council Speaker Nasrun Arbain said the money was needed for reforestation programs. They said South Sumatra had the right to Rp 8 trillion and Jambi Rp 7.2 billion in reforestation funds.
A ministry official who asked for anonymity said the South Sumatra administration had made numerous requests for the money, but the ministry had not yet responded. "The money has allegedly been misused by the central government for, among other things, an aircraft manufacturer and to bail out private companies," the official said.
Saiful Ramadhan, the head of the South Sumatra Forestry Office, said the province had a total of 3,275,125 hectares of forest, 1,920,842 hectares of which has been destroyed.
A similar situation exists in Jambi. According to Arbain, illegal logging was rampant in the province. "Conservation areas, including Berbak National Park and Kerinci Seblat National Park, have become the targets." Berbak National Park covers about 142,500 hectares, while Seblat National Park encompasses 402,500 hectares.
Agence France-Presse - April 3, 2001
Jakarta -- Indonesia has admitted failure in meeting forestry protection commitments to its key donor group, the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI), weeks before a CGI meeting in Jakarta, a report said Tuesday.
"It's our own fault. How could we have set such unrealistic targets?" newly-installed forestry minister Marzuki Usman was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying after a meeting with forest concession holders.
The CGI pledged 4.8 billion dollars to Indonesia at its annual meeting in Tokyo last October, in return for more reforms in finance and governance from President Abdurrahman Wahid's government.
Among the reforms Jakarta pledged at last year's Tokyo CGI meeting were eight key steps for saving its forests, in response to CGI members' concern at rampant deforestation.
They included combatting illegal logging and unlicensed sawmills, accelerating forest resources assessment and a moratorium on forest conversion. Also pledged was a cutback of wood-processing industries, closing heavily-indebted timber companies and enhancing sustainable forest management.
Asked whether future CGI loans were in danger as a result of defaulting on the commitments, Usman replied: "Just wait and see". He added negotiations were ongoing.
The ministry's recently-sacked secretary general Suripto complained to a donor meeting in Jakarta last October that the fight against illegal logging was being hampered by other government agencies.
Suripto said he had provided the police with reports on 14 illegal logging barons, but no action had been taken.
He said the customs office and neighbouring countries were also being uncooperative, citing Malaysia's acceptance of smuggled illegal logs as legal once Malaysian tax had been paid.
Suripto was sacked last week, in the wake of President Abdurrahman Wahid's sacking of Nurmahmudi Ismail as forestry minister. Wahid cited Suripto's retirement age and Ismail's ineffectiveness in running the forestry ministry as reasons for their dismissals.
Chief economics minister Rizal Ramli said newly empowered regional government chiefs had been competing with each other since decentralisation to convert forest land into concessions. "This will be very dangerous," Ramli was quoted as saying by the state Antara newsagency.
A World Bank briefing paper for last October's CGI meet described illegal logging in Indonesia as a flourishing business, bigger than the legal industry.
It was estimated that Indonesia was losing 650 million dollars annually in royalty and reforestation fund repayments as well as 1.8 million hectares of forest. Indonesia has 113 million hectares of rainforest area, including 49 million hectares in protected areas.
CGI representatives will hold a preparatory meeting in Jakarta from April 21 to 24 ahead of making fresh loan commitments. Ramli said last week that forest management would be a "crucial issue" on the donor group's agenda.
| Economy & investment |
Straits Times - April 6, 2001
Robert Go, Jakarta -- The Indonesian government will step up tax-collection efforts, including the targeting of foreigners now living in the country, to boost revenues and control a mounting budget deficit.
Coordinating Economic Minister Rizal Ramli and Finance Minister Priyadi Praptosuhardjo have both confirmed this week the possibility that Indonesia could run a 70 to 75 trillion rupiah (S$12.6 billion to S$13.5 billion) deficit this year.
"According to our calculation, the budget deficit will go over 5 per cent of GDP. That is the case if we do nothing to check the problem," said Dr Rizal on Wednesday.
Mr Priyadi told reporters yesterday that the government considered the budget problem to be very serious and would focus its resources on dealing with the swelling deficit in the next few weeks.
One solution, according to the ministers and senior officials at the Finance Ministry, is to increase tax revenues, especially from the country's expatriate community.
Tax Directorate spokesman Nono Hanafi told The Straits Times that his office was preparing "all sorts of campaigns" to goad Indonesians, and foreigners who spend more than 183 days in the country, to pay their full tax liabilities.
He stressed that the government's aim was to increase Indonesian citizens" participation in the tax programme and said: "There are more than 200 million Indonesians, but only 1.3 million have tax IDs. Many more should have it and should regularly pay taxes." But collectors will soon start paying special attention to resident foreigners.
Said Mr Nono: "All expatriates will also be required to have tax numbers and pay tax to Indonesia. They earn a lot of money here, but their cost of living is much lower than in their countries. If they spend more than half the year here, they will be treated as Indonesians."
Tax experts have characterised past regulations governing both Indonesians and foreigners as confusing and have termed the authorities' collection and enforcement efforts as lackadaisical and inconsistent.
As a result, many living in the country, including most foreign nationals, paid little or no taxes. The government, however, has been firming up its tax codes and tax brackets in recent years.
Last November, it decreed that individuals earning more than 200 million rupiah each year would have to pay a 35-per-cent rate. And if the Tax Directorate gets its way, the tax ID number will become an integral part of everyday life in the country.
Processing a passport, applying for a credit card, flying outside the country, buying a car or a house and even opening a bank account will all need a tax ID. "People would not be able to dodge paying taxes in the future," said Mr Nono.
He and other sources in the Finance Ministry declined to comment on how much money the government could raise through improved taxation, saying that their brief was to help reduce the budget deficit and meet the directorate's targets.
But some government advisers, like Mr Amir Sambodo who is a close aide of Junior Minister for Restructuring Cacuk Sudarijanto, warned that even increased revenues will not help Indonesia's budget woes.
Mr Amri said: "Indonesia needs to stabilise its overall economic condition. Increased revenues alone won't be enough to fix the budget problem. Enforcing better taxation also has to be a careful process, one that won't scare away foreigners or foreign businesses. It is a matter of consistency and transparency."
Asia Times - April 3, 2001
Jakarta -- Indonesia's major creditors have agreed to roll over the country's debt repayment based on an agreement in the Paris Club of official creditors, a report said on Tuesday.
Finance Minister Prijadi Praptosuhardjo said that in addition to Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States have also agreed to reschedule Indonesian debts.
Prijadi, however, gave no figure. Earlier Japan was reported agreeing to roll over the repayment of government debts totaling up to US$2.7 billion.
A Japanese official was quoted as saying earlier that debts in official development assistance (ODA) will be rescheduled for 20 years and debt outside ODA will be rolled over for 15 years.
Prijadi described as very important the role of Japan in bringing success to Paris Club II negotiations. Under the Paris Club II agreement in April 2000 Indonesia has to negotiate with 22 donor countries on a total debt of US$5.86 billion maturing between April 1, 2000 and March 31, 2002.
In other developments: The World Bank says it will support Indonesia if the country calls for the faster disbursement of committed loans and grants tied with reform programs set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a report said on Tuesday.
A World Bank senior advisor, K Sarwar Lateef, told the newspaper Kompas the government has not discussed that matter with the World Bank.
Chief economics minister Ramli said recently Indonesia still had unutilized loans totaling $17 billion for which the country has continued to pay commitment fee. Rizal said the cash-strapped government will seek to speed up the disbursement of the loan to finance its program.
The statement by Rizal came after the government failed to persuade the IMF to disburse its loan tranche of $400 million delayed since last December. Observers have said that the government might be in trouble even to pay the salaries of the civil servants if the IMF would continue to delay the disbursement.
Lateef said by the end of February unutilized aid from the World Bank for Indonesia totaled $2.2 billion. The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (Ibra) will accelerate sales of the Rp16 trillion ($1.6 billion) worth of assets under its control. The assets were owned by 90 companies with debts to the agency, the Financial Sector Policy Committee (KKSK) said.
KKSK, which is headed by chief economics minister Rizal Ramli, said the assets will be sold through an open tender and payment could be made in cash or bonds.
The statement said among the debtors are a number of subsidiaries of the Humpus Group with debt totaling $89 million to IBRA. The Humpuss Group, owned by Tommy Suharto, the youngest son of former President Suharto and now a law fugitive, will pay partly in cash and party through asset settlement.
Indonesia's oil and non-oil exports reached only $4.37 billion in February 2001, a 2.42 percent drop compared to the previous month, due to a decline of 16.75 percent in oil/gas exports.
The Central Bureau of Statistics [BPS] reported on Monday that since September 2000, the country's total exports had continued to decline from more than $5 billion to $4.85 billion in January 2001, and $4.73 billion in February 2001. The decline in the February 2001 exports was the result of the sharp drop in oil/gas exports by 16.75 percent to $1.12 billion, especially due to the 33.76 percent drop in gas exports. During the same period, non oil/gas exports increased by 3.06 percent to $3.61 billion.
Meanwhile, the country's imports in February dipped 0.18 percent to $3.03 billion. Oil/gas imports reached $251.2 million, or up by 6.85 percent, while non-oil/gas imports reached $2.77 billion, or down by 0.77 percent. In the January-February 2001 period, imports reached $6.06 billion.
Dow Jones Newswires - April 2, 2001
Linda Silaen, Jakarta -- The International Monetary Fund has warned the Indonesian government of the possibility of a higher- than-expected deficit in the state budget this year due to a delay in the implementation of a tax regulation and only a limited fuel price increase, Finance Minister Prijadi Praptosuhardjo said Monday.
"The IMF asked the government to intensify efforts to raise revenues from domestic resources," Prijadi told reporters. The government canceled the plan to impose a tax on agriculture products after protests from parliament earlier this year.
As of Sunday, the government raised fuel prices for industrial users to between 50% and 100% of international market prices, in an effort to cut subsidies. It however shelved the plan to raise fuel prices for public, small and medium enterprises, the public transportation sector and the state-owned electricity company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara until October.
The government this year is trying to limit the deficit in the state budget to 3.7% of the gross domestic product.
Reuters - April 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Indonesia's finance minister on Monday warned the 2001 budget deficit could be wider than expected, hit by a weak rupiah, high interest rates and low oil prices.
"The finance ministry is currently reviewing fiscal developments, because ... our deficit could be wider," Prijadi Praptosuhardjo told reporters. "It depends on the value of the dollar and interest rates."
He also said oil prices, now tipped to fall below the budget's assumption of an average $$24 a barrel, would have an impact. In its 2001 (Jan-Dec) budget, the government forecast the deficit at 52.5 trillion rupiah ($5 billion), or 3.7 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 444.1 trillion (4.8 percent of GDP) in the truncated 2000 fiscal year (April-Dec).
The 2000 fiscal year was shortened to bring the financial and calendar years into alignment from 2001.
[On the same day Reuters reported that year-on-year inflation in 2001 could exceed the 7.2 percent forecast in the budget, an official from the government's statistics bureau told reporters. He was speaking after the bureau announced year-on-year inflation in March was 10.62 percent, up from 9.14 percent a month early, and month-on-month inflation 0.89 percent, up from 0.87 - James Balowski.]
Dow Jones Newswires - April 2, 2001
I Made Sentana, Jakarta -- Indonesia's state-owned Pertamina (P.PTM) oil and gas company has raised fuel prices for industrial users to between 50% and 100% of international market prices, effective Sunday, in a bid to reduce government fuel subsidies.
Mining and oil companies operating in Indonesia, ships carrying foreign flags and those sailing to international destinations must pay fuel prices at international market prices, Pertamina announced over the weekend.
Other industries and domestic fishing ships have to pay for oil fuels at 50% of international market prices. Fuel prices for industrial users will now fluctuate in accordance with international fuel price movements.
Pertamina reaffirmed that fuel prices for the public, small and medium enterprises, transportation companies and state-owned electricity company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara are unchanged.
The government has shelved a plan to increase fuel prices for the public, at least until October, after strong criticism from parliament. The government has been trying to reduce fuel subsidies and ensure these subsidies only reach the poor to ease the burden on the state budget.