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Indonesia News Digest No
18 - Aril 29-May 5, 2001
East Timor
Detik - May 3, 2001
Bagus Kurniawan/FW, Yogyakarta -- Students from various
universities across the ancient royal city of Yogyakarta took
their action to the street to commemorate National Education Day,
which falls today, Wednesday.
The students voiced their concerns over the poor quality and
policy of the education system in the country. Some of the
universities who joined the action were the prominent Gadjah Mada
University (UGM), Yogyakarta State University (UNY), National
Islamic Institute of Kalijaga (IAIN Kalijaga), Sarjana Wiyata
Taman Siswa University, Janabadra University and UPN Veteran.
Each university apparently had different themes and demands on
their action. Yogyakarta State University said their action was
only to show their concern over the myriad problems in the
education.
Meanwhile, Gadjah Mada University demanded the government to pay
a more serious attention to education by firstly, improving the
quality, education system and the education budget. Secondly,
they rejected government effort in politicizing and
commercializing the education. Thirdly, they rejected the so-
called campus autonomy.
The rally was relatively small and was proceeding peacefully.
Each group -- UGM, UNY and IAIN Kalijaga -- only consisted of 50
students. While Sarjana Wiyata Taman Siswa University had the
largest number of demonstrans, around 300 students. They marched
from their Campus II at Jl Batikan to their Campus I at Jl
Kusumanegara, which is around 1,5 km.
Along their way, they showed happening art on the deteriorating
condition of national education. They also held out a poster of
Ki Hajar Dewantoro -- the national education hero - a banner with
writings "Return the education to the people".
South China Morning Post - May 5, 2001
Agencies in Jakarta and Geneva -- The United Nations and foreign
diplomats yesterday condemned as a mockery jail terms imposed by
a Jakarta court on six men convicted in connection with the
murders of three foreign aid workers in West Timor last year.
The court dropped manslaughter charges against three of the six.
Judge Anak Agung Gde Dalem, head of the three-judge panel,
instead upheld charges against them of "fomenting violence which
resulted in the deaths of three United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) workers".
The judges sentenced the three -- Julius Maisama, 35, Jose
Francisco, 30, and Joao Alves da Cruz, 26 -- to between 16 and 20
months' imprisonment on the lesser charge.
The judges also handed down jail terms to three other East
Timorese, who were originally charged with violence leading to
the death of a person or persons, on the lesser charge of
"conspiring to foment violence which resulted in damage to
property." Xisto Pereira, 26, and Joao Martins, 27, were both
sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment while Serafin Ximenes was
jailed for 15 months.
The court's leniency is likely to increase external pressure for
the establishment of an international war crimes tribunal for
East Timor amid claims that Indonesia is incapable of delivering
justice over human rights abuses.
Indonesia has already been harshly criticised for delaying the
prosecution of dozens of key suspects, including top military
commanders, accused of other atrocities in East Timor.
"The sentences make a mockery of the international community's
insistence that justice be done in this horrific case," the UNHCR
said in Geneva.
The decision by the North Jakarta District Court "flies in the
face of world opinion and is an affront to the memory of those
humanitarians who have given their lives in the service of
others", the UN statement said.
On September 6 last year, a mob of pro-Indonesian militia stormed
a UNHCR office in the Indonesian town of Atambua, West Timor,
near the border with East Timor.
Before the assault, Indonesian army commanders had assured UN
staff that they would be protected. But Jakarta's troops stood by
and did nothing. Witnesses said the aid workers -- from the US,
Croatia and Ethiopia -- were stabbed and stoned to death before
being dragged out to the street and set alight.
"This is nothing. I've never heard of sentences this light for
murder," said Boris Mitrovic, Croatia's ambassador in Jakarta.
The defendants, wearing red and white shirts and baseball caps,
said they had no regrets. "I accept the sentence with pride
because I did what I did to defend [Indonesia's] red and white
flag," said Maisama.
"My clients made a mistake because three people got killed," said
defence lawyer Suhardi Sumomulyono. "But it was a mob attack and
they were not the only ones responsible." Lawyers for both sides
have a week to lodge an appeal against the sentences.
Indonesian rights activists also condemned the verdicts. "This
often happens in Indonesia -- the categories of crimes are
minimised and punishments reduced," said rights lawyer Hendardi ,
head of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association.
"But the problem in a case like this is we're facing the
international community. Can they accept this? I think ... they
are starting to lose faith in the Indonesian Government's law
enforcement efforts."
The secretary-general of Indonesia's Human Rights Commission,
Asmara Nababan, implored prosecutors to appeal, saying: "They
should appeal to the High Court against not only the light
sentence but also the lessened charge," he said, adding that the
outcome showed Indonesia's judiciary system was still devoid of
credibility.
The killings led the UN and other international groups to
withdraw from West Timor. Aid agencies still refuse to return to
the region. The defendants are pro-Jakarta militiamen who, along
with about 120,000 refugees, moved from East Timor after it voted
to break free from Indonesian rule in a UN-sponsored ballot in
1999.
Labour struggle
Aceh/West Papua
Elite power struggle
Regional/communal conflicts
News & issues
Environment/health
Arms/armed forces
Economy & investment
Democratic struggle
Students rally to commemorate Education Day
East
Timor
Killers' light terms outrage UN
Ballot violence: six to go free
Sydney Morning Herald - May 3, 2001
Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta -- Jakarta has dropped prosecutions against six people who have been under investigation over crimes against humanity in East Timor, including the notorious militia leader Eurico Guterres.
The Attorney-General's office confirmed yesterday that a presidential decree restricted it to prosecuting only 12 of 18 cases it had prepared for a special court to be set up in Jakarta.
United Nations officials and human rights activists have expressed outrage that the decree signed by President Abdurrahman Wahid last week stipulates the court can hear only crimes committed after the August 30, 1999 ballot on East Timor's independence.
Most of the atrocities under investigation were committed before the ballot, but the military pressured Mr Wahid to approve a ballot cut-off date so its members could not be tried for crimes committed during Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor.
A spokesman for the Attorney-General yesterday backed away from an earlier denial that cases would be dropped. "Yes, because of what is stipulated in the presidential decree we're going to set aside some of the cases, meaning they will not be brought before the court," he said. He could not say which cases would be set aside, but only 12 would now proceed.
One long-planned prosecution of Guterres relates to the massacre of 12 people at the home of the independence leader Manuel Carrascalao in April 1999, five months before the ballot. Television footage shows Guterres ordering his men to attack and "kill if necessary" members of the Carrascalao family.
UN officials and human rights activists have described a six- month jail sentence imposed on Guterres by an Indonesian court on Monday on a separate charge as a "slap on the wrist".
The cut-off date will also mean that those responsible for the May 1999 massacre of up to 60 people at a church in Liquica will go unpunished.
Even before Mr Wahid signed the decree, an original list of 22 suspects named by the Attorney-General's office sparked outrage from human rights activists.
The list excluded high-ranking military officers identified by Indonesian and UN investigations as being responsible for the violence, including the former armed forces commander, General Wiranto, Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim and Major-General Syafrie Syamsuddin.
The Attorney-General's office has also omitted from its list of prosecutions four militia leaders who were originally named as suspects, on the grounds that it cannot locate them.
One is Izidio Manek, accused of leading a massacre in the grounds of a church in Suai in September 1999. But on April 18 Indonesian soldiers brought Manek to a government office in the West Timor border town of Atambua, where he was interviewed by the Herald, then allowed to return to a refugee camp where he lives with three wives and a girl, Juliana dos Santos, whom he allegedly abducted from Suai. The Attorney-General's office has also dropped an investigation into the September 1999 murder in Dili of a journalist for the London Financial Times, Sander Thoenes, citing lack of evidence.
A Jakarta-based human rights group, Solidarity Without Borders (Solidamor), met prosecutors on Tuesday to protest at their failure to prosecute those responsible for the East Timor violence, including General Wiranto, and called for the decree to be amended so that crimes committed before the ballot can be prosecuted.
Estafeta -- April 2001
Charles Scheiner -- Eighteen months have elapsed since the Indonesian military and its militia proxies devastated East Timor. A quarter century has passed since the US-supported Indonesian invasion of East Timor began an occupation which killed one-third of the population and kidnapped, raped, tortured and terrorized hundreds of thousands more. Uncountable crimes against humanity have been committed in East Timor since 1975 by Indonesian forces, with the complicity of the world's "great powers." It is a record which cries out for justice.
Indonesian incapacity, international reluctance
The Indonesian government is besieged from many sides. Acehnese and West Papuans are demanding self-determination, internal conflicts rage in Kalimantan and Maluku, atrocities are rampant in all these areas and elsewhere. The military is desperately struggling to keep its Suharto-era power. It's not surprising that President Wahid and his Attorney General Marzuki Darusman have achieved little headway in bringing the architects of East Timor's invasion, occupation and destruction to justice.
In January 2000, an Indonesian government commission named suspects, going up to the highest levels of the military, for the 1999 violence in East Timor. Four months later, Indonesia signed an agreement with the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) to cooperate in supplying witnesses and transferring suspects. On April 25, 2000, the chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission lauded Indonesia's promises to prosecute crimes against humanity committed in East Timor and to cooperate with UNTAET. Many were hopeful the rule of law would emerge in Indonesia, and that criminals would be brought to justice. Indonesian pro-democracy activists urged the international community to support judicial processes in the archipelago.
The rest of 2000 saw a steady decline in Indonesia's willingness and/or capability to achieve justice. No prosecutions have occurred, nor have any indictments been handed down. Indonesia amended its constitution to make it almost impossible to convict military officers for past crimes or for command responsibility. Indonesia refused to cooperate with UNTAET, whose investigators have traveled to Jakarta several times. Witnesses -- including military officers and notorious militia leader Eurico Guterres -- refused to answer questions. Although UNTAET shares information with Indonesian prosecutors, endangering East Timorese who testified in confidence, Jakarta has not reciprocated. According to the US State Department Human Rights Report on Indonesia for 2000, "The Government has not prosecuted any persons in connection with the militia-related crimes in West or East Timor dating back to 1999, although the Attorney General in September and October named 23 persons as suspects in East Timor human rights cases." At press time, five months later, there is still no progress.
Since the Indonesian system perpetuates impunity, ETAN is calling on the United States and other nations to create an international tribunal to try those responsible for serious human rights abuses and crimes against humanity in East Timor since 1975. This was the number one priority of the East Timorese NGOs I met with in December and January, and is also ETAN's highest goal.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), Representative Lane Evans (D-OH) and others have introduced a concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 9/H. Con. Res. 60) calling for the United States to "endorse and support the establishment of an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of prosecuting culpable Indonesian military and police officers and personnel, leaders of local militias and paramilitary organizations, and other individuals who are responsible for crimes against humanity in East Timor, including systematic murder, rape, and terrorism, the unlawful use of force, and crimes against United Nations personnel deployed in East Timor and in the refugee camps of West Timor." This resolution is non-binding, but it is an important tool to reinvigorate calls for a tribunal.
Is the Crimes Unit serious?
UNTAET has established a "Serious Crimes Unit" to investigate and prosecute murder, rape and other major offenses in East Timor. It is focusing on a few high-profile crimes from 1999, but many doubt the SCU can even successfully pursue those. The unit is inadequately funded and staffed, and plagued with mismanagement and incompetence which leads many to doubt its seriousness of purpose.
A delusion based on a distorted view of East Timor's history pervades UNTAET and many foreign governments and journalists. It has three main elements: (1) forget everything which occurred before January 1999, (2) grant de facto amnesty (by amnesia, insufficient political will, or incompetence) to Indonesia and other governments who committed,directed or supported crimes against East Timor, and (3) blame an alleged East Timorese "culture of violence" for human rights violations and atrocities. UNTAET's Serious Crimes Unit exemplifies this perspective.
I attended the first day of Serious Crimes trials, January 10 in Dili District Court. The defendant, 22-year old militia member Joao Fernandes, pled guilty to premeditated, deliberate murder of village chief Domingos Goncalves Pereira in Maliana on September 8, 1999. The killing was part of an organized attack by the Dadarus Merah Putih militia which took dozens of lives. The trial featured inadequate translation, inexperienced defense attorneys, arrogant foreign prosecutors, and poor process. The presiding judge, from Italy, seemed to have little interest in the organized nature of the crime; the judge from Burundi said nothing. The East Timorese judge, Natercia Gusmao, urged that the defendant be charged with crimes against humanity, but her colleagues outvoted her, resulting in an indictment for simple murder. On the third court date (the second adjourned for lack of an interpreter), the prosecution requested 10 years because the defendant was cooperative. On January 25, the judges handed down 12 years. On March 1, Joao Fernandes sawed through the roof of his cell and escaped. He is probably in Indonesia, and prosecutors fear he may pass on damaging information to his militia colleagues. The under-resourced judicial system is fraught with problems. The SCU seems oblivious to systematic military execution of the 1999 destruction, failing to develop cases or obtain Indonesian cooperation against Indonesian military officers. As East Timor moves toward nationhood, it will need to look further than Dili or Jakarta for examples of a system based on the rule of law.
Reconciliation without justice
UNTAET is rapidly moving to implement a "Truth, Reconciliation and Reception Commission" (TRRC) that is of limited utility. Although one of the consultants for this project is a former executive of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there are major differences between the two. One similarity is the scale: both are projected to have around 300 staff people, a huge project for a country as small as East Timor.
The TRRC will have two principal tasks. The first is to take testimony from victims of crimes committed between 1974 and 1999, and to prepare a report on these crimes. Although the report will probably not explore the chain of command (the Commission is not likely to obtain military documents or testimony from Indonesian sources), it will document the scale and horror of Indonesia's occupation, including but not limited to the post-ballot destruction. The more controversial Reconciliation component is limited to people not accused of serious crimes (rape, murder, systematic multiple arson) who choose to live in East Timor. If the prosecutor's office decides they are eligible for the TRRC process, they can confess their crimes and be given a restorative sentence (such as rebuilding a house they destroyed), after which it is hoped that their community will forgive them. This restorative justice is modeled on traditional East Timorese custom, and is an attempt to compensate for the impossibility of handling tens of thousands of cases via the judicial system. This process, which UNTAET is rushing to set up during the transition rather than allowing an independent East Timor to design its own process, aims to encourage low-level militia and pro-integration people to return from West Timor, with the assumption that the Reconciliation process will dissuade villagers from inflicting vigilante justice.
But most East Timorese are amazingly willing to welcome even those who committed mayhem (under Indonesian military direction) home. Even most militia leaders would be accepted, provided they acknowledge the vote for independence. The East Timorese know who ravaged their country -- and are frustrated by ineffective attempts to hold Indonesian military officers accountable. Of the 175,000 who have returned from West Timor, only a few dozen have been harassed or assaulted. Although militias killed thousands and burned most of East Timor's buildings in 1999, only four returnees have been killed in retaliation, all before April 2000.
The fear which keeps many of the 100,000 refugees still in West Timor from returning is inculcated by armed militias whose propaganda, threats and violence mislead the refugees about what they would face in East Timor. The TRRC, whatever its merits, will not end the disinformation.
Quotidian justice
Justice is not only achieved in the courts. It should be present in day-to-day interactions between the powerful and the powerless members of society. In this regard, the UN Transitional Administration fails badly. After more than a year of sovereignty over East Timor, UNTAET has learned little. Many of the international staff of the UN and other large institutions and agencies in East Timor are racist, sexist, rushed and arrogant. They don't care to learn the language, history, culture, needs or desires of the people they are ruling, and don't bother to ask the population for direction or ideas. Although there are exceptions to this generalization, those who fit the pattern are ubiquitous and reappear on every large UN mission. The problems have systemic causes.
UN workers, hopping from one trouble spot to another, give loyalty to the mission; their priority is their career. Many have six-month contracts, and almost all will be gone when independence comes in early 2002. They rush to complete tasks before they leave and do not think about who will do the work after they are gone. The UN brought 180 international workers to East Timor to canvass households for a "civic registration" database. Though called "volunteers", these foreigners are paid many times what it would cost to hire an East Timorese worker who would do a better job and still be around next year. Foreign workers don't know the language, geography, or people, and can't find their way around. Given the 80% unemployment rate for East Timorese, this is outrageous.
UNTAET international staff make 50 times as much as East Timorese doing the same jobs. The UN says low East Timorese wages -- usually less than $10 a day -- are necessary so that East Timorese workers don't become accustomed to a lifestyle which cannot continue after the UN leaves. But prices have tripled because international staffers make $300 a day or more. A new economy has developed to soak up this excess cash -- container and cruise ship hotels, car rentals, cell phones, satellite TV, restaurants, weekends in Bali -- dominated by expatriate Australians who will take their profits home when the UN departs. Little of the money stays in East Timor, and no permanent or sustainable development results. For example, the UN imports millions of plastic water bottles from Indonesia -- filling the streets with litter -- but potable water systems haven't been repaired. Most other infrastructure (roads, electricity, telephones, houses, commercial buildings not used by the UN) remains as devastated as in September1999, after TNI and its militias burned 75% of the country.
UNTAET recently directed its local and international personnel not to talk with anyone outside the mission about anything relating to East Timor. This is not the first example of a culture of secrecy in the transitional authority: UN staffers have been threatened with dismissal for discussing the reasons for Dili's electricity being off more than half the time (there are random blackouts in different neighborhoods; apparently the UN didn't budget enough money for diesel fuel).
UNTAET is mandated to prepare East Timor for independence and should be "helping, not doing" as they train East Timorese to take over their jobs. But UN staffers are used to working in disaster areas, with ostensibly helpless victims of war and catastrophe. They do not see East Timorese people as triumphant in a long and often heroic struggle against a neighbor 200 times their size.
La'o Hamutuk, ETAN and others are pushing UNTAET to understand and avoid the most egregious aspects of international behavior, and to see how they can be a part of the solution, rather than the problem.
Eventually, East Timor will triumph over the damage wrought by UNTAET, its fourth foreign occupation in 60 years. But is this an appropriate legacy for the international community to leave its newest member?
Sydney Morning Herald - May 3, 2001
Hamish McDonald -- Negotiators for Australia and East Timor yesterday began a secrecy-shrouded meeting in Brisbane in the search for agreement on the seabed boundary in the Timor Sea, after a month of escalating pressure tactics by both sides. These have included warnings that some $15billion in gas-based investments could "evaporate" unless a new regime is quickly agreed to replace the Timor Gap Treaty signed in 1989 between Australia and Indonesia, then occupying the territory.
The Northern Territory Government, oil companies with discoveries in the disputed area, and the US Embassy have all added to the sense of urgency. Phillips Petroleum this week said it needed an agreement by early June if it is to meet its end-of-July deadline to enter a final contract for construction of a 500-kilometre undersea pipeline from its Bayu-Undan field to Darwin, from where gas will be liquefied for export to the US and piped to industrial customers in Australia.
Other fields are likely to connect to this pipeline. "We have taken Timor Sea gas to the threshold of development," said Phillips's manager in Darwin, Jim Godlove. "For us to go across the line, we require governments to provide us with legal and fiscal certainty."
The tension follows a blunt speech to an oil industry conference in Hobart on April9 by one of the chief negotiators for the East Timor side, Peter Galbraith, who is head of political affairs in the territory's United Nations transitional administration. Mr Galbraith pointed to "compelling claims" under maritime law for East Timor's ownership to be extended over much more of the oil and gas discoveries in the Timor Sea, within the "Timor Gap" itself and by extension of its side boundaries.
Such wider ownership could lift East Timor's revenue flow to $US345 million a year. In addition, he indicated that East Timor wants to be in a position to influence the tax regime, and that the pattern of developments at present gives all downstream benefits to northern Australia. The Timorese had fought Indonesian occupation for 24 years. Without a treaty based on international law, he said, "the East Timorese are prepared to wait patiently for their rights".
Although both sides are keeping their positions secret, it is known that East Timor asserts seabed ownership out to the median line between the two opposing coasts, while Australia continues a claim to ownership to the end of its continental shelf, which it puts in the 2,000-metre-deep trench running close to Timor's coast.
In the Timor Gap Treaty, a compromise between similar positions set up a "zone of co-operation" over the disputed area, administered by a joint authority and with government revenues shared equally between Australia and Indonesia. So far in negotiations with East Timor since last October, Canberra has insisted on keeping this arrangement, but is thought to have modified its proposed revenue split to 80:20 in Dili's favour.
Since this speech, Mr Galbraith, formerly senior staffer on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and US ambassador in Croatia, has been singled out for personal attack as a "moral zealot" prepared to mislead the East Timorese into believing that investment for the Timor Sea will always be on tap while they argue a principle of maritime law for up to 24 years. Responding to one press commentary on this line, Mr Galbraith remarked last week to one associate that "this piece is in a category with those I encountered in the wartime press in the Balkans".
A senior oil industry consultant said yesterday the negotiations had reached a critical stage with Mr Galbraith's speech and the responses. "It's all guns out to get the best deal," he said, adding that the East Timorese had the right to seek the best bargain they could. The attacks on Mr Galbraith and "alarmism" were predictable and aimed at countering sympathy for the East Timor case in Australian public opinion.
The Federal Opposition and a Senate committee had supported a new treaty giving East Timor 90per cent of revenues from disputed zones. "Everyone knows that rationally these projects will go ahead, because there is so much sunk capital in them and the engineering is all under way," the consultant said.
Melbourne Age - May 3, 2001
Lindsay Murdoch -- Indonesia has dropped prosecutions against six people who have been under investigation for more than 12 months over crimes against humanity in East Timor, including the notorious militia leader Eurico Guterres.
The attorney-general's office confirmed yesterday that a presidential decree issued last week restricted it to prosecuting only 12 of 18 cases it had prepared for a special court to be set up in Jakarta. The decree signed by President Abdurrahman Wahid stipulates the court can hear only cases of crimes committed after the August 30, 1999, ballot to decide East Timor's future.
Most of the atrocities under investigation had been committed before the ballot.
The Age reported on Tuesday that the Indonesian military pressured Mr Wahid to approve a ballot cut-off date so that its soldiers and officers could not be put on trial for crimes committed during Indonesia's brutal 25-year occupation of East Timor.
Mr Mulyohardjo, a spokesman for the Attorney-General, yesterday backed away from an earlier denial that the decree would result in cases under investigation being dropped.
"Yes, because of what is stipulated in the presidential decree, we're going to set aside some of the cases, meaning they will not be brought before the court," he said. Mr Mulyohardjo said he could not say which cases would be set aside, but only 12 would proceed.
One long-planned prosecution, of Eurico Guterres, relates to the massacre of 12 people at the home of pro-independence leader Manuel Carrascalao in April, 1999, five months before the ballot. Television footage showed Guterres ordering his men to attack and "kill if necessary" members of the Carrascalao family.
United Nations officials and human rights activists have described a six-month jail sentence imposed on Guterres by an Indonesian court on Monday as a "slap on the wrist". The charge related to inciting violence in Indonesian West Timor. Guterres, 26, is expected to be released in a couple of weeks after time served under house arrest is taken into account.
The cut-off date will also mean that those responsible for the May, 1999, massacre of up to 60 people at a church in the town of Liquica will go unpunished.
Even before Mr Wahid signed the decree, an original list of 22 suspects named by the Attorney-General's office sparked outrage from human rights activists.
The list excluded high-ranking Indonesian officers identified by Indonesian and UN investigations as being responsible for the violence, including former armed forces commander General Wiranto, Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim and Major-General Sjafrie Sjamsuddin.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned last year that the UN would consider setting up an international tribunal to hear East Timor cases if Indonesia did not punish those responsible for an estimated 1200 deaths and the destruction of most buildings in East Timor.
Mark Dodd reports from Dili that UN and East Timorese human rights officials reacted with dismay to the restricted terms of the hearings. Analysts there said the narrow terms of reference and restricted jurisdiction of the Indonesian court would be likely to increase pressure for an international tribunal on East Timor war crimes.
The head of the UN transitional administration in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, expressed disappointment at the decision and said he would seek clarification from the office of the Indonesian Attorney-General.
Timor Post - May 2, 2001
The labor sector must be allowed to participate in the political process because they too have rights, said the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party of Timor Avelino Coelho.
Avelino made this statement when asked to comment on Labor Day. He said the Transitional Administration preferred to remain silent over labor problems, and this in turn allowed foreign investors to exploit workers.
Workers are not even mentioned in the constitution. The Transitional Administration talks a lot about civil education but they have forgotten that workers are also a part of civil society, he said.
Avelino said his party, the PST, will champion the rights of workers by working together with other groups like Laifet and the Trablista Party.
Avelino said PST will demand a minimum wage for workers nationally that was tax-free. Why are international staff exempt from tax, while local workers earning $100 and more have to pay? asked Avelino.
Green Left Weekly - May 2, 2001
Vanya Tanaja, Dili -- Thousands of small traders at the Dili market (Mercado Lama) are being pressured to move to two refurbished markets in Comoro and Becora, on the western and eastern outskirts of the city respectively.
The traders have resisted, despite promises made by Dili district officials that the new markets are superior to the Mercado Lama. The new markets were refurbished by Japanese international aid agency, JICA. However, contrary to expectations of the aid agency, the markets lie empty. At the time of the refurbishment last year, much publicity focused on the hope that traders would move to the decentralised locations.
Avelino Coelho from the Socialist Party of Timor (PST), among other political leaders, is being blamed in the local media for encouraging the traders' resistance.
Criticisms of the Mercado Lama area have ranged from poor hygiene, lack of toilet facilities and rubbish collection, and the growth of criminal activity. Since the beginning of the transitional period in 1999, the market has been reported worldwide, including on Australian television, as the source of all unrest. Allegations of gambling rackets, protection rackets and usury surround the market.
The Mercado Lama was built as a market square by the Portuguese, but since then the markets have expanded and now snake through surrounding streets and lanes. A burgeoning row of second-hand clothes stalls are the newest comers to the market.
The market has become completely "uncontrollable", according to many letters sent to the local media. The United Nations authorities have tried to address some of these criticisms by attempting to take down "illegal erections" (stalls outside the market boundaries).
In the middle of last year, eviction notices were pasted onto trees, as the "structures" had no walls or poles holding them up! Portuguese National Republican Guards were posted around the market to direct traffic, arousing much antipathy from taxi and minibus drivers. The market is also a transport hub, due to its central location and the fact that it is the main shopping centre of Dili.
Aside from trying some repressive tactics, the Dili district authorities did not attempt to regulate the market by constructive measures, such as instituting a rubbish collection system or building basic amenities, let alone make an attempt to refurbish the market itself.
The proposal to move the market to the new locations was criticised because the two markets cannot accommodate all the traders and a lottery system for stall spaces was suggested.
Since the proposal was put forward last year, there has been no change to the activities of the market in central Dili. It was reported in the Portuguese section of one of the local newspapers that some political leaders were instrumental in inciting the traders to resist the move.
The PST responded at length. It argued that the people affected should have a role in deciding on the solutions to the problems of the market and that the PST's support for this hardly constituted "incitement". The PST criticised the lack of facilities at the new markets, including the lack of stall facilities, the shortage of toilets and the unclear procedures for rubbish collection, as well as a lack of transport to the new sites. Traders would not move if there were doubts as to the accessibility of the new location to shoppers, the PST pointed out.
It has also been rumoured that a supermarket and shopping centre will be built on the current central location and that this has been the impetus for the renewed vigour with which the relocation has been taken up. The PST asked why such a centre is not located further out of Dili where customers with their own transport, who are most likely to patronise such a centre, can reach it.
The rumour has been denied by Dili district sources. As a result of a visit to Mercado Lama by members of the local advisory body to the UN authorities, the National Council, a motion was passed that stated that the market should be moved in stages. This was an amendment to an original motion put forward by the member for Dili district, Maria Odete Varia, that the market should be moved immediately.
An immediate move would necessarily require the use of force. The PST believes that breaking up the market using the excuse that this would get rid of "criminal elements" would not solve the problem, but would simply move it elsewhere.
"We need to understand why there has been unrest and dissatisfaction in Dili in general and why there is a big move of people towards Dili from the districts", said Avelino.
Green Left Weekly - May 2, 2001
Jon Land -- In the wake of the second round of negotiations between Australia and East Timor on the Timor Gap Treaty and the disputed seabed boundary, Australia's big business press are stepping-up its support for Canberra's push to deny East Timor a fair share of the revenue from oil and gas deposits.
At the conclusion of the talks, held in Melbourne on April 4-6, representatives of the Australian government, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and East Timor's transitional cabinet had made little headway in resolving the boundary dispute or the issue of how oil and gas royalties will be split.
During the opening of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) conference in Hobart on April 9, federal industry minister Nick Minchin stated in a speech that renegotiating a new treaty for the Timor Sea was the "highest priority" for the Australian government.
While claiming that the government is "taking a very generous position on the issue of revenue sharing", Minchin also indicated the government's reluctance to compromise with East Timor. "The existing joint management of the area has worked extremely well and we want to see that continue ... there are important Australian national interests at stake which must be recognised", he stated.
The speech later in the day at the APPEA conference by UNTAET political affairs officer and cabinet member Peter Galbraith sparked a bout of media hysteria over the "hard-line" position adopted by UNTAET and the East Timorese.
"I am here to underline our intention to develop and implement a transparent, stable fiscal and regulatory regime that will be amongst the most modern in the world, and which will enable both the companies and the East Timorese to profit from our resource", stated Galbraith.
Referring to the stalemate in negotiations, Galbraith said: "I would like to stand before you and declare the Timor Sea open for business. Unfortunately at the moment I am unable to do this, I cannot say when it will be open for business."
Illegal
Galbraith pointed out the historical and political facts behind the creation of the Timor Gap Treaty and that, "As the product of an illegal occupation, the Timor Gap Treaty is itself illegal. While the United Nations for practical reasons continued the terms of the treaty for the transitional period, it did so without prejudicing the position of an independent East Timor."
The history lesson proved too much for representatives of Australia's and the world's largest oil and gas exploration companies, some of whom walked out during Galbraith's speech. The Australian capitalist press responded sympathetically to the corporations' discomfort with a series of alarmist headlines: "Timor Sea `closed for oil talks'" (Australian Financial Review, April 10); "East Timor demands more gas revenue" (Australian, April 10); "UN takes tough line on Timor Gap negotiations" (Sydney Morning Herald, April 10).
The position of UNTAET and the East Timorese that the treaty be renegotiated according to the terms of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, on which rests their claim that the seabed boundary be the median line between East Timor and Australia, is not "new" or "hard line".
It was the key demand made by UNTAET and East Timorese leaders in the lead-up to the first round of negotiations held last October, along with the argument that royalties be split 90%-10% in favour of East Timor (since a median-line boundary would place the largest known reserves of gas and oil entirely under East Timor's sovereignty).
As Galbraith told the APPEA conference, "Like any negotiation, this requires compromises. East Timor recognises that resolving the issue of sovereignty in the Timor Sea -- making a seabed delimitation -- is difficult for Australia ... East Timor is therefore prepared to enter an interim agreement provided it has the same, or nearly the same, economic benefits as if there were an actual maritime delimitation done in accordance with international law."
Uncompromising
What the big business media in Australia have ignored since negotiations began is that it is the Australian government that is uncompromising and taking a hard line. It has threatened to, if the seabed boundary is redrawn, reduce Australia's aid commitment to East Timor. Australian negotiators have repeatedly played down the boundary dispute as a substantive issue in the negotiations, despite it being a core demand for East Timor. Canberra has refused to accept that Australia has a moral obligation, let alone a legal one, to agree to a median-line seabed boundary.
The Australian press has accused Galbraith of pushing his own agenda, rather than what the East Timorese want. The strongest allegations have been made by the Australian Financial Review's Geoffrey Barker.
In an April 20 article, Barker wrote that corporate observers and Australian government officials are concerned that Galbraith has "captured" East Timor's negotiating stance and "that a closer analysis of his speech revealed a possibly darker agenda". Barker quoted the opinion of Northern Territory chief minister Denis Burke (an outspoken opponent of East Timor's claims): "I'm not convinced ... that [Galbraith] speaks for all the Timorese leadership".
The AFR editorial that day proposed that "the compromise to the growing dispute between the transitional government and the Australian government should be a generous approach to revenue sharing by Australia within the existing treaty boundaries and taxation regime".
On April 23, Barker's attack became more virulent. "A powerful stench of moral zealotry suffuses Peter Galbraith's outrageous demands for radical changes to seabed boundaries between Australia and East Timor", Barker wrote. Galbraith is driven by "deep personal hostility to Australia and Indonesia" and has been "parading East Timor's minister designate for economic affairs, Mari Alkatiri, and claiming his support" for Galbraith's "obsessive agenda" and "mad moral crusade".
Not only do Barker's attacks on Galbraith contain cheap, patronising shots at the East Timorese leaders and people, they are also an attempt to create divisions between UNTAET and the East Timorese leadership over what tactics and goals they should pursue in negotiations with the Australian government.
There has been no indication that the UNTAET is pursuing any goals different to the wishes of the East Timorese leadership. There have been no public criticisms from the National Council or the East Timorese members of the transitional cabinet.
Although the Australian government and its supporters in the capitalist media look set to continue their blackmailing and bullying tactics, and misrepresentation of the views of East Timor's negotiators, UNTAET and the East Timorese leadereship seems determined not to falter.
AID/WATCH - April 26, 2001
Two AID/WATCH volunteers returned from East Timor yesterday and observed that, while East Timorese society has been heartened by the stability and security restored by the Peace Keeping Forces, and by the good relief work supported by the international community, it is distressed and confused by the emerging role of the World Bank.
AID/WATCH researchers Yoga Sofyar and Tim Anderson, found consistent concern amongst NGOs, church groups and administration officials, that the development assistance -- generously and freely given by the international community -- is being managed in a predetermined, secretive and authoritarian manner. The main responsible agency is the World Bank, supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Successive World Bank teams have now argued that the "clean slate" of East Timor's devastated economy presents an ideal opportunity for a 'free market' experiment. " They have argued this consistently, as a 'best practice' notion, despite East Timorese opposition" said Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Sofyar and Mr. Anderson were informed that many East Timorese feel that the World Bank is not treating them with respect. Recently a group of East Timorese economists, retained by the World Bank to analyse the state of the country's coffee industry, resigned en masse after their work was trivialised. They had been offered a couple of weeks and ten dollars a day each to complete a large study. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of dollars has been wasted on international consultants.
According to the main student body, IMPETU, a World Bank attempt at a youth consultation fared little better. The World Bank organised a forum, then were not seen again. Mr Aderito de Jesus Soares, lawyer and Director of the Sahe Institute, said that East Timorese participation in World Bank projects had so far been "cosmetic".
AID/WATCH calls on The Bank to explain its presence in East Timor, and to apologise and compensate for its involvement in past projects such as the unpopular and coercive transmigration and birth controls schemes.
The Asian Development Bank has been put in charge of US$7.7 million of Trust Fund moneys intended to establish microcredit for poor rural people (especially women). This project has been designed with interest rates between 40 and 80% pa, and plans to privatise the scheme as a profit making venture with international consultants receiving US$600,000.
Mr Demetrio Amaral de Carvalho, Director of the Haburas Foundation, informed AID/WATCH that the World Bank appeared to have "its own perspective" on what projects would be funded, and this had a lot to do with profit making concerns. Many community proposals have been ignored. The relief and peacekeeping efforts have been good, but the current process is not "nation building".
The World Bank has blocked proposals by East Timorese administrators and UNTAET for facilities such as a public grain silo and public abattoirs, insisting that all potential revenue- generating projects must be privatised. The World Bank has termed such calls attempts at "command and control activities" -- an inappropriate reference to Soviet styled totalitarianism.
Minister for Economics in the Transitional Administration, Mr Mari Alkatiri, told AID/WATCH that his cabinet was "resisting" pressure from the World Bank to not use trust funds for public economic facilities. There is also serious concern at the "dual economy" that has evolved, with UN staff paid 30 and 40 times more than local people, regardless of skills. A number of restaurants, for example, are notable for the absence of East Timorese customers.
Yet UNTAET will soon be gone, but the World Bank will remain. AID/WATCH would like to see the Australian Government play an active role in helping engage the East Timorese community in the development of their country. A sustained effort is needed to help this new neighbour nation find its feet, and express its own character and voice. The paternalism must end.
AID/WATCH recommends that:
The Age - May 1, 2001
Mark Dodd, Dili -- The United Nations' Serious Crimes Unit, the taskforce gathering evidence to prosecute perpetrators of the violence that swept East Timor in 1999, is on the point of collapse. Morale is at rock bottom and qualified investigators are quitting amid claims that the unit is under-equipped and badly managed.
In January the UN sent a senior official to report on problems in the taskforce, now dubbed the "Not-So-Serious Crimes Unit" by its staff. Over the past fortnight, three staff members have resigned, including two senior investigators, one of whom was the sole investigator into the murder of 70 independence supporters in the Oecussi enclave.
The unit is currently without a forensic pathologist, although more than 30 sets of human remains await examination in Dili. A replacement is expected to arrive this month. One Australian Federal Police officer working at the unit is investigating on his own more than 300 individual homicides, including the murders of UN staff. A frustrated investigator said that at times he wondered if the unit and the UN transitional administration were on the same side. "They (UNTAET) are holding reconciliation negotiations with militia leaders we want to arrest," he said.
The UN chief prosecutor in East Timor, Mohamed Othman, admitted yesterday that there were shortages. He said specialist investigators in the field of homicide and sex crimes were urgently required. But Mr Othman, a Tanzanian judge with experience at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, said he still expected indictments for crimes against humanity against senior Indonesian commanders and civil administrators by the end of the year.
Many staff of the unit blame their Norwegian chief, Oyvind Olsen. Critics say he has little understanding of the situation in East Timor in 1999 and has been slow to support prompt investigations.
Sydney Morning Herald - May 1, 2001
Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta -- The notorious East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres will be free within weeks after a Jakarta court yesterday sentenced him to six months' jail for inciting violence. The court said the four months he had spent under house arrest in Jakarta while awaiting the outcome of his trial should be deducted from the sentence.
Human rights activists and United Nations officials in Jakarta last night described the sentence as a slap on the wrist for Guterres, 26, who is accused of crimes against humanity at the height of the East Timor bloodshed in 1999. Prosecutors had sought a 12-month jail term.
Guterres appears set to escape other prosecutions over atrocities in East Timor because of a decree approved last week by Indonesia's President Abdurrahman Wahid that opens the way for a special human rights court to be established in Jakarta to hear East Timor atrocity cases -- but only in relation to crimes committed after the August 1999 UN ballot.
The Indonesian Attorney-General's office last week assured the Australian Embassy that those involved in pre-ballot incidents would be prosecuted. Indonesian prosecutors have spent more than a year investigating crimes allegedly committed by Guterres before the ballot, including the massacre of 12 people at the home of the independence leader Manuel Carrascalao.
The Herald has learned Indonesia's armed forces pressured Mr Wahid's Government to approve the cut-off date so that soldiers and officers could not be prosecuted for crimes committed during Indonesia's brutal 25-year occupation of East Timor.
A senior military officer said the decree's timing was designed to "focus the investigation". "If it was not limited they might as well bring up [events] since 1975, and it will never end," the officer said. "Is it fair if they charge us with things we did in the past? I mean, why now? Why didn't they cry out when the government issued the order to us? The TNI [military] was only doing what the country asked it to do." The UN has questioned the cut-off date, and human rights groups in Jakarta are urging Mr Wahid to amend the decree.
Guterres told about 75 supporters outside the court yesterday that he did not accept its verdict and would appeal. He was accused of inciting his men to oppose security personnel and take back 19 weapons they had handed over to police in the West Timor border town of Atambua last September. The court was told Guterres was angered when police stopped him meeting Vice- President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who was in town to witness the handing over of militia weapons.
Tempo - April 27, 2001
Jakarta -- Some Indonesian NGOs -- including Kontras (Commission for Missing Persons & Victims of Violence), YLBHI (Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute), and ELSAM (Institute for Policy Research & Advocacy) -- suspect that the Attorney General's Office (AGO) has tried to cover up Wiranto's involvement in violating human rights in East Timor after the 1999 referendum. The AGO failed to place Wiranto's name on the list of 12 suspects that would be submitted to the Human Rights Ad Hoc Court.
"The National Commission on Human Rights, represented by the investigating commission on human rights violations (KPP-HAM), had reported some TNI high ranking officials, including Wiranto," said the coordinator of Kontras working committee, Munarman, today.
In its report to the ad hoc court which was formed by the Supreme Court and the Justice and Human Rights Department, the AGO investigation team mentioned personnel allegedly involved in violating human rights in East Timor. The report does not mention the four highest ranking military officials that have been reported by KPP-HAM as being most responsibility for security in East Timor. The four are Wiranto, Johny Lumintang, Zacky Anwar and HR Garnadi. A source has confirmed that Wiranto is one of the suspects reported by KPP-HAM.
"The AGO investigation team is playing a political game to protect the [four] personnel. It is really stalling the enforcement of human rights," Munarman said. In the report, the AGO investigation team only mentions officials at controlling level. Munarman said that these officials only conducted tasks in accordance with policies set by their commanders, and it is therefore those commanders that must take responsibility for the incidents in East Timor.
Some NGOs demanded that the AGO confirm that its suspects list does not include high ranking officials. They suggested that the law establishing the Human Rights Court is not sufficient to stop the practice of impunity. "We are afraid that the same practice will be applied to other cases, such as the Tanjung Priok case," Munarman said.
Sydney Morning Herald - April 30, 2001
Craig Skehan -- The Australian Government yesterday urged Indonesia to push ahead with the prosecution of all those involved in killings and other human rights violations in East Timor in the months leading up to and after the 1999 referendum on independence.
This followed a decree by President Abdurrahaman Wahid establishing an ad hoc tribunal which appeared to only provide for the prosecution of those who participated in the bloody wave of reprisals after the independence vote. Officials said Australian diplomats last week sought clarification of Indonesia's position.
"We are encouraged by the comments of officials in the Attorney- General's office that those involved in incidents before August 1999 will be prosecuted," a spokesman for the Foreign Minister, Mr Downer said. "We would certainly urge Indonesian authorities not to exclude serious abuses of human rights."
There has been growing evidence that some Indonesian authorities are looking for ways to avoid the prosecution of senior figures. Mr Downer's spokesman said assurances had been given that senior military officers would be brought to justice.
The Herald reported on Saturday that a secret report by Indonesia's Commission of Investigation into Human Rights Violations for the country's Attorney-General's Department detailed how anti-independence East Timor militias were trained, armed and paid by the Government. This included the massacre of six people five months before the referendum under the direction of Indonesian military commander, Lieutenant Colonel Burhanuddin Siagian.
The Australian Government says it is the responsibility of Indonesia to bring to justice those responsible for such crimes. "They should be given time to do so," Mr Downer's spokesman said yesterday. The international community was only obliged to act if Indonesia does not. "They are still going through those processes."
Concerns remain that internal sensitivities will result in political restrictions on the scope of prosecutions. Mr Downer's spokesman said it was hoped "narrow limitations" would not be set on who was brought before the tribunal.
Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Laurie Brereton, said the report in the Herald confirmed the Indonesian military involvement in "crimes against humanity". It also confirmed how the Australian Government had consistently downplayed the evidence of Indonesian military orchestration of the violence.
| Labour struggle |
Jakarta Post - May 3, 2001
Jakarta -- Manpower and Transmigration Minister Al-Hilal Hamdi revealed on Wednesday that some 80,000 Indonesian laborers overseas have little protection, since they are not registered with the government-run insurance program. "They cannot claim any compensation from the insurance program if they encounter any trouble at their workplace overseas," he said after signing a memorandum of understanding with Jordanian Ambassador Muhammed Ali Badher here on Wednesday.
He alleged that labor exporters may have collected US$20 from each of those workers to be included in the insurance program but the funds were not paid to the Finance Ministry, as required by the 1986 ministerial decree on overseas workers. He cited a government loss totaling $1.6 million as a result.
Meanwhile Badher said that under the newly signed MoU, Jordan would distribute workers from Indonesia to be employed in the informal sector. "Jordan needs thousands of workers as domestic helpers and baby-sitters," he said.
Separately, Jacob Nua Wea, a legislator of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) said the country must have a law to regulate migrant workers overseas, the recruitment of workers and their protection overseas.
"The Labor Export Association [Apjati] should draft a bill on migrant workers overseas and submit it to the House because it will take a long time if the government is asked to do it," he said in a discussion on the migrant worker policy here on Wednesday.
Jacob, also chairman of the All-Indonesia Workers Union Federation said that the increasing number of Indonesian workers overseas who encounter problems is related to the absence of a law to protect them. "Our workers have been subject to extortion by labor exporters, government officers and their employers overseas because of the absence of standard regulations and legal sanctions," he said.
Soeramsihono, director general for labor deployment at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, said the government would take strict action against labor exporters and government officers who violated labor export procedures.
"Labor exporters should return their export license to the government and do business in another sector if they decline to treat workers humanely," he said. He said the labor export program needed total reform to empower Indonesian migrant workers.
Husein Alaydrus, chairman of Apjati, conceded that numerous labor exporters had breached export procedures to reap higher profits but stressed that the government should be consistent in enforcing the export regulations.
"It should not be possible for unskilled workers to go overseas if their departure has not first been checked by the government, as workers need to be certified by the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry before they are allowed to go to work abroad," he said.
Indonesian Observer - May 2, 2001
Jakarta -- An increasing number of Indonesian migrant workers find themselves in grim circumstances these days due to unjust salary reductions, along with the threat of rape, repatriation, torture or even death sentence.
In relation to May Day 2001, Defender Consortium of Indonesian Migrant Workers (Kopbumi) released data revealing the extent of their problems. Of the total 4 million Indonesian migrant workers prevailing in many countries in the world, only 400 of them established Indonesian Migrant Workers Union, which is officially registered in Hong Kong.
Kopbumi chairman, Wahyu Susilo, also pointed out here yesterday, that from January until April 2001, there has been violation of human rights over 1,714,522 migrant workers in several countries.
Aside from torture and sexual harassment especially for women, 10 died this year and one faced a death sentence; around 69 were raped by their employers, while 4,500 were forced to flee their bosses due to inhuman treatment. He also added that almost 13,000 workers were neglected by companies that have sent them abroad.
Around 24,008 are considered missing because there was no contact established with their families in Indonesia, and the families can not trace their presence in the countries were they work today.
In Malaysia today, there are around 1.5 million workers who are highly susceptible to deportation because they either have no passport/visas or working permits. More than 14,000 of them are now in Malaysian jails while 120,000 have been repatriated by force. Around 32,000 workers suffer from mass dismissal without clear reasons.
In Taiwan, migrant workers who worked there for three year-period did not received salary payments of up to 14 months. It is said that the fund is used to pay their transport to the destination country and for tax, but of course there are no official reports about it.
Four main points International Labor Organization (ILO), in commemoration of May Day 2001, has released four main points, which are necessarily important to improve working condition of workers.
First, they should have rights to establish unions/organizations. Second, there must be no force on people to do certain jobs. Third, slavery of children must be eradicated. And the last, migrant workers should have better protection for example anti- discrimination protection.
Indonesia, though has ratified ILO Convention related to freedom of establishing unions/organizations, has no initiative to reinforce workers or to facilitate them in establishing unions in foreign countries.
Paradox Migrant workers contribute big funds for the state, amounting to almost Rp20 trillion per annum but so far there is no significant efforts to improve their condition.
Ages of the workers below 15 are manipulated by companies sending them abroad, and such an illegal recruitment in West, Central and East Java, West and East Nusa Tenggara could be likened the slave trading.
Brokers are roaming every where in the rural areas promising the people that they can get very high salaries in foreign countries and that they can be rich within a couple of years, without informing them about the cultural problems they could face.
Following such problems, Kopbumi calls for the government to issue a special law protecting the migrant workers; to help workers establish their unions; to implement the ratification of UN Convention and to make bilateral agreements with every country in the world, where Indonesian migrants work, in order that those governments offer better protection to Indonesian workers.
Detik -- May 1, 2001
Djoko Tjiptono/HD, Jakarta -- Around on thousand of Indonesia workers from greater Jakarta marched to flood at the Monas National Monument square in a rally to commemorate International Workers Day on Tuesday.
The workers who marched in a rally to the Monas National square are from the National Struggle Front of Indonesia Workers (FNBI), Indonesia Workers Union (PBI), Independence Workers Union (SPM) and Indonesia Free Workers Union Group (Gaspermindo). It also appeared the chairman of Welfare Workers Union (SBSI).
In their action, they were submitting several demands in regards to the workers' welfare such as the right to work within 32 hours per week and union freedom as well speech freedom. They also demand International Labor Day on May 1 be declared a national holiday and the politisation over the workers be stopped.
Meanwhile, as observed by Detik, other hundreds of workers which are grouped in the Jakarta-Bogor-Tangerang Workers Union are still doing a longmarch from the International Hotel Roundabout on Jl MH Thamrin, Central Jakarta to Monas square.
In East Java, around 1,500 workers which grouped in the FNBI is facing ahead with one company (100 personnels) of anti-riots troops from Brigade Mobile at the East Java Provincial Legislative Council (DPRD).
The situation looked very tense and frightening since the workers yelled and urged to come inside the building while the security officers stood tightly in front of the buildings gate which is located on Jl Indrapura, Surabaya, East Java.
As before, the workers had given 10 minutes for the head of DPRD for East Java to meet with them. But, since he didn't appear for so long, the workers who has gathered there since 10.00 local time forced to come inside.
However, the workers who come from Gresik, Margomulyo and Tandes has been immediately blocked by the security officers who were on the alert with their full weapons such as rottan sticks, shields and gas launchers.
Indonesian Observer - May 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Labor rallies held in several major cities to commemorate World Labor Day were predominantly marred by vandalism and clashes between workers and police. Labor figures claimed that the government and parliament have never given enough attention to the problems of laborers.
In the West Java capital city of Bandung, hundreds of workers from industrial compounds clashed with the police in the afternoon after they were prevented from entering the regional administrative building.
The violence erupted after protesters tried to break the polices shoulder to shoulder chain preventing them from conveying their demand to local administrator members.
Bandung Police headquarters, which had anticipated the likelihood of riots, had deployed 400 policemen in the location. They managed to clear the protesters from the regional administration compound. A number of injured victims were seen in both parties.
Bandung Police Chief Adjunct Senior Commissioner Edward Syah Pernong was himself pushed to the ground by a protester.
The labors demanded that May 1 be proclaimed a national holiday, that violence ceased against labors and to be given part of the companys stock share. They demanded to have a session with Ruhiyat Noor, the Commission E Chairman in West Java regional administration to convey their demands. The protesters consisted of members of the Indonesian Labor National Front (FNBI) and National Student League for Democracy (LMND).
Meanwhile in the East Java capital city of Surabaya, at least 1,000 also held a demonstration before their regional administrative building.
Some of them were seen committing vandalism, including damaging a vehicle belonging to a local official. In Jakarta, labor rallies was conversely conducted in solemn manner.
Workers held conducted rallies at two strategic points, in the national square located in front of Presidential Palace and in the key roundabout before Hotel Indonesia in Central Jakarta. The rallies, attended by at least 1,000 labors of numerous factories in Jakarta, Bogor, Bekasi and Tangerang, were conducted peacefully.
In her speech that addressing the rally, a labor activist of FNBI Dita Indah Sari criticized the parliaments negligence of the accumulating problems experienced by laborers. They never give a damn about workers problems. The labor draft which has already been issued does not provide benefits to laborers, Indah sari said. We regret that we casted our votes for these so-called representatives in the last general election, she added.
In agreement with Indah Sari, another national labor figure Muchtar Pakpahan criticized President Abdurrahman Wahid and accused him of ignoring the plight of laborers. Gus Durs government never takes the side of the laborers, and the political parties only struggle for their own political interests, said Pakpahan, referring to Wahids nickname.
Meanwhile Executive Director of International Labor Organization (ILO) Kari Tapiola, who participated in the rally, said that working conditions in Indonesia are often categorized as the worst.
She called on companies and labor unions to develop a relationship based on cooperation and support, while avoiding foreign infiltration. The relationship must be renewed and there should be no foreign infiltration, Tapiola said.
Jakarta Post - May 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Indonesian workers took the opportunity of Labor Day on Tuesday to hold rallies and voice their demand for better pay and working conditions.
Organized by newly empowered labor unions, thousands of workers staged rallies in major cities across the country. Most of these rallies were peaceful, though several people were injured in the West Java capital of Bandung when hundreds of workers clashed with police.
Rally participants were unified in demanding that May Day be declared an official holiday, that workers be given greater freedom to organize and that authorities put an end to arbitrary dismissals.
"The government and the House of Representatives must take action to stop the troubling trend of arbitrary layoffs," union leader Dita Indah Sari told about 5,000 workers at the National Monument in Central Jakarta. Dita also demanded the government declare May Day a national holiday.
Addressing the same crowd, labor activist Muchtar Pakpahan called on the government to raise the minimum wage 100 percent. Pakpahan, the chairman of the Indonesian Prosperous Labor Union, also demanded the government eliminate working contract systems used by employers and establish an official eight-hour workday.
Dita and Pakpahan were both jailed by former president Soeharto for organizing labor protests. Soeharto outlawed May Day celebrations and free trade unions during his 32-year rule. His successor, B.J. Habibie, liberalized the labor movement in April 1999. Habibie also ratified three International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions, including those on the abolition of forced labor and on discrimination in employment and occupation.
The visiting executive director of the ILO, Kari Tapiola, urged Indonesian workers to unite, saying the ILO supported their struggle.
In another part of Jakarta, hundreds of workers from the Tanjung Priok sea port in North Jakarta staged a peaceful rally in front of the North Jakarta mayoralty office. The workers demanded the elimination of illegal levies at the port.
Jakarta Police chief Inspector Gen. Mulyono Sulaeman said about 2,000 police officers were deployed to ensure public order during the May Day rallies in Jakarta.
In Bandung, hundreds of members of the National Front of Indonesian Labor Fighters clashed with police officers who blocked them from the West Java legislative council building. Several activists and police officers were injured in the violence. Some of the workers claimed they were unaware of the planned protest, saying they were told if they came to the council building they could settle disputes they had with their employers.
"I came because I was promised that our dispute with PT Lunatex would be settled here," said Nano, an employee of the textile firm.
In Medan, North Sumatra, some 3,000 workers rallied at the local provincial legislative council building and the governor's office, demanding better working conditions and an increase in the minimum wage.
Workers from plywood factory PT Tjipta Rimba Djaya who took part in the rally were docked their pay for the day. The company claimed the workers missed work to take part in the rally without prior approval from the management.
In Surabaya, East Java, approximately 2,000 workers, including employees of Maspion II and PT Japfa Comfeed, marched five kilometers from Bungkul Park to the provincial legislative council building. The rally was organized by the Regional Labor Union.
The workers demanded the government honor murdered labor activist Marsinah as a national hero. Marsinah, murdered in 1993, worked at watch factory PT Catur Putra Surya in Porong, East Java. She was allegedly killed for organizing protests to demand better wages and her murder remains unsolved. "Marsinah is the true symbol of the struggle of labor against the arbitrariness of the government and employers," said Arief, one of the protest leaders.
In Semarang, Central Java, thousands of workers held rallies at the Mangkang industrial zone, the local legislative council building and the governor's office.
Meanwhile, the head of the All-Indonesia Workers Union Federation's Central Java office, K.M. Umar, had his own take on how laborers could defend their rights. "I urge all workers just to pray for Indonesia. Strikes will only cause more companies to go bankrupt," Umar said.
| Aceh/West Papua |
Reuters - May 3, 2001
Achmad Sukarsono, Jakarta -- A group of Indonesian legislators on Thursday endorsed a proposal that would give rebellious Irian Jaya province more powers including an all-indigenous upper house and a locally-recruited police force.
The proposal, drafted by Irianese academics and obtained by Reuters, is the first to give more authority to the resource-rich territory that has been endorsed by any lawmakers.
Sixty legislators from the 500-seat parliament endorsed the proposal, said MP Simon Patrice Morin, a key backer of the draft, who warned the government to take note of the document. Morin said the proposal would soon be formally submitted to the government, which has failed to meet a promise to give Irian Jaya wide-ranging autonomy by May 1, and also to a full session of parliament.
MPs have rejected the government's own draft on autonomy for Irian. A special autonomy law for Aceh, Indonesia's other main separatist headache, is close to final debate in parliament. "For the people there, a deadline is not important. The important thing is content. And the content of the government's draft was unsatisfactory," Morin told Reuters on Thursday.
The MP from the former ruling Golkar party said the endorsed draft had been repeatedly revised in Irian Jaya, also known as Papua, before being given to President Abdurrahman Wahid last month by the provincial governor. It was unclear what Wahid thought of it. The proposal still has to be submitted formally to the government before it can be debated in parliament.
"This is the best Papua can come up with. The people actually have lost trust in Jakarta. But the intellectuals told them this is a way out ... a middle way," Morin, himself Papuan, said. "It's an issue of 'take it or leave it'. We may back off a bit but Jakarta has to understand this is the basic design Papuans can take." He admitted separatists groups had slammed the decision to draft anything which still kept Irian part of Indonesia.
Demands for independence have simmered for decades in the far eastern province, fuelled by human rights abuses, ethnic tensions and resentment at Jakarta's plundering of its mineral wealth. Papua people's assembly
Most Papuans are also fed up being treated as second-class citizens in their own land where migrants from other parts of the archipelago dominate commerce and the bureaucracy.
With that in mind, the draft has included a controversial article supporting a bicameral local parliament with an upper house only open to appointed indigenous community leaders called the Papua People's Assembly.
"This will guard the indigenous voice when there is a demographic shift. So, they will not become a forgotten minority group in the future," Morin said. "We do not want their dissatisfaction piling up further and tearing society apart," he said.
Jungle-clad Irian Jaya is home to about 250 tribes, most of them still living a stone-age culture with men wearing nothing more than feathers and penis gourds. The province is also the site of one of the world's largest copper mines run by Freeport McMoRan of the United States.
The draft also supports the establishment of a police force comprising local recruits and separated from Jakarta's command. Many police in Irian Jaya are not locals and have been accused of human rights violations and siding with migrants. This has also triggered sporadic attacks from pro-independence tribes on police offices in remote Irian towns.
Irian Jaya was incorporated into Indonesia in 1963, after heavy diplomatic pressure on the Netherlands, the country's former colonial ruler. In 1969, a UN-run plebiscite was held among local leaders, which resulted in a vote to join Indonesia. The vote has been widely criticised as unfair.
Jakarta Post - May 3, 2001
Jakarta -- Sixty-seven people were killed in Aceh province between April 11 and April 29, Aceh's Human Rights Care Forum (Forum Peduli HAM Aceh) revealed on Wednesday.
The head of the group's investigation team, Batlimus, was quoted by Antara as saying that of the 67 casualties, 52 were civilians, nine were National Police/Indonesian Military members and six were Free Aceh Movement (GAM) separatist rebels.
During the same period, the forum also recorded 48 cases of torture in which 33 civilians and 15 members of the Indonesian security forces were injured.
At least 72 buildings were also razed in arson attacks. Eighteen gunfights between rebels and security forces were recorded in several regencies in the strife-torn province.
Separately, spokesman for the police's Cinta Meunasah II Operation Adj. Sr. Comr. Sad Harunantyo told The Jakarta Post from Banda Aceh capital on Wednesday that a series of arson and rebel attacks took place in North Aceh and West Aceh on Tuesday.
In West Aceh, rebels attacked a joint police and military patrol unit by throwing bombs at the unit in Babah Ngom village of Sampoiniet district on Tuesday.
"The windshield of a police truck was shattered as the rebels blasted the troops with three assembled bombs. Two officers and six civilians were injured in the attack," the officer said, adding that the attackers then fled the scene. Police seized four active bombs and wires as evidence.
Jane's Defence Weekly - May 2, 2001
John Haseman, Bangkok -- Indonesia is resuming extensive military operations in the troubled province of Aceh after almost a year of fruitless political negotiations, humanitarian pauses and ceasefires which the government fears have considerably strengthened the separatist Aceh Merdeka guerrilla force (GAM).
The efforts to achieve a non-military settlement between the Indonesian government and the GAM had minimal effect in reducing casualties -- during this year alone more than 600 people have been killed and wounded in Aceh.
The policy change is contained in a comprehensive plan that combines intensified security operations against armed separatist units with a wide range of non-military initiatives to address grievances in the resource-rich province.
In essence, the government is gambling that government issues wrapped in a comprehensive local autonomy package will satisfy the wide majority of Acehnese who do not support independence from Indonesia.
The Aceh plan, issued by President Abdurrahman Wahid as a formal Presidential Instruction on 11 April, assigns responsibilities to no less than two co-ordinating ministers, 12 cabinet-level ministers, the national police chief, the head of the National Intelligence Agency and commander-in-chief of the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI).
Overall responsibility for security operations has been vested in the national police rather than the TNI, the former having been assigned the internal security mission after the police were separated from the TNI last year.
A senior TNI official told Jane's Defence Weekly that the armed forces are dissatisfied with the role they have been given in Aceh. For several months senior TNI officers have pressured President Wahid to approve resumption of full-scale military operations against the GAM. After the framework of the Presidential Instruction became known, the TNI urged a more comprehensive military involvement that would include formal declaration of a civil emergency in the province. Such a step would provide greater legal protection for TNI troops in the event of civilian casualties.
"What happens when my troops shoot an armed guerrilla and capture his weapon, but his family insists he was unarmed?" one army general asked rhetorically.
A number of TNI officers have cited these concerns as partial justification for the slowness of armed forces to respond to incidents of ethnic violence in the outlying archipelago. Mindful of human rights abuses during previous military operations in Aceh, TNI commander-in-chief Adm Widodo pledged that military operations will be "specifically targeted" against armed separatist guerrillas to minimise civilian casualties. "I have just asked my forces to perform their duties professionally. I have also asked them to ensure that they are there to create peace [and] not to make war with innocent people," he said.
The TNI have formed a unique multi-service task force, dubbed the Rajawali (Hawk) Task Force, for operations in Aceh. Comprising more than 1,000 personnel drawn from the army, air force and marine corps, the force consists of 11 company-size teams who have received several months of training in guerrilla tactics, counter-guerrilla warfare, and psychological operations at the Army Special Forces Command (Kopassus) training center at Batujajar, West Java.
This is the first time that so many regular line Indonesian armed forces personnel have been given additional special forces training.
The TNI General Staff apparently chose this course of action to avoid a deployment of Kopassus troops to Aceh. Kopassus has been repeatedly accused of human rights violations during prior deployments to Aceh and East Timor. By keeping the special forces away from Aceh this time, the TNI is hoping that the quick training programme will enable the Rajawali Task Force units to conduct effective counter-guerrilla operations and minimise alienation of the populace.
These recent deployments bring the number of troops in Aceh to well over 12,000. To simplify command and control, the TNI has created an operational command for Aceh. Brig Gen Zamroni, commander of the Army Education and Training Command and former deputy Kopassus commander, will assume command of existing territorial force commands at Banda Aceh and Lhokseumawe as well as all TNI troops deployed from outside the province. Gen Zamroni will report to the Medan-based northern Sumatra Kodam commander, Maj Gen I G Purnama.
However, overall supervision of security operations in Aceh will fall under the aegis of the national police. There are more than 20,000 national police personnel in Aceh, including a significant component of the Police Mobile Brigade. Senior officials are anxious that this large police-military security operation works smoothly.
Prior experience in Aceh and elsewhere pointed to a serious lack of co-ordination between the armed forces and the police. The single biggest challenge of the entire Aceh programme will be the effective co-ordination of the large and cumbersome security structure.
GAM spokesmen have condemned the Indonesian plan for Aceh and refused a government offer to hold yet another round of negotiations, warning that further violence can be expected.
Some 2,500 army troops already deployed in Aceh have been assigned to secure the Arun natural gas complex in North Aceh operated by ExxonMobil. A senior TNI officer told JDW that this is an integral part of military operations in Aceh, combining static defence of key installations and facilities with active patrolling to prevent GAM forces from gaining access to Arun or threatening ExxonMobil staff.
ExxonMobil shut down its operations and evacuated all its non- Acehnese staff in March last year, citing a steady increase in violence against its personnel and facilities. The company is under heavy pressure to resume operations, but is adamant that it will not reopen the facility until the threat to its personnel is removed.
ExxonMobil officials told JDW that the combination of arson, ambushes, bombings, terrorist threats, and sniping was far more extensive than reported in the press. Indonesia normally earns $100 million monthly in natural gas sales from the Arun field.
| Elite power struggle |
Green Left Weekly - May 2, 2001
Max Lane -- Between 100,000 to 500,000 supporters of President Abdurrahman Wahid are expected to gather in Jakarta for a mass prayer meeting on April 29, just one day before the Indonesian house of representatives meets to discuss a censure motion against the president over corruption allegations.
If the house votes for the censure memorandum, the way is opened for a special session of the People's Consultative Assembly, the MPR, in three months time. Such a session could feasibly remove Wahid and replace him with Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, or even somebody else. The censure motion is the second presented this year. The motion against Wahid has been pushed through the parliament by the same forces that voted him into the presidency: Golkar, the party of the Suharto dictatorship, the right-wing Islamic Central Axis coalition and the TNI, the Indonesian armed forces, who have representatives in parliament.
Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), dominated for the moment by its right wing, has also followed the Golkar-Central Axis-TNI coalition.
In response, Wahid has sought the high moral ground, supporting a proposal for a meeting between himself, Sukarnoputri, Golkar head Akbar Tanjung and other senior party leaders to end what is publicly seen as infighting within the "elite politik".
Wahid has also played with the idea of mobilising his massive numbers of supporters, especially the members of the Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama, of which he is the former head.
While the president's own pronouncements have wavered, sometimes calling for mobilisation, sometimes opposing it, Nahdlatul Ulama has now decided to proceed with the mass prayer meeting in Jakarta's largest stadium on April 29.
Wahid has, however, called on the Prepared to Die Brigades, his most fanatical supporters, not to come to Jakarta, for fear that other parties will mobilise their private armies.
Reports from activists in contact with the Nahdlatul Ulama rank and file say that the mood is very angry. There is also a conflict developing within the organisation, between the mass base and the formal hierarchy of Islamic teachers and preachers, called kyai.
A layer of younger kyai, outside the formal NU structure, are exercising more and more influence over the mass base and are more supportive of mass action.
The formal leadership of Nahdlatul Ulama is calling on supporters coming to Jakarta to return to their regions, mainly in East Java, immediately after the mass prayer rally on April 29.
However, the younger kyai and the masses themselves seem to be committed to rallying again the next day at the parliament building, to demand that MPs not proceed with the censure motion. They will also likely to raise the demand for the dissolution of Golkar, for its complicity in the 30 year dictatorship of Suharto.
Such a mobilisation, of 100,000 or more fanatical Wahid supporters, mainly peasants, could turn into something even larger, depending on whether the rally raises any clear demands other than opposition to the censure motion and on the mood within the mass base of Sukarnoputri and the PDIP.
If the NU masses rally with a clear anti-Golkar focus, it is possible that they may draw along with them thousands of Jakarta's urban poor, who also hate Golkar but who are now mainly backers of Sukarnoputri.
The hierarchy of Nahdlatul Ulama is attempting to prevent any drift in that direction. It has denied requests from other anti- Golkar forces, such as the radical Peoples' Democratic Party (PRD) and progressive student organisations, to bring their banners or flags to the mass prayer meeting.
The PDIP is deeply divided, between a right-wing anti-Wahid faction comprising of MPs who have only recently joined the party from backgrounds in Golkar, the military and business and a wing closer to the traditional nationalist stance of Sukarnoputri's father, Sukarno, who was Indonesia's first president. The Sukarnoists are vehemently opposed to any ouster of Wahid, as they believe it would strengthen the right-wing Muslims, their traditional enemy.
The PDIP's primarily urban mass base has as yet shown no enthusiasm for replacing Wahid with Sukarnoputri by manoeuvre. A call by the party's leadership to set up posko, or neighbourhood command centres, the technique used to mobilise massive support for Sukarnoputri in the 1999 elections, has enjoyed little backing from party supporters.
Sukarnoputri herself has maintained her silence, not stating what stance she will take on the censure motion and not rescinding her standing commitment to support Wahid as president until his term expires in 2004.
The armed forces are clearly collaborating with Golkar to dislodge Wahid. The TNI's 38 parliamentary representatives voted to censure Wahid in February and seem very likely to do so again this time around.
The military is at loggerheads with the president over its operations in the northern Sumatran province of Aceh, where people are demanding a referendum on independence.
Military figures have repeatedly called on the government to give them the go-ahead to crush the GAM, the Free Aceh Movement. But while Wahid has approved some measures, such as dispatching extra forces to guard ExxonMobil's oil refinery in the province, he has so far avoided making any commitment to the all-out offensive the TNI wants.
There are now rumours circulating in Jakarta that some elements in the military may attempt to provoke the kind of anarchy that exploded in the capital in July 1996 and in May 1998, providing them with a pretext for a major crack-down.
There is also some evidence that the ground is being prepared for another scapegoating campaign against the PRD. Right-wing Muslim students have launched a wave of attacks against the offices of PRD affiliates since early April and there are fears that they have more in store.
Jakarta Post - May 1, 2001
Jakarta -- Thousands of people braved heavy rain on Monday as they marched through the city's thoroughfares in a display of support for President Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid, whose political legitimacy slid to a further low after the House of Representatives issued him a second censure.
In their last-ditch effort to prevent the issuance of the second memorandum of censure, the emotional supporters of the beleaguered President, mostly from East Java, warned that any attempt to oust Abdurrahman would spark a rebellion in the province that is one of the President's strongholds.
Wearing headbands and waving Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) flags, the demonstrators spread out banners which, among other things, said, "Long live Gus Dur" and "If Gus Dur falls, East Java separates", as they headed for the House, where 500 legislators were debating whether to rebuke the President for the second time.
The fanatic crowd was led by Fawaid As'ad from Asy-Salafiah Islamic boarding school in Situbondo, East Java. Many of those were participants in Sunday's mass prayer who defied their leaders' calls to return home immediately. From early in the morning, the protesters began to gather at the National Monument (Monas) park near the Presidential Palace.
After negotiating with the police who had earlier set up roadblocks at a number of main streets, they continued their march to the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle at about 11 a.m. "We are here to oppose the second censure, there will be bloodshed if Gus Dur falls," a man named Achmad from Lumajang, East Java, said.
Some of the supporters had undergone weeks of paramilitary training in East Java under the banner of the "Defenders of Truth" force.
Fears of violence failed to materialize as they eventually took a U-turn at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle and moved back to Monas square. A roadblock of 20 buses parked on Jl. Sudirman kept them from the House.
"Pak Kyai asked us not to go to the House. We must obey it," one of the protesters said, referring to Hasyim Muzadi, the NU chairman. "If Gus Dur is ousted however, we will strike back," added the protester from the East Java town of Pasuruan.
Included in the rally were 500 people grouped in the Blitar White Tiger Truth Defenders Front. "We want to deliver our aspirations to the House, which we assume to have hampered the reform movement," the group leader Ahmad Tamim said. He, like other group members, wore a headband which read "Ario Blitar" (Blitar Knight). "If only we had been allowed to by our ulemas, we could have broken the security cordon, since we were prepared to do so, no matter how many personnel were guarding the House compound," Tamim said.
He said his group had complied with the request of an East Java ulema M. Subadar, who informed them that the House had received 10 representatives of Gus Dur's supporters from East Java to deliver their message. According to Tamim, the Blitar group, which came from 22 districts, arrived in Jakarta on Friday. Some 150 supporters from another part of East Java who called themselves Sidoarjo Gus Dur Supporters Forum (FPGD) also turned up for the rally.
The supporters, who arrived in Jakarta on Saturday and were led by Pramono stretched out a long banner which read, "The House considers people are deaf, blind and stupid all the time". "We just wanted to warn the House that it should not take a decision at its own whim or for the sake of personal or group interests," Pramono said. He said that the second memorandum against the President was unnecessary as it was against the people's true wishes. "We can accept the memorandum, but we cannot control people in remote areas," he said.
In the evening, most of the East Javanese boarded police trucks which took them to the Senen railway and bus stations. Separately, 150 activists from 15 NGOs grouped under the Anti-New Order People's Front (Frarob) also staged a rally under a flyover near the House on Monday, demanding the dissolution of the House, the Golkar Party and the trial of corrupt officials from the New Order government. "We don't care about the censure against Abdurrahman Wahid. We just want to see the legislature, which is home to a number of New Order cronies, dissolved," Reinhard Sirait who led the rally said.
[On May 4 the Straits Times reported a recent survey of 2,500 children conducted by marketing and research consultant company, Frontier, found that most wanted to be doctors. The least- preferred profession -- a dismal 0.4 per cent -- was a tie between modeling and becoming President - James Balowski.]
Straits Times - May 1, 2001
Marianne Kearney, Jakarta -- As Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri's legislators lobbed their strongest shot yet against President Abdurrahman Wahid, acting as shock troops in the attack on him, party members alike claim the attack was an attempt to persuade him that the game was up and resignation was his only sensible choice.
But given the President's well-known appetite for tough fights, a quiet resignation is unlikely. Therefore, yesterday's clear warning that Ms Megawati's PDI-P would push for impeachment, appears to be part of the elaborate play in convincing Mr Abdurrahman to begin negotiations to hand over the reigns.
As one commentator wryly noted, Mr Abdurrahman will be forced to start living in a grounded reality rather than the virtual reality he has inhabited until now. The harsh light of reality leaves him with two unsavoury choices -- be pushed out of office or hand over executive power to Ms Megawati, effectively stepping aside as President.
While many analysts say Mr Abdurrahman has left his run too late to stitch up a last-minute deal with the Vice-President, a compromise deal may be far more preferable to pursuing the rocky two month road to impeachment. If the PDI-P pushes for impeachment, party members are concerned that it could be a rough ride, fearing that one of Mr Abdurrahman's strategies is to expose the shady business dealings of Ms Megawati's husband, Mr Taufik Kiemas.
But an even bigger concern is that without some sort of compromise deal, Indonesia is set for a painful war of attrition, with a relentlessly declining rupiah, economic growth taking a nose-dive and mass violence persistently threatening to burst onto the streets. There would be little progress on the economic front as the IMF is unlikely to conclude its agreement and disburse any loans until Indonesia has a stable government.
But even as negotiations for a compromise government possibly begin, Indonesia is set for a rudderless couple of months. Yesterday's censure effectively disempowers Mr Abdurrahman, making it impossible for his Cabinet to command any kind of power, and brings the government to a virtual standstill.
On top of this, there is little chance that separatist violence, sectarian clashes, and general lawlessness from a population increasingly taking the law into its own hands are likely to subside.
New York Times - April 30, 2001
Seth Mydans, Jakarta -- April 30 -- Legislators today overwhelmingly censured President Abdurrahman Wahid for corruption and incompetence, setting the stage for possible impeachment of the nation's first democratically elected leader in four decades.
Mr. Wahid will have 30 days to make a formal reply. He is a tough political infighter, but he has already expended most of his political capital. The likelihood is that Parliament will reject his reply in June and will call for formal impeachment proceedings to begin. In the view of many experts here, opposition to Mr. Wahid has reached a critical mass, just 18 months after he took office. "The striking thing here is that there is a fairly impressive consensus -- not unanimous but still a consensus -- among the political elite here in Jakarta about what is likely to happen," Donald K. Emmerson, an expert on Indonesia who teaches political science at Stanford University, said on Sunday.
But political forces and personal agendas here are complex and contradictory. Mutual enemies are more plentiful than mutual friends. The fate of Mr. Wahid has not yet been sealed. There are scenarios and sub-scenarios still to be played out. The powerful vice president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose most eloquent statements consist of her silences, declined to criticize the pending censure motion. And she was suddenly too sick on Friday -- "She really is sick," a spokesman said -- to join Mr. Wahid when he pleaded on national television for understanding.
Mr. Wahid cannot have been a happy man in delivering his speech, which, because he is nearly blind, was read for him by his spokesman, Wimar Witoelar. Though Mr. Wahid has publicly disparaged both the Parliament and Mrs. Megawati in the past, he was elaborately respectful to them this time, adding, "If I am thought to have made mistakes or failed in any way, I ask to be understood and forgiven."
Then he added: "The condition of our nation is of enormous concern. But even if we were to change the president 100 times a year, nothing would be able to restore our inundated economy in short order."
A different president might be a better manager, more focused and less abrasive than Mr. Wahid, and might have more success in calming the political battles that have sapped his energy. But the continuing slide in the economy is perhaps more threatening to his survival than those battles. In 1998, after years of slowly building opposition, it was an economic crash that finally put an end to the 32-year rule of President Suharto. The currency, the rupiah, is falling steeply again, approaching the depths that touched off the economic panic of Mr. Suharto's final months.
Indonesia's feeble economic growth is slowing again. Inflation is rising. And in what looked like a vote of no confidence, the International Monetary Fund this month declined to approve disbursement of $400 million in scheduled assistance. What underlies all of those problems, economists say, is the uncertainty caused by Indonesia's continuing political instability.
And whether Mr. Wahid stays or goes, stability may take a long time to come. His successor would be Mrs. Megawati, Indonesia's most popular politician. But it is not certain that she wants to inherit Mr. Wahid's problems or to step into the political line of fire at this time. One possible scenario is that Mr. Wahid would be forced into some form of power sharing with her, a compromise that holds out as much promise of failure as success.
Whoever is president, this is still the post-Suharto period, a chaotic time of power struggles at all levels -- from the presidency down to feuding island sultanates. No one seems to be in charge, and no one knows the shape of a future Indonesia. "After becoming president," Mr. Wahid said in his speech, "it became apparent that before me there was nothing but jagged debris, the ruined wreck of the former administration -- an enormous foreign debt, an economy in disorder, social injustices, conflagrations and accusations springing up everywhere."
And there was political infighting. After decades of repression, new political parties, religious factions, military blocs and ambitious politicians all began to grab for a share of power. The impeachment process began in February with the passage of a first censure motion, based on two corruption charges that almost everyone agrees are beside the point. "The pretense that it is about corruption has largely eroded," said Greg Barton, an Australian expert on Indonesia. "The real issue is just a power grab."
Reacting with what many Indonesians saw as arrogance, evasiveness and a lack of commitment to the country's problems, Mr. Wahid failed to avert Monday's session, the second step in the process. And as he fought for his political life, he seemed to condone the formation of armed "suicide squads" of his supporters, who have poured into Jakarta from the countryside in recent days in what looks like a tactic of intimidation.
"This is not the leader we were looking for," said Jusuf Wanandi, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. "He was supposed to be the great democrat, but when his survival is at stake, he has sold his principles down the drain."
Business Times - May 1, 2001
Shoeb Kagda, Jakarta -- Indonesia's Parliament yesterday issued a second censure against embattled President Abdurrahman Wahid, raising the political temperature to a new high, but the besieged leader's political career may not be over just yet.
Despite the second censure, which could pave the way for the president's impeachment by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), high-ranking members of the Indonesian Democratic Party- Struggle (PDIP) told The Business Times that closed-door negotiations to hammer out a political compromise were continuing.
The PDIP, led by Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, is trying to forge a political deal that would keep Mr Abdurrahman in office but with significantly reduced authority and influence. But any such deal would depend on the willingness of Mr Abdurrahman to effectively hand over the reins of government to his popular deputy, a move he has so far rejected.
According to the PDIP sources, the party has approached both the National Awakening Party (PKB), Mr Abdurrahman's political vehicle, and the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Muslim organisation in Indonesia, which he headed before being elected president, to help negotiate the compromise.
Yesterday, the PDIP, which is the largest party in the House of Representatives (DPR), joined seven other factions, including Golkar and the National Development Party (PPP), the second and third largest parties respectively, in rebuking the president for not fully accounting for his actions involving two financial scandals that led to the first memorandum in February. "PDIP has concluded that the president has really not paid full attention to the first censure, so PDIP proposes to Parliament to issue a second censure," noted legislator Dwi Ria Latifa, who read out the party's stance.
Ms Latifa, however, denied the rebuke was an attempt to bring Mr Abdurrahman's stormy 17-month rule to an early end, although many political analysts have said it would take the Muslim leader further down the road towards possible impeachment. "If PDIP's proposal is accepted by Parliament, and Parliament decides to issue a second censure against President Abdurrahman Wahid, it should be viewed as far from efforts to topple the president, but [as an effort] to warn him," she told the House.
Under Indonesia's Constitution, only the MPR, the nation's highest legislative body, can remove the president through a special session. If Mr Abdurrahman, or Gus Dur as he is popularly called, is forced out or steps down voluntarily, the vice- president will automatically replace him.
Following the second censure, Gus Dur now has 30 days to respond. If the DPR is still dissatisfied with the president's reply, it can instruct the MPR to convene a special session to begin the impeachment process.
The ongoing political battle between Gus Dur and his political opponents in Parliament will, however, cast a long shadow over the country's fragile economic recovery and will further hurt its already weakened currency. The rupiah, the world's worst performing currency this year, has already lost more than 15 per cent of its value against the US dollar since the beginning of the year, while the economy is showing signs of a slowdown after posting a healthy 4.7 per cent GDP growth last year. "I do not see a clear path from here on," said Andre Cita from Kim Eng Securities Indonesia. "We are looking at a few months of uncertainty, and that will weigh on financial markets."
And although feared clashes between the president's supporters and his critics on the streets of Jakarta did not materialise yesterday, concern remains over security in the nation's capital. Thousands of pro-Gus Dur supporters have descended on Jakarta from his East Java stronghold and yesterday about 3,000 marched to the Parliament building in driving rain before turning back to avoid confrontation with security forces.
"It seems the security forces are well prepared to deal with the situation, but they may not be able to maintain the heightened sense of alertness for too long," noted one foreign businessman. "Our worry is how long this process will drag on."
Many offices and banks were either closed yesterday or had let their staff off early because of fears of unrest. Although Gus Dur has called for peace, some of his more extreme loyalists have formed paramilitary squads and said they were ready to die for him.
| Regional/communal conflicts |
Straits Times - May 5, 2001
Jakarta -- Police have arrested both a leader of the ethnic Dayaks who killed more than 500 settlers on Borneo island this year, and the commander of a Muslim militia fighting Christians in the Maluku islands, officials said yesterday.
Jafar Umar Thalib, commander of the Laskar Jihad, or Holy War Troops, was detained yesterday over allegations that he incited violence in the eastern Maluku islands, a spokesman for the group said.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in the province since fighting between Muslims and Christians first erupted there in 1999. The conflict intensified after the 3,000-strong paramilitary group arrived in the region last year.
Jafar and other Laskar Jihad leaders have vowed to rid the islands of Christians. Local officials blame the fighters for some of the bloodiest incidents in the war.
Meanwhile, police on Borneo island arrested Mohammad Usop, a university professor, on charges of inciting ethnic violence in which more than 500 immigrants from the island of Madura were killed, a spokesman said.
Mohammad Usop, 64, the respected head of the Dayak Community Research Association in Palangkaraya, was arrested and flown to Jakarta on Thursday as "a suspect in last February's massive violence" in central Kalimantan.
He is being held on charges of inciting the bloodshed, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of six years in jail. Mohammad is also the former rector of Palangkaraya University in the central Kalimantan provincial capital of Palangkaraya on Borneo island.
One of his staff, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, called the arrest "ethnically biased, and simply because of his outspokenness".
Agence France-Presse - May 3, 2001
Jakarta -- The Catholic church in Indonesia on Thursday disassociated itself from a separatist group in the violence-torn Maluku islands.
"The Catholic Church, in this case represented by the Diocese of Amboina [Ambon], disapproves of any separatist movement or action in the Moluccas," a press release from the diocese received here said. "The Moluccan Protestant Church [GPM] has the same position," the release added, using the alternative spelling for the chain, also known as the Spice Islands.
The statement came in the wake of the arrest on Monday in Ambon of Alex Manuputty, the executive chairman of the Front for the Sovereignty of Maluku (FKM). Manuputty was arrested after activists of the movement briefly raised the FKM flag in Ambon on the anniversary of the movement on April 25, the anniversary of a 1950 proclamation of the South Maluku Republic. The flag, raised between the Indonesian flag and that of the United Nations, flew only briefly before it was hauled down by police.
The press release, from the crisis center of the Ambon diocese, also said the Dutch embassy in Jakarta had asked the center to air on its website a statement that The Hague did not support the movement.
"The ambassador asked us to inform the readers ... [that] the government of the Netherlands endorses uncurtailedly the territorial integrity of the Republic of Indonesia, and does in no way support or approve of any actions of separatism," it said. The statement was signed by C.J.Bohm, the secretary of the Ambon diocese crisis center.
The South Maluku Republic movement was banned by the country's first president Sukarno and its followers were allowed to either remain in Indonesia or leave the country for the Netherlands, Indonesia's former colonial power.
The movement has reappeared in Ambon following the drawn-out religious conflict there and in other islands in the Malukus which have seen intense fighting between Muslims and Christians for more than two years.
Fighting between Christians and Muslims first erupted in Ambon in January 1999 and spread rapidly to other islands in the Malukus. More than 4,000 people have been killed in the violence and up to 500,000 of the three million inhabitants have fled their homes for internal refugee camps or to other islands.
Some extremist Muslim radio stations in the islands which have sprung up since the conflict began, have painted the Christians there as separatists, their Internet websites say.
Jakarta Post - May 2, 2001
Jakarta -- Police shot four people and detained another seven following a riot that broke out in Manokwari, Irian Jaya, Monday afternoon.
During the riot a crowd set fire on the Kijang van belonging to Manokwari's regional secretary, Stevanus Rumfabe, who was driving past Fanindi area. Another Kijang van belonging to the local head of the social political affairs office was also destroyed by the crowd, Antara reported Tuesday.
The incident followed rumors that the police were planning to lower the Bintang Kejora (Morning Star) separatist flag hoisted at the house of the chief of the Manokwari tribal community, Barnabas Mandacan, located in Fanindi Dalam.
The rumors sparked anger among Free Papua Movement supporters, who blocked the road to Fanindi Dalam. The angry crowd also damaged a telephone kiosk and the house of a junior high school teacher.
The police were forced to shoot the rioters to prevent them from causing further damages. The police also detained seven men believed to be responsible for the riot.
The incident caused tension in Manokwari and all shops were closed while traffic was grounded to a standstill.
| News & issues |
Jakarta Post - May 5, 2001
[Despite a legacy of organized crime, Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso has said that freeing Jakarta of thugs is "easy." Researcher Tim Lindsey, Associate Professor and Director of the Asian Law Centre at The University of Melbourne, examines whether the policy is effective.]
Melbourne -- Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso has declared war on crime. "The concept is easy. Let's fight hoodlums together. That's it," he declared recently (The Jakarta Post, April 10).
Unfortunately it's not as simple as that. Setting criminals to get rid of other criminals will not solve Jakarta's spiraling problems of theft, extortion and street violence. Some background is necessary to explain why.
Sutiyoso's target are the preman. From the Dutch for freeman, the term refers to the gangsters found throughout Indonesia who run protection rackets in bus terminals, shopping malls, markets, parking lots, nightclubs, brothels and similar places.
Under the New Order, preman were closely tied in with local government authorities -- especially police and local government -- through a practice known as deking or beking. Beking allowed money extorted from the public to find its way up through President Soeharto's corrupt "franchise system".
The preman thus enriched members of the elite who in turn allowed local officials to protect the standover rackets; everyone received a cut of the money extorted from business operators.
Beking allowed criminal activities to become highly organized. Under Soeharto, almost every shop, bar and nightclub in Jakarta paid money for "protection". Most public spaces and markets were controlled by an "authorized" gang, often defined by its ethnicity. Tanah Abang, for example, was controlled by Madurese, led by Pak Mayor, while Blok M is Surabayan territory.
Since Soeharto, the disintegration of New Order beking structures has led preman to struggle among themselves for territory. Minangkabau gangs are currently fighting to take the Tanah Abang market from the Madurese, who are starting to look elsewhere for pickings.
The situation is worsened by the economic crisis. It has pushed previously law-abiding citizens into becoming preman, as they see no other way of earning a living. This increases turf wars as newcomers fight for a niche. The impression among Jakarta residents is of crime out of control and so rising vigilantism adds to the chaos.
For his war against hoodlums Governor Sutiyoso will deploy some 1,900 civilian police assistants or Banpol, in addition to 800 police officers. Jakarta police chief Insp. Gen. Mulyono Sulaeman says that stern action will be taken and officers will be licensed to shoot any preman who resist arrest "in self-defense".
The problem with this strategy is that Sutiyoso is setting thieves to catch thieves. There is widespread concern that the Banpol are themselves little better than preman.
For example, Azas Tigor Nainggolan, coordinator of Jakarta Street Traders Association, has complained in the past that Banpol frequently use violence against street traders. Likewise, the South Jakarta Public Order Office has been accused of hiring Madurese preman, dressing them as public order recruits (PotMas) members and using them to force street traders out of locations near the Blok M bus terminal.
The South Jakarta mayor claims -- improbably -- that they are not preman but admits paying them Rp 15,000 per day.
Using preman as government recruits by setting up dubious organizations and providing uniforms was a well-established New Order tactic. Pemuda Pancasila and other "youth groups" were -- and still are -- used by the members of the elite and government to attack and intimidate their opponents.
These groups blur the line between non-governmental organizations, gangs and militias and have the potential to influence politics at the highest level. The role of the militias in East Timor is an example of this, as are the President's threats to bring Ansor's civilian security guards (Banser) members to wreak havoc in Jakarta if his opponents continue to seek his impeachment.
When Ali Murtopo's "zoo" of preman -- used to do the then ruling Golkar's dirty work -- got out of control in the mid-1980s Soeharto's response was the notorious petrus killings (extralegal assassinations).
Is Sutiyoso's plan to hire Banpol thugs to push preman out of markets that different to the petrus operation in principle? Will the thugs who are pushed out be replaced by the thugs who pushed them out? Is this war against preman or will it simply replace one group of preman with another that has backing from the latest set of officials?
Even if Sutiyoso's intentions are good, it will take more than hiring of thugs to stop thugs operating in Jakarta. It is almost impossible to stop crime while state officials like police or local government are involved.
A systematic cleansing and restructuring of the whole state system is necessary before government initiatives to clean up the private sector can offer much hope for ordinary citizens. Sadly, that's not likely any time soon.
Jakarta Post - May 5, 2001
Jakarta -- Despite a massive crackdown against hoodlums by the city administration, thugs are still operating freely in a number of markets in the city, extorting money from vendors and public transportation drivers.
Hoodlums are still rampant in Jakarta markets such as Tanah Abang textile hub and Senen market in Central Jakarta, Kebayoran Lama market in South Jakarta, and even in Rawa Bening precious stones market in Jatinegara, East Jakarta.
Traders and sidewalk vendors in those markets complained that the city's campaign against hoodlums, costing the city administration Rp 1 billion (US$910,000) in the past month, had not reduced the illegal fees imposed on them by various parties, including street thugs and organized gangs.
Samin, 35, a sidewalk toy seller at Tanah Abang, for instance, revealed on Friday that he still had to pay around Rp 5,000 a day to a number of thugs operating in the market.
Once, he said, he was badly beaten by four thugs after he gave them less money than what they demanded. "No other street traders dared to help me as they did not want to create problems with the thugs here," he said.
A similar story was shared by Benyamin, 49, a fruit juice vendor at Senen market. He said he and other vendors in the market had to allocate no less than Rp 5,000 a day each for several fees, including those paid to thugs. He said he earned about Rp 20,000 a day, but he could only take home Rp 15,000 a day.
He said he would rather pay the illegal fees than risk a surprise attack from hoodlums. "Once I refused to give them money as I had only two customers up until noon. But they did not understand. They went into a rage and broke all the glasses and overturned my pushcart," he said, adding that he had to spend Rp 200,000 to buy new glasses and repair the pushcart. He added that thugs were always quick to hide or escape if the police or other law enforcers conducted a raid at the market.
Dadang, 37, a fruit vendor at Kebayoran Lama market said that besides thugs, he had to pay illegal fees to a number of parties, including private market security personnel and local youth organizations. "I have to spend at least Rp 5,000 out of my daily income that ranges from Rp 15,000 up to Rp 25,000 only to feed hoodlums, market officers and security personnel," Dadang said.
About 20 meters away from Dadang, noodle vendor Lukman, 47, confirmed that he had to pay uang jago (security money) every day to a group of hoodlums. Several vendors at Rawa Bening precious stones market in Jatinegara also complained about the presence of hoodlums who continuously extorted money from them.
Soft drink seller Arjani, 45, said it was common for sidewalk vendors in Rawa Bening market to spare Rp 5,000 per day for several illegal fees, including those paid to thugs.
Safri, 25, a compact disc seller at Rawa Bening market supported Arjani's statement and said thugs charged him at least Rp 2,000 per day. "Thugs here are organized well by a group under the protection of certain police and TNI [Indonesian Military] officers. That's why no vendors here dare to refuse to pay Rp 1,000 or 2,000 per day to them," he said.
Straits Times - May 5, 2001
Jakarta -- An anti-communist group in Indonesia has said it will stage vigilante-style raids on book stores in the capital on May 20 to rid them of leftist publications, local media reports said yesterday.
"All of our people, around 36,000 in Greater Jakarta, will move on that day to show our commitment to fight against communism," said Mr H.M. Suaib, the chairman of the Islam Youth Movement (GPI).
The threat followed the disclosure on Thursday by the country's largest book store chain, Gramedia, that it was withdrawing some 20 titles deemed leftist because of threats. The titles include books by the country's most famous author, Nobel Prize nominee Pramoedya Anata Toer.
"This is to anticipate undesired incidents following threats by a Muslim group to conduct sweepings of bookshops for communist- related books," the book store's national sales supervisor, Mr Samuel, said.
"Conditions right now are extremely sensitive. We're just a normal bookstore selling books, but the consequences could be extreme if something happens so we're taking preventative measures." Mr Suaib said the raids would go ahead even if the "leftist" books had been removed from the shelves, and that the group would concentrate on forcing a halt to the production of the titles.
At its most recent rally last month the Islam Youth Movement burned books on Marxism and several groups blamed communists and leftists for the current political instability in the country.
Former Indonesian dictator Suharto introduced a blanket ban on the teaching and publishing of the works of all communist philosophies after an abortive coup attempt blamed on the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) in 1965.
Jakarta Post - May 3, 2001
Jakarta -- In the reform era where journalists have more freedom to write, they apparently face violence and intimidation, mostly from the public, government officials and the police.
The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) reported on Wednesday that during the past year, there were 106 cases of oppression against journalists and the media, with almost half of them, 47 cases, perpetrated by the public.
"The most prominent case occurred on May 6 [last year] or three days after the World Free Press Day. That was when Jawa Pos was occupied by a large number of people," AJI secretary-general Didik Supriyanto told a discussion here marking World Free Press Day.
Didik referred to an incident when Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) civilian guards in Surabaya rallied and occupied the Surabaya-based daily's office because it had reported allegedly corrupt practices by executives of the country's largest Muslim organization. The occupation caused the daily to cancel its Sunday edition, resulting in a total loss of Rp 1 billion.
Didik also pointed to the case in Pekanbaru, Riau, when a group of people ran amok at the Pekanbaru Pos' office. A similar incident also occurred in Padang, West Sumatra when the office of Bijak tabloid was attacked and damaged by a group of college students and their professors.
Didik said that there is nothing wrong in staging a rally to express one's objections to a media report. "But the problem is, it is followed by terror and violence," he said.
Mass violence, Didik said, is often worsened by security bodies like the police. AJI recorded that police and government officials came second in cases of violence against journalists with 18. The violence ranged from hitting and death threats toward the journalists to threatening to shut down the paper.
The latest incident occurred in March when North Maluku Governor Abdul Muhyi Effendie threatened to shut down three local media: Ternate Pos, Fokus and Mimbar Kieraha for printing "disturbing" news.
Abdul also threatened to ban private TV stations RCTI and TPI from reporting in the area. "Therefore, in commemorating World Press Day, we urge everyone to stop any form of oppression and violence against journalists and the media," Didik said.
Didik admitted that journalists are not always innocent and many have ulterior motives in their reporting, but violence is not the solution. "People can do three things: clarify the news, go to the National Press Council or file a lawsuit in court," he said.
AJI also called on media to be more accurate and honest when reporting. Ezki Suyanto from AJI's campaign division said that many media are still using "talking journalism" or "spit journalism".
"The report is nothing other than people's comments, mostly government officials' or bureaucrats'. Journalists have become the spokesperson of the [government] spokesperson," she asserted.
Women
In a separate discussion on Wednesday, AJI also pointed to the low percentage of women journalists in Indonesia who only make up 12.8 percent of the total in this country.
A survey conducted by the Yogyakarta-based Publishing Education Research Institution in 1997 also shows that the higher the positions are within a media organization, the fewer the women who hold them.
"That's because there is still sexist stereotyping in our culture about the job," said the editor of Media Indonesia Tatik Hafidz. There are also cynical comments around, saying that women journalists have made it because they use their femininity.
Zuherna Bahari from Aceh-based Serambi Indonesia said that women journalists are being used by their media bosses to get information from sources. "But when we make a good report, they say that we've manipulated people with our femininity. Women journalists are also an object of intimidation in conflict areas," she said.
Zuherna said that the police often intimidated her to give information about the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) base camps. She added that GAM had tried to manipulate her too.
Indonesian Observer - May 3, 2001
Jakarta -- The Gramedia bookstore here has withdrawn from its shelves all books related to communism, socialism, Marxism and Leninism including the best-seller, Palu Arit (Hammer and Sickle).
Sales supervisor of Lampungs Gramedia, Rachni Wibowo, disclosed yesterday in Bandar Lampung that at least 10 titles of such books have been removed from the store and disposed of.
Rachni, as reported by Antara, claims the withdrawal of the leftist literature was carried out on Gramedias own initiative, and certainly not because of a prohibition or intimidation, or even a suggestion from any right wing government officials.
What is more, the content of these books contradicts the culture of the Indonesian people. The withdrawal was also directed at helping promote national stability, Rachni stated, without giving details on just how in fact, the literature can be contradictory to the culture, nor did he mention how ignorance would be able to promote national stability.
The sales supervisor pointed out that, in the absence of any prohibition from government officials, the popular and quick- selling books might some day be put back on the shelves.
However, if the government decides to issue an official ban, the sales of the books would automatically be stopped permanently, Rachni added.
The ban on distribution and sales of all kinds of books containing left wing teaching or history was put into effect shortly after the right wing CIA-inspired, Soeharto military coup in September 1965.
Since then the government has enforced rigid laws against anyone distributing, selling, or reading socialist literature. Including such books written by the legendary Indonesian author, Pramoedia Ananta Toer, not because his books contained communist teaching, but merely because, some people believed the rumors that he might have been a communist sympathizer.
Indonesians, and residents of Indonesia can still access books and literature if the internet is available. It can also be a good source of literature of all types for those with access to a computer and the internet. Internationally known, www.amazon.com offers all types of books delivered anywhere in the world, sometimes cheaper than bookstores can sell them for. Other books of a leftist nature can be downloaded in whole for free from several internet sites.
Jakarta Post - May 2, 2001
Jakarta -- A list of the declared wealth of 77 officials and legislators issued by the State Officials' Wealth Audit Commission (KPKPN) here on Tuesday revealed House of Representatives speaker Akbar Tandjung to be 33 times richer than People's Consultative Assembly speaker Amien Rais. Amien claims to only possess total assets worth Rp 1 billion (US$90,000).
KPKPN deputy chairman Abdullah Hehamahua revealed that Akbar had registered a personal estate worth Rp 33.4 billion ($3.03 million).
Included in Akbar's list of possessions were eight plots of land and houses, four automobiles and three motorcycles. Akbar also registered valuables in the form of jewelry worth Rp 355.7 million. The House speaker also held stocks said to be worth Rp 12 billion and a credit transfer account amounting to Rp 688.6 million.
Meanwhile Amien registered two plots of land and houses, three cars and three motorcycles. Amien also cataloged family jewelry worth Rp 8.4 million and a bank account totaling Rp 378.4 million.
This is the third list made public by the commission, making a total of 181 government officials whose wealth and assets have been announced. All state officials and legislators are now required to have their personal wealth audited.
Included in the latest list were House deputy speakers Tosari Wijaya with an accumulated wealth of Rp 3.7 billion and Soetardjo Soerjoguritno with Rp 2.03 billion.
The wealthiest among the officials on Tuesday's list was legislator R.H.M. Hussein Naro from the United Party, who topped the list with total assets of Rp 97.431 billion plus US$468,000 in cash. Almost all of the assets, or some Rp 96 billion in the form of houses and land, were said to be inherited from Hussein's father former deputy speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly/House of Representatives and politician, the late Jailani Naro.
The first publication was announced on April 18 which revealed the wealth of 47 government officials, including that of President Abdurrahman Wahid and Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri.
Megawati and her husband, legislator Taufik Kiemas, topped the list with total assets of Rp 59.81 billion while Abdurrahman only ranked number eight with total assets of some Rp 3.5 billion. Almost half of the President's assets were made up of donations received during the first year of his presidency.
The second list was announced last Tuesday which detailing the wealth of 57 bureaucrats and legislators. Rekso Ageng Herman, a legislator from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) topped the roster with total assets worth Rp 94.4 billion.
But after the third list was made public on Tuesday, Hussein Naro appears to be the wealthiest official so far. According to Hehamahua, the announcement will be followed by an investigation starting in June.
"We will verify whether the data is true or not," he told a media conference here. He said that they also welcomed public reports about the data's accuracy.
Hehamahua admitted that the commission had received reports that President Abdurrahman did not include his house in Jl. Irian, Central Jakarta on the list. "We also received a report that Megawati still has another 10 antiques which have not been included in the form. We're still investigating it," he said.
The commission have distributed 9,227 forms to 2,742 public servants at state-owned companies; 4,313 executive officials; 1,948 legislators and 224 judicial officials since February.
So far, only 528 people have returned the form. Hehamahua said that the commission has cautioned those who had not returned the forms, through telephone or letters. "I understand that this is a new thing for all of us, so we have given them more time," he said.
| Environment/health |
South China Morning Post - May 5, 2001
Vaudine England -- The survival of several animals key to global biodiversity -- the Sumatran tiger, the Asian elephant and the orang-utan -- have been put at risk by Indonesia's disappearing forests. Illegal logging and ignorance about the long-term costs are now destroying those habitats at greater speed than ever.
"The important point to remember for any conservation of the nice furry animals here is that what matters is their habitat. When they lose that, they lose their ability to feed and procreate and survive," an international forestry expert said yesterday.
In a report just published in the Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the authors highlight Indonesia's failure to achieve the kind of integrated conservation management regimes which are "crucially important for the continued survival of Asian megafauna such as the Sumatran rhinoceros, the Sumatran tiger and the Asian elephant".
In Indonesia's central island group of Sulawesi, the challenge to rare species of flora and fauna is intense, with far-reaching consequences for Earth's animal diversity. A tectonic clash about 40 million years ago has produced a mixing of plants and animals to create a biological transitional zone between Asia and Australasia called Wallacea.
This gives Sulawesi one of the highest levels of species endemism in the world. Studies by Robert Lee, head of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Sulawesi project, and Suparman Rais, head of Bogani Nani Wartabone National Park in Sulawesi, say the risks to wildlife are increasing by the day. The Bogani park is probably the last great stronghold for rare and threatened species of birds and mammals.
Sulawesi masked owls, hornbills, parrots, the babirusa "pig-deer" and macaque monkeys are among those facing possible extinction. Along with the ugly, grey and hairless babirusa, the grumpy goat-sized buffalo called the anoa, and two cuscus species of marsupials roam the park. Blue-helmeted maleo birds dig pits near hot springs or on beaches to lay their gigantic eggs.
"Unfortunately, many of these species are quickly disappearing from forests throughout Sulawesi," Dr Lee said. "Large mammals including babirusa, anoa and macaques are hunted for the meat market in eastern North Sulawesi." As in the forests of Sumatra and Kalimantan, Sulawesi's problems start with illegal logging, mining and hunting. Staff responsible for managing national parks are poorly trained and schemes are rarely implemented.
South China Morning Post - May 5, 2001
Vaudine England, Jakarta -- The pillaging of the nation's forests has increased dramatically since the fall of former president Suharto and within 10 years the remaining trees will be gone, a report published yesterday warns.
"If the current state of resource anarchy continues, the lowland forests of the Sunda Shelf, the richest forests on Earth, will be destroyed by 2005 on Sumatra and 2010 on Kalimantan," say four experts in the latest issue of the US Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Paul Jepson, James Jarvie, Kathy MacKinnon and Kathryn Monk all have extensive experience of Indonesia's resource management efforts over several decades. They made a special trip to the main areas at risk in December.
"Twenty years ago, Indonesia used the best principles of conservation biology to plan a national protected area system based on representativeness, irreplaceability, complementarity and connectivity," the experts said. "Today, Indonesia is a society in transition, torn apart by economic and political crises and the gap between scientific best practice and the reality of current forest mismanagement could hardly be wider." The fate of Indonesia's vanishing forests came to the world's attention in 1997 and 1998 when raging fires started by farmers on land cleared of trees sent a pall of smog over much of Southeast Asia. Soldiers were eventually called in to help extinguish the flames.
The causes of the destruction are to be found in the Suharto era's corruption and the former president's penchant for giving away forest concessions to key friends and allies. Local residents in forested areas were disenfranchised and prevented from carrying out traditional forest-tending practices.
Since then, the state's collapsing security and judicial systems have made abuses even more rampant. Political reforms such as new regional autonomy laws are, in many places, accelerating the losses because local authorities are unable or unwilling to resist the temptation of quick money. In some areas, such as the Gunung Leuser National Park in north Sumatra, the report notes, local communities have been forced by fear and lack of options to sign over their land titles to illegal logging gangs. This practice is heightened by the continuing confusion over what land rights they actually have.
"After Suharto's fall from power, the interim government of president Habibie [1998-99] passed two pieces of legislation that were vague about the extent of regional autonomy for resource planning and management," the authors said. "In December 2000, we visited protected areas and forest concessions in Sumatra and Kalimantan. We found a rapidly deteriorating situation compared to just six months previously."
At stake is not just global biodiversity and local environmental needs, but tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid. The World Bank-funded project in the million-hectare Kerinci-Seblat National Park in Sumatra has already been judged comprehensively "unsatisfactory" by Bank supervision teams, a designation which is a precursor to possible funding cuts. A national park should be a protected area, but such places in Indonesia are currently offering warm welcomes to illegal loggers.
World Bank country director Mark Baird says the key problem is the lack of law enforcement. Despite numerous pledges, the Indonesian Government has failed to successfully prosecute a single company or person for illegal logging and the setting of fires to clear land.
"What is still missing in the thinking of government agencies is an awareness of the human resources to hand," an international forestry expert said.
He cited the example of one community on the eastern island of Lombok which succeeded in intercepting both the illegal loggers and the contraband logs being taken from their area.
But when they applied to local officials for action and personal protection, it became clear that a member of the Ministry of Forestry was a major beneficiary, and no action was taken.
"There is still the tendency to write off local communities as threats rather than vital partners. And there's the total anarchy you see in these areas. Everyone will try to grab what they can, regardless," said the experts.
Jakarta Post - May 1, 2001
Manado, North Sulawesi -- Environmentalists said here over the weekend that the submarine tailing disposal (STD) used as a waste disposal system by gold mining firm PT Newmont Raya Minahasa (NRM) was unsafe for the environment as it had affected the sea habitat and human beings.
Coordinator of the Network for Mining Advocacy (Jatam) Chalid Muhammad said reports disclosed that PT NRM had polluted the environment nearby its operation site with hazardous chemical substances, including mercury and arsenic. He alleged the substances found were part of the waste disposed by the company at Buyat Bay.
The data on alleged pollution was supported by the results of blood tests on local residents in Buyat village near the mining site. The examination was carried out by Jatam and the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi) in 1999. "The blood of Buyat villagers in Belang district of Minahasa regency have been contaminated with dangerous levels of mercury and arsenic. They have been consuming fish from water which has been polluted by hazardous chemicals," Chalid told a conference on the submarine tailing disposal.
His analysis was supported by an expert on toxicology of the school of fisheries at the state-run Sam Ratulangi University, Markus Lasut, who said that inorganic mercury and arsenic contained in the STD were disentangled by sea microorganism to become organic substances. The organic substances were then consumed by fish and other sea organisms. "If human beings consume the contaminated fish, their blood will be contaminated," he said.
Buyat villagers reportedly had suffered from skin irritation, acute headaches, sore throats and queasiness. "Environmentalists urged that the gold mining firm stop using STD. If the pollution is not stopped, a Minamata tragedy [in Japan] can occur in Minahasa."
An official at the mining company Krisna Isma Putra, however, asserted that STD used by Newmont was safe for the environment, saying that the company had never used mercury nor arsenic in its mining activities. He said the public should be made aware that in the vicinity of the company mining sites there were a number of illegal mining operations that extracted gold using pure mercury. "This fact [illegal mining] has never been examined by those environmental activists," he said.
Meanwhile, Roger Moody from Nostromo Research rejected the argument that the STD installed by PT Newmont was safe. "Widespread pollution is unavoidable if an earthquake occurs," Moody said.
The conference on the submarine tailing disposal was jointly held by Jatam, Walhi, Project Underground, Mineral Policy Institute, and Jaring Pela from April 23 until April 30. The seminar was participated in by a number of foreign non-governmental organizations, including those from Papua New Guinea, Britain, the Philippines, Australia, New Caledonia and Fiji.
| Arms/armed forces |
Reuters - May 4, 2001
Tomi Soetjipto, Jakarta -- As Indonesia's politics descends deeper into gloom, Indonesia's tarnished military is repolishing its image and trying to position itself as the nation's saviour.
The armed forces has spent the last few years in the public dog- house for its decades of support to the corrupt Suharto regime and then failure to control spiralling violence that ravaged Indonesia after he fell from power in 1998.
It has been an unpleasant reversal for an institution which saw itself as a people's army that grew out of the struggle to end Dutch rule in the 1940s but finally became the oppressor.
The military -- which is given 38 seats in parliament -- this week opted to abstain from a second censure by legislators against President Abdurrahman Wahid which could lead to his impeachment. But analysts said the neutrality is something of a veneer and behind the scenes, many of the military's top brass are cosying up to popular Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
And since parliament was so certain to issue the rebuke against Wahid, it did not make any practical difference which way the military voted, said one source close to the military. In fact, its decision to abstain on the vote won the military praise from the government and legislators.
The queenmaker
If Megawati -- her party holds the most seats in the parliament -- has the key to Wahid's survival then the military remains the major factor that can bring her to the presidency, which now appears to be up for grabs. "The military is now in an advantageous position, everybody needs them," Kusnanto Anggoro, an analyst from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters.
The military clearly prefers the nationalism of Megawati, a trait derived from her father, founding President Sukarno. Her insistence on preserving national unity and opposition to federalism go hand in hand with military ideology. Like the military, Megawati does not seem to mind tough policies to keep the multi-ethnic country intact.
Wahid, on the other hand, is less predictable and the military is uneasy with what it sees as his interference in their internal affairs. Most grating on that score was last year's appointment of pro-Wahid general, Lieutenant-General Agus Wirahadikusumah, to a powerful army post which so rankled his fellow officers that he was out in less than three months. "But it had already left a wound in the military," Kusnanto said.
The whipping boy
But analysts said the military knows that if it is to repair its damaged image it must be seen as aloof from the political fray and give the appearance of neutrality.
For three decades, the army-dominated forces threw their political and military might behind former autocrat Suharto, whose tenure was marked by persistent human rights abuses.
In return for its support, Suharto gave the military wide-ranging access to business and placed senior officers in powerful civilian posts. After Suharto's fall three years ago, the military, confused and clearly hurt by the mounting public criticism against it, began to retreat to the barracks to lick its wounds.
But this February, it peeped out of the political closet and joined the consensus decision in parliament to issue the first censure against Wahid over two financial scandals, which triggered mass protests by his supporters.
It was in part fear of more violence that drove the military -- which has struggled to stem repeated bloodshed around the archipelago -- to abstain the second time. "The military realises ... it needs to be neutral [politically] if it wants to deal with any mass movement," military analyst M.T Arifin told Reuters
Leave it to the MPR
With the second censure, Wahid now has only 30 days to improve his leadership before parliament can call for a special session by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), which has the power to sack the president.
In its response to Wahid's reply over the censure, the military said if he and parliament still fail to find common ground, the problem "should be solved through the MPR".
That, according to some analysts, is clear enough warning to Wahid that the military would not block efforts to hold the special session which could impeach him.
"If the majority of the parliamentary parties want a special session, we will still remain neutral but at the end the result would be up to them [political parties]," Lieutenant-General Hari Sabarno, a legislator from the military faction told Reuters.
| Economy & investment |
Green Left Weekly - May 2, 2001
Pip Hinman -- The International Monetary Fund is tightening the screws on President Abdurrahman Wahid to deliver on austerity measures in return for its US$5 billion bailout package.
Following a review of Indonesia's neo-liberal economic reforms, the IMF announced it would wait until a new Letter of Intent is agreed between it and the Wahid government before it reconsiders the release of a US$400 million tranche delayed since December.
Having talked of economic growth of 5% this year, the IMF and Jakarta now say it will be closer to 3%. Together with rising inflation, the declining rupiah (which has lost 20% of its value against the US dollar this year), and a projected budget deficit of between 4-6% of gross domestic product, Indonesia is still in the grip of a severe economic crisis.
The IMF is angry that the Wahid government hasn't already sold state enterprises including Telkom, the Pertamina oil company and Garuda Airlines. It has criticised Wahid for not selling off the government's 40% share in Bank Central Asia or its stakes in Bank Niaga and Bank Indonesia.
The fund has also been pushing for tax incentives for companies which restructure their debts and for quick approval of debt-for-asset swaps, which would allow public sector utilities to be snapped up on the cheap by their creditors.
The IMF is also frustrated at the government's refusal to amend the central bank law to its satisfaction. It wants laws which prevent the government from using the central bank to implement economic policy outside the fund's neo-liberal framework.
Last year, despite the deepening economic crisis, the Wahid government delivered on many of the IMF's demands, including cuts to state subsidies on electricity, fuel, fertiliser, education and generic medicines.
The IMF successfully pressured Jakarta to abandon earlier commitments to exempt key sectors of agriculture -- namely, sugar and rice -- from deregulation. The Wahid administration is now introducing "free trade" in rice and sugar and ending all subsidised credit for farmers, sending many more farmers into dire poverty.
But this hasn't been enough for the IMF. It is insisting that all remaining government subsidies on fuel -- petrol, diesel and cooking oil -- and other staples be eliminated.
It is furious that, at the last minute, Wahid backed away from an across-the-board 20% increase in fuel prices in April. With the threat of mass demonstrations hanging over it if the US$409 million fuel subsidy was cut, the government opted instead to raise the fuel price for industry by 50%.
But on April 24, finance minister Prijadi Praptosuhardjo announced the government would be pursuing austerity measures including expanding the tax base, cutting subsidies for oil and electricity, cutting back on "low priority" development projects and cutting costs associated with the implementation of new autonomy laws.
The economic crisis which hit Indonesia in 1997 has been exacerbated by the Wahid government's decision to go along with most of the IMF's austerity plans.
Between 1995 and 2000 the average cost of basic goods increased by a whopping 224%. According to statistics gathered by Indonesian Labour Consultants (ILC), in 1997 income per capita was US$1063; by 2001 it had almost halved (US$596).
The numbers of people now officially categorised as "poor" (which the UN defines as less than $2 a day) amount to some 19 million -- the total population of Australia. In all likelihood, the real picture is much worse: in 1998, the ILC estimated there were 31.9 million rural poor.
According to investment bank Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Indonesia's total debt is US$262 billion or 17% of GDP. Some 42% of all foreign earnings are allocated to debt repayment.
In February, the bank warned that Indonesia was a prime candidate for a permanent debt trap, whereby a rising proportion of its economic output goes to servicing domestic and foreign debt.
While the IMF is hell-bent on measures which will impoverish millions of Indonesian workers and peasants, it has pointedly ignored public demands to force the extended Suharto family to hand back its ill-gotten wealth -- which some estimate at US$100 billion.