Aceh

Media curbs in Aceh put journalists at 'grave risk': CPJ

Agence France Presse - May 23, 2003

The Indonesian military's attempts to stop reporters quoting rebel statements in Aceh province put journalists covering the war there "at grave risk", a New York-based journalists' organisation said Saturday.

"The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed by the efforts of Indonesian military authorities in Aceh to control press coverage of the conflict there," CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in a letter Saturday to President Megawati Sukarnoputri. "The policies ... put journalists covering the conflict at grave risk," she said.

The CPJ urged Megawati "to direct military authorities in Aceh to respect press freedom and immediately cease all efforts to curb the media." Martial law administrator in Aceh Major General Endang Suwarya announced the planned curbs on Tuesday, a day after the military launched a major military assault to try to wipe out rebels.

"We will bring a halt to the news from the spokesmen of GAM [Free Aceh Movement] because they are turning the facts upside down," he said. He said journalists were free to correct the actions of security personnel "but there should be no reports from GAM and reports that praise GAM." Suwarya said rules on press coverage would soon be issued and journalists would have to be accredited with the military command in Aceh. The military has "embedded" some local reporters with combat units.

The armed forces spokesman in Jakarta, Syafrie Syamsuddin, said Friday the military would take legal action against media which carried reports about military excesses which proved to be false.

The Indonesian Alliance of Independent Journalists has protested the curbs, saying reporters need to cover both sides of the story. GAM officials and spokesmen have previously been freely quoted by the local press.

CPJ said military officials have issued warnings to the Aceh- based daily Serambi Indonesia and a private broadcaster for carrying reports considered to favor GAM.

A local radio station, Nikoya FM, received a call from someone claiming to be a GAM commander, threatening that the rebels would kill a reporter if the station did not start carrying more balanced news, the CPJ said.

'Asia instability' if Aceh rebels win

BBC News - May 25, 2003

Phil Mercer, Sydney -- Australia's foreign minister has warned that a victory for separatist rebels in the Indonesian province of Aceh could result in a disastrous security situation in South-East Asia. Alexander Downer says the Australian Government does not support the Free Aceh Movement in its bid for independence.

The Indonesian authorities in Jakarta have launched a military offensive in the secessionist province last week after peace talks were abandoned.

Australia believes a victory by rebels in Aceh could trigger the break-up of Indonesia -- the world's fourth most populous nation. Mr Downer insisted the result would be an area of fundamental instability to Australia's north. He said there were enough problems in the Asia-Pacific region without compounding them by the dissolution of Indonesia.

East Timor

Mr Downer has called on the rebels in Aceh to lay down their arms and resume negotiations. He said he was not concerned by the prospect of Aceh becoming an independent Islamic fundamentalist state, but by a break-up of Indonesia.

Australia keeps a nervous eye on its northern neighbours. There is concern about an "arc of instability", which stretches from East Timor, through Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands, where law and order have crumbled in the aftermath of an ethnic war. Analysts warn that parts of the Asia-Pacific region are plagued by tribal violence, economic decline and political corruption and could become a haven for terrorists and drug traffickers.

The military campaign is Indonesia's largest operation since the invasion of East Timor in 1975. Almost 25 years later, the province seceded from Indonesian control. Australian troops played a key part in restoring order after East Timor's vote for independence ignited a wave of violence by pro-Jakarta forces.

Mr Downer has indicated his government's position on Aceh is far removed from that of East Timor. Mr Downer said there was no reason for Australia to intervene in the conflict.

The country's ambassador to Indonesia, David Ritchie, has been told by officials in Jakarta that the authorities there were still hopeful of negotiating an end to the fighting with the Free Aceh Movement.

Why is Aceh different from Kosovo?

Melbourne Age - May 24, 2003

Scott Burchill -- Delivering the 25th annual Menzies lecture last October, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer declared that "bit by bit, leaders of governments that suppress human rights are being made to feel uncomfortable, however much they bluster and hide behind sovereignty arguments". He praised NATO's 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, suggesting "it was not until NATO stepped in to fill the void that a successful humanitarian intervention was undertaken that stemmed the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo".

Given these comments, how should we view Downer's claim this week that renewed assaults by the Indonesian military (TNI) against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) cannot be stopped by outside intervention because Aceh "is part of Indonesia, and the Indonesians are going to have to sort out these problems themselves"? Why should the world respect state sovereignty in South-East Asia but not in the Balkans?

History rarely presents ideal comparisons, but the contrasting fortunes of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Free Aceh Movement are striking. Facing persecution and ethnic cleansing from troops loyal to Belgrade, a Muslim separatist movement in southern Yugoslavia (with al-Qaeda links) persuaded the world's most powerful military alliance (NATO) to bomb Serbia until it surrendered its political authority in Kosovo. NATO forces and a UN occupation government were then installed to work with the KLA in seeking to keep the peace between Serbs and Albanians in the province.

In northern Sumatra, a Muslim separatist movement (without al- Qaeda links), which has already seen more than 10,000 of its nationals killed since 1976 in a struggle with forces loyal to Jakarta, now faces an escalating military assault and the prospect of 200,000 people being cleansed from the province. Appeals to the West and the UN for assistance and protection are met with either indifference or outright hostility.

"The violence perpetrated by the separatist movement is absolutely unacceptable," declared Downer, who couldn't muster the same admonition for the more violent TNI. Defence Minister Robert Hill, whose military forces breached Iraq's territorial integrity in recent weeks, said: "Indonesia's got the perfect right to maintain its internal integrity and we regret those who are in armed revolt." Hill is determined to re-establish closer ties between the Australian Defence Force and Kopassus, Jakarta's special forces with a history of state terrorism and links to Islamic extremist groups such as Laskar Jihad.

How can Canberra's diametrically opposite responses to the KLA and the GAM be explained? Like his predecessors, Downer seems to have a greater attachment to Indonesia's territorial integrity than many Indonesian citizens, especially those who live in provinces such as Aceh and West Papua. He seems convinced that the detachment of the republic's eastern and western-most provinces from Jakarta's rule will trigger centrifugal forces across the archipelago. There is no reason to believe this is likely. He also seems convinced that secession will inevitably lead to horrendous violence.

This is possible. However, those who warn of bloody consequences if Indonesia fragments must answer a prior question: how many Indonesian lives are worth the preservation of its existing political boundaries? There are few reasons to believe Indonesia's territorial boundaries are more immutable that those of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany or Israel. It is therefore naive of Australia's strategic planners to base their projections on either wishful thinking or unfounded worst-case scenarios.

A more realistic approach is to bank on inevitable change and seek to influence developments in a favourable direction. The alternative policy betrays our wider duty to humanity. Let's recall the Government's belated humanitarian arguments for breaching Iraq's sovereignty recently, and John Howard's warning that "the cost of [doing] nothing is potentially much greater than the cost of doing something". In Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan, apparently, but not in Indonesia.

Despite the illegitimacy of its imperial mission, the boundaries carved out by Dutch colonialists are now sacrosanct, at least in the eyes of Indonesia's southern neighbour. Another human catastrophe beckons. As President Megawati Soekarnoputri shores up her nationalist credentials in the lead-up to next year's election, the Indonesian military is free to perform its traditional role of internal repression safe in the knowledge that the West will again avert its eyes from a slaughter. Clearly it's not just repressive governments who "bluster and hide behind sovereignty arguments".

[Scott Burchill lectures in international relations at Deakin University.]

Claims rebel morale is high in face of attacks

Radio Australia - May 23, 2003

In Aceh where Indonesia's biggest military offensive in a quarter of century continues to gather pace. The Indonesian armed forces, the TNI, say they have killed more than 30 rebels of the separatist Free Aceh Movement, or GAM in a series of clashes, and continue to deny claims that civilians are among the dead.

Indonesia launched its operation following the breakdown of last-ditch weekend peace talks with the GAM in Tokyo. An American freelance journalist who's with the rebels in Aceh says morale among the GAM forces is high, and the movement retains popular support ... despite the military's onslaught.

Presenter/Interviewer: Tom Fayle

Speakers: William Nessan, American freelance journalist in Aceh

Nessan: "I'm standing on top of a mountain, it's raining very hard, I'm looking out across fields of bananas and jungle across to the hill and mountain after endless mountains ... I can't quite see the sea but if I were a little higher up I could."

Fayle: And William how long have you been with the GAM forces?

Nessan: "I've been with GAM, with the guerillas and the villagers here for several weeks. I'm in east Aceh now."

Fayle: And since your arrival in the area have you witnessed any action?

Nessan: "Yes I've been in a number of battles here, firefights between the guerillas and the TNI. These were ambushes by GAM on TNI forces, when TNI began approaching a few villages that we've been in."

Fayle: And what about casualties?

Nessan: "Casualties I've seen four dead TNI, that's four TNI fall down obviously shot from between 50 and 100 metres by automatic weapon fire. None of the GAM soldiers I've been with have been hit or mostly it's a quick attack and the TNI ends up running away. The guerillas survive only because of active physical support that they receive from basically every village that I've been in. I've been in a couple of dozen now."

Fayle: It's not just a question William then of ordinary people adopting the very pragmatic stand of expressing support to whatever armed group happens to be in the vicinity at the time?

Nessan: "It's not just a question of pragmatic support, no I mean these are the brothers and sisters and fathers and sons of the villagers, and these are ordinary kids who are the sort of proud bearers of the independent sentiment that you feel in every village."

Fayle: And one final question, the military says none of the casualties so far have been civilians and that the GAM forces have abandoned wearing their uniforms?

Nessan: "Well I haven't seen any change in uniform from a year ago except they have more of them. Everyone of these guys is happy to wear fatigues; they just don't have enough of them. I mean some of them are dressed in all black like the Vietnamese once did and guerillas do all around the world. And those operate in the cities of course they don't wear uniform, and I know civilians have been killed."

"I know a guy, met a guy who I knew the next day was killed. We know that people have been killed, there are reports that coming every day, I mean I haven't seen dead civilians, but every day you hear that villages that we were in or villages near where we are people have been killed or beaten."

Aceh: Freedom goes up in flames

Sydney Morning Herald - May 24, 2003

Matthew Moore, Lhokseumawe -- War in Aceh began on Monday and the Indonesian Army kicked off with its best attempt at a big bang. Passengers watched bemused as six Hercules aircraft dropped 450 paratroopers into the province's only real airport which, not surprisingly, they secured without a murmur.

Television crews were at the ready to catch Indonesia's air force using its handful of US-made Bronco attack planes to fire rockets at what was supposed to be a rebel stronghold just a few kilometres from the airport.

And there was a final volley of upbeat speeches from politicians and generals promising triumph at last over the rebel Free Aceh Movement, called GAM, a full 27 years after it began its fight for the province to break free of Indonesia. Within 24 hours it was clear that despite this full-gloss launch, Aceh's civil war was going to remain the dirty, cruel conflict that it's always been.

By Monday night schools were ablaze across the province. By Tuesday, when the military promised extra troops to protect them, 180 had already gone. By late Thursday, another 100 had been torched, and there's no sign of it stopping.

Aceh is situated on Sumatra's northern tip. Its lifeline is the road that runs north from Indonesia's third-biggest city, Medan, Sumatra, along its coast to the capital Achenese, Banda Aceh. Traffic has hardly moved on it since the war began; truck and bus drivers are too scared of getting caught in firefights or attacks by GAM. Vehicles have been stopped and burnt, trees felled across the road and there has been regular shooting, ensuring that movement of supplies has almost ceased.

Power poles have been dropped across back roads, cutting electricity and stopping vehicles from avoiding roadblocks on the main route. Petrol stations and electrical installations have been attacked, as have telephone exchanges.

Just four days into the war, motorists are already queuing for fuel in Banda Aceh. Eggs, cooking oil and vegetables are running low and the prices of basics like rice are quickly beginning to climb. Sensing a looming crisis, Indonesia's Welfare Minister, Yusuf Kalla, has already appealed to the army to secure the road to Medan.

Away from the coast, in the lush, forested mountains that cover most of the province, the roads are quieter. On the road to Takenon in Aceh's hinterland, kids have no buses to take them to and from home so they're sleeping at school while waiting to do their final exams. It says a lot about this war that despite such widespread, co-ordinated destruction, no-one can say with much certainty who is behind it. The military has blamed GAM for the school burnings; GAM says it's the military. With both sides wanting support from the civilian population, such wanton destruction seems self-defeating.

If the military is right, and GAM has begun some sort of scorched-earth campaign, then it is clear their forces were unprepared and are seriously inadequate to maintain security, let alone doing so while defeating GAM.

When President Megawati Soekarnoputri on Sunday night signed the decree approving the war, she also imposed martial law for six months, the time in which GAM is supposed to be defeated. To ensure that happens, the military has mounted its biggest campaign since the invasion of East Timor in 1975. The navy has deployed 15 ships, the air force has four British-made Hawk jet fighters and its Broncos and troops were shipped in weeks before the war actually began.

And yet the army says the total number of soldiers on the ground is only about 28,000 with about 10,000 Brimob or paramilitary police. This is not much more than the 35,000 army and Brimob forces in the province when the now abandoned peace deal was signed in December last year. But the evidence of week one of the war suggests it's more freedom, not more troops, that the army hopes will give it the edge in fighting the guerillas.

The chief of the armed forces, General Endriatono Sutarto, could not have been more blunt when he told his commanders early this week to fight the rebels "until your last drop of blood". In case that wasn't clear he said, "You are trained to kill, so wipe them out." Within hours of Megawati's decree, that's just what the army began doing, taking suspects from their beds and shooting them, sometimes robbing them as well to help supplement their woeful wages.

Indonesia's military spokesman said the policy was for troops to arrest suspected GAM members and to put them on trial. Such legal niceties, though, have never been part of Indonesia's army in the past and there's no sign of that now.

Within 40 kilometres of Lhokseumawe, known as a pro-GAM area, there is compelling evidence from numerous witnesses about two massacres by soldiers on Wednesday, with at least 14 unarmed people shot dead, including two 12-year-old boys.

In the village of Cot Bate, numerous witnesses told how the army gathered the community together, produced a list of suspects and took them outside where they were severely beaten before all were shot.

It's too easy to find such incidents. When the Herald stopped in one small village 12 kilometres from Lhokseumawe, we were told of five men who were taken from their homes by soldiers before dawn on day one of the war. At least two were shot, one killed.

As Indonesian soldiers continue to face the human rights courts in Jakarta for alleged crimes in East Timor, other soldiers are committing similar offences in Aceh.

In Indonesia's desire to crush GAM, it is running serious risks it will further blot its human rights record and fuel international support for GAM, which is non-existent. Perhaps that's why the rhetoric from the military commanders has also changed.

Reporters have been encouraged to expose failings by soldiers and the blunt-speaking Endriatono told his commanders that if their troops do commit human rights abuses "just shoot them in the head".

Along with the apparent increased encouragement to kill suspects, the Indonesian Government has prepared a plan to forcibly relocate up to 200,000 people in an effort to expose the hidden enemy.

On paper it seems easy enough to defeat a force that the army says has just over 5000 soldiers, not all of whom are armed. But the war with GAM is a true guerilla war, with rebels feeding off the civilian population, extorting money, kidnapping and ransoming victims and playing a major role in various criminal enterprises, especially Aceh's extensive marijuana industry.

With a population frightened of GAM, Indonesia's army has struggled to identify rebel members, let alone find and defeat them. It sees internment as a solution.

The Government has announced it expects to forcibly move people from areas regarded as strongholds and relocate them in camps to be built on sports fields. Once the population has been moved out, anyone found in the areas would be regarded as GAM and could be shot, the theory goes. In an apparent attempt to sabotage this plan, GAM members have now begun confiscating people's identity papers. Photocopying shops in Lhokseumawe have been busy this week copying ID cards for people who soon expect to have them confiscated.

It's also been suggested that one reason GAM has burnt the schools is to stop them being used as camps when the relocation policy gets under way.

In the last 10 years of his reign, the former president Soeharto ran a brutal military operation in Aceh, crushing any opposition and leaving some 10,000 dead in the process. The military has since apologised to Aceh's four million people for past abuses, but its terrible record will not easily be forgotten.

Like GAM, the military continues to make a fine living from the war. You only have to drive down the main road to see truck and bus drivers stopping at military checkpoints to hand over cash -- just one way the Indonesians exploit a local population that hates them.

The Indonesian Government and military have said they can never win this war unless they also win "the hearts and minds" of the people. To do that, Jakarta has pledged a humanitarian campaign and the restoration of local government, which has collapsed. So far, though, there's been no sign of either of these promises. Just more killing. On the evidence of the first week, Aceh's war has a few years in it yet.

Acehnese refugees flood North Sumatra

Jakarta Post - May 24, 2003

Apriadi Gunawan, Jakarta -- North Sumatra has begun to feel the effect of the war in Aceh, as hundreds of people have been streaming down from the neighboring province seeking refuge.

The displaced people, mostly women, fled their homes in Southeast Aceh regency to safer areas in Tanah Karo and Dairi regencies in North Sumatra, which border Aceh.

Tanah Karo Police Head Adj. Sr. Comr. M. Natari said the Acehnese refugees had been flooding Tanah Karo as a number of armed people, presumably members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), had been spotted around their village. The refugees, who come from Gajah Mati village in Southeast Aceh, have taken shelter in Perbulan village in Lau Baleng district, said Natari.

He said the police would check the refugees closely, particularly the men, to see whether they were GAM members or were linked in any way to the rebels. "At present, we must be suspicious of anyone coming from Aceh, as it is possible that GAM members disguise themselves as refugees when they are under pressure," Natari told The Jakarta Post on Friday. He also confirmed the presence of Acehnese refugees in Dairi.

Police in North Sumatra have been on high alert against possible GAM attacks since last month, when blasts rocked the capital city of Medan and Deli Serdang regency. Four people have been arrested and police confirmed they were connected to GAM.

Separately, North Sumatra Governor T. Rizal Nurdin said the provincial government had allocated Rp 500 million (US$55,000) and 41 tons of rice to help the refugees during their stay in North Sumatra. "The fund will be distributed to the refugees while we await the disbursement of aid from the central government," he told the Post.

Rizal said that the North Sumatra administration had prepared 16 areas in the province to accommodate Acehnese refugees, but did not elaborate. Although the refugee camps have been set up and other shelter would be constructed by the government, Rizal said some refugees might prefer to rent houses in Medan instead.

North Sumatra has received thousands of Aceh refugees over the past few years as the security situation has grown worse.

Meanwhile, real estate businessman Armyn Hakim Daulay said that demand to rent or buy houses in Medan and its surrounding areas among Acehnese had increased sharply. "After the imposition of military law in Aceh, one of the significant impacts in North Sumatra has been that the rent and the price of houses have risen by up to 75 percent," he said.

He said the rent for a medium-sized house was now between Rp 6 million and 8 million annually, but that it had been between Rp 4 million and Rp 5 million annually prior to the massive military offensive against GAM.

The rent for lower-class housing has also risen to between Rp 2.5 million and Rp 4.5 million per year, from between Rp 1.5 million and Rp 3 million per year before the military operation, he said. The price of houses, which previously stood at Rp 35 million, now reaches Rp 45 million.

The refugees usually contact their relatives or colleagues in North Sumatra to house-hunt for them, he said. Medan Sunggal, Kelambir and Semayang are among those areas in North Sumatra favored by the Acehnese.

Indonesia plans new Aceh ID cards to foil rebels

Reuters - May 24, 2003

Achmad Sukarsono, Banda Aceh -- Indonesia said on Saturday civilians in Aceh, scene of its biggest military crackdown in decades, would be given new ID cards to stop separatist rebels blending in with the population.

With the United Nations warning of a looming humanitarian crisis after five days of fighting, a military spokesman predicted the plan would help restore normality to parts of the staunchly Muslim province at the northern tip of Sumatra island.

"The ID card will have signatures from the local region, the local police and the local military," a military spokesman, Major M. Solih, said. "This is for the sake of the people to normalise the situation in parts of Aceh." Police say Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels have been confiscating people's old identification cards, but it was not clear when the new cards would be introduced.

Indonesia declared martial law and attacked the rebels on Monday after a five-month peace agreement collapsed.

Officials said on Friday that 23,000 civilians had fled their homes in the province, which is rich in gas and oil. The United Nations said basic health services had collapsed in places.

More than 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in a 27-year war in the province, one of two separatist hotspots in the sprawling archipelago. Papua province in the far east is the other.

The military says 58 rebels have been killed since Monday. The rebels say 53 civilians have been killed, along with 12 GAM fighters and 43 soldiers and police. The casualty tolls could not be independently verified, but the Indonesian military denies causing civilian deaths.

The government, with 45,000 troops and police pitted against about 5,000 GAM fighters, is hoping for victory within six months, but the rebels have historically taken full advantage of the rugged, jungle-clad terrain.

Island fight

Solih said the military were pushing rebels off an island, off the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, 1,700 km northwest of Jakarta. They have pounded the island with rocket fire from helicopters and machinegun and cannon fire from patrol boats.

"We have controlled four rebel posts, but there are four other posts which still are in the hands of the rebels because a lot of residents are surrounding those posts so we are holding back," Solih said.

The military, accused of human rights violations in the past, says it is doing its utmost to avoid civilian casualties and will punish any rights violations.

Aceh's deputy governor, Aswar Abubakar, said on Friday 23,000 people had been displaced since Monday. The UN Children's Fund said up to 300,000 people could be displaced within the next three months.

Basic health services had "collapsed" and more than 280 schools have been burnt and destroyed, depriving 60,000 children of education, the agency said in a statement issued in Geneva.

UNICEF said it was sending 20 tonnes of emergency health kits to cover the basic needs of 200,000 people for three months and 20,000 hygiene kits for displaced families.

Prices of commodities soar as deliveries disrupted

Jakarta Post - May 24, 2003

Jakarta -- Prices of some basic commodities are climbing in the Aceh capital of Banda Aceh as the ongoing conflict between government troops and separatist rebels has disrupted supplies from the neighboring province of North Sumatra.

Antara reported that the prices of some commodities had almost doubled as traders began to run out of stock. Cooking oil climbed from Rp 6,500 per kilogram to Rp 8,500 per kilogram, while eggs jumped from Rp 7,250 per kilogram to Rp 12,800 per kilogram. But other prices like rice, wheat, sugar and meat remained stable due to sufficient supply. A kilogram of rice, for example, costs Rp 2,500.

Deliveries of some commodities from neighboring North Sumatra all be ceased as of Tuesday as road travel is seen as increasingly dangerous, said traders and drivers. Some trucks have reportedly been stopped and burned along the highway connecting the two provinces. "Today some basic commodities are no longer available. I'm selling what I have because there's no supply anymore," Abdullah, a trader at a traditional market in Banda Aceh told AFP on Friday.

Another truck said he no longer delivered food following the arson attacks. "I'm afraid of driving after four trucks and a bus were burned by armed men in Pidie on Wednesday," said the driver, who declined to give his name.

However, military vehicles belonging to the Indonesian Military (TNI) continue to patrol the road from dawn to dusk. Red-and- white Indonesian flags were seen hoisted above houses along the road.

Aceh Governor Abdullah Puteh said the government would airlift food supplies if necessary. He said unidentified people had also used felled trees to block roads linking North Sumatra and Aceh.

Meanwhile, in Aceh Besar regency, the Indonesian Military (TNI) started the delivery of five tons of rice, 200 boxes of instant noodles and 50 blankets on Nasi Island after securing the island from GAM.

Before TNI captured the island, GAM had prohibited all boats from sailing from and to the island, causing 6,000 residents on the island to suffer food shortages. The TNI is still hunting about 40 GAM members on the island.

Meanwhile, several bus drivers said that intercity buses were temporarily grounded at bus terminals or garages due to security concerns. Some bus companies revealed they did not dare operate due to fears of being attacked by GAM rebels.

Transportation company owners pointed to the arson attacks along several parts of the highway linking Aceh and North Sumatra. Both the public at large and the transportation company owners expressed hope peace would be restored as soon as possible.

Sabotaged dam creates threat of starvation in Aceh

Sydney Morning Herald - May 24, 2003

Matthew Moore, Lhokseumawe -- Up to 150,000 civilians in Indonesia's war-torn Aceh province face starvation because of a new tactic of destroying irrigations systems on which farmers rely to grow their crops.

In the Bireuen region, the sluice gates of the main dam that supplies water to 6500 hectares of rice farms were jammed open on Tuesday. A government official, too frightened to be named, said the water pouring from the dam had flooded crops in five heavily populated sub-districts. Unless the dam is fixed within days the young rice crop, which normally feeds 150,000 people, will be destroyed along with fruit trees and vegetable crops.

The senior official said his staff are unable even to inspect the damage at the dam because of fears they will be killed if they venture into the area. Despite the build-up of Indonesian troops for the renewed war against separatist rebels -- the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) -- there was not enough security to protect such installations, the official said. He refused to allocate blame for the damage at the dam, which he said had been attacked because it was a piece of "strategic infrastructure". On Tuesday there was a threat to burn his office down.

The military's spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Yani Barsuki, said he had not received any reports of the damage four days ago. In the first five days since the war was renewed, about 280 schools have been burnt, kilometres of power lines brought down, and telecommunications facilities attacked. GAM spokesmen deny the military's accusation they have burnt the schools and accuse the military of burning them down.

Five kilometres downstream from the dam, a four-metre wide hole has been cut through the concrete that lines the side of the irrigation canal it feeds. Water has been pouring out for days flooding thousands of hectares of land.

The land farmed by Emadam, 62, has been inundated by the hole in the canal and he is now clearing a plot of land in the bush to grow peanuts and vegetables to survive the famine he fears the flooding will cause. He said there is still time to save the rice crop that has just been planted, but only if the flooding stops. "We reported this hole to the village chief but they have not fixed it," he said.

Although a truck full of sandbags would be enough to fill in the hole, the villagers have not considered such action. It might save them from starvation, but it could also lead to a quicker death in this increasingly bitter conflict. "We are not game to fix it ... GAM sometimes controls this area," Emadam said.

As well as the rice crop, he said the flooding will destroy coconuts, pawpaws, bananas and mangoes. Cocoa, a valuable cash crop now bringing $A3 a kilogram will also be lost. "We are the ones to suffer, we don't know what they want by doing this," he said.

58 Aceh rebels killed, says Jakarta

Straits Times - May 24, 2003

Robert Go, Banda Aceh -- Indonesia said yesterday that 58 members of the separatist group, Free Aceh Movement (GAM), and five civilians have died in the troubled province since Jakarta's major offensive began.

Military officials also confirmed that fighting had intensified in several hotspots, including within Bireun and Pidie regencies to the east of Banda Aceh, and said troops were likely to encounter more resistance as the campaign progressed.

Other figures mentioned by the authorities' briefing document included 23 detained GAM members, 18 wounded and two dead Indonesian soldiers, and three marjiuana fields found by the authorities.

Troops have taken control of two small and sparsely populated islands near Banda Aceh after a two-day siege by navy ships. The number of schools torched by arsonists had also gone up from previous days to a total of 328 by yesterday.

GAM spokesmen had different numbers from the military and said that only 12 of their men have been killed so far, while over 50 civilians have fallen victim to the Indonesian military while soldiers chased after rebels.

Officers warned that more clashes between GAM and Indonesian forces could be expected in the near future. Military operations spokesman Firdaus Komarno told The Straits Times that gun battles took place in at least seven different areas of Aceh yesterday.

A grenade went off and injured one soldier at the Heroes' Cemetery in Banda Aceh, located just a few kilometres from the military's command centre.

He said: "Our troops are getting closer to GAM's nests and will see more contact with the enemies. The going is tough, as GAM members can blend in with civilians and we are trying to avoid civilian casualties. We have to be very careful." Indonesia's current Aceh campaign is trying to shrug off past charges of human-rights abuses and soldiers' reputations as bullies.

Mr Firdaus, however, admitted that military police were investigating allegations that soldiers executed as many as seven civilians, including a 12-year-old boy, in the northern village of Mapa Mamplam on Wednesday. He said: "We are looking into those reports. If our investigation shows soldiers are indeed responsible, then we will hand down punishments we promised at the beginning of this operation." Indonesia's Armed Forces Chief, General Endriartono Sutarto, said on Monday that he would order severe punishments against any soldiers who were caught abusing their authority or commiting human-rights violations during the Aceh offensive.

Meanwhile, according to the Xinhua news agency, the Indonesian police have submitted a request to 180 governments worldwide to capture the exiled leader of GAM, Mr Hasan Tiro, if he travels to their countries. Indonesian police believe that Mr Tiro, who now resides in Sweden, is responsible for a series of bombings across Indonesian cities, including bomb attacks at the Malaysian embassy and the Jakarta Stock Exchange building in 2000.

Aceh civilians to be interned in camps

Straits Times - May 23, 2003

Robert Go, Jakarta -- As fighting intensifies in Aceh, Indonesia's government plans to start rounding up thousands of civilians in tent camps and intern them for short spells as the military cleanses hot spots of rebel fighters.

The programme could affect villages located within the Pidie, Bireuen and East Aceh regencies within a matter of days and be expanded into other areas in the troubled province according to need and the progress of the military crackdown. Senior officials explained interning villages would enable soldiers to pick through emptied areas with fine-toothed combs in search of members or sympathisers of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM.

Civilians who are moved to the camps, officials added, would be out of harm's way in the case of gun battles between soldiers and rebels, and be safe from GAM's attempts to use them as human shields against the Indonesian military.

British forces fighting communist guerillas in Malaya during the 1950s used similar tactics and moved thousands of villagers into guarded camps, in part to prevent their enemies from taking shelter amid civilian populations.

Social Affairs Minister Bachtiar Chamsyah, who was the first to speak about Jakarta's plans, said only areas identified as potential GAM hideouts would be affected.

The government has also told Aceh's civilians to carry identification papers at all times, avoid travelling through known trouble spots, and report any suspicious activity or unknown individual to local police and military posts.

The military said its forces have killed 29 GAM rebels since the start of martial law on Monday, while separatist leaders said as many as 50 civilians have died at the hands of Indonesian soldiers.

Mr Marty Natalegawa, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, told The Straits Times the government would keep the internment plan, as well as other security arrangements, as non-intrusive as possible to the local population.

He said: "We are not looking at concentration camps. These are meant to ensure the safety and well being of civilians. This programme was designed with the perspective of protecting civilians from GAM forces." Asked if the military would forcibly move those who refuse to be taken off their lands and put into the tent camps, Mr Natalegawa said troops would be persuasive.

The Foreign Ministry official and other government sources declined to give more information on how long internees would be removed from their home areas, or give a more accurate estimate on the number of civilians who could be affected by the plan.

He said: "In the short period of time since our operations began, GAM has targeted civilians. Indonesia would protect these people as long as that is needed." Analysts warned the internment plan, regardless of the Indonesian government's reasons, would be met with resistance by some Acehnese and advised troops to guard against further alienating the local population.

But several said this strategy could work well in containing and isolating many of the reputedly 5,000-strong GAM rebels into known pockets, and ultimately help the Indonesian military's efforts to deal serious blows against the separatist group.

Editorial: Falling into the Soeharto trap

Sydney Morning Herald - May 22, 2003

The launch this week of the biggest Indonesian military operation since the 1975 invasion of East Timor suggests an impending bloodbath in the contested northern province of Aceh.

That the huge military assault on Aceh's pro-independence guerilla forces (GAM) went ahead at all represents a stunning failure for the political process. In ordering her forces to "crush" GAM, President Megawati Soekarnoputri has reached for the same brutal, but ultimately counter-productive, template of the authoritarian regime of the former president Soeharto.

Despite the democratic credentials of Mrs Megawati's government and an earlier official apology to the Acehnese people for human rights abuses committed under Soeharto, there is evidence that civilians will be no better protected in the new offensive. Civilians made up most of the 10,000 people killed in Aceh in nearly three decades of fighting.

Both sides are at fault for the breakdown of December's fragile ceasefire and the 11th-hour peace talks in Tokyo at the weekend. GAM's 3000 to 5000 guerilla fighters have shown virtually no willingness to compromise and have committed their share of violent abuses against soldiers and civilians.

But the nature of the independence struggle means the ball has always been in the government's court. Aceh's history as a fiercely independent Muslim sultanate until its incorporation into the Republic of Indonesia in 1949 -- and its bitter experiences since of human rights abuses and the diversion of considerable revenue from natural gas and timber to Jakarta's coffers -- always meant peace would only ever come at a price.

Unrealistically, GAM set this price as independence. Jakarta is determined, at virtually any cost, to prevent a repeat of East Timor's humiliating breakaway. And despite international concern at human rights abuses in Aceh, there is little external support for an independent state on Sumatra's northern tip.

However, Jakarta's "special autonomy" package of 2001 has proved little more than an empty phrase. There was never any real prospect for peace without genuine political representation for the Acehnese, the return of gas and timber earnings and an end to the perpetual state of fear created by long-term militarisation.

A slim hope lies in the ongoing diplomatic efforts of the United States, Japan and the European Union, which had pushed for the last-minute Tokyo talks. Despite the resort to overwhelming force there can be no decisive military solution in Aceh, only another bloody military failure.

Youths 'massacred' in Aceh village

BBC News - Mary 23, 2003

The BBC's Orlando de Guzman has made a second visit to the site of Wednesday's incident, in the northern village of Mapa Mamplam, and has been told by witnesses that boys, one as young as 12, were among the victims.

Military chiefs have denied the allegations, saying that civilians are never targeted.

Indonesian warships have been shelling rebel positions, as the military continues its offensive against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), which began on Monday after peace talks broke down.

The villagers at Mapa Mamplam said a group of seven boys and men, aged between 12 and 20, were sleeping in a hut near a prawn farm to guard it -- standard practice in rural areas.

A group of Indonesian soldiers entered the hut and dragged the boys out, lining them up on one of the dykes dividing the ponds, they said. A witness, who had a clear view of the events, told our correspondent that some of the group were then shot one by one at close range. Three or four others were then told to run, before being shot in the back, the villager said. In his first visit to the village, our correspondent saw four bodies with bullet wounds to the back of the head.

The military said on Friday it had killed 38 rebels since Monday. Rebels said 12 of their fighters had been killed, along with 53 civilians. Human rights workers say almost 10,000 people have fled their homes since the fighting started.

Major-General Endang Suwarya, the commander overseeing Indonesia's campaign in the strife-torn province, hass insisted: "Absolutely no civilians were killed. We have a list of targets that we want killed or captured. We don't miss or make mistakes." However, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda admitted that rebels no longer wear military uniform, and therefore are difficult to distinguish from the local population.

Our correspondent says that whenever reports of such abuses come to light in Aceh, the GAM rebels and Indonesia's authorities tend to blame each other. However, he adds that in recent days there have been many confirmed cases of Indonesian troops storming into villages, dragging people out of their homes and brutalising them.

'All-out attack'

The BBC's Rachel Harvey says the army is determined to crush the rebels, amid evidence that supplies of food and fuel are running low in many areas.

So far, the offensive has largely taken the form of sporadic skirmishes, largely in the middle of the night, and mostly in the northern districts of Bireun and Pidie.

The military crackdown in Aceh began after talks with rebel negotiators broke down, ending a five-month-old peace deal that had raised hopes of a permanent resolution to the 26-year conflict. Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has imposed martial law, giving the military sweeping powers to make arrests, impose curfews and curb travel.

Acehnese resentment against Jakarta's rule has been fuelled by past abuses by the Indonesian military, and a feeling that the government is exploiting the region's resources.

The failed peace deal, signed in December, offered Aceh an autonomous government by 2004, which would have been allowed to keep 70% of the revenue generated from the province's rich oil reserves.

Military forces in Aceh

• GAM fighters: 5,000
• Indonesian troops: 28,000
• Indonesian regular police: 8,000
• Indonesian paramilitary police: 2,000

Stumbling across a massacre

BBC News - May 22, 2003

I got there just as the Indonesian army patrol was leaving. These men are part of the Indonesian army's notorious specials forces. They told us they'd just been in a gunfight with GAM (Free Aceh Movement) rebels earlier in the morning.

I followed the narrow dirt road leading to a dirt village they'd just patrolled. There we found a burning roadblock. People had just started coming out of their houses. One woman was inconsolable, troops had broken her door down with automatic gunfire to search for suspected rebels.

But this was just the start. We had stumbled across a massacre. The villagers were desperate to tell us what had happened. "The TNI [Indonesian army] come to the village and they take some people in the rice field," one man told us. "They just shoot them, they just shoot them and the people die."

We found the main witness at the cemetery, where the bodies had been buried quickly, according to Muslim tradition. We cannot use his name here, but he says he saw everything from a hiding place in the palm trees. "They asked the victims to stand in front of the rice fields and then they killed them one by one in the back and then they threw their bodies to the rice field," he told me.

'Young victims'

My translator and I walked past the area where the killing had happened. I stopped to ask a group of women what they had seen. One woman said she did not see the killings happen, but that she was a relative of one of the victims. She said they were not members of GAM. "They are not GAM -- they are working in the rice fields, they are not the GAM, [because] they were very young," she told us.

At least eight young men were killed here. The youngest was 11, another 13, another 14, and none of the remaining five were over 20. The villagers told me that all had the same injuries -- shot in the back of the head.

Indonesia says 31 rebels killed, denies civilian deaths

Agence France Presse - May 23, 2003

Indonesia's military said it has now killed 31 rebels during an all-out attack on separatist guerrillas in Aceh province and the government denied that civilians are among the dead.

Two Free Aceh Movement (GAM) members died in a firefight with troops early Friday in North Aceh and two were captured, said military spokesman Yani Basuki Friday, the fifth day of the country's biggest military operation for a quarter-century.

Martial law administrator Major General Endang Suwarya had Thursday night put the rebel death toll at 29 and said the military suffered one death in a landing craft accident.

The military, which has a record of gross rights abuses in past campaigns in Aceh and elsewhere, has denied reports by villagers that 10 people gunned down on Wednesday in the northern coastal district of Bireuen were farmers. Basuki said Thursday the victims, including a boy aged 13, had fired on troops and were shot while fleeing. He acknowledged no rebel guns were found but said GAM customarily dumped weapons while fleeing.

GAM, which has also been accused of brutalities during its 27- year fight for independence, said in a statement to AFP in Jakarta that troops had killed 50 civilians as of Thursday evening. No independent confirmation was possible.

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda, asked about GAM allegations of civilian deaths, told reporters: "It's just part of their tactics. Before it was clear that they were wearing military uniform complete with their red berets but now they disappear and are not wearing military uniform any more and when they get shot they claim they are civilians," Wirayuda said. "Don't be fooled by such allegations and the media should not be lured into spreading them."

The GAM statement said rebels attacked a military position at Lhoknga in Aceh Besar district late Thursday. There was no immediate confirmation.

GAM said troops at Ujong Pancu in Aceh Besar on Thursday had used civilians as human shields in front of a patrol, an allegation hotly denied by military spokesman Basuki. "It is not true. TNI [the military] came to Aceh to protect their people," he said.

Indonesia launched its operation following the breakdown of last-ditch weekend peace talks with GAM in Tokyo. Up to 30,000 troops plus 10,000 police, backed up by warships and planes, are confronting some 5,000 guerrillas. No full-scale pitched battles have been reported so far.

Civilians, as always, have been the first to suffer. Authorities say some 100,000 children have nowhere to learn after GAM torched some 287 schools this week. Tents are being sent to the province on Sumatra island for use as temporary classrooms. The rebels say the army is behind the arson attacks to try to smear GAM.

Food supplies to the province were under threat after trucking firms decided to stop deliveries from neighbouring North Sumatra, reports said Friday. Food merchants in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, quoted by the state Antara news agency, said stocks were running low and the price of some staples had risen by 30 percent.

Antara said companies halted operations after some drivers were threatened or had vehicles vandalised by unidentified armed civilians in Aceh. Martial law chief Suwarya said five trucks and public vehicles were set ablaze Wednesday. Aceh Governor Abdullah Puteh said the government would airlift food supplies if necessary.

Jakarta defends offensive as concern mounts

Melbourne Age - May 23, 2003

Banda Aceh -- Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda has gone on the defensive in the face of international concern over Jakarta's military operation against the independence movement in Aceh, the military's biggest offensive in decades.

He told foreign envoys that Indonesia's territorial integrity was at stake over Aceh, the country's northernmost province on the tip of Sumatra, where the offensive was launched on Monday after peace talks collapsed at the weekend.

Mr Wirajuda said rebels had wrecked the peace process. Mediators, however, have said that Jakarta sank the talks in Tokyo, which were aimed at saving a five-month-old peace pact, saying it had sought to impose new conditions on the rebels.

"Nothing less than the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Indonesia is at stake ... it is they who speak the language of force and terror," Mr Wirajuda said. "The Indonesian Government and people are doing only what are expected of us, we are confident that governments around this hall would do the same if faced by a similar challenge."

As the operation continued in Aceh, a spokesman for the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) insisted that no armed separatists had been killed and accused the military of murdering nearly 50 civilians. The military denied killing non-combatants. Senior officers said they were considering imposing night curfews in areas hit by the heaviest clashes.

Casualty claims have been hotly disputed ever since GAM began fighting for independence in 1976. But one hospital official in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, said the military had brought in nine dead bodies riddled with bullets since Monday. He said they looked like civilians. The military said it had killed 12 rebels and captured nine in the campaign so far, for the loss of six soldiers wounded.

In Aceh yesterday, public buses stopped running for fear of being attacked and the Government reported that as many as 180 schools had been torched. The military vowed that it would hunt down arsonists while setting up emergency tents for the tens of thousands of students left without classrooms. The Government also has rounded up activists and aid workers on suspicion of being rebel sympathisers, police said. Malaysian authorities said they had increased patrols along the borders in Sumatra to prevent Acehnese from fleeing the fighting.

"It's a daily battle just to get to our workplace," said a hairdresser who identified herself as Vivi. "We are all terrified." President Megawati Soekarnoputri has imposed martial law, giving the military wide powers. More than 30,000 troops are in Aceh to fight about 5000 poorly armed rebels.

Aceh military chief Major-General Endang Suwarya has said authorities may arrest local journalists or close down media organisations if they quote rebel sources in their reports.

At least 12,000 people -- many of them civilians -- have been killed in Aceh since 1976, when the Free Aceh Movement emerged to challenge Indonesian rule.

Children massacred by military in Aceh

Melbourne Age - May 23, 2003

Matthew Moore, Lhokseumawe -- In Indonesia's new war against Aceh's rebels, 12 is now old enough to get shot in the back as you run for your life through a rice paddy.

That was how Anas bin Nazir and his friend Bedi bin Daud died on Wednesday morning, the youngest in a group of 14 young men and boys shot dead by the army. Witnesses, including the boy's parents, spoke to reporters over two days and say all the victims were massacred.

Army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Yani Basuki said all those killed were rebels attacking the Indonesian army, although he admitted that no weapons were found with any of those killed.

The evidence on the ground points to a very different story. With three friends, Anas and Bedi were sleeping in their little hut on the edge of Cot Rabo village, perched above the fish farm they guarded at night. Indonesian soldiers arrived before dawn in the village, about 10 kilometres east of Bireuen, an area known as a stronghold of the separatist army called GAM.

More than 30 villagers say they were beaten by soldiers using sticks and guns. Many of the villagers showed the welts to prove it. A woman called Murni Abdullah said a soldier pointed a gun at her and stole money worth $A60. Another soldier sprayed a house with bullets, while others walked along the path that runs between the paddy field and the fish ponds.

From where their bodies were found, just metres from their hut, these soldiers were early enough to catch the boys in their beds. Witnesses say the soldiers told them where to run. But you can't run through the thick mud of a rice paddy, and Anas and Bedi got no further than 10 metres before they died face down with their three friends.

An Indonesian journalist who went to village soon after the killings said soldiers gleefully directed him where to go. "Just say that we are Kopassus," one soldier said to him. "They said 'We already killed 10 rats over there'." (Kopassus is the army's notorious special forces group.)

Up the road a little, Tasran bin Dahlan, 17, was at home when soldiers arrived, shouting that they were looking for members of GAM, the Acehnese separatist fighters that Indonesia's military has vowed to "exterminate". His mother, Nurmiyah, said Tasran opened the door, went out and the soldiers grabbed him.

"I came out and they pointed a gun at me," she said. "I did not say anything. I was afraid." His father heard the noise, and came round from his fish farm at the back before his eldest son was led away. "Tasran just cried," he said. "He called out tolong [please], tolong, tolong. What could I do? They had guns." The soldiers took him up the road to shoot him, then brought his body back, in keeping with the policy of returning to their families people killed.

His parents were preparing his body for burial when soldiers arrived in the village of Cot Bate, several kilometres away, across the rice paddies. The 200 villagers there had heard the morning shooting and knew soldiers would come. They waited together in the simple white building that serves as their local hall.

As scores of marines patrolled the area yesterday, several witnesses told how scores of soldiers arrived on foot, the tracks to the village too small for anything bigger than a motorbike.

Villagers in the hall were divided into groups of about 15 and a list was produced. It had six names on it. The village head was then forced to identify the named men. One by one five men were taken outside and beaten with sticks while those inside listened to them scream.

The sixth man, Zaifudin, was too scared to go the hall, and hid in his house. When he tried to flee, the soldiers must have known what was coming. "It's normal here that if someone is running away they think that means he's a separatist," he said. He was the first to die, shot in the rice paddy. The villagers waited while the other five men, all in their 20s, were led away. The first was shot about 100 metres down the road, the others taken a little further on before they too were executed.

There were no witnesses other than soldiers, although a reporter who saw their bodies said three were shot in the head and several had chest wounds suggesting they had been shot at close range.

Asked if they were GAM members, one man in the village who knew them well said: "They were GAM sympathisers. I don't know if they were members." In his response to detailed written questions from The Age, Colonel Yani said soldiers had seen three well-known GAM spies while on patrol in the area at 5.30, guarding an empty house, and had questioned them.

He claimed the GAM soldiers began shooting, and one of the spies had run out of the house with a two-way radio. They shot him and nine others, including the two other spies, although he refused to name them. Soldiers then chased and killed seven more, he said. He said Dedi was 13, not 12, although The Age interviewed his 30-year-old mother.

In accordance with Islamic law, all the dead were buried before sunset on the day of their deaths, although not all of the parents could face the burials.

Dedi's mother, Asri, heard the shooting, and then heard from friends that her son was dead. "My husband I went there, and he was lying there in the mud," she said. "I could not stand it, and I collapsed and people took me to my house. I was not there when he was buried, I cannot stand to see him like that."

[Additonal reporting by Karuni Rompies.]

Activists return home after Indonesian arrest

ABC News - May 23, 2003

Two Australian peace activists arrested at a rally in Indonesia earlier this week are expected to arrive in Sydney tonight.

Kylie Moon from Books Not Bombs and Nick Everett, from Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific, were among a number of activists arrested on Wednesday during a protest outside the Presidential Palace in Jakarta.

Ms Moon says the pair were in police custody for more than 30 hours before being deported to Singapore yesterday.

She says Indonesian authorities have indicated they will be denied re-entry in the short term.

"Myself and my friends from Australia and South Korea and South Africa that were arrested have all been blacklisted, so that means that we are not able to enter Indonesia for a period of time, the Indonesian Government refuses to state how long that will be for," she said.

Foreigners deported for rallying

Jakarta Post - May 23, 2003

Damar Harsanto, Jakarta -- Four foreigners were deported to their home countries on Thursday for committing what immigration officials called "a dangerous activity" by participating in a rally to protest the Indonesian government's decision to launch a military operation in Aceh.

They were: Australians Nicholas James Everest, 32, and Kylie Irene Moon, 25, South African Lydia Leone Cairn-Cross, 27, and South Korean Choi Yung Chan, 32.

"The Australians and the South Korean were deported today through Singapore, while the South African was sent home through Dubai," said Ade E. Dachlan, the spokesman for the Directorate General of Immigration.

Police arrested the foreigners on Wednesday at about 6pm after they took part in a rally in front of the presidential palace on Jl. Medan Merdeka Utara, Central Jakarta. "They took part in a dangerous activity or one that could endanger public safety and order," Ade quoted the Director General of Immigration Mohammad Indra as saying.

Officials said they had violated their visas by taking part in political activities here. The Australians and South Korean came as tourists and had obtained a short visit visa that was effective for 60 days, while the South African was on a visa to visit social organizations here, the official said.

After they were held overnight at police headquarters, the police sent them before noon on Thursday to the immigration office. They were quarantined before they were deported later in the day.

"Foreigners must abide by the law in this country. What was their business that they had to take part in the rally to protest the Indonesian government's policy on Aceh?" said city police spokesman Sr. Comr. Prasetyo.

In other developments, police arrested eight student protesters involved in Wednesday's clash with police at the House of Representatives/People's Consultative Assembly (DPR/MPR) compound in South Jakarta.

"We are questioning them as suspects," said Prasetyo. He said the students could be charged under Article 170 in the Criminal Code for perpetrating a violent action, and Article 187 for causing an explosion. If convicted, the students could spend a maximum of seven years and 12 years respectively in prison.

They had joined thousands of student representatives from a number of universities across the country who staged a rally to demand incumbent President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Vice President Hamzah Has to resign for incompetence.

The rally was held to coincide with the fifth anniversary of reformation in 1998, which led to the downfall of former president Soeharto.

Prasetyo said the students were being detained for refusing to disperse and committing a violent action, including damaging public facilities. The protesters burned banners and flags of political parties on the toll road near the DPR compound. They also burned the fiberglass fence on the road and closed down the toll road gate. In a clash with students, a police officer suffered minor injuries from a Molotov cocktail thrown by one protester.

Police seized two loudspeakers, two Molotov cocktails, 16 bamboo sticks, five flags, 12 stones, a Kijang van and a public minibus from the protesters.

Police arrested Bimbi Tuanakotta from Bung Karno University for allegedly throwing a molotov cocktail and burning the United Development Party (PPP) flags.

Police also arrested Alib Bara from the University of Indonesia (UI), Naviar Saleh from the Islamic University of Lampung, Muhamad Dawan from the Sunan Gunung Jati Islamic University of Bandung, Andi Supriadi from the University of Surya Kencana, Cianjur, West Java, Asbid Mujahid from the University of Jakarta, Agus Mulani from UI and Nandang Wira Kusuma from Tirtayasa University of Cilegon, Banten.

Jakarta wants to tag Aceh rebels as terrorists

Straits Times - May 22, 2003

Robert Go, Jakarta -- Indonesia's government is moving to label leaders of separatist group Free Aceh Movement (GAM) as "terrorists", following arson attacks on nearly 200 schools and other public buildings in the region during the past three days.

Officials attributed the fires, as well as bombings in the past two months in Medan, North Sumatra and at Jakarta's international airport, to the separatists.

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said during parliamentary meetings yesterday: "The government is considering categorising GAM representatives who are in exile in Sweden as terrorists. They play commanding roles within GAM and are involved in terrorist acts in Indonesia." The rebels have denied the bombing allegations.

Officials say a number of GAM representatives in Aceh who have been arrested since last weekend could face terror charges as well as treason allegations. The detainees include GAM negotiators who were arrested shortly after President Megawati Sukarnoputri's martial law declaration late on Sunday.

As military sources confirmed an escalation of their operations in Aceh, the authorities attempted to muzzle GAM by ordering a clampdown on media reports containing statements from rebel spokesmen.

Military spokesman M. Solih said fighting between troops and rebels began shortly after dawn in the Bireun area, 150km from the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, and was continuing in the afternoon.

"We face difficulties in distinguishing between rebels and civilians. Moreover, it's tough terrain out there. You hear sounds of gunfire from one place, you go to it and nobody's there," Mr Solih told Reuters.

Residents of two villages in the north of the province told AFP that 18 people were killed yesterday by the military. AFP staff saw 11 bodies. It was not possible to determine whether the dead had been GAM members.

Another military spokesman, Lt-Col Achmad Yani Basuki, said the offensive would not be a quick campaign. "This war definitely can't be won in weeks like the US did in Iraq. The rebels have blended in in this guerilla war," he told Reuters.

The "terrorist" tag for the separatists is likely to scupper the chances of further peace talks between the two sides, analysts said. The military is also likely to be given freer rein in its operations, especially in the use of force.

About 30,000 soldiers and thousands more police officers have been deployed to Aceh as part of an integrated force to counter GAM. However, the Indonesians have yet to start an all-out offensive.

GAM spokesman Sofyan Dawod told The Straits Times the separatists were not terrorists. "We are a revolutionary movement that is seeking independence. This terrorist label represents the Indonesian government's attempt to malign us again." But political analyst Arbi Sanit said GAM's hardline position on independence had earned it distrust among most Indonesians.

Rival claims of atrocities in Aceh province

Radio Australia - May 22, 2003

Indonesian troops have been stepping up their operations against separatist rebels in Aceh province. Local reports say that in one incident, at least eight villagers were shot dead in the eastern Bireun area after being lined up by security forces. Indonesia's Foreign Ministry dismissed these reports saying they were stories aimed at discrediting Jakarta. But what about military counter- claims that GAM rebels are themselves targetting civilians?

Presenter/Interviewer: Linda Mottram

Speakers: Tim Palmer, Indonesia correspondent

Tim Palmer: Certainly, I haven't personally been able to see that yet, although we're heading into the area where most of those claims are emerging from right now. But one of the wire services, the AFP has seen 11 bodies in the area where villagers were claiming at least 18 people were killed, and in the majority of cases are telling stories of men and in some cases boys as young as 12 being ordered from their homes during military sweeps through the area and either led away where they've disappeared or being shot nearby. Those people being unarmed.

Now, Indonesia's Army did say that it killed a number of people in that area yesterday, around seven people was their original number, claiming that they were all members of the GAM movement. So clearly a significant difference again emerging in accounts there but it does certainly appear that some of the people were shot through the head having been led away from their houses unarmed. So we will hopefully know more about that tomorrow.

Linda Mottram: There've been suggestions that the Indonesian authorities are intending to move civilians out of what they're calling "strategic areas". Are you seeing that happening?

Tim Palmer: Again, we haven't seen it happen but GAM rebels have contacted the ABC in the past few hours and told us of a story that's happening just off the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.

Indonesia last night announced that it had moved on two islands there with Navy backed up by Marines taking over especially one island, which it says has been used for arms smuggling and for recruiting and training members for the Free Aceh rebels, or GAM.

GAM, when they contacted the ABC last night, told a story that 500 families had been forcibly expelled from the island, a significant part of the population of the island has essentially been cleared, and that those families have been taken onto three Navy warships which GAM named, which are just off the coast here.

So again, we'll be investigating that over the next few hours. That story happened, we were told happening late yesterday.

Linda Mottram: And what about the general climate and the feeling, I mean we're seeing an escalation of operations here, is that very evident to you?

Tim Palmer: It is. The situation here feels like it is deteriorating. On the main road yesterday, as it was the day before when we travelled it, there was virtually no traffic and at one point in fact the main highway, which basically is a lifeline for a large part of this province, was blocked for five hours after GAM rebels ambushed a convoy of trucks, cars and busses and then torched them on a bridge blocking the highway, then waited for Indonesian soldiers to respond and fought them off with gunfire and apparently with some light grenades as well at some stage during that attack.

So there's clearly a real climate of fear and as well as these claims of executions during Indonesian Army sweeps through the northern part of Aceh, there have been suggestions of kidnappings in the past day. Two women disappeared in Bireun, having approached a military checkpoint, haven't been since and, you know, we aren't hearing in fact, many reports coming from the western part of the island, which was even more remote and where initially in the first day we'd been told a similar story, that villagers had been ordered out of their, out of their villages to leave the area and if they stayed would be identified as GAM and dealt with as such.

So you know, as news filters in it's clear that there are widespread operations across the island, that there is a real level of fear growing, especially in the outlying areas.

Aceh rebel leader calls on UN to intervene

Reuters - May 21, 2003

Patrick McLoughlin, Stockholm -- The leadership of separatist rebels in Indonesia's Aceh province, under attack by government forces after peace talks collapsed, called on the United Nations on Wednesday to intervene immediately in the conflict.

Mahmood Malik, whom the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) movement considers its prime minister, blamed the Indonesian government for breaking off last-ditch weekend talks in Tokyo and said Jakarta had "declared war" on the restive province.

"We condemn the Indonesia government in the strongest terms for destroying all prospects for peace in Aceh ... by launching a military operation," Malik said in a communique.

"We appeal to the United Nations for its immediate involvement in the resolution of the Aceh conflict and for an international fact-finding mission to be sent to Aceh to investigate the crimes against humanity that have been committed."

The Swedish-based leader's calls came after Indonesian troops parachuted into Aceh on Monday in a military offensive aimed at crushing a 27-year-old rebellion that has killed more than 10,000 people, most of them civilians.

Malik also called on countries which supplied arms to Indonesia to prohibit the use of their weapons in the province, which lies on the northern tip of Sumatra.

GAM rebels, who number about 5,000 and demand independence, have estimated 20 civilians have been killed so far in this week's operation. Indonesia's military says it has killed 15 rebels.

Truth becomes casualty of war as military restricts media

Jakarta Post - May 22, 2003

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta -- Truth risks becoming another casualty in the conflict in Aceh after the military ruler instructed the media not to print statements from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) members.

Media groups quickly raised strong objections to the new guideline on Wednesday, branding it news censorship, and a violation of a journalist's basic principle of covering both sides.

In its statement, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) said the military's main duties in Aceh were to restore order, protect Aceh civilians and assist the local administration, instead of controlling journalists.

"Just because a journalist quotes GAM leaders does not mean that person is promoting GAM. The media is required to cover both sides, which is in accordance with the principle of balanced reports," the statement said.

Agus Sudibyo, the Institute for the Studies on the Free Flow of Information (ISAI) coordinator for public policy freedom mediation, said the censorship revealed the military's arrogance.

"This is not about taking sides with a certain party. But the issue is that the media must give the same coverage to each of the conflicting parties. That is what we call fair coverage," he told the Post.

AJI and ISAI were responding to Aceh military ruler Maj. Gen. Endang Suwarya, who said the restriction was aimed at preventing the media from reporting statements made by GAM leaders.

"I want all news published to uphold the spirit of nationalism. Put the interests of the unitary state of Indonesia first. Don't give statements from GAM any credence as they are made without facts and evidence," he explained.

As the administrator of martial law, Endang has the authority to impose a complete news blackout according to the Law No. 23/1959 on emergencies.

Aceh-based daily newspaper Serambi Indonesia was the first to be scolded for its coverage. Reporters from private television channel Metro TV have also been given a firm tongue-lashing from the military at the central command in Lhokseumawe because of their footage displaying a group of people wearing GAM symbols who were helping local residents extinguish a fire at a school in Bireuen.

"The officer spent almost two hours laying into us and threatened to expel us from Aceh if we continued airing such footage," one of the reporters said.

AJI demanded that the military drop rulings that would create difficulties or endanger journalists in the conflict area. "The media's credibility and journalists' safety in conflict areas can only be guaranteed if there is fair and partial coverage, not one-sided propagation," it said.

Citing the 1949 Geneva Convention, the alliance urged both the warring parties to protect journalists and consider the press as civilians who shall not be attacked during war time.

Agus also criticized the military's decision to embed a group of journalists with its troops in Aceh, effectively restricting their perspective. "Their argument that the media must produce reports in favor of the unitary Republic of Indonesia is absolutely unacceptable. It definitely goes against the public's right to truthful information," he asserted.

TNI spokesman Maj. Gen. Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin said that, so far, the military had no plans to completely restrict the press, but insisted that there was no need to interview GAM in order to cover both sides. "Of course we acknowledge the principle of covering both sides, but it must be conducted in a way that supports the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia," Sjafrie instructed.

Authorities prepare for mass civilian displacement in Aceh

Radio Australia - May 21, 2003

With the war in Aceh set to to intensify, Jakarta says its preparing for the evacuation of some 300,000 people. Since the weekend declaration of martial law after the collapse of peace talks, an estimated 12,000 Acehnese have already been displaced. And with that number expected to rise, Jakarta has launched a humanitarian operation, designating refugee shelters.

Presenter/Interviewer: Sarah Gibson

Speakers: Michael Elmquist, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jakarta; Achmad Sujudi, Indonesia's Health Minister

Gibson: The first contingent of extra medical workers is going to Aceh this week. 29 specialists have been sent by the Indonesian Ministry of Health, as part of emergency preparations following the imposition of martial law. Minister for Health, Achmad Sujudi, says there are already seven hospitals in the province, and extra resources will be sent in as required.

Sujudi: If necessary, we can mobilise doctors from another region of Indonesia. We can mobilise specialists, I think 100 more doctors, maybe 200 and nurses, may be 1000. What we are thinking now in the humanitarian is the people. I mean the common people not the military, because military they have their own system, but what we are preparing now, they're humanitarian for civilian.

Gibson: The Health Minister admits he has no idea how many civilian casualties to expect. But, he says the government is working with specific estimates when it comes to the expected numbers of Internally-Displaced People. Mr Sujudi says 85 camps have been set up around Aceh, and in neighbouring North Sumatra and Medan, to cope with a minimum 100,000 expected IDPs. But he says the number could well be higher.

Sujudi: It could be 300,000, I don't know exactly yet but our estimates made also by local government of Aceh and also by military, it's about 100,000 but it could be until 300,000.

Gibson: How concerned is the Indonesian governmnet about the humanitarian side of things ... I mean it is the Indonesian government that has launched this offensive, and clearly civilians are going to get hurt. How do you respond to that?

Sujudi: Yes we are very concerned about that ... so that's why we are strengthening our system there.

Gibson: The figure of 300,000 is backed up by the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA. It's role is to coordinate international humanitarian assistance, in cooperation with local governments. The head of its Indonesia office Michael Elmquist says contingency planning for Aceh has been underway for some time.

Elmquist: Over the last several weeks, we have initiated contingency planning. Initially, internally amongst the UN agencies, then we widened it to include the international NGOs, and most recently, we shared our contingency planning with the government, and the government shared their contingency planning with us, not in details but in broad terms. I think both parties are operating on the same kind of planning assumptions, that there could be up to 300,000 internally-displaced persons that would require humanitarian assistance. That figure is not a prediction, it is a kind of planning figure to simply have something to plan against.

Gibson: Would you say it is a worst case scenario?

Elmquist: No I think for us we regard it more as the most likely scenario. We also have a best case scenario which unfortunately we have not unfolded, and then the worst case scenario would be an all-out conflict, but I don't think that's likely.

Gibson: Health Minister Achmad Sujudi says he expects his department alone will spend 50 billion rupiah -- or six million US dollars -- on the first six months of the humanitarian operation. That figure is a fraction of Jakarta's latest 200 million US dollar estimate of the cost of the military operation in Aceh.

But, Michael Elmquist, from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jakarta, says the Indonesian government does seem to be aware of its humanitarian responsibilities.

Elmquist: Well all the indications we have, and as I say it is early days, but all the indications we have is that the Government is taking it extremely seriously. I met with government officials yesterday and discussed our cooperation, and the indication is that the governmnet is very keen for the UN and the international NGOs to continue their presence in Aceh and continue their humanitarian work there, and working with the government. So the indication we have is that indeed the government is taking them seriously. I think we should also recognise that we're coming up for elections next year so it's important for the government to be seen as doing the right thing.

Military chief defends use of British jets

The Guardian (UK) - May 22, 2003

John Aglionby -- Indonesia's military chief warned Britain yesterday not to try to dictate how he should use his country's British-made Hawk fighter jets in its operations against separatists in Aceh.

General Endriartono Sutarto told the Guardian during a visit to Aceh that he was not concerned about promises made before the purchase. "In order to cover the whole region and complete the job, I am going to use what I have," he said. "After all, I have paid already."

He confirmed that the Hawks had been used offensively, but he said the fighters had not yet been used in air-to-ground attacks. He gave no promises about their future use. "If we don't use them [for air-to-ground operations], we don't use them," he said. "But who knows?"

Britain's ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Gozney, said yesterday that Indonesia's defence minister, Matori Abdul Djalil, had reassured him on Tuesday about how the Hawks would be used. "The defence minister confirmed that the Hawks would not be used in a ground-attack role," he said -- but he made no mention of their use in other offensive roles.

Britain sold the fighters to Jakarta on the understanding that they would not be used in offensive operations in Indonesia. In the first three days of renewed hostilities in Aceh, the Indonesian military repeatedly used four of the aircraft against the Free Aceh Movement.

Aceh military offensive heats up

Radio Australia - May 21, 2003

In Aceh's western district, government troops have clashed with separatist rebels as the military continues to boost its strength, sending more troops and and police. So far, 17 civilians and five rebels have reportedly been killed in the battle and some 200-schools torched. But each side is blaming the other for the destruction.

Presenter/Interviewer: Linda LoPresti

Speakers: Tim Palmer, Indonesia correspondent reporting from Aceh.

Palmer: Well there is some confusion about who is a civilian and who isn't. Obviously, when we hear the claims from the GAM, the Free Aceh Movement that 17 civilians have been killed in the first two days, the government saying that it's only responsible for five deaths, and claiming they are all rebel guerillas ... er, it hasn't been possible to confirm the casualties on either side at this point.

But in addition to those early figures, I've heard reports directly from the field from a GAM spokesman near Bireun, claiming that an Army operation swooped in through villages close to Bireun today, that that ten civilians and two GAM fighters were killed in a single village after it was hit by a serious attack by TNI soldiers.

Again, we haven't been able to confirm that at all. Reporters have been stopped from getting into that area, but it's one of a number of heavier attacks today as the army swept through that part of the north Aceh regency of Aceh province. In other attacks, the main road linking Banda Aceh with Lhokseumawe, was closed all together for a number of hours after an ambush which we presume was carried out by GAM fighters, hit a series of trucks and busses and left them blazing along the road.

Lo Presti: We've heard a military spokesman being quoted today as saying that an operation is under way. Any idea what that might mean? Does that mean a major attack is imminent?

Palmer: There has been discussions that there was going to be a major assault, but I think what they may be referring to is this series of sweeping operations close to Bireun, and near the town of Sidli. We did hear some reports that there were some Kopasus Special Forces tied up in that operation. They were spearheading it, although one report I heard from that area suggested that Kopasus soldiers had said, while they engaged the enemy, they were unable to capture those forces that they were fighting with. But again they didn't specify casualties at that point.

Lo Presti: From a reporting perspective, how difficult is it to get information, given that Jakarta has put a muzzle on the media, refusing any separatist rebels from being interviewed?

Palmer: There's not much that Jakarta can actually do about it unless they are actually monitoring the press. At this stage, they haven't stopped us from being in contact with the GAM rebels because we've simply been unable to. Over the past few years, GAM has set themselves up with satellite phones and as well as simply using cell phones to speak to reporters, it is of course much more difficult than it was even a matter of even two weeks ago to physically meet up with members of GAM. They fear that reporters might be tailed in by Army or that they may be located some other way. But while the governmnet is trying to restrict reporters from getting any viewpoint from the rebels, it's pretty much not possible for them to do so unless they're determined that they are going to monitor reporters and then act by possibly throwing them out of the province, if they don't like what they hear. Now there are some suggestions that the government's going to tighten up accreditation over the next few days, and that reporters will be brought under the provisions of martial law, a curfew under the martial law, which again has been suggested may be implemented in the coming hours, but it's not quite clear how the government intends that to work.

Indonesia captures and kills rebels

Sydney Morning Herald - May 21, 2003

Indonesian troops have killed or captured dozens of insurgents in its north-western province of Aceh in a major offensive aimed at destroying a separatist rebellion. The guerrillas have pledged "a drawn-out war".

In her first remarks about the offensive, President Megawati Sukarnoputri said yesterday she ordered the operation with a heavy heart and urged the country to back her.

"I hope this action will be understood and supported by all the Indonesian people, including those groups working for democracy and human rights," said Megawati, a nationalist leader whose father was Indonesia's first president.

Megawati signed a decree on Sunday authorising six months of martial law and ordering 30,000 government troops to crush about 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas fighting for independence in the oil- and gas-rich region.

World leaders, meanwhile, urged Jakarta to resume peace talks to end the fighting. The conflict has simmered for 27 years and has killed 12,000 people, mainly during outbursts of fierce fighting.

The military said it shot and killed at least 12 rebels and arrested dozens more in Indonesia's biggest military offensive since it invaded East Timor in 1975.

Human rights groups urged the government to protect civilians and warned the offensive could lead to new abuses by Indonesia's military, which already has a long record of abuse in Aceh.

Indonesian military chief General Endriartono Sutarto toured Aceh's capital of Banda Aceh yesterday, directing troops to fight rebels of the Free Aceh Movement, known as GAM, "till your last drop of blood".

"Chase them, destroy GAM. Don't talk about it, just finish them off," he said. "If they want to surrender, then don't kill them. But if they persist, you only have one job, destroy them." Rebel spokesman Sofyan Daud insisted the guerrillas will remain in control of their bases in the province of 4.3 million people.

"We will fight back hard," he told The Associated Press by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.

The wounds inflicted by the military "will hurt for a long time and create a new generation of rebels", Daud said. "It's going to be a drawn-out war."

The United States, Japan, Australia and members of the European Union said that weekend talks aimed at salvaging a December 9 deal for regional autonomy in Aceh should have been given more time to succeed.

"We hope that it's going to be possible to get back on to the diplomatic path before too long," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.

The talks in Tokyo collapsed on Sunday when rebels rejected Jakarta's demands to lay down their weapons and accept autonomy instead of independence. "It's our judgment that the possible avenues to a peaceful resolution were not fully explored at the Tokyo conference," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Dozens of schools were burned down in Aceh yesterday, with each side blaming the other for the destruction. One education official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said masked men in civilian clothes hurled petrol and torched at least 180 schools during the night.

"Once the fighting was in the mountains and rebel strongholds. Now the violence has spread to the outskirts of Banda Aceh," said resident Muhammad Bukhori, as children nearby played in the still-smoking ruins of their school near the provincial capital.

The words "Merdeka! Merdeka!" -- "freedom" in Indonesian -- were scribbled with chalk on the school's walls.

Under martial law, authorities have wide powers to make arrests and limit movements in and out of the province 1,900 km north- west of the capital, Jakarta.

The December 9 ceasefire accord signed in Geneva envisioned autonomy, rebel disarmament and military withdrawals. Neither side carried out its end of the deal.

Bitter Acehnese say Megawati is no different than her father Sukarno, who they say broke a promise for autonomy that was supposed to have been Aceh's reward for helping spearhead Indonesia's fight for independence from the Dutch during the 1940s.

The region has a distinct language, culture and a stricter brand of Islam than practiced in the rest of Indonesia.

Critics say the latest offensive was launched not just to prevent the vast archipelago nation from breaking apart. Extortion, drug running and arms smuggling have led elements on both sides to prefer the status quo over peace.

Also at stake are huge reserves of oil and gas that locals want to keep for themselves.

Big trouble in little Aceh

ASAP news list (original source not quoted) - May 22, 2003

Greg Sheridan -- When in 1978 Dick Woolcott paid his last call as Australian ambassador in Jakarta on then Indonesian president Suharto, Suharto told him the real threat to Indonesian stability would eventually come from Islamic extremists, who already had a stronghold in Aceh, especially if they received outside support.

Woolcott recalls the meeting in his fascinating memoir, The Hot Seat (HarperCollins). Reading Woolcott's sobering account of Indonesia's escalating involvement in the tragedy of East Timor is a disturbing counterpoint to now.

For Indonesia today is sleepwalking once more into tragedy, this time in Aceh. The differences between Aceh and East Timor are vast and it is unlikely that Aceh will end up independent. But the basic pattern -- of a massive but indecisive military campaign, accompanied by human rights abuses and lingering resentment and alienation among the civilian population, could well be repeated.

Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri, with an eye to exploiting nationalist sentiment in the lead-up to next year's election, has deployed into Aceh 30,000 soldiers from TNI and up to 10,000 Brimob, or mobile police personnel. That's a lot of fire power for a province of only 4 million people. The rebel movement, GAM, has about 5000 fighters. They will follow a classical guerilla strategy of fleeing to the hills, disappearing among the civilian population, launching lightning strikes.

Aceh is a beautiful, densely green province on the far northern tip of Sumatra. It is the one part of South-East Asia in which a fundamentalist Islam has taken deep root and is not a recent import from the Middle East. The Acehnese always resisted Dutch rule and were fierce in the fight for Indonesian independence.

The differences between Aceh and East Timor are fundamental. Almost all post-colonial states have question marks over their legitimacy. Indonesia derives its legitimacy in part as the successor state to the Dutch East Indies, of which Aceh was part. East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was never part of the Dutch East Indies. Similarly, the international community has always recognised Aceh as an integral part of Indonesia, whereas, while 30 nations recognised Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor, it was never ratified at the UN. Similarly, the East Timorese are religiously and ethnically distinct from most Indonesians. Although the Acehnese also claim ethnic distinctiveness they are, like most Indonesians, Muslims and the real ethnic difference from their neighbours in nearby provinces is slight.

Most important, GAM does not have anything like the international support that East Timor's independence campaigners had. There are good reasons for this. GAM is a murderous and extremist outfit, involved in narcotics trade, protection rackets and a full range of human rights abuses. These activities sit uneasily with its religious puritanism, but sit with it they do.

There is no independent information on what a majority of Acehnese want but probably they feel alienation and despair with both GAM and the Indonesian military.

The International Crisis Group, in a recent report on Aceh, listed four possible options for the Indonesian Government. It could: negotiate with GAM; buy off GAM; marginalise GAM; or pursue military operations. For the moment it has chosen the last option.

There is plenty of blame to share all around here. Talks between Jakarta and GAM broke down last week because GAM would negotiate only for full independence. Jakarta has implemented a deep autonomy package that guarantees a percentage of resource revenues to the local provincial government and also allows it to implement sharia law.

International opinion is not going to come to GAM's rescue. Western opinion, especially the US, is preoccupied with Indonesia's co-operation on the war on terror. International Islamic opinion tends to support the territorial integrity of existing Muslim states. Some extremists want a pan-Muslim mega- state but separatism is not popular among Muslim extremists, though GAM historically got some support from Libya.

South-East Asian opinion is strongly opposed to separatist movements because each country faces potential separatist challenges at home.

Nonetheless, this does not give Indonesia a free hand to do what it likes in Aceh -- nor should it. The danger is that the TNI will behave so badly that Indonesia will forfeit all these advantages in international opinion and end up producing what it most fears, a separatist movement with significant international sympathy.

Australia's interests are overwhelmingly served by the maintenance of Indonesia's territorial integrity. The process of breaking up Indonesia would be bloody and catastrophic, with profound economic and military consequences for us. However, we also need TNI's international reputation to be good enough that we can continue vital counter-terrorist co-operation.

It appears that GAM, like some Australian commentators, see Indonesia as a Javanese empire analogous to the old Soviet Union, which broke up into its constituent parts. I'm inclined to think Indonesia may come eventually to resemble India, with constant trouble in the provinces, a perennially sub-optimal economic performance and so many chronic problems that you can never quite see how it hangs together, yet an effective state that muddles through.

Australian politicians of both sides have been rightly cautious on Aceh. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer urges negotiation and moderation but constantly reiterates that this is an internal Indonesian problem. His opposite number, Labor's Kevin Rudd, calls for a UN mediator but readily repeats that Labor supports Indonesia's territorial integrity and accepts that Aceh is part of Indonesia. Defence Minister Robert Hill does not believe that the new military phase will hurt Australia's renewed co-operation with TNI and Kopassus in the war against terrorism.

If TNI behaves very badly in Aceh, this may be an unduly optimistic assessment. Labor for the moment supports co-operation with TNI but not Kopassus. It is an unpleasant irony that so many and such deep Australian interests are engaged, yet there is nothing we can do beyond keeping our heads, not trying to inject ourselves as a party principle and urging moderation on both sides.

Aceh: Indonesia moves closer to all-out war

Green Left Weekly - May 21, 2003

Max Lane, Jakarta -- A report issued on May 9 by the conservative Brussels-based International Crisis Group, headed by former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, declared: "The Indonesian military is not using the phrase 'shock and awe', but the stream of reports on the number of troops, tanks, and weapons being prepared for Aceh is designed to have the same effect."

The report quoted Major-General Djali Yusuf, chief of the regional military command based in Banda Aceh, as saying that the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) troop strength in Aceh had reached 26,000 in late April. The report stated that this figure included 2000 soldiers who arrived in Aceh in mid-April, among them a company of army special forces (Kopassus) troops.

Sudi Silalahi, secretary to chief Indonesian security minister General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, told the Indonesian press that the TNI was planning to conduct operations aiming at "separating civilians" from Free Aceh Movement (GAM) guerrilla fighters by first asking women and children to come out from their homes, then unarmed men. This, he said, "would finally leave those with guns".

This kind of operation, known as "sweeping", is the most feared military operation in Aceh. It inevitably brings with it many civilian casualties and widespread violation of human rights, including torture.

The presidential decree ordering the military offensive in Aceh, in combination with "humanitarian", "law enforcement" and "governance" operations, has been postponed at least three times since it was first mooted in late April. The delay in issuing the decree has been a result of both domestic and international resistance to a military escalation in Aceh.

The possibility of a renewal of warfare in Aceh was first mooted after it became clear that the ceasefire agreement reached between Jakarta and GAM in December was breaking down.

In February and March there were attacks on the offices of the ceasefire monitors by demonstrators claiming the monitors were too sympathetic to GAM. There had also been an escalation in armed clashes between GAM and the TNI.

Finally, Jakarta seized on a request by GAM for a two-day postponement of negotiations in Geneva scheduled for April 25 to call off talks altogether. GAM was given until May 12 to agree to lay down its arms and renounce its goal of independence for Aceh.

Since April 25 there has been growing criticism of the prospect of a military solution to the Aceh situation by politicians and media commentators. The essence of their arguments is that using the TNI against GAM will only further Acehnese popular sentiment against Aceh's integration within the Republic of Indonesia. There is, in fact, a widespread understanding in Jakarta political circles that the growth of GAM in the 1980s was a direct result of TNI operations and further military repression will only fuel Acehnese support for the guerrillas.

However, while aware of this fact, none of the mainstream Indonesian political parties and figures wish to go against the TNI on an issue which the military brass sees as crucial to continuing its role in politics.

A desire to have the TNI as an ally in the lead up to the April 2004 general elections means that most parliamentary politicians will support the government-TNI position on Aceh. They may even vote in a six-month period of martial law which would end any role for the predominantly Acehnese civil service and police in Aceh's political life. It would also give the TNI total control over all the media and suspend all civil rights.

There will be another "last minute" meeting between GAM and Indonesian government representatives in Tokyo on May 18. This meeting was agreed to after the ambassadors of the US, Japan, Italy and Switzerland as well as the representatives of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank had a late night meeting with the security committee of the Indonesian cabinet on May 15.

The next day, however, Indonesian police arrested the GAM negotiators on their way to the Banda Aceh airport to fly to the Tokyo meeting. Under the terms of the December 9 ceasefire agreement, GAM representatives must report to the police if they want to leave Aceh.

Two axes of conflict

The Acehnese people endured a double burden of oppression during the period of General Suharto's dictatorship in Indonesia. In addition to having to endure the same conditions of repression, the rest of the Indonesian population, they were subject to an extended period of counter-insurgency warfare by the TNI after the formation of GAM as a guerrilla organisation in the late 1970s.

Originally a tiny and marginalised group, GAM was able to rally support as resentment among the Acehnese population at the TNI's brutality and corruption turned into a desire to secede from Indonesia.

After the fall of Suharto in 1998, the space opened up for more open political organisation across Indonesia and many more Acehnese national rights organisations developed. GAM is not an umbrella organisation channeling all these sentiments but represents one political tendency within the Acehnese national movement. Jakarta negotiated with it because it has an effective armed wing.

The first axis of conflict in Aceh is around the issue of Aceh's relationship to the Indonesian state and how the Acehnese people liberate themselves from the TNI's repression.

A second axis of conflict, the real basis of the current developments, relates directly to the role of the TNI in Indonesian politics more generally, and which has greatly been weakened since the fall of Suharto.

The police force has been taken out of TNI. This threatens the whole rationale of the TNI's territorial structure, which is based on the deployment of troops throughout the country to ensure domestic security. The TNI is desperate to prove that it is needed to solve major political problems, thus giving justification to its representation in parliament.

The TNI brass has been running an all-out open campaign in the media to get support for a war in Aceh, which is now central to their strategy for moving back to the centre of political power. A failure to get what they want in the next few weeks could create a political crisis around the role of the TNI.

On the other hand, if the TNI does get its way, an explosion of anti-TNI, pro-independence sentiment in Aceh could also lead to such a crisis.

So far significant sections of the Acehnese society -- the civil service, the established social elite, the police and even the Acehnese members of TNI -- have continued to support integration into Indonesia. These forces may very well switch to supporting independence -- although not necessarily GAM -- if Jakarta does go ahead with a war despite their pleas not to do so. If this happens, the TNI will be held responsible.

Either way, Aceh will not only be the site of tumultuous politics within its own society in the next year but also a key factor in generating a political crisis in Jakarta itself.

Aceh villagers pay price of battle

The Australian - May 22, 2003

Sian Powell, Jakarta -- Bullets cracked through the smoke from three blazing vegetable trucks and a flaming bus in the village of Teupin Raya as the battle for Aceh grew more heated yesterday.

The trucks and the bus had been stopped on the bridge at Teupin Raya by gunmen, probably rebels from the separatist Free Aceh Movement. The passengers fled to a nearby mosque as bullets whipped through the air, and soldiers lay on their bellies, ready to fire.

Within minutes, a truckload of Special Forces troops arrived and reversed towards the bridge, where a column of thick black smoke was rising.

Three more trucks pulled up, filled with a mix of soldiers and Brimob -- the Mobile Brigade paramilitary police -- who fanned out to secure the area. Crouching and running, they took up positions behind walls and under trees, sub-machineguns ready to blast.

This is Aceh -- a scene of devastation and destruction, where scores of schools have been burnt, two corpses were found near the road between the provincial capital of Banda Aceh and Siglie yesterday morning, and where gun battles are commonplace.

This is the result of failed peace talks, of a separatist movement unwilling to renounce independence and an Indonesian Government determined to crush the rebels. The conflict has ground on for 26 years, and now it has begun again in earnest.

Anisa, a 24-year-old mother expecting her third child, flinched at the sounds of grenades exploding near the Teupin Raya bridge. The village school was burnt down the night before, and the bridge has been blocked every night with felled coconut trees. On Monday, four tyres of a local bus were shot out.

"We are all afraid," Anisa said, cradling two-year-old Moharram. "We don't know what's happening, and the children will be traumatised." Married to a trader and living in Teupin Raya, in the tense district of Pidie on the main road between Aceh's two main cities -- Banda Aceh and Lhoksamauwe -- Anisa fears for the future. She wants a quiet life, she says, but everything has gone wrong. Next door, in the village's health clinic, several frightened women crouch by the windows, wanting to go home to their husbands and children but fearing the consequences.

The Banda Aceh-Lhoksamauwe road is strategically important, and it appears the rebels will try to control it. Tiny jungle roads around Teupin Raya, which could provide a detour around the blazing traffic jam on the bridge, were blocked by logs yesterday, and traffic was rerouted in an hour-long loop.

Military officers said the rebels preferred to ambush Indonesian army trucks on small roads where there was less room to manoeuvre. Two tanks were sent to try to shift the debris, but later in the day the road remained blocked.

Villagers, perhaps used to the violence, eventually began to collect the tomatoes, chillies and apples that had spilt from the blazing trucks, while a relay of little boys with leaky buckets threw water on the smouldering bus.

A middle-aged man was led down the road, bleeding heavily from a head wound. He had been hit with a rifle butt in the head and chest -- an Indonesian soldier's response to the villagers' failure to report the rebel presence in the village.

The victim, Ilyas, 51, said the Indonesian military commander had reprimanded the soldier for the violence. Still, the indignity remained. "I would prefer to be shot than hit like this," he said.

Casualties rise as offensive intensifies

Jakarta Post - May 22, 2003

Jakarta/Lhokseumawe -- Casualties rose on Wednesday as the Indonesian Military (TNI) mounted massive attacks on strongholds of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Bireuen, North Aceh, and Aceh Besar.

Senior army officers said soldiers killed nine rebels on the third and bloodiest day of the assault, but separatists put the death toll at 13, including 10 civilians. There was no independent source to verify the claims.

In Bireuen, at least seven alleged members of GAM were killed in shootouts with government troops sent in to put an end to arson attacks on public schools in the regency.

Public transportation in the regency also came to a halt following attacks by unidentified people on vehicles passing by the main road connecting Banda Aceh and Medan in North Sumatra.

"It is too dangerous to go outside the house. We decided not to go outside," Aisyah, a resident of Djuli village, Bireuen, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Government troops also clashed with rebels on Wednesday in Teupin-Punti, Geudong district, where the rebels opened fire on a vehicle belong to US oil company ExxonMobil. No casualties were reported.

In Pidie, GAM torched five vehicles at Bleumpang III district along the highway between Banda Aceh and Medan, while in Aceh Besar, Din Syehman, GAM commander for Cot Kreueng Darussalam in Kuta Baro district and his bodyguard M. Isa were killed in a gunfight with the military.

Also on Wednesday, military helicopters fired rockets at rebel bases on two islands off Banda Aceh, but no information on casualties was immediately available.

Meanwhile, martial law administrator Maj. Gen. Endang Suwarya moved to censor the press, telling journalists covering the operations to stop quoting GAM spokesmen.

"Journalists are free to report on the actions of security personnel in the field. As long as it is correct, we will accept it," he said. "But there should be no reports from GAM and [no] reports that praise GAM." He also said that he was considering implementing a curfew in Pidie and Bireuen.

Endang said authorities would arrest GAM supporters -- individuals or organizations -- as part of efforts to reduce support for the movement.

Police on Tuesday arrested Cut Nur Asikin, an activist campaigning for an independence referendum. They said she may face charges of plotting against the state or violating antiterrorism laws. Endang had also ordered troops to shoot arsonists on sight after unidentified men torched about 248 school buildings, mostly in Biruen and Pidie regencies, after the military operation was launched last Monday.

According to Endang, GAM rebels had burned a transmitter of state-owned radio RRI in the district of Indrapuri, Aceh Besar, late on Tuesday.

TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto briefed military officers in Lhokseumawe after realizing that the separatist guerrillas had discarded their combat attire and infiltrated the civilian populace.

The four-star general acknowledged that the situation "would make the military operations more difficult than had been predicted". In Jakarta, Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) chairman Mari'e Muhammad said his office had distributed 10 tons of rice from the World Food Program (WFP) as the military operation began in the province. "We also have hundreds of volunteers and sufficient medical supplies to treat victims of the ongoing operation in the province," he said.

Mari'e called on both the TNI and GAM to provide access and guarantee the safety of volunteers while conducting their humanitarian duties in the province. "We expressed hope that both sides would respect the Geneva convention that obligates the warring parties to guarantee the safety of humanitarian workers and provide access while performing their duties," he added.

Separately, Coordinating Minister for Social Welfare Jusuf Kalla said that the government had difficulties in distributing basic provisions for the Acehnese as many of the staple foodstuffs must be delivered from Medan. "We have enough rice in the province, around 45,000 tons, but we may have difficulties in providing other basic needs, which have to be delivered from Medan," he said. The government, Jusuf said, was trying to find an appropriate way to distribute the goods.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirajuda said on Wednesday that the government had demanded that the Swedish government take action on its Acehnese citizens who were responsible for directing attacks in Indonesian cities.

Police round up activists, claiming GAM link

Jakarta Post - May 22, 2003

Apriadi Gunawan and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Medan/Jakarta -- In support of the government's pledge to quash the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), the police rounded up activists and other individuals and charged them with subversion over their alleged connection with the separatist group.

On Wednesday, the Banda Aceh District Police declared a female activist, identified as 47-year-old Cut Asikin, as a suspect in subversion and terror cases in the province. Cut, who leads the Srikandi Aceh women's rights organization, was arrested at her residence in the Lampula area in Banda Aceh on Tuesday afternoon.

Banda Aceh Police Chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Alfons claimed that Cut was the leader of GAM's women's military wing Inoeng Balee. He told reporters that the police charged Cut for violating articles on subversion from the Criminal Code as well as articles of the Antiterrorism Law, which carries the death penalty. Cut, a mother of five, owns a hotel in Banda Aceh. She is currently being interrogated by the police.

Separately, the North Aceh Police arrested three people over their alleged involvement with GAM during an operation dubbed "Balance Operation". One of the suspects, 40-year-old Sheny Angelina, is the secretary to David Gorman, the spokesman of the Henry Dunant Center (HDC), which facilitated the peace agreement between Jakarta and GAM.

Angelina was later released along with an unidentified activist. The third was still being detained for questioning, said North Sumatra Police Chief Brig. Gen. Edi Sunarno. Edi told The Jakarta Post that Angelina and the two others were arrested at about 1:45 p.m. while on transit at Polonia airport in Medan en route to Banda Aceh from Jakarta.

The police alleged that Angelina, an Indonesian national, was a GAM negotiator, as she had attended the recent peace conference in Tokyo, held in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the peace agreement.

"The arrest is in line with [the government's] commitment to law enforcement in its Balance Operation, which has been conducted due to the tense situation in Aceh," Edi asserted.

However, Gorman said that the arrest was a mistake. "She is a staff of the Henry Dunant Center and has nothing to do with GAM. It [the arrest] was a mistake," Gorman told the Post by telephone.

Indonesian military authorities stationed in Aceh announced that they would take firm action against any GAM supporters, whether individuals or organizations, as part of its efforts to reduce support for the separatist movement as part of the martial law imposed by the government.

Maj. Gen. Endang Suwarya, Aceh's military commander and the military law administration chief for Aceh, accused the Aceh Referendum Information Center (SIRA) -- whose chairman is currently on trial for violating the Law on Public Rallies -- and the Student Solidarity for the People's Movement (SMUR) of being GAM sympathizers. He threatened to arrest their members if they continued their activities.

Munir, a prominent activist, said that the moves to round up human rights activists showed that authorities were attempting to "kill control agents by oppressing those elements by labeling them GAM sympathizers". "This tendency clearly shows a deviation from the military operation in Aceh, as well as the government's aim to intimidate non-governmental organizations," he added.

Munir said that military authorities must not stereotype NGOs as GAM sympathizers, as many of them work in the area of human rights, and had no political motives.

Activists arrested as they rally against war in Aceh

Jakarta Post - May 22, 2003

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, Jakarta -- An antiwar rally here ended in the arrest of four foreign and two Indonesian participants on Wednesday while they were expressing solidarity for the Acehnese people who have seen violence return to their home soil.

The arrest took place when about 50 demonstrators marched to the presidential palace after a rally in front of the United States Embassy, where they protested what they called the American occupation of Iraq.

Dozens of riot police dispersed the demonstrators, who included members of the Democratic People's Party (PRD), the National Democratic Students League (LMND), the Indonesian Transportation Workers Union and the Democratic Students Network.

The four foreigners were Australian Nick Everett and Kylie Moon of the Walk Against War Coalition, South African Lydia Cairncross of the Antiwar Coalition and Yong Chan of South Korea. They are being detained at the Central Jakarta Police Station.

Also arrested were Zeli Ariane, chairwoman of Jakarta chapter of PRD and an unidentified labor union activist, but their whereabouts remain unknown, according to rally organizer Natalia Scholastika.

Deputy chief of Central Jakarta Police, Adj. Sr. Comr. Ricky F. Wakanno, said the demonstrators violated the law by taking part in a street protest. But as of Wednesday evening, no charges had been filed.

The foreign activists, who had taken part in the global antiwar movement following the US-led attack on Iraq, are in Jakarta to attend an international peace conference which concluded on Wednesday. They come from 23 countries.

Foreign participants of the conference are expected to leave on Friday at the latest.

"We suspect the police took tough measures against us because we support self-determination for the Acehnese," Natalia told The Jakarta Post. She said the rally organizer had notified the police of the conference and the street rally, as required by the 1998 law on freedom of expression.

During the media briefing earlier in the day, Indonesian participant Dita Indah Sari said the conference resulted in a joint statement against the military offensive and the imposition of martial law in Aceh.

"We demand the continuation of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement and the will to settle the conflict involving wider participation of Acehnese civil society," labor activist Dita said.

A participant from Italy, Rafaella Bollini of the Coordination of the European Social Forum, said the antiwar group avoided applying double standards on Aceh. "We condemn every use of force which targets civilians or schools," she said.

Fears of a return to high civilian casualties

Radio Australia - May 19, 2003

President Megawati Sukarnoputri's declaration of martial law brings to an end a six month cease-fire. The Free Aceh rebels say they are ready to return to war and Indonesian troops have already begun military attacks against the rebels. But does President Megawati's decision have the solid backing of the Indonesian people? Elements within the parliament say the cease fire should have been given more time to work. They fear the imposition of martial law in Aceh will result in large numbers of civilian casualties.

Presenter/Interviewer: Sarah Gibson

Speakers: Mohammad Hikam, co-chair of Indonesia's National Awakening Party; Ed Aspinall, Lecturer in Southeast Asian Studies, University of Sydney; Professor Yusny Saby, an advisor to the Henri Dunant Centre in Aceh

Gibson: The announcement at midnight last night that martial law would be imposed in Aceh province came as a blow to Professor Yusny Saby. Based in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, he has long been involved in monitoring the peace process -- most recently as an advisor to the Henri Dunant Centre -- the Swiss- based group that since last December has been the official peace broker between the two sides. Professor Yusny Saby says the military build-up was immediately apparent.

Saby: "Immediately this morning we saw some planes, military airplanes flying around the city and we heard also some kind of bombs being around, but not in the city of course, in the suburbs. That's what we heard and aeroplanes roaming around."

Gibson: And what's the general feeling in Aceh with this announcement there would be martial law and that the peace talks have failed?

Saby: "Yes of course this is a fear; a scare is there immediately with the people, what is the limit of this kind of martial law that is being implemented? How much casualties, can we prevent it, and what's the target? How much a target can we fix indirectly, people are steeling themselves and they are frightened of the situation because even adhering through the martial law, this is really a problem of itself, because so far no one's heard the martial law, even in Maluku you know, there's no martial law. They call it civil emergency, civil law. Well now here the first time in my life, I got this emergency law. Today I do not know what's going to happen, the people are still feeling like that, they are really scared and afraid."

Gibson: The target of the Indonesian government's military offensive are rebels belonging to the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM. But, as Ed Aspinall from the University of Sydney explains, the strategy is risky and he fears civilians will be caught in the middle.

Aspinall: "Military officers are insistent that they have learned the lessons of the past, that they're not going to repeat the kind of gross violations of human rights, which took place during the most recent round of very severe military operations in Aceh they did during the early 1990s when many thousands of civilians were killed."

"However the difficulty they face of course is that they're facing a rural insurgency, which is deeply rooted in the local populations in part of the Acehanese countryside, so that they face this tremendous difficulty of going into rural areas where the insurgents are really part of the local population. And if the past is any guide any attempt to root out the separatists from the local population many, many civilians will also be killed."

Gibson: The launch of the military operation in Aceh marks the end of attempts to reach a negotiated peace agreement, under the auspices of the December 9th peace accord brokered by the Henri Dunant centre. But attempts to find a peaceful solution to the long-running Aceh conflict started well before then -- a process that, as Ed Aspinall explains, the military has at best, tolerated.

Aspinall: "See this negotiation process was really begun in early 2000 during the presidency of Abdurrahman Wahid, and at that time the military was really on the retreat politically at the national level in Indonesia, and although many of the military leaders at that time didn't favour negotiations, the President Abdurrahman Wahid did indeed favour them very strongly, he had a kind of philosophical commitment to the idea of negotiation, dialogue as a means to resolving conflict."

"And right from that period it was very clear that certainly elements in the military leadership had no truck with the idea of talking with these people who they'd always viewed as their mortal enemies, but at that time they weren't in a position to successfully resist. And this process has really been going on for the last three years, the kind of to and fro between political forces at the national level over whether a military or a dialogue are the most appropriate means to resolving the Aceh conflict."

Gibson: The National Awakening Party of former President Abdurrahman Wahid is still opposed to the tactic of using the military to pressure GAM. Party co-chair Mohammad Hikam says the Indonesian government has not exhausted all options to achieve peace.

Hikam: "I think there is still some room to talk with GAM, and also involving many, many society and also members of the elite in the society, including the Ulamas or the religious leaders, in order to put GAM into rest and not using violence in forcing their demands."

Gibson: And what do you think that this offensive that's being launched says about the role of the military in Indonesian society now?

Hikam: "Well obviously the military's goal is to make the military appearance and the military presence in Indonesian politics is still very much indivisible, by using the Aceh situation then the military at least sending the message that the people still depend on the military's presence in order to maintain security and national integrity. And then by doing that I think the political gain would be quite tremendous in the future if the military succeeded in using this kind of approach."

Gibson: What do you think will happen next? I mean how do you think it's going to end?

Hikam: "Well what I'm afraid is not the success or the failure of the military option, but the impact on the society in Aceh, I think the history of Aceh shows us that people in Aceh will never give up. And you know on the other hand we will face tremendous amounts of sacrifice in terms of life, property and dignity of the people of Aceh, and that's going to be very, very expensive to pay for the nation in the future."

Schools torched in Aceh province

Radio Australia - May 21, 2003

Locals in the Indonesian province of Aceh are accusing forces they won't name of setting about destroying the island's very future, its schools. Hundreds have been torched in just one day, at the same time as Indonesia's military chief ordered his soldiers to exterminate the separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM.

Presenter/Interviewer: Tim Palmer, Indonesia correspondent

Speakers: Acehenese citizens in Bandeh Aceh; Indonesian soldier

Tim Palmer: A man picks at mathematics books in the corner of the still hot shell of a classroom, but they become ashes in his hands. What started with a few schools yesterday, has now become a phenomenon across Aceh. More than 200 schools burnt in a day.

It seems it must have involved hundreds of arsonists in scores of villages. There was almost no traffic on Aceh's deathly quiet roads for the attackers to move from one target to the next.

But at school after school, the question of who did it brings the same response. "OTK" is the answer, "orang tidak kenal," "unknown persons". If people know and some must, they're too scared to say. They do know that the intention is to scorch Aceh's future.

Question to locals: It looks here as though someone wants to ruin an entire generation. Is that what you think?

Acehnese people speaking: "They want to make all of Aceh stupid. They want to make the children stupid. If no students go to school, automatically the next generation will be stupid," said a woman living across the road from the charred stumps of a school near Pidie.

As we drove in darkness back on the province's main highway, we saw eight new fires. At one we could still see men in civilian clothes, torching the buildings. At another, villagers watching the blaze called out "merdeka," or "freedom", identifying themselves as sympathisers with the separatist cause and probably with the GAM rebels.

It's a confusing picture. The government says GAM rebels are the arsonists. GAM says it would never attack schools and that the government is running a propaganda operation.

In another village, heavily armed Brimob elite police units descend on the latest fire, a high school torched by men firing guns, but they miss them by minutes.

[Gunfire and sound of truck driving past]

Down the road five kilometres, the six tanks and APCs of a marine unit are rolling out of town. Today they were told by the Commander-in-Chief, General Endriartono Sutarto, to hunt down the rebels and exterminate them.

But while choreographing the parachute drop and missile fire that opened the war for the cameras was easy, the men here at Samalunga Village are finding the going tough. They were ambushed an hour earlier and a civilian was critically injured in the ensuing battle. The rebel gunmen just disappeared, the shape of the war to come.

Back at the marine's camp, 90 men sent here from East Java are already saying the order to separate civilians from rebel guerrillas is not so simple.

Indonesian marine speaking: "GAM are mixing with the civilians and have taken their uniforms off", says this senior officer. "Yes, it is difficult. Only if we are attacked do we know it's them".

Addressed to marine: Who's going to win this war?

Indonesian marine speaking: "No-one can win", he says, "because the rebels are also like our family".

Many will die but few will really care

Melbourne Age - May 20, 2003

Matthew Moore -- Two things are certain about the newly resumed war in Aceh: a lot of innocent people will die and not many people will care, at least outside this province on Sumatra's furthest tip.

Almost as predictable is that Indonesia's latest promise to crush the rebel army called GAM will fail, just as it has in the past. After all, Indonesia has been battling GAM since it was founded 27 years ago when it launched its fight for Aceh to become an independent state.

For the last 10 years of his rule, former dictator Soeharto ruthlessly used his troops to suppress any signs of uprising from GAM or sympathisers. But in doing so, thousands and thousands of civilians were killed, raped and robbed, schools and houses burned, and support for anyone who fought the military continues to build.

The Indonesian military has borrowed shamelessly from the US's Iraq war script as it has prepared for this conflict. It has established a media centre where daily briefings take place, it has promised to "embed" journalists with its forces and it has pledged this won't be a simple military offensive but will involve humanitarian and other aid, part of winning Aceh's hearts and minds.

And then there is "shock and awe" or the Indonesian version of it. For weeks politicians have been cuddling tanks and heavy machine-guns and using words such as "crush".

Day one of conflict began with low sweeps by screaming jet fighters whose noise brought curious civilians into the streets. There were aerial rocket attacks and a big parachute drop televised across the country.

But Aceh is not Iraq. There are no deserts. It is wild and mountainous, covered in heavy forests. GAM can hide where it wants and the handful of planes and rockets Indonesia's ill- trained troops possess will hardly trouble them.

As in the past, this will be a true guerilla war, fought door-to-door at night against an unknown and unseen enemy. To win, Indonesia must somehow identify GAM members and kill them without killing civilians and thereby fuelling support for the enemy.

Despite its years of failures in Aceh, Indonesia's Government and population is firmly behind this war. It will be fought with the humiliating loss of East Timor still fresh in Indonesian minds.

Aceh has been offered "special autonomy" but the Government insists it will never allow full independence as it did in East Timor. To do so could only fuel independence campaigns in other far-flung provinces, particularly in Papua. Both these provinces are rich in natural resources and to lose them could conceivably lead to the break-up of Indonesia.

Indonesia has its problems, but it has a sense of national identity that includes Aceh and almost no one inside Indonesia and outside Aceh is prepared to let it go. Not a single country anywhere backs GAM's desire for independence. Even Sweden, where exiled GAM leaders live, has supported the unitary state of Indonesia. GAM's prospects of success have rarely looked worse.

And yet, to end the conflict, or reduce support for GAM, Indonesia will have to provide good and honest government the population can respect. With GAM, the military and police earning their living through extortion and crime, those prospects remain remote.

Driving towards Lhokseumawe on Sunday, the utility loaded with rice in front of us stopped at the military checkpoint while the driver handed his bribe to the soldier on guard. Across Aceh it happens every hour. Until it stops, innocent Acehnese will die.

West Papua

Dutch past, Indonesian present ... independent future?

openDemocracy - May 23, 2003

[The West Papuan campaign against rule by Indonesia and corporate exploitation of the territory's rich resources is one of the world's most important and least known resistance movements. As East Timor celebrates a year of independence from Jakarta, and Indonesian forces launch an assault in another rebellious territory, Aceh, Paul Kingsnorth on behalf of openDemocracy talks to John Rumbiak, a leading campaigner for human rights in West Papua.]

openDemocracy: Tell me a bit about yourself, and your work.

John Rumbiak: I am supervisor of ELS-HAM, the Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy. It was established officially in May 1998, a few weeks before the fall of the Indonesian dictator, General Suharto. It emerged from a commitment by churches, non- governmental organisations (NGOs), community leaders, tribal leaders and others who were concerned about the continuing human rights violations in West Papua.

Our work now is monitoring human rights in Papua and trying to educate the international community to understand that when we talk about human rights in Papua, the fundamental issue underlying this problem is the issue of self-determination. There are massive human rights violations in Papua whose roots lie in the opposition of the Papuan people to the annexation of Papua by Indonesia.

The Indonesian position is that Papua will always be part of Indonesia, and thus the government keeps repressing the people of the territory; this is the source of the ongoing human rights violations. Indonesia's dual strategy

openDemocracy: That must be dangerous work. Have you personally experienced problems with the government or the army as a result of your work?

John Rubiak: West Papua is very much under surveillance. Wherever you go, there are Indonesian intelligence agents following you around. It's not a normal life. One example: in August 1996, when one of my human rights reports came out, I was working for another NGO funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The US government came to talk to me about the report. The American ambassador came to Papua to see me, but the Indonesians would not allow him to visit our office. So he invited me to visit him at his hotel. When I arrived, he was shocked to see both Indonesian intelligence and uniformed soldiers accompanying me. They filmed and took notes of our meeting. The ambassador was furious, and asked me if I was OK. I said no, I am not OK; this happens to us all the time. This is the life story of the Papuans.

openDemocracy: Your personal profile internationally is quite high now amongst other NGOs and the media too. Do you think this makes it harder for the Indonesians to try and silence you?

John Rubiak: There are crazy people amongst the military. They don't care; they can kill you any time, and then play with the legal system to escape justice. This is exactly what happened to the moderate Papuan leader Theys Eluay, who was murdered by Indonesian soldiers in 2001. A recent report we compiled on the Freeport mine showed that Indonesian generals had masterminded an attack on Freeport staff, in which several died, and blamed the attack on Papuan rebels, to justify yet another crackdown on them. Since then, I have received so many threats that I have been forced to flee to the US, where I now live.

Indonesia now has a two-pronged strategy to deal with the Papuan "problem." Firstly, they have introduced something called "special autonomy" to Papua, allegedly to give Papua more control over its politics and resources to dampen demands for independence. All the Papuan leaders have rejected this as a sham. The second part is to crack down harder with the military on the leaders of the people; more repression, arrests, torture, extra-judicial killings. The military see Papua as their own resource base -- they make a lot of money from it. They will not give it up without fighting.

openDemocracy: Do you think there is any danger of the Indonesians cracking down on independence activists in Papua under the guise of the "war on terrorism"?

John Rubiak: The military would like to do this, to say to the world: "this movement in Papua is a separatist, terrorist movement, and the international community should support our fight against it". We do a lot of lobbying in the US, and we have some support from senators in the US, who support our call to cut military ties with Indonesia. But one reason I am travelling around the world now is to educate the international community that you can't classify the Papuan movement as a "separatist terrorist" movement.

On the contrary, the movement is increasingly a united and peaceful one. All sections of society have now declared Papua a "land of peace." Such a peaceful movement is a very big threat to the military in Papua. We can see this from the example of Aceh. There, you had this beautiful peace agreement taking place in December 2002, but suddenly the Office of Joint Security Committee, led by a top Indonesian general appointed by the international community had its headquarters burned down by militias, while the police did nothing. Now the war in Aceh has been restarted. We need to explain to the international community: the same generals that caused so much bloodshed in East Timor are now doing the same in Aceh and in Papua. So will you wait until more blood is shed, or will you do something now? BP: you cannot be serious

openDemocracy: Another issue in West Papua is the presence of multinational corporations. BP now plans to come to Papua to extract liquid petroleum gas. You recently met with the head of BP, John Browne, here in the UK. What did you say to each other?

John Rubiak: BP has a very bad reputation amongst local people in Colombia and in other places where they operate, so in Papua they have a pleasant-sounding policy called "community-based security." They want to work with local people to secure the site, and not employ the military. But I am worried. I am not interested in nice concepts, I am interested in the reality on the ground. And in Indonesia, this reality includes powerful military and political security forces, who greatly benefit from the rich resources of Papua. How then can a company like BP make real its claim not to use the Indonesian military?

So my challenging question to Lord Browne was: don't you see how powerful the Indonesian military is, and don't you think this threatens your policy of "community-based security". He agreed with that. In that case, I said, what's your strategy? He replied, well if it doesn't work, we'll pull out. But I am not sure how much BP understands the way Indonesia works, and I also think that their talk of "community security" and "ethics" is just PR. I don't believe they would pull out once they were in; they would have too much to lose. I met several people from BP this week and I don't feel satisfied. They didn't really answer my questions. I had a strong sense that they were not serious. I said to them, don't pretend to be a church or a humanitarian organisation, you are a corporation. Your presence in Papua will affect whole communities, and the military will be based in the region where you are working. I don't see that there is a future for BP's supposed new policy. East Timor or Aceh: what future for West Papua?

openDemocracy: Let's imagine that at some time in the future, Papua is self-governed or independent. What do you think that the Papuan people's relationship with multinational corporations should be? Is it possible to imagine a situation in which that relationship could be mutually beneficial?

John Rubiak: That is the question. It could happen, but people must understand something: Papua is in many ways a "last frontier" in the modern world when we talk about culture, about the environment and about humanity as a whole. It would be a tragedy if what exists in West Papua, and on the whole of the island of New Guinea were to be lost to the world. Most of the world's traditional cultures have been devastated. That happened because the wrong systems were implemented: the wrong type of government and economy, the wrong way of exploiting resources. In Papua, these traditional communities still exist, and if we want to avoid repeating earlier mistakes, then two things must happen. First, Papuans must understand the destruction that has happened in other parts in the world, and how it could happen to them. That means education. Second, Papuans have to be prepared to really make a decision to develop a kind of nation-building that would guarantee their culture, their environment and their resources. In economic terms, this could mean that if companies wanted to come to Papua, they would have to implement strong international standards on ethics, human rights, development and environmental protection. None of this happens now. Freeport, for example, dumps 125,000 metric tonnes of mine waste into rivers every day.

openDemocracy: How could an independent West Papua survive the enormous economic pressures that globalisation would bring and still develop its own indigenous democracy and economy?

John Rumbiak: People really have to decide what kind of political and economic system they want, otherwise one day they will wake up to find that they have lost everything. We must be prepared: it is not simply Indonesia as a state which is the problem in West Papua, it is an entire ideology. So the campaign for freedom from Indonesia must be extended to an understanding of the ideology of the system itself. This is the way to avoid making the same mistakes ourselves, if we get our own government. The system of governance must be changed. We need to design a Papuan system for the future of Papua that will safeguard what we value; to change the values of the system itself.

We have 250 tribes, 250 languages, an egalitarian traditional of local government, a unique culture and environment. How can we design a system that builds on these foundations instead of destroying them? How can we ensure that the Indonesian migrants, many of whom have been in Papua for forty years and consider themselves Papuan, are not excluded from society but allowed to play their part in it? This is very different from simply replacing Indonesian faces in the government with Papuan faces. It is a challenge of nation-building. But I am optimistic. West Papua is very much a forgotten struggle, but that was also true of East Timor for many years. And the people's movement for self-determination in Papua is growing stronger by the year. I believe things will get better. But we must be prepared for success, or we could find that it is almost as dangerous as failure.

Kuyawage inhabitants flee military operations in Papua

Papua Post - May 19, 2003

Biak -- Nine hundred inhabitants in the district of Kuyawage have fled their homes and sought sanctuary in Sinak district, Puncak Jaya, because Indonesian troops are conducting operations in their area.

The operations are being conducted in the army's campaign to find weapons that were seized from their base in Wamena on 4 April. An army officer told journalists that the condition of the inhabitants who had left their homes was not a matter for the army, which is only concerned with security. It was a matter for the local government.

He alleged that the inhabitants had been provoked by units of TPN/OPM to flee. They were using the local people to spread information hostile to the army. "I'm sure the people have fled only because they are afraid of the TPN/OPM although in reality they have confidence in the government because of all the development that has taken place," he said.

Reformasi

Students protest slow reforms since Suharto's downfall

Associated Press - May 21, 2003

Jakarta -- Indonesian police with water cannons drove back hundreds of students Wednesday protesting the slow pace of reform since the downfall of ex-dictator Suharto five years ago.

At its peak, the nighttime rally had about 400 demonstrators, some of whom tried to tear down the main gate to the tightly guarded Parliament in Jakarta.

Many Indonesians have used Wednesday's anniversary to call for the resignation of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, complaining that she betrayed the spirit of democracy that led to Suharto's ouster after 32 years in power. Clashes in other cities between security forces and students also were reported.

"Mega and Hamzah have stained the ideal of reform that was born five years ago," said Daeng Sulaiman, referring to the president and her deputy, Hamzah Haz.

Sulaiman was one of around 500 students protesting outside the local parliament building in the eastern city of Makassar, where demonstrators also tried to break down the gate and were driven back by police, witnesses said. Five students were arrested.

Suharto was forced to step down May 21, 1998, after months of student protests that culminated in three days of riots and looting in which at least 1,200 people were killed.

Suharto's deputy, B.J. Habibie, replaced him and quickly moved to free political prisoners, unshackle the press and reform the political system to allow for free elections. Still, the student movement saw him as a stooge of the old regime and staged daily, often violent, demonstrations urging his removal.

Megawati was elected in July 2001 but widespread corruption, an inept legal system and a struggling economy have dampened hopes for a better life for Indonesia's 210 million people.

Suharto, along with his family members and business partners, allegedly stole millions from the country. Attempts to bring them to trial have been largely unsuccessful.

'Reform makes the rich richer, the poor poorer'

Jakarta Post - May 23, 2003

Leo Wahyudi S -- On May 21, 1998, then president Soeharto yielded to demands to step down during the bloody rallies that followed the earlier May riots. Five years have passed since then and the country has seen three presidents. Yet, many people have voiced the same criticism: The country's leaders have failed to make things better. Some city residents told The Jakarta Post that the reform movement has been useless.

Si Kar, 28, sells backpacks on the sidewalks of Ciputat, Tangerang. He lives in Ulujami, South Jakarta, with his wife and son and other relatives: In terms of my life, things were much better under former president Soeharto. At that time, I did not have much trouble in trying to survive. I could sell my goods anywhere in the city.

I didn't have to worry so much about raids by the city public order officials as I do now. I could earn up to Rp 2 million in a week by selling bags. But since his resignation, I have had a far tougher life. I have been shut down three times in raids. It seems that new vendors are not allowed to run a business in this city.

The price of staple food and other daily needs went up so high that low-income earners were hardly able to afford them. Even now, I try not to use the [public] toilet so I can save the Rp 700 fee. However, I usually have to use it three times a day when I'm at work.

It's been real tough scraping together the Rp 50,000 a day I need to cover my family's expenses, which include food, transportation and daily rent.

It's been a much tougher life since the beginning of the so- called reform era. It hasn't reformed anything. It's nonsense. Rich people keep getting richer and corrupt officials keep getting more corrupt. Meanwhile, the poor just keep getting poorer.

Natsir, 33, is a parking attendant working in Blok M, South Jakarta. He lives in Mampang, South Jakarta, with his fellow employees: With all the talk about unity these days, to be honest, I have got to hand it to former president Soeharto, who kept the country together with the strict way he ran it.

The situation in the country was far safer back then. And it helped low-income earners be able to make ends meet. Prices were also controllable, despite rampant corruption during his dictatorship.

But I'll tell you the truth: Nobody deserves any credit for being a good leader other than first president Sukarno. So, in general I can't really single out one president from the last four who is worthy of praise. They have not made the country any better.

They are all typical politicians who do not take the people's side. They are too busy enriching themselves. Reform has meant nothing at all! Dedi, 23, sells newspapers along Jl. Melawai, South Jakarta. He lives in Kreo, South Jakarta, with his friends: I think all of the country's leaders are capable of ruling the nation, but their image has been tainted by corrupt administrators.

People were far better off under Soeharto, despite all the corruption and collusion, which was out of control at the time. As a capable leader, the President should make every effort to help the poor survive by providing them with rice, for example.

I have never seen any rice being handed out in my village in West Java. Most of it gets taken before it is distributed. Officials are so corrupt that the aid never reaches the people it is targeted for.

Nonetheless, the public should not just blame the leaders. It would be better if they criticize themselves first before criticizing others.

If people keep on blaming the leaders, I don't think anyone can be regarded as the right person to lead this country. What's worse is that in the name of reform, people tend to protest and criticize others without taking a look at themselves.

Government & politics

Amien, Rachma, Wiranto want regime change

Jakarta Post - May 24, 2003

A'an Suryana and Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, Jakarta -- Political leaders asserted on Friday that reform had moved at a snail's pace over the past five years, and that fresh leadership blood was needed to salvage and accelerate reform in the country.

The leaders -- Amien Rais of the National Mandate Party (PAN), Rachmawati of the Pioneer Party, and former Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Gen. (ret) Wiranto -- called for regime change during a discussion organized to evaluate reform movements in the past five years at the Islamic Students Alumni Community (KAHMI) headquarters in Jakarta.

Rachmawati, a nationalist and daughter of Indonesia's first president Sukarno, said the current government had failed to put into practice the reform dream, fought for by students five years ago. "The reform process has been stagnant," said Rachmawati, who is also a younger sister of President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Corruption, an evil that the reform movement hated most, has gone unchecked under Megawati's administration.

According to Rachmawati, in order to rescue Indonesia a change of leadership was required. She did not mention who might replace Megawati. Amien concurred with Rachmawati, saying that a change of leadership was needed to overcome current problems plaguing the nation.

"A Malay society always heeds its leaders, so a good leader will produce a good society, and vice versa. Therefore, in order to improve Indonesia, change must begin with the top leadership," said Amien, who is currently also chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR).

The discussion was part of a weekly discussion held by KAHMI, and Friday's discussion was moderated by KAHMI chairman Fuad Bawazier.

Fuad is a right-wing Muslim, who organized meetings between Amien Rais and Nadhlatul Ulama leader Abdurrahman Wahid in order to prevent Megawati, the winner of the 1999 general election, from being elected president. This succeeded, as Abdurrahman took the top post.

Friday's discussion raised suspicions that Fuad was again encouraging the three leaders to come together for the 2004 general election. Suspicions were bolstered when Rachmawati openly praised such a coalition, saying that the three best represented the main elements of Indonesian society: nationalists (herself), Muslims (Amien) and the TNI (Wiranto).

However, a possible coalition was dismissed by both Amien and Fuad, who said, "it's too early to discuss a possible coalition." Friday's meeting was the second encounter between Amien and Rachmawati. Amien paid a visit to Rachmawati last week at her house.

The pair plan to attend together a traditional puppet show in Blitar, East Java, on June 1, the hometown of the Sukarno family and where Sukarno's body was buried.

Both Rachmawati and Amien represent Megawati's political nemesis. However, Amien, who tried to persuade Rachmawati to join him in order to enlarge his political base while at the same time erode Megawati's, refused to say whether Rachmawati would accompany him in the presidential race, adding that his election team was discussing the possibility.

Walkout mars Hamzah's reelection as PPP chief

Jakarta Post - May 24, 2003

Kurniawan Hari, Jakarta -- A further split has cast a shadow over the United Development Party (PPP), the nation's largest Muslim- based party, as a walkout spoiled the finale of its four-day congress on Friday.

With his reelection as party chairman a foregone conclusion, Hamzah Haz would now need to reconcile with his solitary contender, Bachtiar Chamsyah, who walked out of the meeting to form the party's new board of executives.

Bachtiar left the meeting room in disappointment as his bid for the post of deputy chairman was denied by Hamzah, who headed the seven-member team of selectors following his unanimous win in the election earlier in the day.

Instead of choosing Bachtiar, the party's team picked H. Alimarwan Hanan. The party also named former information minister Lt. Gen. (ret) Yunus Yosfiah its secretary-general.

Bachtiar told reporters afterwards that he would focus on his job as social affairs minister. He acknowledged that he had wanted the position of deputy chairman or secretary-general but Hamzah's rejection had prompted him to quit the meeting.

Five of the selectors were Hamzah's supporters, namely Ahmad Thoyfur, Endin AJ Soefihara, Hafidz Ma'soem, H. Alimarwan Hanan, and Yunus Yosfiah. Two other members were Bachtiar and his only aide Husni Thamrin. Hamzah, who will lead the party until 2008, is also the Vice President, while Alimarwan is the State Minister of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises.

Hamzah, who is preparing himself for the presidential election next year, lived up to his promise to recruit younger cadres to fill the positions in the 37-strong central board of executives.

The congress' steering committee chairman Zarkasih Nur disclosed that 60 percent of positions in the central board went to young politicians. "The inclusion of more politicians from the younger generation would bear well for the future of the party," he said.

Regarding the number of woman politicians, Zarkasih acknowledged that the party had been unable to meet the recommended quota of 30 percent. The party went into the congress following a year of internal dispute, which saw some of its members led by prominent preacher Zainuddin MZ break away and form their own party after Hamzah rejected their demand for a snap congress. The congress was eventually moved forward from its original schedule in 2004, but the deserters refused to come back.

In the latest election in 1999, PPP won 58 seats in the House of Representatives to become the third largest faction in the legislative body. Many doubt that PPP would be able to repeat its performance in the coming election due to the fractions within the party.

However, former deputy secretary-general Djuhad Mahja expressed optimism that the party would fare better next year under Hamzah. "Hamzah will lead the party to success as he enjoys full support from chapters in East Java, Central Java, West Java, Kalimantan, and other PPP strongholds," Djuhad said.

Senior legislator Barlianta Harahap concurred, saying that PPP's future would be brighter thanks to Hamzah and the presence of former state officials, retired military officers and businessmen in the party.

The central board's structure consists of a chairman, a deputy chairman, a secretary-general, a deputy secretary-general, 15 co-chairpersons, 15 secretaries, a treasurer, and two deputy treasurers.

Corruption/collusion/nepotism

Cigarette makers among Jakarta's biggest tax cheats

Straits Times - May 24, 2003

Robert Go, Jakarta -- Some Indonesian cigarette manufacturers are dodging tax payments to the government to the tune of millions of dollars each year, said officials investigating the matter.

According to an as-yet-unpublished study conducted by the Finance Ministry and Diponegoro University in Semarang, Central Java, the scam involves dozens of popular brands and possibly hundreds of millions of sticks of kretek, or clove-based, cigarettes.

There are two ways in which crooks cheat Jakarta. Some sell cigarettes with fake tax stamps. Others use counterfeit packaging materials made to resemble those of legitimate brands, and simply sell their products without any proof of taxation.

As they do not pay taxes, these cheats can sell cigarettes much more cheaply than competitors, and their product lines become hugely popular with Indonesia's millions of poor smokers.

Investigators declined to release the names of the cigarette- makers involved, or estimates of how much damage the government is suffering because of their actions. But the schemes, according to one official, are costing Indonesia a substantial chunk of the 25.9 trillion rupiah it expects to gain from taxing cigarette sales this year.

An official said: "We think this is a huge problem, and after this study is presented to the Cabinet, there will be some changes in the way cigarette companies pay taxes in the future." No single company, however, has been prosecuted for this type of offence. Investigators are said to be continuing to gather evidence in various parts of the country, to get a better assessment of the scope of the practice.

In the meantime, government agencies, including the Customs and Excise Department, have been instructed to improve their monitoring procedures to catch manufacturers in the act of violating taxation procedures.

Mr Anggito Abimanyu, an aide to Finance Minister Boediono, confirmed to The Straits Times that the government had caught on to the scam and would reform existing regulations to improve revenue targets in 2004. A complicating factor for Jakarta, however, is alleged corruption within tax-collection offices and internal turf wars between different government agencies. A government source said: "We also need to investigate whether or not collection people are involved in the scams and have been paid off by manufacturers to look the other way."

Yet another dimension of the issue involves Indonesia's exploding unemployment problem and the fact that even crooked companies remain viable providers of jobs to millions of workers.

The Manpower Ministry recently reported that the number of jobless Indonesians is likely to break the 10-million ceiling this year, while another 30 million people are classified as underemployed and work unsteady hours during any given week.

Against this backdrop, the government source said: "These companies may be conducting illegal practices, but we are mindful that they provide employment to people. There are complications here, and we can't just shut them down."

Indonesian tobacco producers roll out about 240 billion sticks, 90 per cent of which are classified as kretek cigarettes, per year. They have complained, however, that government taxes are too high and regulations are choking the industry to death.

Focus on Jakarta

Hundreds of 'ojek' drivers stage rally

Jakarta Post - May 22, 2003

Tangerang -- Hundreds of motorcycle taxi (ojek) drivers blocked Jl. Rawa Bokor near the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Wednesday as part of their rally to protest PT Angkasa Pura's decision to ban them from entering the airport.

During the rally, they blocked the road that links the airport with Jl. Daan Mogot in West Jakarta with their motorcycles, causing heavy congestion on both sides of the road for almost three hours.

"We don't understand why ojek are banned from entering the airport terminal, while many airport employees and other people use our services every day," Suban, one of ojek drivers, told The Jakarta Post.

He said that he and other drivers earned Rp 30,000 (US$3.5) daily from taking people into and out of the airport terminals. "Now, we are not allowed to enter the airport terminals. It means that we will have no income. We do not really understand why," he added.

Starting on Wednesday, airport operator PT Angkasa also closed the M1 Gate to the public, an alternative access road from the airport to Tangerang municipality. As a result all vehicles heading to the airport from Jl. Daan Mogot must pass by Jl. Rawa Bokor.

Health & education

Jakarta bans harmful traditional medicines

Agence France Presse - May 24, 2003

Jakarta -- Indonesia has banned the sale of 78 brands of traditional medicine -- some of them said to enhance sexual performance -- because they contain hazardous chemicals, officials said yesterday.

Some of the elixirs, locally known as "jamu", contained a substance which could cause kidney and liver problems as well as other hazardous chemicals, the state Food and Drug Supervisory Agency said.

Other blacklisted medicines were advertised as cures for hypertension, rheumatism and weight loss.

The agency said it had revoked licences issued to factories making the medicines. Factory owners face jail or fines if they continue to produce the medicines.

International relations

Australia defends use of force in Aceh

Radio Australia - May 20, 2003

For a second straight day, the Indonesian military has continued its offensive against Aceh's separatist rebels, with an order to exterminate those who refuse to surrender. The assault began yesterday after last-ditch peace talks between Jakarta and the rebels broke down in Tokyo on the weekend. In Australia, defence minister Robert Hill has has urged the military not to use excessive force in Aceh but he's also supported Indonesia's right to defend its territorial integrity. At the same time, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, has ruled out an appeal for United Nations intervention.

Presenter/Interviewer: Graeme Dobell, Canberra

Speakers: Australia's Defence Minister Robert Hill; Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd; Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer

Dobell: Since it led United Nations forces into East Timor in 1999, Australia has developed a diplomatic mantra to restore relations with Indonesia. This is the statement, often repeated, that Australia supports Indonesia's unity and territorial integrity. For Australia's Defence Minister, Robert Hill, that translates into an understanding of Indonesia's right to use military force in Aceh to deal with a revolt.

Hill: "Aceh was always part of the Indonesian state. We believe that Indonesia's got a perfect right to maintain its internal integrity and we regret that there are those who are in armed revolt. We wish that parties could peacefully resolve their differences."

Dobell: Senator Hill dismisses any comparison between the aspirations of East Timor and Aceh. But he says East Timor has hardened Indonesia's determination to prevent Aceh from breaking away.

Hill: "Experience in East Timor is such that they will work even harder to preserve what they see as the internal integrity of their country. But as I've said, we accept that Aceh is part of Indonesia and that their right to protect their own internal interests. What we do is that we urge and we have supported all parties to the conflict to seek to find a resolution within one Indonesia."

Downer: Australia's Opposition Labor Party says Canberra should do more than deplore bloodshed ... it should be calling for the United Nations to establish a special envoy to negotiate a ceasefire. Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd...

Rudd: "The challenge for Mr. Downer as Australian foreign minister is now to pick up the telephone to Secretary-General Koffi Annan of the United Nations. This crisis in Aceh requires immediate UN mediatian and Mr. Downer must act now to ensure that the good offices of the United Nations are brought to bare in this rapidly deteriorating crisis."

Dobell: But mention of the United Nations is another reminder of East Timor. The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, is decidedly cool about Mr Rudd's idea, saying he's not what sure what a UN representative would do.

Downer: "This is all part of Indonesia and the Indonesians are going to have to sort out these problems themselves. We can't just get the UN involved as he put it. I mean in the end, what the international community is saying to, not just the Indonesian Government but also GAM, the separatist movement, that we would wish that they would negotiate this and when negotiations breakdown, we hope that whatever happens in the interim that the negotiating process will begin again as quickly as possible."

Dobell: For Australia's Defence Minister the assault in Aceh should have no impact on the strengthening of military relations with Indonesia. While Jakarta tore up its bilateral security agreement with Australia during the East Timor confrontation in 1999, Senator Hill says military relations were never broken off. Since then, he says, Australia has steadily rebuilt military links.

He says the two countries have mutual interests in dealing with terrorism and now have regular exchanges between senior military officers. The Defence Minister says Australia wants to expand training cooperation to restart joint maritime exercises with Indonesia.

Hill: "Indonesia understands that we see our relationship with Indonesia as very important from the whole national perspective and an important element of that is the relationship between our defence forces. Sometimes it hasn't been easy. East Timor's is a classic example of that I suppose, but notwithstanding the difficulties that we've experienced from time to time, we believe it's in the Australian national interest and we understand Indonesia believes its in their interests."

Military ties

Canberra says military ties unaltered

Melbourne Age - May 21, 2003

Annabel Crabb, Canberra -- Australian military co-operation with the Indonesian army and its special forces unit, Kopassus, would not be affected by their involvement in Jakarta's attack on the rebellious Aceh province, Defence Minister Robert Hill said yesterday.

"We have taken a decision to work with that part of Kopassus that has a counter-terrorism capability toward protecting the mutual interests of both Australians and Indonesians against terrorists," Senator Hill said.

"And that's got nothing to do with the issue in Aceh." Senator Hill said while the Australian Government was concerned about the Indonesian military action in Aceh, there was "no suggestion" that Australian forces would intervene to help quell the conflict.

"We accept that Aceh is part of Indonesia and that they're right to protect their own internal interests," he said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We deeply regret that the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement forfeited a rare opportunity to advance a peace process with the assistance of the international community."

He said that Washington "does regard the problem of Aceh as one that is not amenable to a solution by use of military force", calling on both sides to return to the negotiating table.

In Australia, Labor continued its call for the Government to initiate specific negotiations with Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, towards the appointment of a special UN envoy.

"Labor does not dispute that Aceh is part of Indonesia," Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said. "But that fact has not prevented other countries from assisting in the attempted resolution of the conflict in the past."

Speaking from London on ABC radio yesterday, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he was not sure exactly what a UN envoy would do.

"The international community has been involved in a very substantial way in trying to help Indonesia and [Acehnese rebel group] GAM in this whole process and encouraging negotiations... In the end, though, the will has to be on the part of GAM and the Indonesian Government to get back into a negotiating frame of mind."

Senator Hill said that as Aceh had always been part of the Indonesian state, it was a different situation from the one that led Australia to intervene in the East Timor dispute in 1999.

But he acknowledged that the East Timor experience would affect the Indonesian attitude to the present conflict, which has generated strong national support for Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

"I think ... they will work even harder to preserve what they see as the internal integrity of their country," he said.

Economy & investment

Pertamina's new paradigm

Asia Times - May 23, 2003

Bill Guerin, Jakarta -- Despite predictions that Indonesian state oil and gas company Pertamina faces a bleak and uncertain future after the government lifted its decades-long oil and gas monopoly, Pertamina president Baihaki Hakim this week announced his blueprint for the future.

Changes made by the enactment of Law No 22/2001 on oil and gas have, of necessity, generated a new paradigm for the future that will see the company focus its energies on gas distribution and trading, and on the management of oil refineries and gas- processing plants.

Baihaki told the House of Representatives Commission VIII for the mining, oil and gas industry that, in its upstream business, Pertamina would develop its production wells in West Java and South Sumatra, develop geothermal fields and participate in joint venture blocks.

Baihaki has predicted a tripling of Pertamina's pre-tax profits in the coming five years, from Rp9.7 trillion (US$1.06 billion) to Rp24 trillion ($2.68 billion).

Pertamina will also revamp its refineries. Some $1.4 billion will go on this upstream business and $680 million will go toward improving its distribution network, buying tankers, building fuel-oil depots, establish liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) terminals and upgrading fuel-oil terminals in the downstream sectors.

As a consequence of the law that terminated Pertamina's regulatory role, Pertamina was cut down to size and lost, or is in the process of losing, legal ownership of all the country's oil and gas wells.

Though it remains the sole authorized supplier of oil in Indonesia until 2005, parliament has stripped the company of its monopoly over key areas of the oil and gas sector. In line with the Oil and Gas Law, Pertamina will become a limited liability company, a move that is expected to help boost its competitiveness when the oil and gas sector is liberalized. Turning Pertamina into a limited-liability company also removes the contradictions inherent in Pertamina's role as the government regulator while being a state-owned company.

The law has also ended Pertamina's monopoly in the upstream oil and natural-gas industry -- exploration, mining and refining.

Pertamina must also unload its non-core assets worth some Rp4 trillion after it formally becomes a limited-liability company. Though Pertamina wanted to retain the non-core assets by setting up subsidiaries, the government wants it to stick to the oil and gas sector to allow it to compete with foreign players once the sector is fully open to free competition.

The new paradigm will see Pertamina focus on profit-oriented ventures that will sharply boost pre-tax profits, and transform it into an efficient and professional business.

Rehabilitating Suharto's biggest money machine into such a desirable entity has not, and will not, come easy. Parasitic brokers and other middlemen, non-transparent bidding procedures and sheer robbery by Suharto and his cronies, most notably Bob Hasan, helped make Pertamina Indonesia's biggest cash cow for decades.

PricewaterhouseCoopers identified billions of dollars in inefficiencies and potential losses in 1999. In February 2000 then president Abdurrahman Wahid appointed Baihaki and tasked him with cleaning up the mess.

In the gas sector, Pertamina is dedicating a separate operation to handling LNG produced by the parent company. This will compete against another state-owned enterprise, PT Perusahaan Gas Negara (PGN), in trading LNG overseas and in distribution to the domestic market.

Pertamina's continued leading role in marketing LNG rankles with the other contractors in the industry. Indonesia has two LNG plants, one in Arun, Aceh, where a military offensive began this week, and Bontang, East Kalimantan. A consortium led by US firm ExxonMobil Corp owns the Arun plant, and the Bontang one is owned by a consortium headed by French firm TotalFinaElf and America's Unocal Corp.

The third is the Tangguh LNG plant, being developed by a consortium led by Anglo-US firm BP PLC, in Bintuni Bay in far-off Papua.

A $2 billion network of pipes and onshore processors will convert Bintuni's gas reserves -- among the largest in Asia -- into LNG to service markets in Japan, South Korea and China.

Pertamina wants a slice of the action and has already offered the forthcoming Tangguh LNG to Japanese buyers. Baihaki said Pertamina's move was in line with the government's commitment to the development of the Tangguh plant. "Development of the Tangguh LNG plant is a national political commitment," he said.

Pertamina also plans to build its own LNG plant in Donggi, Sulawesi, clearly sparking a conflict of interest.

Baihaki said BP Migas had authorized Pertamina, which handled the marketing of Indonesian LNG prior to the 2001 Oil and Gas Law, to continue marketing the LNG to Japan at the request of the Japanese buyers. "The Japanese buyers are loyal and conservative. They do not want to buy LNG from anyone except Pertamina," Baihaki said.

Pertamina plans to raise its upstream output, including oil, gas and geothermal steam, by about 84 percent over the next five years.

Pertamina's latest report says oil output is expected to rise 28 percent to 180,000 barrels per day in 2007 from 140,000bpd this year, gas output is projected to increase 69 percent to 1,500 million cubic feet per day from 900mmcfd and geothermal steam to increase by 428 percent to 370 megawatt-hours per day from 70MWh/d.

Pertamina will invest about $3.57 billion in developing its upstream sector over the next five years. The additional output would more than double Pertamina's net profit, increasing it to Rp21.9 trillion from about Rp10 trillion this year.

The company is set to spend some $2.08 billion next year to expand the scope of its operations and thus firmly establish itself as a producer, refiner, and retailer of fossil fuels.

The discovery of substantial new resources at Matindok-Donggi in Sulawesi, and in South Sumatra and East Java, helped fuel Pertamina president Baihaki's prediction that the value of the company's assets will more than double in the next five years, from $15 billion to $37 billion, as a result of the expansion under way.

However, figures from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources show a steady decline in Indonesia's oil production (both crude oil and condensate) from 1.6 million bpd in 1995 to 1.34 million bpd in 2001 and about 1.2 million bpd at this year's levels. Some 250,000 bpd is imported from Saudi Arabia to meet the needs of refineries for higher-quality crude.

Facing a decline in oil reserves, Pertamina is expanding its production base to sites outside Indonesia. The plan to start oil explorations in the Block 3 western desert area of Iraq this year has, of course, been jettisoned since the US-led takeover of Baghdad, but Pertamina still plans to explore new oil reserves abroad with the state oil companies of Vietnam and Malaysia.

Pertamina's regulatory role in the upstream sector has been taken over by the Upstream Oil and Gas Implementing Body (BP Migas). In the downstream sector, a separate body called the Downstream Regulatory Agency will assume Pertamina's role.

Non-oil-related businesses, such as hotel chain Patra Jasa and airline Pelita Air, are to be hived off, though there is stout resistance to this within the company itself.

Proceeds from the sale of the non-core assets should be used to upgrade Pertamina's core operation, says the government, notwithstanding that divestment of these will create substantial unemployment.

A key non-core asset is PT Tugu Pratama, Pertamina's insurance subsidiary. This enterprise was the medium for a markup of 5 percent on every insurance policy bought from foreign insurers. Suharto friend and crony Mohamad "Bob" Hasan, now in jail on unrelated corruption charges, headed up this veritable cash cow, which covered operations under Pertamina's production-sharing contracts. Under Baihaki the 5 percent surcharge was eliminated and premiums reduced by an average of 54 percent, saving a total of $20 million in the first year alone.

The management of four major oil refineries -- Cilacap (Central Java), Balikpapan (East Kalimantan), and Musi and Dumai (Sumatra) -- will go to a new subsidiary, which will also be designated as a BUMN, or state-owned enterprise.

The Cilacap refinery is the main supplier of oil for the island of Java, the most densely populated island in the country, and with the Balikpapan refinery, which supplies sparsely populated Eastern Indonesia, accounts for 60 percent of Pertamina's oil production.

Pertamina contributes less than 15 percent of Indonesia's total crude. The rest comes from production-sharing contractors including US firms PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia, Unocal and ExxonMobil. The biggest producer is Caltex, with an oil output of about 700,000bpd.

The new legislation returned 85 percent of these production- sharing contracts back to the government. Pertamina's insistence that these Western companies use approved subcontractors had previously added as much as 20-30 percent to the cost of oil and gas projects.

Investment in the country's oil and gas sector is essential for it to avoid becoming a net oil importer by 2010 as many have predicted.

Arifin Panigoro, oil tycoon, empire builder and ex-leader of the Golkar party, is always in the frame when political issues come to a head. Though owner of the oil-sector based Medco Group, he was appointed a member of the energy commission at the House of Representatives (DPR).

Just as the political debate over Pertamina and the proposed new Oil and Gas Law was picking up steam, Panigoro said: "We're currently looking for someone who will be suitable to carry out restructuring at Pertamina." Panigoro argued consistently that Baihaki was not the right man for the job.

Panigoro's bias and extreme vested interest stem from September 1982, when his group Meta Epsi won a tender for a Pertamina project to install gas pipes that led into Panigoro, working with a foreign partner, Fluor, securing the contract to build the Pertamina refinery in Cilacap.

Baihaki, within weeks of being appointed, blew the whistle on 159 suspicious contracts between Pertamina and other Indonesian companies, at least 22 of which could result in legal action. Five of those involved Suharto's eldest daughter Siti Hardiyanti "Tutut" Rukmana and former minister of mines and energy Ginandjar Kartasasmita.

A special committee set up by parliament to investigate corruption involving Pertamina revealed in its report last month that a number of former ministers, cronies and members of former president Suharto's family were involved. These include Tutut and Ginandjar as well as former state minister of technology B J Habibie, who later became president, former minister of mines and energy Soebroto, and Suharto's sons Bambang Trihatmodjo and Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra.

With Baihaki at the helm, Pertamina has certainly improved its image by leaps and bounds. The restructuring of Pertamina's operations, and creating a completely new corporate culture, is aimed at preparing Pertamina to compete with foreign companies in the free-trade era.

But the international community is watching to see whether or not the vested interests in the oil-and-gas industry and political heavyweights will combine to drag the new Pertamina back to its image as "untouchable".

With enemies like Panigoro, a close aide to the president herself, still at large, the odds are that Baihaki's security of tenure is far from certain.