News & issues

Bombings have devastated tourism in Bali

Jakarta Post - December 29, 2005

Rita A. Widiadana, Kuta -- Only a few days before the deadly bombing of Oct. 1, 2005, the tourism industry in Bali and other places in Indonesia was starting to enjoy robust business after three years of being in the doldrums.

In Bali, for example, many hotels were experiencing occupancy rates of 90 percent to 100 percent. Travel agencies, airlines, restaurants and cafes had high expectations. They had employed workers who had previously lost their jobs after the tourism slowdown that occurred after the Oct. 12, 2002, bombings.

"We had enjoyed a slight recovery after the 2002 bombings with an increase in hotel occupancy rates and a significant rise in tourist arrivals. The most recent bombings have shattered our hopes," Bali Tourism Board chairman Bagus Sudibya said.

Following the 2005 bomb blasts, the number of tourist arrivals to Bali dropped drastically from 5,000 people a day to only 2,000, with high cancellation rates.

Sudibya told legislators that the impact on the island's related tourist industry has been immense. For Bali, which relies mainly on tourism, the incident crippled the island's social and economic conditions.

"While Bali has been the major gateway to other destinations in the country, terrorist attacks on the island would also have a great impact on other destinations in Indonesia," he added.

As Bali contributes around 40 percent of Indonesia's US$5 billion tourism revenue, this will certainly affect the country's income from the sector.

Minister of Culture and Tourism Jero Wacik admitted that Indonesia had failed to achieve its target of US$6.5 billion in revenue and six million visitors, due to the current situation.

Slow response

While the government was quick to respond to terrorist incidents, as well as natural disasters like the tsunami, it has been slow and unfocused in implementing follow-up policies and strategies.

Immediately after the 2002 bombings destroyed two bars in Legian in an incident that claimed 202 lives, many people from overseas as well as then president Megawati Soekarnoputri visited the site.

A few days later, several of the perpetrators, including Imam Samudra, Amrozi and others were arrested. They have been tried and now await the death penalty thanks to hard work by police led by former Bali Police chief Made Mangku Pastika.

To stimulate the recovery of ruined tourist businesses, the central government, through former coordinating minister for economic affairs Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-Jakti, immediately formulated a "Bali for the World" campaign aiming at luring visitors back to the island.

The government also pledged to allocate billions of rupiah to the island's tourism recovery program.

The results were pitiful, said Putu Agus Antara, former chairman of Bali Tourism Board and a senior tourism and textile industry professional. "We did not need concerts for recovery. What we needed most was real action. So far, we have not seen this by way of recovery funds," he added.

The "Bali for the World" campaign is only evidenced by T-shirts and car stickers now. We had no idea what the central government was doing," he said.

After the 2005 bombings, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration did almost the same thing. A day after the incident, high-ranking officials from Jakarta flocked to the bomb sites in Kuta and Jimbaran, and held press conferences for local and international journalists to show their empathy. But that was it.

Former coordinating minister for economic affairs Aburizal Bakrie invited a number of tourism practitioners from Bali and asked them to make proposals for a recovery program. "I'm not going to beg the central government if the root cause is lack of commitment to help us," said a top person in the Bali tourism industry.

Proposals have been made without clear follow-up action from the central government. The seizure and killing of Dr. Azhari bin Husin, one of the most wanted masterminds in a series of bombings and terrorist attacks, might be good in public relations terms, but securing the recovery of the country's tourism industry requires a lot more effort.

Image recovery Joop Ave, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Indonesian Tourism Association, told The Jakarta Post in an interview here in Kuta that Indonesia has a serious image problem internationally. "Tourism relies mostly on image, trust and products," noted Ave, former minister of tourism and telecommunications in former President Soeharto's government.

The bombings in October 2002 and 2005 in Bali, followed by the tsunami in Aceh and North Sumatra last year, have together destroyed the image of Indonesia as a safe tourist destination.

"Worst of all, the government has done little to counter reports broadcast worldwide by international media on the recent incidents," he added.

Soon after the terrorist attacks, for instance, Indonesia could have sent representatives, such as Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid or the late Nurcholis Madjid, known to be moderate Muslim scholars, to appear on the popular CNN Larry King talk show and tell the world that the majority of Indonesia's 220 million population are moderate Muslims.

"This kind of counter action would have been very important to improve the country's image in the world, but nothing was done," he said.

By comparison, southern Thailand has endured much violence, including bombs and riots. The country was also hit by the tsunami last year. "However, millions of visitors around the globe still feel it is safe to visit Thailand," Ave said.

The key to Thailand's success, he said, lies in its government's strong political will and commitment to supporting the country's tourism industry, an economic backbone. The country, through its aggressive US$65 million "Amazing Thailand" campaign, has carved an impressive image among world travelers, attracting more than 12 million visitors to the country despite the tsunami and unrest in the south.

"Our neighbor, Malaysia, also launched an integrated and successful 'Truly Asia' campaign," he added. Unfortunately, Indonesia, the largest country in Southeast Asia, has allocated only US$1 million for promotional activities.

New strategies

Indonesia, he suggested, must not only focus on Bali. "The island has been our tourism icon, but when it was attacked by a bomb, the country's tourism collapsed in a matter of minutes," he said.

Indonesia has a lot of beautiful tourist potential that needs to be properly developed and promoted worldwide.

The penetration of new markets can also be effective. Some tourist components in Bali have already tried to enter alternative markets such as Russia, Poland, Greece, Middle East countries, China, India as well as Latin America.

I. Gusti Bagus Yudhara from the Bali Chapter of the Association of Travel Agencies commented that the government, together with people in the tourism industry, must work hand in hand to promote Indonesia's potential tourist destinations at various international events.

"Many people in tourism have complained that the government has paid very little attention to such efforts," Yudhara said.

Small wonder, he said, that people elsewhere did not realize where Indonesia was.

PBR factions agree to reunite

Jakarta Post - December 28, 2005

Jakarta -- The Reform Star Party (PBR) has ended its internal rift during a meeting mediated by Aksa Mahmud, a deputy speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) who is also a Golkar Party member.

Aksa was reportedly ordered by Vice President and Golkar leader Jusuf Kalla to help overcome the PBR dispute.

Aksa said on Tuesday that noted Muslim preacher Zainuddin MZ will remain the PBR leader, with Zaenal Ma'arif, who earlier held the top post in the party's splinter camp, being one of his deputies.

Zainuddin apologized to the public for the internal rift, saying he hopes the reconciliation would boost the party's image.

The internal conflict followed a bitter dispute over the contested election of Zainuddin as the PBR chairman last year. Zaenal and a number of other senior party members later set up a splinter faction in protest against the election result.

President under threat of attack: spokesman

Agence France Presse - December 26, 2005

Banda Aceh -- Indonesia's president is under threat of assassination, his spokesman said, amid stepped-up security nationwide for the New Year holiday period over fears of extremist attacks.

Security forces in the world's most populous Muslim nation have been on high alert over the Christmas period, concerned of possible reprisal attacks after last month's killing of Malaysian bombmaker Azahari Husin, a key member of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militant network.

Documents found in Azahari's East Java hideaway indicated extremists were planning attacks over the holiday period. His chief accomplice, Noordin Mohammad Top, remains on the run.

Asked whether reports that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was under threat of assassination were correct, his spokesman Andi Mallarangeng responded: "Yes." "We received the information from the intelligence agencies," he told AFP. "According to the report, the information is quite valid and they have a reason to believe it," he said.

Yudhoyono's outdoor activities had been "significantly reduced" by his guards until the situation improves.

National deputy police spokesman Anton Bahrul Alam told AFP that police had not yet received any intelligence report which suggested threats had been made on Yudhoyono's life.

"One clear thing is that we are on full alert status to anticipate various attack threats, including possible threats on the president's safety," he said.

JI has been blamed for a slew of attacks in Indonesia, including the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, mostly Western holiday-makers.

Yudhoyono led a ceremony Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami and mingled freely with grieving survivors, although a press conference he was supposed to hold was cancelled without explanation.

Diseased healthcare system needs medication

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

Hera Diani, Jakarta -- The year 2005 saw a series of natural and health-related disasters in the country that putt huge pressures on the still wobbly healthcare system here.

It began with the colossal work of dealing with the health problems and the destruction of the healthcare system, in the aftermath of the Dec. 26 tsunami in Aceh province.

Subsequently, outbreaks of disease caused fear around the country, ranging from the reemergence of polio to bird flu.

Nearly a decade after polio was believed to have been eradicated in Indonesia, the water-borne disease, to which children are at highest risk, reemerged in April. The outbreak was first detected in villages near Sukabumi, West Java, and then spread to other cities and provinces.

Causing paralysis, muscular atrophy and death, the virus may have returned to this country via Saudi Arabia through migrant workers or Muslim pilgrims who contracted the virus from pilgrims from Nigeria. The virus spread quickly, and within only six months had infected 236 under-fives in 22 regencies and cities in six provinces.

Immunization campaigns were then launched, But rumors about the safety of the vaccine following the deaths of three children after receiving it caused fear among parents, with the result that one million children had still not been immunized by the second round of immunization.

The next rounds, however, reached nearly 100 percent of 23.31 million under-fives after government assurances that the vaccine was safe, and that the deaths were attributable to dengue fever, cot deaths and low birth weights.

In May, shockwaves reverberated around the whole country following reports that hundreds of people were suffering from severe malnutrition in East Nusa Tenggara province. By July, 35 infants had died.

It is a sad irony that this could happen in a major rice producing area, and yet people are too poor to obtain food and ignorant about nutrition and diet.

Malnutrition cases were also reported in Central Java, with a total of almost 9,000 under-fives recorded as being malnourished between January and June 2005 alone, and with 25 attributable deaths.

In early December, reports of famine started to emerge from the remote Yahukimo regency in Papua, which reportedly has left at least 55 people dead and 112 others sick out of a population of 55,000. A failure of the sweet potato crop was to blame this time around.

Meanwhile in July, another outbreak of disease hit the headlines. A father and his two daughters were confirmed as the country's first fatalities from Avian influenza, several months after the first human case was discovered in South Sulawesi.

As of Dec. 14, Indonesia has had nine confirmed bird flu deaths, and 14 cases of infection in total. The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain is endemic in poultry in parts of Asia, and has affected poultry in two-thirds of the provinces in Indonesia.

The bird flu virus has killed 71 people in Asia since 2003, out of the 138 people known to have been infected.

Aside from new diseases, the old reliables also continued to wreak havoc. Dengue fever, which infected around 18,000 people between December 2003 and March 2004, also caused hundreds of people to fall sick in 2005.

Diarrhea, meanwhile, has recently hit districts in Tangerang regency, with at least 329 people struggling with the deadly but preventable disease, and at least 16 children and adults having died from it.

As for HIV/AIDS, warnings have been sounded that Indonesia is on the brink of a major epidemic, with all of the elements in place for the rapid spread of HIV. The executive director of the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Peter Piot, purposely came here to mark World AIDS day on Dec. 1.

It is estimated that there are between 180,000 and 250,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS in Indonesia, with the number rapidly increasing mainly due to injecting drug use. Piot said that as yet there was no sense of urgency in the country about containing HIV.

A similar criticism was voiced by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) bird flu team, which expressed concern at a lack of awareness in Indonesia's suburban and rural communities about the threat posed by the avian flu virus.

Indonesia's overall response, FAO said, had been inadequate. However, it noted that the government was "doing the best it can within the structures they have, but those structures need to change." The various outbreaks of disease reflect the country's dismal healthcare system, where not enough emphasis is placed on prevention.

Health issues also need to be integrated with environmental rehabilitation. As things stand at the moment, diseases related to lack of sanitation and hygiene quickly spread.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs said recently that the health crisis is only part of a much more general poverty crisis -- it all boils down to poverty.

More money and assistance should be allocated to the public healthcare sector so as to improve remuneration for medical staff, improve infrastructure and the condition of healthcare facilities, procure essential drugs, training professionals and rural-based outreach workers, and so forth.

Government investment in the public health sector, Sachs said, would create a platform for subsequent economic development. Another thing that is essential is good governance, particularly at the local government level following decentralization.

With particular regard to HIV/AIDS, it is time to shed the stigma and discrimination, and for every element of society -- religious leaders, the authorities, the private sector, etc. -- to become involved in improving prevention and treatment as the infection rate has reached alarming proportions.

All these outbreaks of disease reveal just how underdeveloped the healthcare system is in this country and provide valuable lessons on the need to improve things.

Hercules named suspect in attack on 'Indo Pos' daily

Jakarta Post - December 24, 2005

Abdul Khalik, Jakarta -- The Jakarta Police have arrested members of a gang and their leader Hercules in relation to the attack on the office of Indo Pos daily in South Jakarta last Tuesday.

Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Firman Gani said on Friday that Hercules and 12 other men were arrested on Thursday evening and were being held at city police headquarters.

"We have questioned Hercules and members of his gang. Moreover, we have sufficient evidence to name several of them as suspects," he said. Hercules was among those declared suspects, Firman said.

Twenty people from Tanah Abang in Central Jakarta, who claimed allegiance to Hercules, descended last Tuesday on Graha Pena, the office of Indo Pos daily to demand an explanation for an article in its Monday edition on thuggery in Tanah Abang.

The gang members said the reporter had not interviewed them for the article. They also asked the daily's chief editor Irwan Setiawan to explain the article in person.

The article talks about a change in Tanah Abang, whereby a new generation of thugs have taken over the area from Hercules, who was said in the article to have studied Islam in Cirebon, West Java.

Several men entered the building by force, seeking out the one responsible for the article. They then assaulted two reporters and threatened to destroy all computers in the building if they were not shut down. They continued to make trouble until officers from the South Jakarta Police ordered them off the property.

After the incident, Hercules said members of his gang had been at Indo Pos to demand an explanation from the reporter. He said he was not a thug as described in the article as he had never extorted money from store owners or residents of Tanah Abang.

Firman said the police would charge the suspected attackers under Article 170 of the Criminal Code on attacking and injuring people and on destroying private property. Under the article, a suspect could be sentenced to nine years' imprisonment if found guilty.

The attack sent the message to National Police chief Gen. Sutanto that his nationwide campaign against thuggery did not achieve its objective.

The operation called Sarutama was launched in May after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered Sutanto and provincial administrations across the country to crack down on thuggery as the President had received many complaints about the practice through SMS.

Thousands of thugs were arrested in the operation but a large number of them were later released without charges.

Aceh

EU-Led peace mission in Aceh extended

Associated Press - December 30, 2005

Jakarta -- An EU-led team monitoring a peace deal in tsunami- ravaged Aceh province will extend its mission by at least three more months to oversee crucial elections, Indonesia's vice president said Friday.

The 200-strong mission has been in Aceh since August, monitoring a peace agreement between a small separatist rebel army and government troops that ended 29 years of fighting.

"We have agreed that the mission be extended," Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters in Jakarta.

The mandate is due to expire March 15, around the time of local elections in which the rebels will be allowed to participate. He said the mission would be extended by between "three and six months" to monitor the vote but that only 100 members of the team would be retained for that task.

Both sides have stuck to the deal so far. The rebels have disarmed and the military has withdrawn all non-Acehnese troops. Violence between the two sides has ended.

Several earlier attempts to end the fighting that broke out in 1976 and claimed 15,000 lives unraveled amid bitterness and mistrust.

Peace efforts picked up pace after a massive earthquake struck off Aceh's coast one year ago, causing a tsunami that killed at least 131,000 people in Aceh and left a half million others homeless.

Wave of optimism as peace returns

South China Morning Post - December 30, 2005

Before the tsunami, Banda Aceh was a ghost town at night except for patrols of feared paramilitary police. In the mornings, corpses scarred by torture would turn up in the paddy fields down the coast where the brutal guerilla war between GAM (Free Aceh Movement) insurgents and security forces was fought in the jungle.

Yesterday, as the last Indonesian counter-insurgency troops pulled out of Aceh province as agreed under the post-tsunami peace deal timetable, it felt like the 29-year conflict had happened a long time ago.

"People are disappointed with tsunami reconstruction, it is slow," said Mirzan, a young Acehnese who goes by just one name. "But we are very happy with the peace deal. At first, nobody thought it would work. They didn't trust the army. Now we think the war really is over."

The image of the final batch of 3,350 departing combat troops boarding ships in Lhokseumawe yesterday was a powerful one in Aceh, and so was the sight last week of guerillas giving up the last of their 840 guns to EU monitors.

Most Acehnese never thought they would see such sights. Many were sceptical when a peace deal was thrashed out between the separatist GAM and the Jakarta government last August. They remembered the peace deal of 2003, which collapsed into bloodshed when the Indonesian military decided an offensive was a better way to solve the Aceh problem than talks.

This time, with both sides desperate to see reconstruction after the tsunami and intense international pressure, the peace process has worked far better than even the wildest optimist had hoped.

The International Crisis Group, which has long monitored the conflict, was resoundingly upbeat in a report issued this month which announced: "The Aceh peace process is working beyond all expectations."

The group's president, Gareth Evans, described an "extraordinary, almost exuberant optimism" in the air. Everyone involved agrees that the tsunami provided the opportunity to end a conflict that all were tired of, but nobody knew how to bring to a close.

Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, widely praised along with Vice-President Jusuf Kalla for seizing the chance to make peace, singled out the tsunami as the vital factor when he marked this week's one-year anniversary of the disaster in which more than 160,000 Acehnese died.

GAM fighters, many of whom emerged from the jungle for the first time in years to see the destruction, desperately wanted their homeland rebuilt. The Indonesian government, listening to a chorus of woe-sayers warning of the potentially dire political repercussions of the disaster, desperately wanted the province rebuilt. There was even a common belief among the stunned survivors that the tsunami had been sent by God as punishment for a conflict in which brother had slaughtered brother.

Real international pressure was also applied for the first time. The outside world had shown little previous interest in the obscure jungle conflict; but aid donors didn't want to pour billions of dollars in reconstruction money into a hot-war zone.

Most parties now think the process has gone far enough, and smoothly enough, to be irreversible. Banda Aceh has changed out of all recognition. Even late at night its streets are full of people and there are no more corpses in the paddy fields.

Mr Mirzan said: "People are happier and life is so much better. Even the price of oranges has gone down since the army took down its checkpoints. Businessmen don't have to pay their 'taxes' any more."

Army completes withdrawal from Aceh as part of peace deal

The Guardian - December 29, 2005

John Aglionby, Jakarta -- Indonesia is today scheduled to complete the withdrawal of its 21,000 non-local soldiers from Aceh as part of a peace agreement to end a 29-year separatist insurgency in the tsunami-ravaged province.

An army spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Eri Soetiko, said 3,353 soldiers will leave from the port of Lhokseumawe by the end of today. This will officially leave 14,700 troops in the province, compared with more than 35,000 before the signing of the August memorandum of understanding between the two sides.

Aceh bore the brunt of the Boxing Day 2004 earthquake and tsunami, with more than 169,000 people killed or missing and 600,000 losing their homes. The impact of the disaster played a significant role in bringing the warring sides together.

The Free Aceh Movement (Gam) rebels met their commitment to surrender 840 weapons earlier this month. On Tuesday, in an unexpected move, they announced they had disbanded Gam's armed wing. Analysts see this as the strongest sign yet that Gam is truly starting to trust Jakarta.

The Indonesian police are due to finish their pullout in the next few days, reducing their strength from 15,000 in August to 9,100.

International monitors from Europe and south-east Asia, who are overseeing the peace process, will start next week verifying that Indonesia does not have more than the limit stipulated in the agreement. "I don't think it's feasible to do it on the exact number," the chief monitor, Pieter Feith, told the Guardian yesterday. "Many units are under strength, for instance. But I don't think the [military] are playing games." Indonesian generals have repeatedly said they are committed to peace and the small number of violations of the agreement is seen as being testament to this.

Tension has increased in the past week, however, after Jakarta announced it wants to redeploy about 1,000 army engineers to Aceh to help with reconstruction in remote areas cut off to civilian contractors.

"This [deployment] is an unhealthy development, under whatever pretext," a Gam spokesman, Bachtiar Abdullah, told the Guardian. "This is undermining the memorandum of agreement because there should only be 14,700 troops in Aceh, period. But if the monitors are happy then we will have faith in them."

Mr Feith said that in order not to sour the rising confidence levels between the two sides, he told President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Tuesday that any deployment "must be done in an inclusive way, in a transparent way and only after showing there's no demonstrable alternative to military engineers".

He said the engineers should also be unarmed and withdrawn before the monitors leave, a move scheduled for March 15. This is likely to be delayed, however, until the Indonesian parliament meets its commitment to the agreement by passing a law granting autonomy to Aceh.

The peace process is progressing much better than anyone expected after so many years of bitter conflict, which left at least 12,000 dead. But all analysts agree it has yet to become irreversible. "We're now going into the more political and ambiguous provisions of the agreement, so it will get a lot murkier," Mr Feith said.

Ex-rebels disband armed wing

Jakarta Post - December 28, 2005

A'an Suryana and Nani Afrida, Banda Aceh -- The Free Aceh Movement (GAM) announced the dissolution of its military wing here on Tuesday in another move to achieve long-lasting peace in the tsunami-ravaged province.

"On behalf of GAM combatants, I have the honor to announce that TNA (Aceh National Military) is now demobilized or disbanded," TNA chief Muzakkir Manaf said in a statement read out by GAM spokesman Sofyan Dawood in a news conference. Muzakkir was seen at the event.

"We are committed to implementing the memorandum of understanding (the peace pact) and will comply with its contents," the statement added.

The announcement was made after GAM representatives met with visiting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the Aceh provincial capital of Banda Aceh, where he led a solemn ceremony to commemorate one year since the devastating tsunami.

The dissolution paves the way for GAM to transform itself into a political party that is expected to contest a direct gubernatorial election in Aceh scheduled for April. GAM said it is now preparing to enter a political era in Aceh by establishing a political party.

The move also comes after the former rebels handed over all its 840 qualified firearms as required by the Aug. 15 peace accord signed by the government and GAM in Helsinki, Finland.

With the disbandment, GAM troops have now become a part of the civil community. In order to achieve long-lasting peace in Aceh, the former rebels have established the Aceh Transitional Committee (KPA) led by Muzakkir.

"The committee will facilitate former GAM combatants in entering the civilian life," said Irwandy Yusuf, a GAM representative to the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM). The committee is tasked with keeping GAM members disciplined and under control so as to ensure the peace deal would be kept intact.

Irwandy also said GAM itself would still exist and would be disbanded only after "all articles in the Helsinki peace deal have been implemented" by both sides.

Tuesday's news conference was also attended by AMM members. No government or military officials were present.

During the event, GAM also demanded that the presence of the international peace monitors be extended. The AMM is scheduled to end its term in Aceh on March 15. However, the government has hinted at allowing the foreign monitors to stay until July 1.

"We would like AMM to extend their mission to monitor all of the stages of the MOU. We are entering a political process, which is tricky and difficult," Irwandy said.

AMM comprises about 240 observers from the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

After holding a meeting with GAM representatives including Bachtiar Abdullah who returned in October after living in exile in Sweden, and GAM ex-commander of Aceh Besar district Teuku Mukhsalmina, President Susilo said the men were sincere in wanting to end a conflict, which has claimed some 15,000 lives.

"I see there is sincerity to end the conflict. I talked to them briefly, one by one. We have to safeguard this process," he was quoted by AFP as saying of the newfound peace in Aceh. Peace deals have been brokered in the past, but later collapsed.

The government still has to pass legislation that incorporates the peace pact, while GAM faces the difficult task of transforming itself into a political rather than fighting entity.

In a speech marking the tsunami observance on Monday, Susilo said the disaster created a "golden opportunity" to end the 29-year conflict and suggested that the peace deal was "an example of how a new hope for peace can emerge out of the ruin of destruction."

Peace talks opened in January and were successfully wrapped up in July. The rebels ceased their demand for an independent state of Aceh, while the government promised them broad autonomy and would allow them to take part in regional elections.

President approves redeployment of troops to Aceh

Jakarta Post - December 28, 2005

A'an Suryana and Nani Afrida, Banda Aceh -- Ignoring mounting criticism, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has approved a plan for the Indonesian Military to deploy troops to help speed up post-tsunami recovery programs in Aceh.

However the President stressed that the redeployment must involve less than 1,000 soldiers in order to maintain the trust between the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

"There is a need to mobilize the Army's engineering units to Aceh because they can help in the post-tsunami recovery here. But their number should make sense. It could be one to one-and-half battalions, or, less than 1,000 personnel," he said after a closed-door meeting with GAM leaders and ulema in Banda Aceh on Tuesday.

"The mobilization of troops should not disturb the ongoing peace process in Aceh, nor destroy the trust-building process between the government and GAM after the Helsinki peace deal," Susilo added.

He was responding to earlier reports that the Indonesian Military (TNI) was preparing 15 battalions of the Army's engineering and combat troops to build houses and public facilities in isolated areas across Aceh.

TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Soetarto had earlier said he was asked by Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, who heads the Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR), to arrange the involvement of soldiers to help speed up the reconstruction work, particularly in remote areas that could not be penetrated by civilian contractors.

Endriartono responded positively to the request and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Djoko Santoso said that he was ready to send 15 battalions, or some 15,000 troops.

The plan, however, has drawn strong reactions, with many saying the planned mobilization could shatter the peace agreement.

GAM spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah was among those who expressed concern, saying the military redeployment would disturb the ongoing peace process in Aceh. He instead suggested that the government offer the reconstruction job to civilian contractors.

"Actually, the President did not offer the reconstruction and rehabilitation jobs to former guerrillas. But, of course, we have several options to help the BRR. One option is clear, that the government can ask civilian contractors to carry out the Aceh recovery programs.

Another option is that the government can ask local people to do the job in order to reduce the rising number of Acehnese jobless survivors, "We have already completed the decommissioning process. Now, how about the TNI and the police? They haven't finished the process. So, why did the government come up with the idea to deploy troops again to Aceh?" Bakhtiar said.

Aceh rebels disband armed wing

Agence France Presse - December 27, 2005

Banda Aceh -- Indonesia's Aceh rebels formally disbanded their armed wing on Tuesday in a major step toward ending one of Asia's longest separatist conflicts.

Peace efforts gained momentum after Aceh province was devastated by the massive earthquake and tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, killing more than 131,000 people in the province and leaving half a million others homeless.

The announcement came shortly after rebel representatives met with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province. "The Acehnese national army, or the armed wing of the Free Aceh Movement, has demobilized and disbanded," Sofyan Daud, a former rebel commander, told reporters. "The Aceh national army is now part of civil society, and will work to make the peace deal a success."

Since the signing of a peace agreement in August, the former fighters have handed in all of their self-declared 840 arms and the Indonesian military has withdrawn nearly 20,000 troops from Aceh -- with hundreds more scheduled to leave before the month's end. With the sensitive phase of disarmament and decommissioning near completion, the government will start preparing laws giving the rebels the right to form a political party and cementing the region's right to greater autonomy and control of its natural resources.

The rebels took up arms in 1976 to carve out an independent homeland in the oil- and gas-rich province. Nearly 15,000 people died, many of them civilians caught up in army sweeps through remote villages.

Troops in Aceh for reconstruction, not combat: President

Antara - December 27, 2005

Banda Aceh -- President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono denied earlier reports saying he planned to send more than 15,000 troops to Aceh, saying the soldiers would number less than 1,000 and would be used for reconstruction efforts, not combat.

"The soldiers (from the Army's engineering corps) will be deployed because they are needed for reconstruction efforts and not for carrying out combat duties," Susilo said.

"This should not halt the peace and trust building process we are all working hard for." Susilo was speaking at the Aceh governor's official residence in Banda Aceh.

He denied reports the government would send 15,000 soldiers from the engineering corps.

"It's not true; that news is not accurate. Deployment of soldiers from the engineering corps is limited to only one or one a-half battalions, which means less than 1,000 soldiers.

"The presence of soldiers from the engineering corps is natural because they were involved in building bridges and roads right after the tsunami." Soldiers played a vital role reopening roads to areas isolated by the Dec. 26 tsunami.

TNI to close down operational command in Aceh

Tempo Interactive - December 27, 2005

Banda Aceh -- General Endriartono Sutarto, Commander of the Indonesian Military (TNI), has said that the TNI operational command based in Lhokseumawe would be closed down following the withdrawal of non-organic TNI troops in Aceh.

Sutarto made this statement after attending a commemoration of the one-year anniversary of the tsunami disaster in Lhok Nga, Aceh Besar, on Monday (26/12).

According to him, the operational command is to be closed down because its function is no longer required following the withdrawal of all non-organic troops in Aceh. TNI non-organic troops will be withdrawn from Aceh on December 29, through the port of Lhokseumawe.

"There is no more operational command. We have closed it down. All defense functions must be carried out by the Iskandar Muda military command," stated Sutarto. He called on all parties to maintain the peace process in Aceh and rebuild the region following the tsunami.

The TNI Operational Command was set up when a military emergency was declared in Aceh on May 19, 2003. The function of the operational command was to organize personnel under operational control in order to destroy the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

The number of non-organic TNI personnel to be relocated in the last stage totals 6,811. In addition, 2,150 of National Police and Mobile Brigade personnel will be relocated. (Adi Warsidi- Tempo News Room)

Prayers mark tsunami anniversary

Jakarta Post - December 27, 2005

A'an Suryana and Nani Afrida, Banda Aceh -- Tearful mourners gathered here on Monday to offer prayers and lay flowers on the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the world's deadliest natural disasters.

Commemorations were similarly held in other countries affected by the horrific tidal waves, with survivors, relatives and other mourners remembering the more than 220,000 people killed, including Aceh's toll of 126,000 dead and 37,000 others listed as missing.

"One year after the disaster, there is still much to be done," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said while leading an emotional ceremony with a minute of silence in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh at 8:16 a.m., when the wave struck on Dec. 26, 2004.

"Let's now bow our heads in silence to pray for the souls of those who lost their lives... May they rest in peace by God's side," he told the crowd of around 800 locals and foreign dignitaries who gathered in Ulee Lheue district, Banda Aceh, to mark the anniversary.

Susilo then sounded a wailing siren, which was installed as part of an early warning system to alert people prior to natural disasters.

In the neighboring West Sumatra capital of Padang, the government on Monday tested its newly installed warning system for the first time. Thousands of residents moved to higher ground at Gunung Pangilun when blaring sirens were sounded during the simulation.

The commemoration came amid lingering concerns over some 67,000 survivors still living in tents and barracks across Aceh, despite huge amounts of money channeled into Indonesia for them by international donors. The disaster displaced some 500,000 people. "I don't know for how long I must stay here. My house was swept away by the tsunami," said Nadiah, who is now staying with family in a barrack in Lambaro, Aceh Besar regency.

Besides housing, survivors are also in need of assurances of job sustainability, with reconstruction projects creating short-term employment only. Inflation has been running particularly high over the past few months, pushing people further into poverty.

Infrastructure recovery has been slow as 3,000 kilometers of roads, airports, sea ports and farms were destroyed when the tsunami slammed into an 800-km band of the province's coastline.

Many roads are still impassable with only 235 km restored. Some 1,620 bridges were wrecked but only 35 arterial bridges have been rebuilt, according to data from the Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR).

The task is daunting but Indonesia is not alone in its reconstruction efforts. Many countries and institutions, including the United Nations and the United States, have promised to continue providing aid for Aceh.

The pledges were reiterated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery Bill Clinton, US President George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard through pre-recorded messages of support broadcast in Banda Aceh.

They also praised the Indonesian government for taking a leadership role in coordinating relief operations and tsunami recovery programs.

In response, President Susilo expressed gratitude to all countries and parties that had been helping rebuild Aceh. "My appeal to you is to keep this flame of goodwill alive. Do not let it fizzle."

In the event, Susilo also handed over a token of gratitude for local parties involved in Aceh's humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, including the military, police and other government agencies as well as non-governmental organizations. From Sweden, where he has been living for decades in self-exile, Free Aceh Movement (GAM) prime minister Malik Mahmud thanked donors, international organizations, the Indonesian government and all parties that had helped Aceh.

He called on them to maintain "honesty" in implementing the Aug. 15 peace agreement signed by the Indonesian government and GAM.

'I long to see Aceh as it was before the disaster'

Jakarta Post - December 27, 2005

Nani Afrida, special to The Seattle Times -- It has been one year since the tsunami devastated Aceh. What Aceh looked and felt like when the tsunami struck, and the panic of the people around me are still fresh in my mind.

The sad faces of those looking for missing family members stick in my memory. And like any other survivor, I've had to accept the fact that half of Banda Aceh, disappeared in the huge waves.

As a journalist for five years, I know every corner of Banda Aceh and the surrounding landscape, the places that I scour every day to gather news.

A few hours after the tidal wave, I stood alone at the edge of the city staring at the vast expanse of sea water. There was no sight of the houses that once stood closely in a row, and familiar roads had vanished.

Everything was flattened by the giant waves. In that moment, I realized that the lives of the Acehnese, including me, had changed forever. I never stop expressing my gratitude to God for allowing me to survive and witness the events after this disaster.

But working as a local reporter in a disaster area isn't as easy as one might think. Jakarta and foreign journalists might find reporting on such a calamity to be a goldmine of stories. For me, as an Acehnese, the job has become a burden.

In the last several months, I've heard the same stories over and over: The sorrow of survivors continuing to search for their missing loved ones, their futile queries about houses or jobs, their worries about an uncertain future.

Two of the questions I hear most frequently are "When shall we get our houses?" and, "Why are we still living in tents while there are quite a lot of nongovernmental organizations in Aceh?" There are more than 500,000 homeless people in Aceh today. Most live in tents or barracks or stay with relatives. One year after the tsunami, only 16 percent of the planned 200,000 new houses have been built. Only God knows when the remaining ones will be built. The patience of those living in makeshift tents is wearing thin. Worse still, they feel their misery has been exploited by many parties.

In this case, their displeasure and distrust are not only aimed at the government and relief workers, but also journalists. I don't often feel offended or angry by their reaction. But at times, when I interview them in their tents, their words hurt my heart.

I know perfectly well that there have been positive changes since the tsunami. The Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed a peace deal to end 30 years of fighting. Martial law was lifted, opening up Aceh to the world.

That has been a blessing for all of us. But too little has changed in the lives of the tsunami victims.

The less fortunate are still in tents, having to put up with the unfavorable effects of the rainy season -- wet roads, malaria mosquitoes and dirty water. Some tents have begun to wear out. The luckier ones live in barracks.

Each barrack measuring 2x2 square meters must accommodate two to three families, and people sleep packed like sardines.

There are few regular jobs. Relief groups organize work-for-cash programs where each person is paid 35,000 rupiah -- about US$3.50 per day -- but these aren't steady. And the government's monthly allocation of 90,000 rupiah -- around $9 -- does not come on a regular basis.

Everything is costly in Aceh now, with prices pegged to the US dollar, the currency used by foreign-aid organizations. Rice, for example, is now two or three times more expensive than before the tsunami.

Many survivors have begun to show their disgust at outsiders, foreign or otherwise, who drive about in luxury cars while they sit despondently in their tents. They have little confidence in the Indonesian government, believing graft keeps them from receiving the help they deserve.

I sometimes feel frustrated because I believe that the situation in Aceh will hardly change.

I have met Nurleili, a 23-year-old girl whose right leg had to be amputated because of the tsunami. I have met Mar, 54, a housewife who is still staying in her tent. I have met Hasra, a 23-year-old homeless victim now staying in a barrack.

When I came to them for a story about tsunami victims, the three asked me the same question: "Do you think our fate will change for the better after you write about us? Many have written about us, but our plight remains." Now, though a year has gone by, I feel as if the disaster took place just yesterday.

It seems like only a short time ago that I saw the residents in the Meuraxa district sitting on their terraces while it was raining, eating fried bananas with their families. Now, these people -- their families torn apart -- sit in wet tents counting the passing days.

I still have fresh memories of a time before the tsunami, when residents of the Kemukimam Lamdingin would smile hospitably and ask me to drop by when I passed their houses at night. Nowadays, they are busy each night drying out of their tents from the flood that rushes in with the high tide.

It is too difficult to smile.

At these moments, I realize that I long to see Aceh as beautiful as it was before disaster struck, at a time when people still smiled.

[Nani Afrida is an Acehnese journalist who writes for The Jakarta Post and other publications. This story is being reprinted with the permission of The Seattle Times.]

BRR insistent about TNI help

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

A'an Suryana, Banda Aceh -- Despite mounting criticism, the Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) is pressing ahead with its plan to request the Indonesian Military (TNI) to deploy troops to help the body rebuild Aceh.

The troop deployment is crucial to speed up reconstruction projects in the tsunami-ravaged province, said BRR spokesman Sudirman Said here on Sunday.

"We accept the criticism but we will go ahead with the plan as it is crucial to speed up recovery efforts in Aceh," he said. "We will explain the situation to those who have criticized the plan and we believe that they will accept our reasons," he added.

Critics have accused BRR of not promoting policies that support long-lasting peace in Aceh by asking for troops to return to the province after weapons decommissioning by former rebels and a major military pullout has just been completed.

Sudirman said the plan was still in the initial stages. The body has not discussed with the military how many troops would be deployed to Aceh and whether they would be sent from outside the province.

TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto said on Thursday he would respond positively to a request by BRR chief Kuntoro Mangkusubroto to help the agency rebuild Aceh by deploying some 15,000 soldiers to the province.

Sudirman said the reconstruction has been progressing very slowly as civilian contractors lacked the ability to penetrate isolated areas hit by the tsunami. The problem is compounded by the vastness of the area decimated by the tsunami last year. According to data from the agency, the tsunami wreaked havoc on nearly 800 kilometers of coastline in Aceh, damaging nearly all the infrastructure in its wake.

The tsunami left 3,000 kilometers of roads impassable, 14 of 19 seaports badly damaged, eight of 10 airports damaged and 170 bridges destroyed. "As civilians have failed to accomplish the work, we are expecting help from the military," said Sudirman.

But, he said the body understood that the issue was sensitive, adding that if the plan were to materialize, the agency would prefer to use soldiers from the Iskandar Muda Military Command in Aceh rather than pulling in troops from outside the province.

The agency would thus avoid complications following the Helsinki peace deal forged by the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). The Aug. 15 peace deal states that all non-local troops must be withdrawn from the province.

Separately, respected Acehnese figure Achmad Humam Hamid warned the body on Sunday to think twice before pushing ahead with the plan.

"The government and BRR should be aware that Aceh is prone to conflict and moreover that both the government and GAM are building trust after the Helsinki peace deal. The plan could spark a backlash from GAM and then shatter the peace deal," said Hamid, an academic and longtime human rights campaigner who leads the Aceh Recovery Forum that has been at the forefront in working for the rights of tsunami survivors.

Acehnese see little progress in reconstruction work

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

Hera Diani, Jakarta -- People in Aceh and Nias have expressed little satisfaction in the progress of reconstruction and rehabilitation work in tsunami-hit areas, despite the government's claim that the pace of rebuilding is picking up, according to a survey.

The survey, carried out by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) in December, revealed that Acehnese think there has been a generous amount of aid given by local and foreign donors to help finance the reconstruction of areas ruined by the Dec. 26 tsunami, which killed over 170,000 people and made at least half a million people homeless in Aceh, in the northern tip of the island of Sumatra.

However, only 27 percent of 833 Acehnese respondents were happy with the progress of reconstruction work carried out by the government.

The level of satisfaction is below 40 percent with regards the development of housing, schools, clean water facilities, employment provision, medical facilities and so on in Aceh.

As for the performance of the Aceh and Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency (BRR), which has been given a mandate to lead the reconstruction work in the two regions, 38 percent of Acehnese think that BRR has performed generally well, 20 percent said the BRR worked fast, and 18 percent said that BRR's management was transparent and open.

In Nias, however, the level of satisfaction is even lower. Only 18 percent of 430 respondents said that a lot of progress had been made by the central government, 18 percent think that BRR performs well, 7 percent said BRR worked fast and 10 percent praised BRR's transparency and openness.

There is a gap, however, between the perception of people in Aceh and Nias and people in the rest of the country, in terms of the progress in reconstruction and rehabilitation work.

Out of 1,119 respondents throughout the country, 74 percent think that the government has made a lot of progress in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Aceh and Nias.

Rizal Sukma, researcher and deputy director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said that people in Aceh and Nias might be uninformed.

"People in the rest of the country might be picking up the news about the progress from the media, so they knew something is being done," he said.

Meanwhile, BRR's director of donor and international relation, Heru Prasetyo, admitted that reconstruction process in Nias was really struggling.

"(Development) in Nias is difficult because the infrastructure there is not good. But we do whatever we can," he said, adding that it even took Japan 10 years to complete reconstruction work after the Kobe earthquake.

As for the criticism of the plan to deploy 15,000 soldiers to help speed up reconstruction in Aceh, Heru said the expertise of noncombatant soldiers might help development, particularly in coastal areas.

"Meulaboh harbor for instance was built with the help of amphibious troops from Singapore who did construction work under the sea. Surely, we cannot ask for their help, or other foreign soldier's help again, can we? "We're not saying that we need the military, but we need their skills to develop the areas that are difficult to access," he said.

Rizal said that the reconstruction work was important, but must be in line with local demand.

"We shouldn't just focus on the speed of reconstruction, but we must also pay attention to the peace-building process."

Troops could dash fragile Aceh peace

Sydney Morning Herald - December 24, 2005

Mark Forbes, Jakarta -- Indonesia's military has announced plans to deploy more than 10,000 troops in Aceh to speed tsunami reconstruction, a move that threatens the province's brittle peace.

The proposal, which follows a plea for assistance from Aceh's reconstruction agency, exposes concerns about the pace of the relief effort. More than 100,000 homes need to be built, remote areas still receive little assistance and many roads and bridges are unrepaired.

Representatives of GAM, the Free Aceh Movement which has staged a 30-year independence struggle with the military, expressed alarm, saying the deployment would undermine a peace deal. Human rights groups said the move was inappropriate, insensitive and underlined failings in the reconstruction plan.

Under a post-tsunami peace deal, GAM handed over its remaining weapons this week and 20,000 troops have been withdrawn. The President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was due to farewell the last military contingent from Aceh on December 27.

In a surprise announcement, Indonesia's military chief, General Endriartono Sutarto, said he was preparing to deploy 15 battalions of troops to speed up reconstruction. The soldiers would focus on reconstruction work in remote areas, General Endriartono said.

"If the [Aceh and Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency] has no other choice but to ask for military help to carry out reconstruction, then we will help, on the condition that [the agency] provides the funds to mobilise the troops," he said.

But Jakarta later appeared to be backing away from the move. A spokesman for the international mission monitoring the troop withdrawal and GAM's disarmament in Aceh said the mission had been assured the plan would not proceed.

The rehabilitation agency was not available for comment. Sources confirmed it had requested additional assistance, but not directly from the military.

An army spokesman, Brigadier-General Hotman Panjaitan, said the request was made to the Government and referred to the army one week ago. "We have prepared 15 battalions of combat engineering and construction engineering in response to the request made by the rehabilitation agency to the Government.

"It is because the military has another aspect besides serving as a combat force; we also are involved in social works such as building bridges, roads and so on," General Hotman said.

A GAM spokesman, Irwandi Yusuf, called for the deployment to be stopped, claiming it would destabilise the province. "I am very concerned, every Acehnese is concerned," he said. "This undermines the peace process and many Acehnese want work: why give it to the military?"

A spokesman for the Human Rights Working Group, Choirul Anam, said the request showed insensitivity to the peace process. "By sending the troops back to Aceh, [the rehabilitation agency] will not help healing the trauma," Mr Anam said.

Acehnese children still not in school

Jakarta Post - December 24, 2005

A'an Suryana, Banda Aceh -- A year after the tsunami, signs of recovery are evident among Acehnese children, but many challenges remain, a UN body has said. Many children are not going to school, still suffering from trauma and boredom, and living in tents and barracks, all of which require urgent attention, said Lely Jauhari, spokeswoman of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Banda Aceh.

"The relief effort was a success immediately after the tsunami. Most of the children got food, water and shelter, and no major outbreaks of communicable disease were reported. But, problems remain a year after," Lely told The Jakarta Post on Thursday afternoon.

Figures from the Aceh Statistics Agency show that a total of 63,069 children between seven and 15, or 8 percent of a total of 767,044 children in this age group, are still not going to school. Given this situation, education is now one of UNICEF's chief concerns, said Lely.

UNICEF has donated vast quantities of textbooks and school essentials to children, and has recruited, trained and deployed over 1,000 emergency primary teachers in 12 districts, paying their salaries for six months. But, rebuilding the schools destroyed by the tsunami is a major challenge.

Bureaucracy and population displacement are blamed for the slow pace of school rebuilding with only one permanent school building having been constructed by the UN body in Aceh so far.

"Building a school is not a piece of cake. Before kicking of reconstruction, we have to report to the Aceh rehabilitation agency (BRR) and the local government. But the process takes a lot of time. In one case, we sought permits to rebuild schools in one area, but suddenly other parties had already built the schools there so that our request was turned down," said Lely.

In another case, a plan to rebuild a school had to be aborted due to a lack of electricity and a water supply.

In addition, people are still coming into the affected areas for economic and other reasons, which made it difficult for UNICEF to identify which areas actually need schools, said Lely.

"In order to overcome the various problems, we have set up 135 temporary schools in selected areas of Aceh since May 26," said Lely. The temporary schools are important in that they not only provide children with education but also attract parents to settle in the respective areas, said Lely.

Meanwhile, in order to address the trauma experienced by children, UNICEF has been working with local government and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

UNICEF provides funding and training while the NGOs and local government recruit and deployed social workers to help the children overcome their trauma. UNICEF has also set up children's centers around Aceh.

"Children, especially those living in tents and barracks, do not need professional psychologists. They need someone they can trust and these people should come from their own community," said Lely.

The BRR has estimated that at least 67,500 people, including children, are still living in tents since the tsunami.

BRR-TNI reconstruction plan raises questions

Jakarta Post - December 24, 2005

A'an Suryana and Tiarma Siboro, Banda Aceh/Jakarta -- The government has drawn strong criticism for its plan to deploy 15 battalions, or about 15,000 soldiers, to help speed up reconstruction in Aceh.

Critics said on Friday the deployment could endanger the peace process in the tsunami-ravaged province, after former rebels completed their disarmament and the Indonesian Military (TNI) pulled out most of its combat troops from Aceh.

The critics accuse the Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) of not promoting policies that support long-lasting peace in the province.

The agency is only interested in its own success by focusing on infrastructure development in Aceh, which has unfortunately shown very little progress up to this point, said Agung Widjaja, a researcher at human rights and democracy watchdog Demos.

"A massive redeployment of troops to Aceh will harm the ongoing peace process. Anyone who visits Aceh will see there is no area so remote that is too difficult for civilian contractors to reach," he said.

TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto said on Thursday he would respond positively to a request by BRR chief Kuntoro Mangkusubroto to help the agency rebuild Aceh by deploying thousands of soldiers to the province.

Sutarto said the TNI was ready to lend a hand after Kuntoro told him the BRR needed the military's manpower.

The idea was first raised two weeks ago after a meeting between Kuntoro and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta. During the meeting, the President asked Kuntoro how the government could help speed up reconstruction.

BRR spokesman Sudirman Said confirmed on Friday the agency was considering asking the TNI for assistance in Aceh. "The issue is sensitive, so we are discussing it carefully. We are still looking into the costs and benefits of seeking help from TNI," Sudirman told The Jakarta Post in Banda Aceh.

Rusdi Marpaung from human rights watchdog Imparsial questioned whether the President had been informed of or approved the planned redeployment of troops to Aceh.

"The Military Law states that the President is the only person authorized to decide on the use of military forces. The legislature must also endorse and monitor any troop mobilizations. So it would be against the law if Kuntoro bypassed the President and directly asked the TNI chief to send troops to help him rebuild Aceh," Rusdi said.

Sudirman said the BRR faced a daunting task in rebuilding Aceh, given the vast area decimated by the Dec. 26 tsunami. According to data from the agency, the tsunami wreaked havoc on nearly 800 kilometers of coastline in Aceh, damaging nearly all of the infrastructure in the path of the waves. The tsunami left 3,000 kilometers of roads impassable, 14 of 19 seaports badly damaged, eight of 10 airports damaged and 170 bridges destroyed, according to the data.

"Reconstruction projects in remote areas have been progressing at a slow pace because contractors lack the ability to penetrate isolated areas hit by the tsunami. The damage was so severe that contractors, for example, gave up after they had already been hired to rebuild roads between Lamno and Calang. As civilians have failed to accomplish the work, we are expecting help" from the military, said Sudirman.

He said the BRR understood the gravity of the situation and added that if the redeployment materialized, the agency would prefer to use soldiers from the Iskandar Muda Military Command in Aceh rather than pulling in troops from outside the province.

The Aug. 15 peace deal signed by the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) states that all non-local troops must be withdrawn from the province.

GAM spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah said on Thursday that if the deployment took place, it could have a devastating psychological impact on the Acehnese, many of whom were the victims of TNI atrocities in the years before the peace agreement was reached in Helsinki, Finland.

The deployment could also cause suspicion among former GAM rebels, who have cooperated with international monitors to hand over their weapons, as stipulated in the peace deal, he said.

One year on, tsunami toll remains elusive

Agence France Presse - December 24, 2005

Banda Aceh -- Bustari Mansyur shrugs wearily when asked how many bodies his workers retrieved from the mangled wreckage of last December's tsunami. The question seems irrelevant.

"There were so many bodies, we could not count," concedes the chairman of the Aceh chapter of the Indonesian Red Cross, which took on an unofficial role as body-counter in the days after the disaster.

"On the first, second, third day -- there were a lot of bodies. We don't know how many -- the government, until now, does not know."

The Dec. 26 tsunami slammed mercilessly into coastlines around the Indian Ocean, resulting in devastation so complete that skeletons are still being retrieved as the grim cleanup labors ona year afterwards.

The most widely accepted estimates of the final toll add up to around 220,000. But significantly different figures are still being offered: the Roman Catholic charity Caritas Internationalis suggested Wednesday that closer to 400,000 lives were claimed.

Entire villages were obliterated -- leaving no one to report deaths -- while buses and cars were sucked out to sea. Bodies were buried rapidly without identification amid fears that a second wave of disease would hit survivors.

Records from many wiped out areas, already mired in poverty and stricken by deadly conflicts, were frequently patchy at best.

In Indonesia, the Jakarta-based spokesman for the Red Cross told AFP that it planned to release a report later this month on its work in Aceh, which would include a toll. Finalizing one, however, is no longer a priority.

"We are continuing our tracing and mailing program consistently but our focus is now to rebuild Aceh and move beyond body count," Hadi Kuswoyo said.

In a June report, the Red Cross said 131,029 were killed and 37,066 missing. Satkorlak, the government agency tasked with coordinating responses to disasters, puts the number of dead at 130,013, but has the same missing figure.

A post-tsunami census carried out in devastated Aceh province, meanwhile, found that 4,031,589 people were now living in Indonesia's westernmost province, down by 238,411 on the figure compiled before national elections in October 2004, though officials drew no conclusions.

Christian groups 'proselytising', Muslims claim

The Australian - December 24, 2005

Sian Powell, Banda Aceh -- Tensions between fundamentalist Muslims and Western aid workers have begun to erupt in Aceh as the tsunami-devastated Indonesian province slowly recovers.

Islamic activists have claimed that aid workers are secretly attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity, pointing particularly to World Vision, Aceh Relief, the International Catholic Mission and Church World Service.

And Western women have been sent threatening text messages, warning them not to be seen on the beach in swimming costumes, "or else".

Rumours swirl in Aceh of conversions from Islam to Christianity, of plans to undermine Islam with largesse from Christian charities and of a secret Christian agenda of seemingly innocuous aid organisations.

Aceh was traumatised by the Boxing Day tsunami, which left 170,000 dead and missing, but however needed the Western aid organisations have been, they have always been watched with wary eyes.

An elder of the al-Hassanah mosque in Banda Aceh's Geuceu district said a gift of Christian money could not be used for a new roof for the mosque. Instead, the money was borrowed from elsewhere, and the donated funds from the broad-minded US-based Catholic Relief Service were used to repay the loan -- preventing the Christian cash having any direct contact with the mosque.

Long known as Indonesia's most conservatively devout province, Aceh introduced strict Islamic sharia law in 1999. Gamblers have been publicly caned and religious police have detained bare- headed Muslim women or couples seen canoodling.

Christian organisations flatly deny they are trying to bring the Christian faith to Aceh. World Vision Australia chief executive Tim Costello said his organisation had a strict policy forbidding proselytisation.

Aceh's Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency will begin investigating the allegations next month and, more importantly, probe why the Acehnese are feeling so insecure about Christians in the province.

Some parents in Aceh still hope for miracle

Associated Press - December 24, 2005

Banda Aceh -- Some parents in tsunami-ravaged Aceh province are still clinging to hopes for a miracle, placing photos of smiling children in newspapers on the chance they might still be alive.

"It might just jog someone's memory," said Amiruddin, a civil servant who ran an ad in Saturday's Serambi Indonesia with a picture of his two children under a headline that simply reads"Searching For."

"I have a really strong feeling inside me that they will one day come home," he said.

One year after the tsunami slammed into Aceh's coastline, leaving 167,000 people dead or missing, that outcome is now more unlikely than ever.

Only 58 separated children have been reunited with parents since the Dec. 26 disaster, and just two such reunions have occurred since July, according to the UN's child agency.

Amiruddin and others who still run the ads hold out hope that their children may have lost their memories due to post-traumatic shock, or were too young to know their address when the tsunamistruck, and have been taken in by other families.

They also believe that their children may have been smuggled out of the province by professional gangs that were widely reported to have been targeting the province in the days after the disaster. The UN's child agency says there's no evidence this ever occurred.

Trauma counselors in the province attribute the phenomena to the fact that so few of those killed by the tsunami in Aceh were ever identified and given a formal burial.

When the giant waves retreated, they sucked countless bodies back to sea, and tens of thousands of other corpses were hurriedly buried in mass graves in the days after the disaster.

"If they have seen no evidence their child is dead, they will have trouble accepting it," said Amin Khoja, a social worker from the American Red Cross, which is training local counselors to help the survivors and bereaved.

Khoja, who worked in the aftermath of the Gujarat earthquake, said it can take three or four years for some bereaved people to accept their loss.

Despite individual cases, most counselors working in Aceh say the survivors and bereaved are coping remarkably well -- something they attribute to the region's strong community and religious ties.

Amiruddin, a 45-year-old civil servant, and his wife Yasrati have had no counseling since the disaster. They have renovated their badly damaged home, and now live there again with their one remaining son.

Yasrati still believes her two children are alive because she frequently dreams about them.

West Papua

Root of conflict and peace agendas for Papua

Jakarta Post - December 30, 2005

Muridan S. Widjojo, Jakarta -- The meeting between Vice President Jusuf Kalla, flanked by Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo AS, Minister of Home Affairs Mohammad Ma'ruf and Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto, and the official leaders of the province of Papua on Nov. 24, followed by the talks with the leaders of West Irian Jaya province the next day, resulted in a positive consensus.

The conflict over the election of local leaders in West Irian Jaya will be settled based on Law No. 21/2001 on special autonomy and Government Regulation No. 54/2004 on the Papuan People's Assembly (MRP). This implies that the process of creating a legal umbrella for West Irian Jaya will start with a white paper drafted by the governor of Papua, which will then be studied by the Papuan provincial council and brought to the MRP for approval. Subsequently, it will be forwarded to the central government via the minister of home Affairs.

This process is expected to last a month. According to the consensus, the central government will issue a regulation in lieu of law to provide legal protection for West Irian Jaya. If Jakarta firmly adheres to the accord, the door will likely be open for a comprehensive resolution of the root causes of the Papuan conflict.

However, it is worth noting that the agreement was reached only after the provincial council and MRP had rejected the unilateral plan by the Ministry of Home Affairs to hold local elections in West Irian Jaya, and threatened to reject the government initiated special autonomy and demand a referendum. This threat reflected the pinnacle of disappointment and anger among Papuan people and provincial leaders at the government's arbitrary policies and disregard for the Special Autonomy Law.

The success of Vice President Jusuf Kalla in breaking the political deadlock in Papua is in fact only superficial. The conflict over the elections in West Irian Jaya is just a small symptom of a much bigger problem.

Throughout 2005, the central government and provincial administration found themselves at loggerheads over a number of issues. The most significant consequence of this was a high level of Papuan dissatisfaction with the application of special autonomy, as manifested in the demonstration by 15,000 people organized by the Papuan Tribal Council in August.

Their reasons are obvious. First, socioeconomic development in the region is making little significant progress. The public health service is seen as inadequate, and the HIV/AIDS question is not being properly handled. The education sector remains plagued by a lack of facilities and teachers. Widespread poverty amid Papua's natural riches is still the order of the day.

Second, little progress has been made on the human rights and state violence questions. To mention but a few cases, the legal process in respect of grave rights violations in Wamena and Wasior has stalled in the Attorney General's Office. A 2004 military operation in Puncak Jaya (2004) that resulted in serious rights abuses has not even been officially reported yet. Worse still, the first permanent Human Rights Tribunal (2005) has failed to punish rights violators in Abepura (2000). The victims in the case were taken aback by a defense attorney's statement that the accused should be considered "heroes" and the injured parties "separatists".

Third, the demand for "setting the historical record straight" in Papua and hopes for reconciliation have not been responded to wisely.

The Papuans' demands for freedom are connected with the historical issue. This problem will hamper Papua-Jakarta reconciliation and the effort to build healthier political ties. The people of Papua will continue to question their political history in various local, national and international forums.

The Vice President, and even the President himself, have emphasized the need to settle the problems of West Irian Jaya and Papua by taking account of the aspirations of the Papuan people and provincial leaders. Whatever course of action is decided upon in resolving the West Irian Jaya issue, Jakarta must avoid unilateral action. The Papuan side, particularly state leaders in the provincial council and MRP, and the governor, should be fully involved.

The West Irian Jaya problem looks likely to be long drawn out and will not be settled within one month as targeted by Vice President Jusuf Kalla. Differing views will arise between the governor of Papua and the MRP, with the governor accepting the splitting of Papua into five provinces and the MRP tending to reject this. This is not to mention the possible introduction of another agenda by the Ministry of Home Affairs in Jakarta, which is apparently set on pushing through the local election plan.

If the West Irian Jaya issue can be properly resolved, the central government and Papuan leadership will be able to prepare three peace agendas to get to the root of the conflict in Papua.

First, Papua's development can be accelerated based on a new special autonomy paradigm that prioritizes the empowerment of indigenous Papuans in the social economy, health and education sectors. Conflicts over natural resources should be resolved based on the principles of justice and benefit to local communities.

Spending on the Papuan bureaucracy should be reduced and priority given to community development spending. Parallel to this, corruption cases, such as that involving the Jayawijaya regent, should be brought to trial.

Second, human rights should be upheld while at the same time putting an end to the impunity enjoyed by the military and police. As a start, the Abepura case should be appeared. The files on the Wamena and Wasior cases should also be improved and delivered to the court for trial without delay. The entire legal process and control over prosecutors and judges should be tightened to prevent outside intervention on behalf of defendants.

Third, the question of "straightening out Papuan history", the territorial integrity of the Unitary Republic of Indonesia and reconciliation should be addressed by opening a dialog between Jakarta and Papua. This should be aimed at reaching a compromise between the "nationalist" and "separatist" poles.

In this regard, all the important elements of Papuan society should be represented, covering the grassroots like the Papuan Tribal Council, the Presidium of Papuan Councils and Churches and official leaders in Papua. The President should appoint a committee made up of members knowledgeable about Papuan affairs and experienced in negotiating. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has promised that the Aceh peace deal will be a model for Papua.

In the context of the internationalization of Papua, the government should realize that the best diplomacy would be improved Jakarta-Papua relations based upon concrete action in line with the three agendas described above.

There are two principal views in international circles on Papua.

Some NGOs and Indonesian experts believe that Papua could become a second Timor Leste. Other NGOs and Indonesian specialists disagree with this view because, first, Papua has been recognized as part of Indonesia by the United Nations since 1969 and, second, there has been explicit confirmation by influential nations like the US, Australia, the Netherlands and Britain that Indonesia has sovereignty over Papua.

The second group tends to believe that special autonomy is more logical and realistic for Papua.

Nonetheless, all the optimism could dissipate if, first, rights violations are ignored and the security forces continue to enjoy impunity; second, Indonesian troops, perhaps also police personnel, go out of control and commit new rights infringements; and, third, a unilateral policy on Papua continues to be imposed by the Ministry of Home Affairs, thus increasing antipathy on the part of both informal and formal Papuan leaders.

All this would give more reason to the international community to question the 1969 decision on integration and encourage a referendum in Papua. If this were to happens, a Jakarta-Papua political stalemate would be inevitable. Political violence would increase and disintegration would become part of the agenda.

[The writer is a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta, and a PhD candidate in history at University of Leiden in the Netherlands.]

Indonesian military admits to taking money

Associated Press - December 29, 2005

Slobodan Lekic, Jakarta -- Indonesia's military acknowledged for the first time Thursday that its commanders in Papua had received "support" from a US gold-mining giant -- responding to allegations that Freeport-McMoRan Co. gave the army millions of dollars to protect its facilities in the remote province.

Maj. Gen. Kohirin Suganda said the armed forces "as an institution" had never received donations from the New Orleans- based company.

"But we have heard that Freeport provides support such as vehicles, fuel and meals directly to the units in the field," Suganda said. "That's the company's policy. It was not done because we requested it." Suganda was responding to an article published Tuesday in The New York Times that detailed Freeport- McMoRan's payments of $20 million to military commanders in the area in the last seven years.

Indonesia regularly ranks among the world's most corrupt countries in international surveys. The latest reports will do little to raise confidence in the army -- considered one of the country's most graft-ridden institutions -- or the government's pledge to eradicate official corruption.

Human rights groups have criticized direct payments by foreign mining and energy companies to the military, saying they were undermining efforts to bring the politically powerful armed forces under civilian command following the collapse in 1998 of the 32-year military dictatorship of former President Suharto.

Only one-third of the financing for Indonesia's armed forces comes from the state budget, while the rest is collected from non-transparent sources such as "protection payments," allowing the military brass to operate independently of the government's financial controls.

When asked about the payoff allegations, Indonesia's military commander Gen. Endriartono Sutarto would only say, "Please ask Freeport, not me." A Freeport spokesman in Jakarta said the only company official who could comment on the matter was busy in Papua.

Reports that Freeport was paying off the military to protect the mine have circulated for years. Last year, international watchdog Global Witness reported that Maj. Gen. Mahidin Simbolon, the region's former military commander and currently inspector- general of the army, personally received $247,705 from Freeport from 2001 to 2003.

In 2003, Freeport acknowledged in a report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission and to New York City authorities that it had paid millions of dollars to the army.

"We've been deployed to difficult areas, don't we deserve better supplies?" Simbolon was quoted as saying Thursday in The Jakarta Post.

He acknowledged that the military had received payments from Freeport, but denied he benefited personally, saying the money had been given to battalion commanders to pay for various expenses and daily allowances to the troops.

The Indonesian military had previously denied receiving money directly from Freeport.

Freeport has been accused by international environmental groups of causing massive pollution in Papua's hitherto pristine jungles by allowing large quantities of toxic waste to seep into surrounding groundwater.

In its filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Freeport said annual payments to the Indonesian security forces were included in its contract covering operations at the giant Grasberg mine in Papua, the Indonesian-occupied half of New Guinea island.

Other US-owned mining and energy companies also have come under fire for allegedly providing money and other services to the Indonesian armed forces, which are accused of having killed thousands of labor activists and other political opponents after a military coup in Jakarta in 1965. Suharto gained Western support following the 1965 coup by opening Indonesia's economy to foreign investment. The first company to take advantage of this was Freeport-McMoRan in 1969. Critics have long condemned Freeport for allegedly obtaining the rights to the mine through a direct deal with the dictator.

At the time, Indonesia was under a reign of terror -- at least 500,000 opponents of the dictatorship were slaughtered in a political purge -- and it was impossible for local people to demand an open international tender, critics say.

General confirms Freeport payments

Jakarta Post - December 29, 2005

Tiarma Siboro and Tony Hotland, Jakarta -- Former Trikora Military Commander in Papua Maj. Gen. Mahidin Simbolon has confirmed direct payments from US gold miner Freeport-McMoRan to Indonesian military and police personnel guarding the firm's mine.

Mahidin said on Wednesday that the money from Freeport was used to support the military's logistical and other expenses, including meals, transportation, clothing and medication. On-duty soldiers, said Mahidin, also received daily allowances, the total amount of which was set by Freeport.

Mahidin did not say whether such payments also protected the mining firm from any unwelcome intrusions by officials or environmentalists in connection with open-pit mining.

With the Freeport payments, the military benefits from extra income as the government also pays for soldiers' needs and basic expenses.

"The soldiers are deployed for security purposes to guard vital objects in the country. I suppose (US oil firm) ExxonMobil is also paying the soldiers assigned to guard its site in Aceh.

"It might well be the case that Exxon is paying more than Freeport because the risks are more severe in Aceh," Mahidin said, referring to the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

ExxonMobil spokesperson Deva Rachman admitted that the firm paid for security, but said that the money was paid to and fully managed by the government's Oil and Gas Regulatory Body (BP Migas).

Mahidin added, though, that such payments should not result in the military being seen as mercenary. "We've been deployed to difficult areas. Don't we deserve better supplies?" he argued.

Mahidin, now the inspector general of the Army, denied ever having received part of the money, saying it was paid directly to the commander of the battalion guarding Freeport's mine.

This despite the fact that, during his tenure, he was the one responsible for determining the rotation of battalions.

Since Freeport commenced operations in Papua, the Indonesian Military (TNI) has stationed a battalion of troops from the Army's Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad) at the mine on a rotating basis.

Each battalion is deployed for one year to protect the firm's 100-kilometer-long pipeline, which runs from Gezberg to the Portside area. The mine taps one of the world's largest gold deposits, and contributes quite significantly to Indonesia's state revenue.

Mahidin is one of the senior TNI and police officers named in a new investigative report published in The New York Times on Wednesday as having received many thousands of dollars into their pockets.

In the report, which was based on authentic documents, Freeport paid nearly US$20 million between 1998 and 2004 to military and police generals, colonels, majors, captains, and also military units, to provide security at its mine.

Mahidin is listed as having received a whooping US$130,000 in 2002 in connection with what are described in the Freeport records as "military project plan 2002" and "humanitarian civic action project".

Since 2003, the report says Freeport has been paying the money to units instead of individuals, including the Mobile Brigade on more than $200,000 and the police with $1 million in 2003 for "monthly supplement payment", "administrative costs" and "administrative support" requirements.

The cost of gold - the hidden payroll

New York Times - December 27, 2005

Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner, Jakarta -- The closest most people will ever get to remote Papua, or the operations of Freeport-McMoRan, is a computer tour using Google Earth to swoop down over the rain forests and glacier-capped mountains where the American company mines the world's largest gold reserve.

With a few taps on a keyboard, satellite images quickly reveal the deepening spiral that Freeport has bored out of its Grasberg mine as it pursues a virtually bottomless store of gold hidden inside. They also show a spreading soot-colored bruise of almost a billion tons of mine waste that the New Orleans-based company has dumped directly into a jungle river of what had been one of the world's last untouched landscapes.

What is far harder to discern is the intricate web of political and military ties that have helped shield Freeport from the rising pressures that other gold miners have faced to clean up their practices. Only lightly touched by a scant regulatory regime, and cloaked in the protection of the military, Freeport has managed to maintain a nearly impenetrable redoubt on the easternmost Indonesian province as it taps one of the country's richest assets.

Months of investigation by The New York Times revealed a level of contacts and financial support to the military not fully disclosed by Freeport, despite years of requests by shareholders concerned about potential violations of American laws and the company's relations with a military whose human rights record is so blighted that the United States severed ties for a dozen years until November.

Company records obtained by The Times show that from 1998 through 2004, Freeport gave military and police generals, colonels, majors and captains, and military units, nearly $20 million. Individual commanders received tens of thousands of dollars, in one case up to $150,000, according to the documents. They were provided by an individual close to Freeport and confirmed as authentic by current and former employees.

Freeport said in a written response to The Times that it had "taken appropriate steps" in accordance with American and Indonesian laws to provide a secure working environment for its more than 18,000 employees and contract workers.

"There is no alternative to our reliance on the Indonesian military and police in this regard," the company said. "The need for this security, the support provided for such security, and the procedures governing such support, as well as decisions regarding our relationships with the Indonesian government and its security institutions, are ordinary business activities."

While mining and natural resource companies sometimes contribute to the costs to foreign governments in securing their operations, payments to individual officers raise questions of bribes, said several people interviewed by The Times, including a former Indonesian attorney general, who said it was illegal under Indonesian law for officers to accept direct payments.

The Times's investigation also found that, according to one current and two former company officials who helped set up a covert program, Freeport intercepted e-mail messages to spy on its environmental opponents. Freeport declined to comment.

More than 30 current and former Freeport employees and consultants were interviewed over the past several months for this article. Very few would speak for attribution, saying they feared the company's retribution.

Freeport's support of the military is one measure of its extraordinary working environment. In the 1960's, when Freeport entered Papua, its explorers were among the very first outsiders ever encountered by local tribesmen swathed only in penis gourds and armed with bows and arrows.

Since then, Freeport has built what amounts to an entirely new society and economy, all of its own making. Where nary a road existed, Freeport, with the help of the San Francisco-based construction company Bechtel, built virtually every stitch of infrastructure over impossible terrain in engineering feats that it boasts are unparalleled on the planet.

That history, Papua's extreme remoteness and the company's long ties to the Indonesian government have given Freeport exceptional sway over a 21st-century version of the old company town, built on a scale unique even by the standards of modern mega-mining.

"If any operation like this was put forward now, it wouldn't be allowed," said Witoro Soelarno, a senior investigator at the Department of Energy and Mineral Resources, who has visited the mine many times. "But now the operation exists, and many people depend on it."

For years, to secure Freeport's domain, James R. Moffett, a Louisiana-born geologist who is the company chairman, assiduously courted Indonesia's longtime dictator, President Suharto, and his cronies, having Freeport pay for their vacations and some of their children's college education, and cutting them in on deals that made them rich, current and former employees said.

It was a marriage of mutual convenience. As Freeport prospered into a company with $2.3 billion in revenues, it also became among the biggest -- in some years the biggest -- source of revenue for the government. It remains so.

Freeport says that it provided Indonesia with $33 billion in direct and indirect benefits from 1992 to 2004, almost 2 percent of the country's gross domestic product. With gold prices hitting a 25-year high of $540 an ounce this month, the company estimates it will pay the government $1 billion this year.

With Suharto's ouster in 1998, after 30 years of unchallenged power, Freeport's special place was left vulnerable. But its importance to Indonesia's treasury and its carefully cultivated cocoon of support have helped secure it against challenges from local people, environmental groups, and even the country's own Environment Ministry.

Letters and other documents provided to The Times by government officials showed that the Environment Ministry repeatedly warned the company since 1997 that Freeport was breaching environmental laws. They also reveal the ministry's deep frustration.

At one point last year, a ministry scientist wrote that the mine's production was so huge, and regulatory tools so weak, that it was like "painting on clouds" to persuade Freeport to comply with the ministry's requests to reduce environmental damage.

That frustration stems from an operation that, by Freeport's own estimates, will generate an estimated six billion tons of waste before it is through -- more than twice as much earth as was excavated for the Panama Canal.

Much of that waste has already been dumped in the mountains surrounding the mine or down a system of rivers that descends steeply onto the island's low-lying wetlands, close to Lorentz National Park, a pristine rain forest that has been granted special status by the United Nations.

A multimillion-dollar 2002 study by an American consulting company, Parametrix, paid for by Freeport and its joint venture partner, Rio Tinto, and not previously made public, noted that the rivers upstream and the wetlands inundated with waste were now "unsuitable for aquatic life." The report was made available to The Times by the Environment Ministry.

Freeport says it strives to mitigate the environmental effect of its mine, while also maximizing the benefits to its shareholders. The Times made repeated requests to Freeport and to the Indonesian government to visit the mine and its surrounding area, which requires special permission for journalists. All were turned down.

Freeport refused to make any official available for an interview and would respond to questions only in writing. A cover letter signed by its legal counsel, Stanley S. Arkin, said that Grasberg is a copper mine, with the gold retrieved as a byproduct, and that many journalists had visited the mine before the government tightened its rules in the 1990's. "Freeport has nothing to hide," Mr. Arkin wrote.

Indeed, at Grasberg, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold mines the world's third-largest copper deposit. The mine also has proven reserves of 46 million ounces of gold, according to the company's 2004 annual report.

This year, Mining International, a trade journal, called Freeport's gold mine the biggest in the world.

Social tensions erupt

Since Suharto's ouster, Freeport employees say, Mr. Moffett's motto has been "no tall trees," a call to keep as low a profile as possible, for a company that operates on an almost unimaginable scale.

But even before then, the new world that Freeport created was growing smaller. By the mid-1990's, with production in full swing, and the expanding impact of Grasberg's operations ever more apparent, Freeport was beset on all sides.

Environmental groups, able to coordinate more effectively with the Internet, made Freeport a target.

Local tribes were more and more restless at seeing little benefit for themselves as vast riches were extracted from their lands. And some military commanders in Papua saw Grasberg's increasing value as ripe for the plucking.

To fortify itself, Freeport, working hand in hand with Indonesian military intelligence officers, began monitoring the e-mail messages and telephone conversations of its environmental opponents, said an employee who worked on the program and read the e-mail messages.

The company also set up its own system to intercept e-mail messages, according to former and current employees, by establishing a bogus environmental group of its own, which asked people to register online with a password. As is often the case, many who registered used the same password for their own messages, which then allowed the company to tap in.

Freeport's lawyers were nervous, a person who was at the company at the time said, but decided that nothing prohibited the company legally from reading e-mail messages abroad.

Social tensions around the mine, meanwhile, were fast growing, as was Papua's population. Papua, mostly animist and Christian after long years of missionary work, is distinct in many ways from the rest of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country.

Almost from Indonesia's independence, the province had rumblings of a separatist movement. Throughout Indonesia the military, a deeply nationalist institution, finances itself by setting up legal enterprises like shopping centers and hotels, or illicit ones, like logging. In Papua, the Grasberg mine became a chance for the military not only to profit but also to deepen its presence in a province where it had barely a toehold before Freeport arrived.

For many years Freeport maintained its own security force, while the Indonesian military battled a weak, low-level insurgency. But slowly their security needs became entwined.

"Where Freeport really took it on the chin is the military who came in had no vehicles, and they would commandeer a Freeport bus or a Freeport driver," said the Rev. David B. Lowry, an Episcopalminister hired by Mr. Moffett to oversee social programs. "We had no policies at that time."

No investigation directly linked Freeport to human rights violations, but increasingly Papuans associated it with the abuses of Indonesian military units, in some cases using company facilities.

An Australian anthropologist, Chris Ballard, who worked for Freeport, and Abigail Abrash, an American human rights campaigner, estimated that 160 people had been killed by the military between 1975 and 1997 in the mine area and its surroundings.

Finally, in March 1996, long-simmering anger at the company erupted in rioting when anti-mine sentiment among different groups coalesced into what was perhaps the biggest threat to the company to this day.

The mine and its mill were shut down for three days. Rioters destroyed $3 million of equipment and ransacked offices. The company intercepted e-mail messages that, according to two persons who read them at the time, suggested that certain military units, the community and environmental groups were working together.

One e-mail exchange, between a community leader and the head of an environmental group, was filled with tactical military intelligence, according to a person who read the messages. In another exchange, an environmental leader urged the group's members to pull out because the demonstrations had turned violent.

Freeport told The Times that local leaders later met with company officials and said "they had provoked the disturbances as a means of expressing their aspiration to receive greater benefits from our operations."

In recent interviews, current and former Freeport officials recalled how they were stunned when, among those rioting, they saw men with military haircuts, combat boots and walkie-talkies. They seemed to be directing the rioters, at one point, to a Freeport laboratory, which they ransacked.

It was not long before a worried Mr. Moffett flew out to Indonesia in the company jet. Freeport refused to comment on the meeting that followed. But a company official who was there recounted that Mr. Moffett met with a group of senior Indonesian military officers at the Sheraton Hotel in the lowland town of Timika, near the mine. The all-powerful Gen. Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of President Suharto and commander of the Indonesian Special Forces, presided.

"Mr. Moffett, to protect you, to protect your company, you have to help the military here," General. Prabowo began, according to the company employee who was present. Mr. Moffett is said to have replied: "Just tell me what I need to do."

The cost of security

Each military service drew up its wish list, current and former company employees said.

In short order, Freeport spent $35 million on military infrastructure -- barracks, headquarters, mess halls, roads -- and it also gave the commanders 70 Land Rovers and Land Cruisers, which were replaced every few years. Everybody got something, even the Navy and Air Force.

The company had already hired a former C.I.A. operative, and on his recommendation, it now approached a military attachi at the American Embassy in Jakarta, and persuaded him to join the company, according to former and current employees. Two more former American military officers were hired, and a special department, called the Emergency Planning Operation, was set up to handle the company's new relationship with the Indonesian military.

The new department began making direct monthly payments to Indonesian military commanders, while the Security Risk Management office handled the payments to the police, according to company documents and current and former employees.

"They signed a pact with the devil," said an American who was part of Freeport's security operations at the time, and who agreed with the company's decision.

Freeport gave the military and the police in Papua at least $20 million from 1998 to May 2004, according to company documents. In interviews, current and former employees said that at least an additional $10 million was also paid during those years.

Seven years of accounting records were provided to The Times by an individual close to the company.

Additional records for three years were provided by Global Witness, a nongovernment organization, and which released a report last July, "Paying for Protection," about Freeport's relations with the Indonesian military.

Diarmid O'Sullivan, who works for Global Witness in London, criticized the payments. It may be necessary for a company to help governments with security, he said, but "they should give the money through the proper channels, in a transparent way."

Freeport told The Times, "Our books and records are transparent and accurately reflect the support that we provide."

That support, the company said in its responses, included "mitigating living costs," as well as "infrastructure, catered food and dining hall costs, housing, fuel, travel, vehicle repairs, allowances to cover incidental and administrative costs, and community assistance programs conducted by the military and police."

The company said all of its expenditures were subject to a budget review process.

The records received by The Times showed payments to individual military officers listed under things like "food cost," "administrative services" and "monthly supplement."

Current and former employees said the accounting categories did not reflect what the money was actually used for, and that it was likely that much of the money went into the officers' pockets. The commanders who received the money did not have to sign receipts, current and former employees said.

Asked if there was a reason Freeport would give money directly to military officers, Father Lowry, who retired in March 2004, but remained a consultant to Freeport until June, said, "I can't think of a good one."

The records show that the largest recipient was the commander of the troops in the Freeport area, Lt. Col. Togap F. Gultom.

During six months in 2001, he was given just under $100,000 for "food costs," according to the company records, and more than $150,000 the following year. Freeport gave at least 10 other commanders a total of more than $350,000 for "food costs" in 2002, according to the records. Colonel Gultom declined to be interviewed.

Those payments were made to individual officers, current and former employees said, even though since the riots Freeport had allowed soldiers to eat in the company's mess and had trucked food to more distant military kitchens. "Three meals a day, seven days a week," a former official said.

Freeport also gave commanders commercial airplane tickets for themselves and their wives and children.

Generals flew first or business class and lower ranking officers flew economy, said Brig. Gen. Ramizan Tarigan, who received $14,000 worth of tickets in 2002 for himself and his family.

General Tarigan, who held a senior police post, said that police officers were allowed to accept airplane tickets because their pay was so low -- as a general, his base salary was roughly $400 a month -- but that it was in violation of police regulations to receive cash payments.

In April 2002, the company gave the senior commander of forces in Papua, Maj. Gen. Mahidin Simbolon, more than $64,000, for what was described in Freeport's books as "fund for military project plan 2002." Eight months later, in December, he was given more than $67,000 for a "humanitarian civic action project." The payments were first reported by Global Witness.

General Simbolon, who is now inspector general of the Indonesian Army, declined requests to be interviewed. A former Freeport employee who was involved in making those payments said the company could not be certain how much of the money General Simbolon actually spent on those projects.

Unsolved killings

By 2003, following the Enron scandal and passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which imposed more rigid accounting practices on companies, Freeport began making payments to military and police units instead of individual officers, according to records and current and former employees.

The company paid police units in Papua slightly under $1 million in 2003, according to the records, listed under items like "monthly supplement payment," "administrative costs" and "administrative support."

Freeport told The Times that "company policies take into account the potential for human rights abuses in determining what types of assistance to provide."

According to the records received by The Times, the police Mobile Brigade, a paramilitary force often cited by the State Department for its brutality, received more than $200,000 in 2003.

In its 2003 annual human rights report, the State Department said soldiers from the Mobile Brigade "continued to commit numerous serious human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and arbitrary detention." It cited no specific incidents from Papua.

There was another reason for extra care by the company. In August 2002, three teachers employed by Freeport, including two Americans, were killed in an ambush on a company road patrolled by the military that Freeport had paid to protect its employees. Three years later, the F.B.I. is still investigating and the reasons for the killings have not been determined. Freeport said that it could not comment on the investigation.

The United States indicted a Papuan, Anthonius Wamang, in 2004. But it has yet to receive the full cooperation of the military, several American officials said.

Freeport employees and American officials said the killings could have been part of a turf war between the military and the police, each of which wanted access to Freeport payments.

An initial report by the Indonesian police pointed to the Indonesia military, and some Freeport and Bush administration officials have said they suspect some level of military involvement.

The police report suggested that the motivation was that Freeport was threatening to cut its support to soldiers. Soldiers assigned to Papua have "high expectations," the report said, but recently, "their perks, such as vehicles, telephones, etc., were reduced."

Questions of accountability

Freeport has resisted nearly any detailed disclosure of its payments to the military, saying they are legal and even required under Indonesian law.

Marsillam Simanjuntak, who was minister of justice and later attorney general in one of the first governments after the fall of President Suharto, said it was a violation of Indonesian law for soldiers or police officers to accept payments from a company. "Of course, it's illegal," he said.

But many companies do it, he said. The better question to ask, he said, was, "Is it allowed by the laws of the United States?"

This year, the New York City pension funds submitted a shareholder resolution asking Freeport to review its policy on paying the police and military. They argued that it could violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids American companies from paying bribes to foreign officials. Freeport opposed the resolution.

In 2002, the funds submitted a similar resolution demanding that Freeport disclose how much it was paying to the military. Freeport kept it off the ballot.

In later filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freeport reported that it had paid the military a total of $4.7 million in 2001, and $5.6 million in 2002. The company did not indicate whether the money was paid into commanders' personal accounts, or what the money was used for.

Freeport, in its responses, said it was complying with the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, a set of guidelines drawn up by the State Department.

They recognize that natural resource companies "may be required or expected to contribute to, or otherwise reimburse, the costs of protecting company facilities."

The principles do not address the question of direct payments to individual officers. Nor do they require companies to account for the payments.

Freeport has also said that the payments were required under its Contract of Work, its basic agreement with the government of Indonesia, first signed in 1967 and updated in 1991.

The company declined to provide a copy of the contracts to The Times. A copy of each was provided by Denise Leith, author of "The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto's Indonesia." They contained no language requiring payments to the military.

S. Prakash Sethi, head of the International Center for Corporate Accountability, which recently concluded a report on Freeport's development policies in Papua, said that the company had told him that it made "in-kind" contributions to the military, for housing and food, but that he had not been given access to accounting records.

Any direct payments to military officers would be illegal, said Mr. Sethi, an expert on business ethics and corporate social responsibility and a professor at Baruch College. "It's corruption," he said. "It's bribery."

Mine waste in the rivers

All the while Freeport sealed its relations with the military, the country's fledgling environment ministry could do little but watch as waste from the mine piled up.

This year Freeport told the Indonesian government that the waste rock in the highlands, 900 feet deep in places, now covers about three square miles.

Down below, nearly 90 square miles of wetlands, once one of the richest freshwater habitats in the world, are virtually buried in mine waste, called tailings, with levels of copper and sediment so high that almost all fish have disappeared, according to environment ministry documents.

The waste, the consistency and color of wet cement, belts down the rivers, and inundates and smothers all in its path, said Russell Dodt, an Australian civil engineer who managed the waste on the wetlands for 10 years until 2004 for Freeport.

About a third of the waste has moved into the coastal estuary, an essential breeding ground for fish, and much of that "was ripped out to sea by the falling tide that acted like a big vacuum cleaner," he said.

But no government, even in Indonesia's new democratic era, has dared encroach on Freeport's prerogatives.

The strongest challenge came in 2000, when a feisty politician, Sonny Keraf, who was sympathetic to the Papuans, was appointed environment minister.

Again, Mr. Moffett flew out to Jakarta. Mr. Keraf initially refused to see the Freeport boss, but eventually agreed, and on the day kept him waiting for an hour and a half. "He came in so arrogant," Mr. Keraf recalled of the meeting in a recent interview, "sitting with his legs crossed."

Freeport refused to comment on the meeting. The American ambassador to Indonesia at the time, Robert Gelbard, said in an interview: "It was a terrible meeting."

Mr. Keraf said that Mr. Moffett had said that his company had never polluted. "I told him that he should spend the money he spent on paying off people not to talk about the mine to properly dispose of the waste," Mr. Keraf said.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Keraf kept up the pressure, angered that the company was using the rivers, forest and wetlands for its mine waste, a process allowed during the Suharto years.

An internal ministry memorandum from 2000 said the mine waste had killed all life in the rivers, and said that this violated the criminal section of the 1997 environmental law.

In January 2001, Mr. Keraf wrote to the coordinating minister for economic affairs, arguing that Freeport should be forced to pay compensation for the rivers, forests and fish that its operations had destroyed.

Six months later, one of his deputies, Masnellyarti Hilman, wrote to Freeport, saying a special environmental commission had recommended that the company stop using the river as a waste chute, and instead build a system of pipes.

She also told Freeport to build sturdier dam-like walls to replace the less solid levees that it used to contain the waste on the wetlands. That practice has continued.

Freeport says that local and regional governments have approved its waste management plans, and that the central government has approved its environmental impact statement and other monitoring plans.

But in a blistering July 2001 letter, Mr. Keraf took the governor of Papua to task for granting Freeport a permit in 1996 to use the rivers for its waste. The governor, Mr. Keraf said, had no authority to grant permits more lenient than the provisions of national laws.

Despite all these efforts, nothing happened. Mr. Keraf was unable to secure the support of other government agencies or his superiors in the cabinet.

In August 2001, a new government came to power, and a less aggressive minister, Nabiel Makarim, replaced Mr. Keraf. At first, he, too, talked publicly of setting stricter limits on Freeport. Soon his efforts petered out.

The Environment Ministry has begun trying to put teeth into its rules where it can. It brought a criminal suit against the world's largest gold company, Newmont Mining Corporation, for alleged pollution, including a charge of not having a permit for disposing of mine waste into the sea. Newmont has fought the charges vigorously.

But in the case of Freeport, the ministry has had no traction. Freeport still does not hold a permit from the national government to dispose of mine waste, as required by the 1999 hazardous waste regulations, according to Rasio Ridho Sani, assistant deputy for toxic waste management at the ministry. Mr. Arkin, Freeport's counsel, said that the company cooperated well with the environment ministry and that Freeport would not otherwise comment.

"Freeport says their waste is not hazardous waste," Mr. Rasio said. "We cannot say it is not hazardous waste." He said his division and Freeport were now in negotiations on how to resolve the permit question.

'A massive die-off'

The environment ministry was not the first to challenge Freeport over how it has disposed of its waste in Papua.

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a United States government agency that insures American corporations for political risk in uncertain corners of the world, revoked Freeport's insurance policy in October 1995.

It was a landmark decision, the first time that the agency had cut off insurance to any American company for environmental or human rights concerns.

In doing so, two environmental experts, Harvey Himberg, an official at the agency, and David Nelson, a consultant, after visiting the mine for several days, issued a report critical of Freeport's operations, especially the huge amounts of waste it had sent into rivers, something that would not be allowed in the United States.

The company went to court to block the report from being made public, and only a redacted version was later released. A person who thought it should be made public provided an uncensored copy to The Times.

Freeport says the report reached "inaccurate conclusions." The company says it has considered a full range of alternatives for managing and disposing of its waste, instead of using the river, and settled on the best one.

A storage area would not be large enough and would require a tall dam in a region of heavy rainfalls and earthquakes, it said. A waste pipeline, rather than the river, would be too costly, prone to landslides and floods.

To the American auditors, such arguments were not convincing. Freeport "characterizes engineered alternatives as having the highest potential for catastrophic failure when the project otherwise takes credit for legendary feats," the audit noted, like the pipelines more than 60 miles long down the mountains to carry fuel and copper and gold slurry.

At the time, the waste was jumping the riverbanks, "resulting in a massive die-off of vegetation," the report said.

The company threatened to take the agency to court over the cancellation of its insurance. After protracted negotiations, the policy was reinstated for a few months, as a face-saving gesture to Mr. Moffett, according to the head of the agency then, Ruth Harkin. It was not renewed.

Today, many of the same problems persist, but on a much larger scale. A perpetual worry is where to put all the mine's waste -- accumulating at a rate of some 700,000 tons a day.

The danger is that the waste rock atop the mountain will trickle out acids into the honeycomb of caverns and caves beneath the mine in a wet climate that gets up to 12 feet of rain a year, say environmental experts who have worked at the mine. Stuart Miller, an Australian geochemist who manages Freeport's waste rock, said at a mining conference in 2003 that the first acid runoffs began in 1993.

The company can curb much of it today, he said, by blending in the mountain's abundant limestone with the potentially acid producing rock, which is also plentiful. Freeport also says that the company collects the acid runoff and neutralizes it.

But before 2004, the report obtained by The Times by Parametrix, the consulting company who did the study for Freeport, said that the mine had "an excess of acid-generating material."

A geologist who worked at the mine, who declined to be identified because of fear of jeopardizing future employment, said acids were already flowing into the groundwater. Bright green-colored springs could be seen spouting several miles away, he said, a tell-tale sign that the acids had leached out copper. "That meant the acid water traveled a long way," he said.

Freeport says that the springs are "located several miles from our operations in the Lorentz World Heritage site and are not associated with our operations."

The geologist agreed that the springs probably were in the Lorentz park, and said this showed that acids and copper from the mine were affecting the park, considered a world treasure for its ecological diversity.

In the lowlands, the levees needed to contain the waste will eventually reach more than 70 feet high in some places, the company says.

Freeport says that the tailings are not toxic and that the river it uses for its waste meets Indonesian and American drinking water standards for dissolved metals. The coastal estuary, it says, is a "functioning ecosystem."

The Parametrix report shows copper levels in surface waters high enough to kill sensitive aquatic life in a short time, said Ann Maest, a geochemist who consults on mining issues. The report showed that nearly half of the sediment samples in parts of the coastal estuary were toxic to the sensitive aquatic organisms at the bottom of the food chain, she said.

The amount of sediment presents another problem. Too many suspended solids in water can smother aquatic life. Indonesian law says they should not exceed 400 milligrams per liter.

Freeport's waste contained 37,500 milligrams as the river entered the lowlands, according to an environment ministry's field report in 2004, and 7,500 milligrams as the river entered the Arafura Sea.

Freeport would not comment on the measurements. The company says it spent $30 million on environmental programs in 2004, and planted 50,000 mangrove seedlings last year as part of its reclamation efforts. It says cash crops can be grown on the waste with the addition of nutrients, and has begun demonstration projects.

An uneasy coexistence

If the accumulating waste is the despair of critics, for Freeport it signals expanding production. To keep its mine running, the company has increasingly had to play caretaker for the world that it has created.

After the 1996 riots, Freeport began dedicating 1 percent of revenues annually to a development fund for Papua to pay for schools, medical services, roads - whatever the people wanted.

The company built clinics and two hospitals. Other services include programs to control malaria and AIDS and a "recognition" fund for the Kamoro and Amungme tribes of several million dollars which, among other things, gives them shares in the company as part of a compensation package for the lands Freeport is using.

By the end of 2004, Freeport had spent $152 million on the community development fund, the company said.

Mr. Sethi, of the Center for Corporate Accountability, commended Freeport for commissioning the report on the company's development programs, saying that it was the first mining company to do so.

The report, which was released in October, concluded that the company had successfully introduced a human rights training program for its employees and had doubled the number of Papuan employees by 2001. The company was poised to double the number of Papuans in the work force again by 2006, the audit said.

Still, Thom Beanal, the Amungme tribal leader, says the combined weight of the Indonesian government and Freeport has left his people in bad shape. Yes, he said, the company had provided electricity, schools and hospitals, but the infrastructure was built mainly for the benefit of Freeport.

Mr. Beanal, 57, a vocal supporter of independence for Papua, has fought the company from outside and inside. In 2000, he decided that harmony was the better path, and joined the company's advisory board. In November, he and other Amungme and Komoro tribesmen met with Mr. Moffett at the Sheraton Hotel in Timika.

In an interview in Jakarta not long afterward, Mr. Beanal said he told Mr. Moffett that the flood of money from the community fund was ruining people's lives.

When the company arrived, he noted, there were several hundred people in the lowland village of Timika. Now it is home to more than 100,000 in a Wild West atmosphere of too much alcohol, shootouts between soldiers and the police, AIDS and prostitution, protected by the military.

Still more soldiers are on the way. Having negotiated an end to a separatist insurrection this year in another province, Aceh, the government is redeploying soldiers to Papua in a move to defeat the growing enthusiasm for independence, once and for all, and to watch over the province with the world's biggest gold mine. Freeport says its gold ore has 35 years to go.

Mr. Beanal said he was increasingly impatient with the presence of the soldiers and the mine. "We never feel secure there," he said. "What are they guarding? We don't know. Ask Moffett, it's his company."

[Evelyn Rusli contributed reporting for this article.]

New York Times takes on Freeport McMoRan

Mineweb - December 28, 2005

Dorothy Kosich -- It was only a matter of time until the New York Times "investigative" series on gold mining would highlight the track record of Freeport McMoRan's Grasberg operations in Indonesia.

In an article published in Tuesday's edition of the New York Times, reporters Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner detailed a plethora of information, much of which has been detailed in news media and NGO accounts for more than a decade.

Some grievances have been addressed along the way while others still remain, open sores on the credibility of multinational hardrock mining.

To anyone who has followed Freeport McMoRan in the news for more than a decade, many allegations raised by the Times are old news. The Indonesia military, which has even come under fire from the US State Department for its human rights abuses, helps to protect Grasberg. Freeport officials assert there is not a thing they can do about it.

The Times article also highlighted the cronyism between Freeport Chairman James R. "Jim Bob" Moffett and former Indonesian President Soharto. The newspaper claimed that Freeport paid for the vacations of the Soharto family, some of their children's college educations. and cut them in on deals that made them rich. Any journalist or miner who followed the Bre-X scandal a few years back was aware of these allegations, believed to have played a part in the awarding of the Bre-X concessions to Moffett and Freeport, after a heavily fought contest involving major players such as Barrick, Placer Dome, and Newmont.

The combination of a highly successful mining operation and outsiders, who migrated into the traditional territories of the Indonesian tribes surrounding Grasberg, exploded into a human rights nightmare. The Times quoted Australian anthropologist Chris Ballard, who worked for Freeport, and Abigail Abrash, an American human rights campaigner, who estimated that 160 people had been killed by the military between 1975 and 1997 in the Grasberg area and its surroundings. By March 1996, rioting erupted, resulting in the destruction of $3 million in equipment and ransacked offices at Grasberg.

After the riots, Freeport established a development fund for Papua, by dedicating 1% of its annual revenues. The company built clinics, hospitals, and established programs to control malaria and AIDS. Meanwhile, the local Kamoro and Amengme tribes received several million dollars in a fund intended to compensate them for the lands Freeport is using.

Although Mineweb submitted a request to Freeport's Vice President for Corporate Communications for a copy of the company's written statements provided to the Times, no one had responded by deadline Tuesday night.

In August 2002, three teachers employed by Freeport, including two Americans, were killed in an ambush on a company road. Three years later, the FBI is still investigating the deaths and the reasons for the killings. The Times suggested an initial report by the Indonesia Police suggested that the motivation "was that Freeport was threatening to cut its support to soldiers. Soldiers assigned to Papua have high expectations, the report said, but recently, their perks, such as vehicles, telephones, etc., were reduced." In filings with the SEC, Freeport said it had paid the military a total of $4.7 million in2 001 and $5.6 million in 2002. Freeport has said that the payments are required under its Contract of Work with the Government of Indonesia.

The Times article also criticized Freeport's environmental track record at Grasberg. "This year Freeport told the Indonesian government that the waste rock in the highlands, 900 feet deep in places, now covers about three square miles," according to the report. "Down below, nearly 90 square miles of wetlands, once one of the richest freshwater habitats in the world, are virtually buried in mine waste, called tailings, with levels of copper and sediment so high that almost all the fish have disappeared, according to environmental ministry documents." Perlez and Bonner referred to a 2000 "internal ministry memorandum" which reportedly said "the mine waste had killed all life in the rivers, and said that this violated the criminal section of the 1997 environmental law." "The Environmental Ministry has begun trying to put teeth into its rules where it can." said the Times journalists. "But in the case of Freeport, the ministry has had no traction." The toxic waste management division of the Environmental Ministry is in negotiations with Freeport regarding forcing Grasberg to obtain a permit to dispose of mine waste.

The Times article also resurrected the October 1995 revocation of Freeport's insurance policy by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Freeport argued the report reached "inaccurate conclusions" and went to court to block the document from being made public, according to the Times. The OPIC policy was reinstated for a few months and, ultimately, not renewed.

Freeport allegedly told the Times that its tailings are not toxic, and that the river it uses for its tailings meets Indonesian and American drinking water standards for dissolved metals. The company also declared that the coastal estuary "is a functioning ecosystem." Freeport said it spend $30 million on environmental programs in 2004.

Mineweb's findings

A search conducted by this Mineweb reporter Tuesday also discovered other findings. For instance, last September, the FTSE4Good Semi-Annual Index removed Freeport from its list, citing Freeport and 21 other companies "have failed to meet the FTSE4Good environmental criteria requirements."

Last July, a report by the human rights NGO Global Witness accused a Freeport subsidiary of allegedly paying large sums to individual military and police officers prior to April 2003. The NGO called for the company to be investigated under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other applicable US and Indonesian laws."

Freeport responded that "the Grasberg mine is designated as a vital national asset, resulting in the military playing a significant role in protecting the area." The company asserted that postings in Papua are a hardship, which requires mitigating living costs and providing other support.

"For 2004, the total costs for PT Freeport Indonesia's internal civilian security department were $13.4 million ($12.3 million net to PT Freeport Indonesia). The security department receives human rights training and each member is required to certify his compliance with our human rights policy. PT Freeport Indonesia continually evaluates its human rights training programs to seek ways to improve them," according to the Freeport website.

In August, New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr., acting on behalf of the New York City Pension Funds, expressed concern regarding the relationship between Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold and the Indonesian military. Last May, five New York City pension funds presented a resolution at FCX's annual shareholder meeting calling for a review of the company's policy concerning payments to the Indonesian military and security forces.

Nevertheless, some good news existed among the articles, documents and studies reviewed by Mineweb. During the past two years, Freeport had voluntarily submitted itself to an audit by the International Center for Corporate Accountability (ICCA). While the audit noted the company was linked "to horrific acts allegedly committed by the Suharto dictatorship against rebels unhappy about the company's expansion of its gold and copper mine," the ICCA also found that FCX and PTFI may also be well known to human rights activists for the publication of a human rights review that could become a model for all multinationals.

The 136-page report published in October is the first of three audits involving the three operating units of PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI). The scope of the audit included the protection of human rights, hiring and employment opportunities for the Papuan people, and social and economic development of the Papuan community.

In an October 24 BusinessWeek article, reporter Aaron Bernstein praised Freeport's "willingness to be exposed" which "puts it in a class by itself." The ICCA report found that none of the human rights violations committed in the name of protecting the Grasberg mine involved Freeport personnel. The ICCA's assessment of the PTFI Human Rights Training program for security and social program personnel found it was well suited for the operating environment.

The audit also praised the activities of the company's Social and Local Development Department and the Education Bureau. Employees' attitudes toward PTFI were determined to be quite positive, according to the auditors. ICCA revealed that Freeport has contributed $132 million to the Papua development fund since it was established after the 1996 riots. The fund concentrates on education, health and village development.

In its response to the audit, Freeport said it is establishing a team headed by Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, Special Counsel for Human Rights to the Office of the Chairman, "to ensure the continued implementation of PT-FI's Social, Employment, and Human Rights Policy, including addressing the recommendations made in the ICCA audit report."

The company invited the ICCA to return to its Indonesian operations "early in 2006 to review and assess the actions that PT-FI has taken in response to issues in its audit report." Among the audit findings is to discontinue the practice of using Freeport-provided drivers to transport military personnel on PTFI roads, establishing employee development plans for all workers and attracting the best Indonesian university graduates to the mine, and improvements in scholarship and other education programs.

The audit findings were publicly disseminated, and can be found on the Internet.

"The company's willingness to open up so wide is a major development in the corporate responsibility movement. Certainly, no other global mining or oil company has come close to such transparency, long a key demand by human rights groups," declared BusinessWeek. "Most companies are closed books when it comes to independent scrutiny. A majority of US multinationals have codes of conduct that promise good behavior in these fields, but there is rarely a way of checking up. Freeport's example could set a new standard."

Soldier gets six years for killing civilian

Jakarta Post - December 28, 2005

Nethy Dharma Somba, Jayapura -- The Jayapura Military Court on Tuesday sentenced a soldier to six years in jail for killing a civilian in Papua. The soldier was also dishonorably discharged from the Army.

Presiding judge Maj. Sutrisno said Pvt. Zulkarnaen Lubis, a 31- year-old member of the 643rd Infantry Battalion, was guilty of shooting and killing a sawmill employee, Liborius Oka, 33, during a fight on Dec. 1 in a housing complex in Asiki district, near the border with Papua New Guinea.

Sutrisno said Zulkarnaen had disgraced the Indonesian Military by his actions, which also threatened to spark conflict between the military and ordinary Papuans. "He (the defendant) demonstrated his arrogance by using his firearm in dealing with a personal matter," the judge said.

The verdict was a year lighter than the seven years demanded by military prosecutors, who charged Zulkarnaen with violating Article 338 of the Criminal Code on manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail. The defendant also was charged under Article 351 on assault, which is punishable by a maximum jail sentence of two years and eight months.

The incident occurred when Zulkarnaen was serving at a border post in Boven Digoel regency, along with Pvt. Rosadi, Pvt. Rusbianto and their commander, Sgt. Roni. The four soldiers received a complaint that Liborius had attempted to break into a house near the border post.

As the four soldiers were heading to Liborius' home, they ran into his wife, Hana, and their son, Eko. At gunpoint, Zulkarnaen demanded that Hana tell him where her husband was.

Liborius, who was hiding nearby, attempted to intervene and was allegedly assaulted by Pvt. Rosadi, 28, who is being tried separately in the case. The victim attempted to defend himself and was shot and killed by Zulkarnaen, allegedly after going for the soldier's gun.

Foul play feared in governor's death

The Courier Mail - December 27, 2005

Greg Poulgrain -- Supporters of Papuan Governor Jacob Salossa have raised allegations of foul play over his sudden death last week. They are concerned that no autopsy was performed on the man who led Indonesia's easternmost province for five years.

Jakarta media reported that the 57-year-old politician died on December 19 while being taken to hospital in Jayapura. Some reports said he had stomach pains and was foaming at the mouth; others said he had difficulty breathing and died of a heart attack.

Salossa, from Sorong in the far west of Papua, served two terms after being appointed by Jakarta in 2000. He envisaged a third term next year when -- after many delays -- Papua will hold its first elections for governor.

Salossa's interim replacement is John Ibo, chairman of the parliament in Jayapura. He comes from Lake Sentani on the northern coast of Papua and was nominated as an election candidate only two weeks ago.

After Salossa's funeral last Wednesday, intense political and tribal rivalry surfaced between supporters from Sorong and Sentani.

Other candidates for governor include Constan Karma, formerly Salossa's deputy, former governor Bas Suebu, also from Sentani, and Australian-trained Lukas Enembe, who is a popular highland political figure untainted by corruption.

Salossa had a leading role in introducing special autonomy for the Papuan people over the past five years -- a strategy aimed at bringing revenue back into the province.

However, much popular support for autonomy was lost when he could not stem rumours that Papuan politicians had Swiss bank accounts. An anti-corruption drive by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has already netted two provincial governors.

Salossa has worked with Jakarta to dampen down separatist activity in the province. This year he ordered that no one was to fly the "Morning Star" independence flag on December 1 -- as Papuans do each year -- to commemorate the parliament they had before Indonesia took control in the 1960s.

Human rights/law

NGOs demand SBY resolve Munir case

Jakarta Post - December 30, 2005

Jakarta -- Dozens of local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have sent a letter to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, urging him to instruct the police to further investigate the murder of the country's top human rights activist Munir.

"We do appreciate the action taken by the President of Indonesia to form Fact Finding Team (TPF) to investigate the case because Munir was a prominent human rights defender and well recognized both on the national and international levels.

"We have been following the ongoing legal proceedings in Munir's case, but we've noticed that the investigation and legal proceedings have not been done with the maximum effort," said an activist at a press conference on Thursday.

Munir was poisoned to death in September 2004 on board a Garuda flight bound for Amsterdam. Senior pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who was on the first leg of the flight as a passenger, was recently sentenced to 14 years in jail. But activists believed that Pollycarpus was not the mastermind behind the murder.

The NGOs urging the president to act included the Indonesian- based Kalyanamitra, Sri Lanka-based Women and Media Collective, Thailand-based Alliance for Women's Aid Organization, the US- based Women's Law and Development International, Malaysia-based Women's Aid Organization and the Philippines-based Women's Lead Foundation.

22 women's NGOs urge government to protect Munir family

Tempo Interactive - December 30, 2005

Jakarta -- Twenty-two women's non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Indonesia and foreign countries have urged the Indonesian government to give security protection to Munir's family.

"This is because Munir's situation is not an ordinary case. In Munir's circumstances, there is conspiracy and power embezzlement from Garuda Indonesia and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN)," said Kalyanamitra Executive Director Rena Herdiyani in Jakarta.

Up to now, Herdiyani said, Garuda is yet to give any security guarantee or compensation over Munir's death. Therefore, Herdiyani added, there was a need for compensation for Munir's family such as life insurance and education for Munir's children.

Twenty-two women's non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the Dubar Network from Bangladesh, the Northeast Network from India, Women's Law and Development International from the US, sent a letter to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on December 15 to follow up the recommendation of the fact-finding team on Munir.

Up to now, Herdiyani said, there is yet to be any response from Yudhoyono. (Fanny Febiana-Tempo News Room)

SBY urged to push police to continue Munir murder probe

Jakarta Post - December 29, 2005

Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta -- A group of human rights activists has asked President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to order the police to continue the investigation into the murder of noted human rights defender Munir in a bid to reveal the masterminds.

The group also asked the President to order the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) to conduct an internal investigation in response to rising speculation that former and active senior officials of the agency were involved in Munir's murder.

"The President rejected our prior proposal to establish a presidential team to monitor the performance of the police and BIN during the investigation of the Munir case.

"As a consequence, the President has to show his willingness to continue the investigation into this case by asking the National Police chief and the BIN chief to reveal the conspiracy behind the murder as earlier stated by the court," said Asmara Nababan, who is also former secretary-general of the National Commission on Human Rights, at a news conference.

He was referring to a verdict issued by the judicial panel at the Central Jakarta District Court in the recent trial of Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who was found guilty of murdering Munir and forging documents to enable him to be on the Sept. 7, 2004 Garuda flight on which Munir was fatally poisoned during the Jakarta-Singapore leg of the trip to Amsterdam.

Pollycarpus was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The judicial panel also ordered law enforcers "to find the mastermind of the murder".

The judicial panel also said that top Garuda officials at the time were involved in falsifying travel documents for Pollycarpus. The court also said Pollycarpus contacted on several occasions via mobile phone a high-ranking official from BIN, Maj. Gen. (ret) Muchdi Purwoprandjono, prior to and after the murder took place.

"But as of today, the police have yet to summon them for investigation purposes," said another activist, Rachland Nashiddik, from human rights watchdog Imparsial.

Present during the news conference were Usman Hamid from the National Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), Hendardi from the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI) and Iskandar Sonadji from Kontras.

They were on the now-defunct government-sanctioned fact finding team that concluded that the September murder was a conspiracy involving top BIN officials.

Law prompts more abused women to seek help: Report

Jakarta Post - December 24, 2005

Hera Diani, Jakarta -- The new law on domestic violence passed last year has encouraged more abused women to seek help, a crisis center's report says.

Before the enactment of Law No. 23/2004, police, prosecutors and even hospital staff frequently ignored women's claims of abuse when they were brave enough to make a complaint.

Under the new law, police can act against perpetrators of domestic violence without having to take complaints from victims first.

The report released by the crisis center Mitra Perempuan (Women's Partners) on Thursday says 443 women contacted it for legal assistance this year, a 38 percent increase from last year's 329 women. Around 4 percent were teenage girls aged 18 and below, the report says.

More women called the crisis center's hotlines in Jakarta, Tangerang and Bogor, to find out practical information about the law, police and medical services.

Of the cases women reported, 86 percent involved a form of abuse. Seventy seven percent of the abusers were husbands, about 9 percent were boyfriends or close friends, while parents, in-laws and relatives made up 6 percent, ex-husbands 3 percent and employers 0.22 percent.

The data also showed that abusers and their victims came from a range of backgrounds, belying a common opinion that they are generally poor, uneducated or unemployed.

Nine out of 10 women who used the Mitra Perempuan services had been abused more than once, and in different ways: physical (68.7 percent), sexual (40.6 percent) and abandonment (73.6 percent).

About 56 percent were also involved in household conflicts, including fights over child custody, inheritance and alimony, along with polygamy and divorce cases.

Nine out of 10 women also suffered from forms of mental illness, with 26 trying to commit suicide, while 16 percent of women had suffered damage to their reproductive health.

However, while many consulted the crisis center, only 6 percent of victims of violence went to the police, the courts or health centers for assistance.

About 5 percent of women opted to take legal action to settle their cases.

Mitra Perempuan executive director Rita Serena Kalibonso said the media had done a good job disseminating information about the law to the public.

She said that about 23 percent of the women who contacted the center said they had found out about the service from media reports.

"The implementation of Law No. 23/2004 shows the importance of domestic violence prevention and victim protection." However, information campaigns must continue so more women would learn they did not have suffer in silence, she said.

Rita said all state agencies needed to have policies to help victims of domestic violence. The state should also abolish charges on medical consultations to encourage abused women to come forward, she said.

Government/civil service

New survey rates SBY's popularly as high

Jakarta Post - December 30, 2005

Jakarta -- In spite of mounting criticism of his administration following the fuel price increases, the latest survey shows that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's popularity remains high, with over half of the population deeming that he is doing a good job.

However, they are unhappy with the government's economic performance.

Released by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) here on Thursday, the poll, conducted in mid-December, put Susilo's job approval rating at 56 percent, a decline from 63 percent in an LSI survey issued in September.

The President won respect across the country for his integrity, as well as performance in the areas of legal, security and social welfare ever since he took office 15 months ago. The areas that people feel have room for improvement are medical services, crime and gambling elimination, corruption eradication, education and women's empowerment.

The majority of 1,100 respondents, however, are dissatisfied with the current government's economic performance, with 53.4 percent of them feeling that this year's economic condition was worse than in 2004. The sentiment was mainly due to the steep fuel price increases, which averaged 126 percent.

The respondents said the fuel price hikes made it tougher for them to buy kerosene (90 percent), cooking gas (61 percent), gasoline (89 percent) and diesel fuel (73 percent). The affordability of staple food has also declined, as well as people's financial ability to cover medical costs and school tuition.

For the year ahead, only 40.2 percent of the respondents think things will improve economically. The toughest challenges for the Susilo administration this year were creating jobs, reducing poverty, maintaining stable prices, stabilizing the rupiah and spurring economic growth.

With regards to the recent Cabinet reshuffle, 41 percent of the respondents believe it will improve the performance of Susilo's administration, particularly his economics team.

Responding to Susilo's relatively stable popularity, presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng said that 56 percent was "not too bad" for a democracy.

Cabinet reshuffle caps year of silent rivalry

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

Dwi Atmanta, Jakarta -- President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's face stiffened prior to announcing the first Cabinet reshuffle that night of Dec. 5.

He spent most of his introductory speech denying media reports regarding an alleged tug-of-war that preceded the changes to his Cabinet team, which he said were speculative and baseless.

Why did he bother responding to such unsubstantiated news in that case? Critics were quick to criticize Susilo for lacking the composure a statesman needs to respond to the problems he is facing. Former president Megawati Soekarnoputri joined the chorus, saying her successor did not have a sense of humor.

What was behind the President's ire was his attempt to prove his critics, who branded him an indecisive leader, wrong. "I have never hesitated (to replace ministers). I have a definite concept in running the government," Susilo said in a televised speech.

He also dismissed speculation that he had come under pressure from certain political parties or individuals in determining who gets what in the minor reshuffle.

Whatever the President maintained, many deem the reshuffle as a win-win solution reached between him and Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who leads the Golkar Party, the major bedrock of political support for his one-year-old administration.

Demands had mounted previously for Susilo to replace Aburizal Bakrie, who is a Golkar member, as the chief economics minister.

Susilo bowed to the pressure, but instead of kicking Aburizal out of the Cabinet, he shifted him to the post of coordinating minister for people's welfare. To further appease Golkar, Susilo awarded the party the National Development Planning Board chairmanship post. A Golkar executive said the party could have secured one more post in Fadel Muhammad, but Susilo dropped him at the last minute.

A source said Kalla was initially reluctant to travel to Yogyakarta to accompany Susilo in announcing the Cabinet reshuffle. The source said Kalla was unhappy with Aburizal losing his strategic post to Susilo's handpicked candidate Boediono. After three telephone conversations with Susilo, however, Kalla departed.

Kalla flew back to Jakarta just an hour after the announcement with a smile. But it was Susilo who seemed to have had the last laugh.

Replacing Aburizal is indeed the boldest measure Susilo has ever taken. Aburizal's entry into the Cabinet was recommended by Kalla, who also focuses on economic affairs in line with the division of labor agreed upon with Susilo.

When the discourse on the reshuffle began to roll, Kalla insisted that there would be no changes in the economic team.

Then the President raised the issue of public officials who also play a role as businessmen. Susilo call them dual-function politicians, reminiscence of a New Order term for the socio- political role played by the military.

It remains unclear who the President was referring to, because in fact state officials are banned from running businesses. There is no regulation prohibiting their families from seeking profit, however.

There are several Cabinet members who used to be active in business, including Kalla, Aburizal and Minister of Industry Fahmi Idris.

As if to respond to Susilo's statement, Kalla said the inclusion of businessmen in the Cabinet was unavoidable and would benefit the government due to their managerial and negotiating skills.

Susilo seized the momentum of the Cabinet reshuffle to dissociate public officials from the private sector.

The President said he would issue a regulation that would prohibit companies run by families or relatives of public officials from bidding for projects funded by state or regional budgets.

The reform movement in 1998 had led to a major crackdown on corruption, collusion and nepotism involving state officials, but only recently the demand began to materialize. Collusion and nepotism, however, are still rampant and difficult to prove.

To further show who's the boss, Susilo announced a plan to formalize his professional relationship with the Vice President in a bid to avoid overlapping tasks that might confuse not only the Cabinet members but the public at large.

The idea of issuing the unprecedented regulation followed repeated contradictory statements made in public by the President and the Vice President, notably the fuel price hike and the Cabinet reshuffle.

A recent study conducted by the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) revealed that most respondents perceived the Vice President as playing an equal or more important role in running the country.

The pollster said Kalla's increased performance rating probably came from his prominent role in the peaceful settlement of the Aceh conflict, perceptions of his proactive approach to the country's economic policies, his support base in the House of Representatives through the Golkar Party he heads and his leadership style.

Kalla proved himself a skillful peace broker when he managed to convince Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels to sit at the negotiating table, and later on drop their long-held demand for an independent state.

Most respondents of the LSI survey say that one year into his term of office Kalla has played a bigger role in the government than his boss Susilo. Therefore in its recommendation, LSI suggested that Susilo take more initiatives while Kalla stay in the background.

Susilo might have had to allow for compromises in order to consolidate political support in the difficult first year of tenure, which might explain why he appeared to not be in full command.

Now that the Cabinet reshuffle has brought together all major parties except the self-styled opposition camp, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle on his side, Susilo could emerge as a powerful president as LSI put it in the second year.

"The President should never hesitate to exercise the powers the Constitution grants him in line with the presidential system of government," LSI said in its recommendations.

Nobody knows what Susilo has in mind to strengthen his political clout, but LSI suggested that he build a political machine that will provide him with second opinions that go in line with his platform, keep him in touch with trends in the society and help him maintain his political capital.

His popularity, still high despite the tough year, is his most valuable asset, which none of his contenders can afford to ignore.

Kalla must realize that. A Golkar figure said the Vice President told party executives it would be impossible for him to challenge Susilo in the 2009 election.

"It is possible that Kalla will again contest the election as Susilo's running mate, and emerge as a more powerful vice president," he said.

Kalla himself has dismissed speculation that he might challenge Susilo for the top post, like he did in 2004 when they challenged their former boss Megawati.

With politics being the game of the possible, no one can guarantee that an energetic, hardworking Kalla will keep a low profile.

Everything is now dependent on whether Susilo can gain the momentum of the Cabinet reshuffle to make use of the chemistry he and Kalla have formed. One year of confusion is more than enough.

House power play keeps checks and balances at bay

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

Tony Hotland, Jakarta -- Vehemently, they took turns to press the speaker's button to voice their protests, while others impatiently moved forward from their seats to the House leadership bench. A brawl was imminent, and journalists readied themselves.

The same fracas recurred a week later, with the same faces, same floor and the same debate, which stretched to midnight. Legislators shouted persistently, insisting on a vote to throw out the government's policy to lift subsidies and raise fuel prices. They lost, but many believe they won the public over.

Members of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the immediate darlings after the 1998 fall of Soeharto's three- decade-long authoritarian rule, are now swamped with agendas -- they are expected to play their role as staunch critics of the government after their landslide loss in last year's presidential election to Democratic Party leader Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Being in opposition is familiar territory for the PDI-P. Along with the United Development Party (PPP), the formerly named Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), were two of the few opposition parties to Soeharto's Golkar Party.

But this was hardly an opposition in the any democratic sense of the word. Parties could be shut down if they pushed New Order governments too hard, and even if they did speak out, a cowed media were often too afraid to report them.

In a now-freer political climate, opposition politicians can openly challenge policies and attack personalities without fear of imprisonment or banning -- something, judging from the PDI-P members' sometimes uneven performance, members are still getting their heads around.

After the presidential election, the PDI-P initially formed an opposition bloc with former arch foes and fellow presidential also-rans Golkar, and their traditional allies, the National Awakening Party (PKB). This was the kind of power-hungry parliamentary flip-flop that would be viewed as bizarre in the West -- and wasn't thought of too highly here either.

This unnatural bunch of bedfellows quickly broke up after Vice President Jusuf Kalla was voted into Golkar's top post. Former PKB members also joined Susilo's Cabinet but it was not enough to bring the whole party into the fold. This time, however, with ministers joining from both the party's factions, the PKB's formal entry into government could come soon. Which would leave the PDI-P as the main opposition in the House.

"In short, our job is to establish a check-and-balance system of the current administration. We (may be) alone, but perhaps it's better off that way, as long as we're close to the people," PDI-P deputy secretary general Sutradara Gintings said.

The party, which won the most votes in the 1999 election, dropped to second behind Golkar in last year's legislative poll to secure 109 out of 550 seats in the House.

In a modern democracy, Sutradara said, being in opposition should be considered as equally worthy as being in government -- as a vital counterbalance to power.

However, for many other parties, he said, it seemed that old ways die hard. After Susilo was elected, former opposition parties (like Golkar) were quick to ignore whatever vague political manifesto they had to rejoin the government, getting their hands back on power -- and the state's coffers.

"And we completely grasp why other parties were easily enticed to joining the Cabinet -- because of the obvious perks. That's how this country was run for more than 30 years. But remember that there are always times for a political switch," Sutradara said.

He should know, he has stood for and won legislative seats under three main parties -- Golkar, the Nationhood Unity Party and PDI-P.

But this unwillingness to betray its political position, he said, was why the PDI-P turned down the President's offer for ministerial posts prior to last month's Cabinet reshuffle.

"I should mention that some of us did give thought to this. Drooling over the perks, some wanted to reconsider our political stance, but we're not new kids on the block. Thus, I find it silly when you threaten to pull out your political support unless you're given more Cabinet seats," he said.

This December also marks the first year of the current House of Representatives.

Looking at PDI-P's time in opposition, Sutradara said his party had gone all-out to become a credible sparring partner to the government and that the Susilo administration should start taking its justifiable criticisms seriously. "But it is not for us to assess our success, but the public in the next election," he said.

In opposition, the PDI-P was left out of almost all of the political lobbying in government, especially in the many closed- door meetings between party factions at the State Palace prior to House plenary sessions, which decided positions of the House.

"It's these kind of (government) efforts to absorb all the political powers, especially in the House, which are unhealthy for the development of politics. That's what we refer to as a procedural -- not a substantial -- democracy," Sutradara said.

From a battle of positions to a brawl, to lax monitoring, to a disappointing record in passing legislation, the House has exhibited a shaky performance this year -- a description that House Speaker Agung Laksono, of the Golkar Party, has publicly agreed with.

And a desire for party unity has ensured that individual legislators' dissenting opinions become taboo after their faction leaders engage in lobbying with the government.

To others, much of this opposition seems to be cynical grandstanding. Countless legislators from opposition and governing parties rushed to stand out and voice their disagreement with the government's second fuel price hike in early October. But when the plenary session came, less than five of these legislators bothered to dissent during the vote.

Afterwards the others claimed, unconvincingly, they had at least tried to fight the legislation early on.

Of course, without the support of a majority in the House, there is no way that Susilo's administration could have had a hope to push through any of the reforms we have seen in the past year.

But having a more even number of legislators in opposing and reigning camps could mean more scrutiny and could end up benefiting the people, observers have said.

Political analyst Ikrar Nusa Bhakti said such a situation would be a boost to a democracy's check and balance system, especially if opposing groups were able to produce innovations and workable alternate policies.

"The PDI-P, for instance, has been striving to play the part of a good opposition. But they lack innovation and have poor public relations, which is unfortunate when you are practically the only challenger in the field," Ikrar said.

Syamsuddin Haris, of the National Institute of Sciences, says this lack of policy ideas was the most likely reason why many parties preferred to join the administration. "And in PDI-P's case, their lack of originality and unclear form of opposition have also worked to put off other parties from supporting them," he said.

Sutradara has a response, accustomed as he is to critics that say his party is as clueless as the government. Whether it is convincing, or not, is -- in Sutradara's words -- for the public to decide.

"We share the general description of our alternate policies with the government, but of course we spare them the details. These are for us to reveal and once our turn to rule the administration comes," he said.

He added that while his party was playing hard in opposition, it was also attempting to play fair, by giving credit to the government's approach on the special autonomy status for Papua and the health minister's policy to provide insurance for the poor.

"When (policy) benefits the public, particularly the poor, the government can count us in. Other than that, we're more than prepared to challenge," Sutradara said.

"The poor" and "the public" are perhaps the most tired phrases used by campaigning politicians, who are actually focused on other words -- "president", "minister", "legislator", "power" or "money".

Perhaps this is why these seemingly clear and noble sentiments become blurry when these politicians assume power. Promises stay promises.

Members of the House Commission III on human rights promised victims of the 1998 Trisakti and Semanggi shooting incidents a review of why the investigations into these cases had stalled. But there was no follow-up until the families of victims came back knocking on their door -- six months later.

It seems that whatever side of the fence one is on politically, the parties have a long way to go.

Observers say, clear political platforms, and less venal leadership would be a start. Especially for those who proudly bear the title "representative of the public".

Returning legislators play cat and mouse with journalists

Jakarta Post - December 24, 2005

Tony Hotland, Jakarta -- Mounting public criticism over a visit by lawmakers to Egypt appears to have taken its toll on their maturity.

A game of cat and mouse with journalists at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Friday appeared to be first on the agenda for the returning legislators.

Scheduled to touch down at 1:45 p.m, Qatar Airways Flight No. 626 from Doha via Singapore was delayed for an hour.

A staff member at the airport's VIP lounge told journalists that state-owned airport operator PT Angkasa Pura was to send a bus to transport the lawmakers directly to the nearby Sheraton Hotel, rather than to the lounge as is the normal procedure.

The journalists later split into two groups -- some waiting at the hotel, others at an exit gate usually used only by the airport's apron crew and restricted to the public.

With spirits low, the appearance of a blue bus heading slowly out the apron gate at around 3:05 p.m. came as a glimmer of hope for journalists. But, just as TV cameraman began to get footage a man sitting in the front seat in the left row of the bus was seen sinking down into his seat and covering his forehead as he cast his eyes downward.

Suited up and wearing sunglasses, journalists identified him as Choirul Sholeh Rasyid, a legislator from the National Awakening Party (PKB).

In the right row of the bus, several women wearing headscarves and sunglasses were also observed peering anxiously out the window. They were believed to be the lawmakers' wives, who reportedly accompanied them on the visit.

In one car, the journalists followed the bus. The bus changed direction several times, turning into the parking lot of a storage building.

With a truck between them and three minutes stuck at a parking gate, the bus transporting the lawmakers went out of view. The bus was however spotted once again driving back into the airport's apron area.

Contacted by The Jakarta Post through his cellular phone, Choirul admitted that the lawmakers were playing cat and mouse with the journalists because they were not ready to be interviewed.

"Yes, we were indeed trying to evade you because we weren't ready to face journalists. But it was the secretariat staff who commanded us to hide from the journalists," he argued.

Choirul said four lawmakers had stayed in Singapore on Friday, but he had forgotten their names. Legislator Djoko Edhi Sucipto had returned on Wednesday as his party, the National Mandate Party (PAN), decided to recall him from the House of Representatives for joining the visit along with other 14 lawmakers.

However, the latest data shows there were 24 delegates on the Egypt trip in total, including the lawmakers' wives.

The visit, which cost US$76,170, drew harsh criticism from fellow legislators and the public after the delegates denied the visit would go ahead, but then left quietly for Egypt.

The admonishment increased when an itinerary for the visit revealed the lawmakers were not traveling on state business.

Criticism of the visit continued on Friday when a group of people from an association of Indonesian constituents filed a report with the House's disciplinary committee, requesting it impose sanctions on the 15 lawmakers.

Political analyst Arbi Sanit from the University of Indonesia said other parties should follow PAN's example by recalling legislators who were among the delegates.

Corruption/collusion/nepotism

KPK complains over lack of support in antigraft drive

Jakarta Post - December 30, 2005

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta -- The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) complained on Thursday over a lack of support from other state institutions in its ambitious anticorruption drive.

Addressing the commission's second anniversary, KPK chairman Taufikurrahman Ruki said most other state institutions had failed to seize the momentum from the KPK's antigraft campaign and push for reforms.

"There are no parties trying to use the momentum to reform the system in their respective institutions," he said during a modest anniversary ceremony.

Key national figures in attendance included National Police chief Gen. Sutanto, Supreme Court Chief Justice Bagir Manan, Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh and head of the AGO's special antigraft team Hendarman Supandji, Constitutional Court chief Jimly Asshidiqie, Central Bank Governor Burhanuddin Abdullah, Head of the country's money laundering watchdog (PPATK) Yunus Hussein, Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Minister of Justice and Human Rights Hamid Awaluddin and Minister of State Apparatus Empowerment Taufik Effendy.

Ruki said that the KPK's graft investigations were supposed to be a trigger for a general bureaucratic reform in the country, a crucial element in the ongoing efforts to curb rampant corruption in the country. "No wonder anticorruption efforts have remained the same," he lamented.

KPK has busted a number of corrupt high-profile officials, including several within the General Elections Commission (KPU) and at the Supreme Court.

While some KPU members have been thrown in prison for graft, nothing has been done to reform the KPU. The same goes for the Supreme Court, whose internal reform efforts have gone nowhere.

In its second year, Ruki said, the KPK still felt all alone in the anticorruption movement because the civil society groups concerned with graft "are small and they each go in their own direction".

The battle against corruption has become increasingly difficult because of "the entrenched power of corrupt people, which is stronger than that of the anticorruption groups" due to a lack of political support and capital, he added.

"The antigraft movement here is still half-hearted. Everybody claps their hands if the KPK arrests their political opponents or someone they don't know. However, they become ambiguous when KPK arrests their friends, family members or party members," Ruki said.

Abdul Rahman appeared to disagree with Ruki's statement about the KPK fighting a solo battle against corruption. "What are we then? There is Pak Sutanto, Pak Hendarman and myself. Alone? Come on...," he said with a chuckle after the ceremony.

Set up two years ago, the KPK's main task is to eradicate "complicated" corruption cases that exceed Rp 1 billion (US$99,700) or more.

Its establishment was due to the fact that many major graft cases were often dismissed by the police, prosecutors or judges without appropriate explanation.

KPK is often called a "superbody" because it is able to summon anyone, including high-ranking officials, without permission from the President. It is also authorized to monitor the bank accounts of graft suspects.

Some KPK achievements in 2005:

1. The arrests and convictions of a number of officials in graft cases, including former Aceh governor Abdullah Puteh, KPU chairman Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin, KPU member Mulyana W. Kusumah and other KPU officials as well as Ministry of Communications officials Harun Letlet and Tarcisius Walla.

2. Getting back state money, which had been embezzled by the convicts, or in the form of bribery, amounting to some Rp 200 billion.

3. Promoting the "island of integrity" and good governance programs that were later adopted by seven provinces in the country to boost clean government.

4. Establishing a forensic website and software that has become the backbone of the commission's administration.

No playoff, no public services

Jakarta Post - December 30, 2005

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, Jakarta -- For over 30 years, Wati has never enjoyed "free" public services. Each time she renews her ID card, her driver's license, or applied for marriage and land certificates, as well as birth certificates for her three sons, she always is forced to pay hundreds of thousands of rupiah in bribes to obtain her documents.

"If I do not pay, it would be time consuming to get those certificates. Moreover, they would have bounced me around from desk to desk like a ping pong ball," said the 55-year-old woman.

She was lucky that she could afford the illegal fees required, thanks to her wealthy husband, whom she admitted also might have taken payoffs while he served as a civil servant.

"My husband is a retired official with the tax office, he might have taken some bribes during his working days. I guess, I have used bribery money to bribe others. People call that karma," she said with smile.

Wati can call it whatever she wants, but Joe Fernandes of the Institute for Public Policy Studies (IPCOS) says the government current situation was akin to a "corporate state", in which officials seek maximum benefits from the public services they give.

"Indonesia is not a 'welfare state', where the government serves its citizens without charging them, because it is their right to have good and free public services," he explained during a year- end discussion on Thursday to assess the country's public services in 2005.

Joe lashed out at the government for doing nothing to curb the "crass selling of public services", and asserted that state officials had even maintained such corrupt practices for their own benefit. "I doubt whether next year the condition will change," despite the implementation of the regional autonomy law, he said.

The recent release of the 2005 Global Corruption Barometer, a report issued by Transparency International, was similar to Joe's assessment. The report shows that up to 30 percent of Indonesian adults may have bribed officials in 2005 for government services to be done in a timely fashion.

A senior official from the office of the state minister for administrative reforms, Mangapul Sitorus, admitted that such bribery had remained out of control for the past three decades.

He blamed all of this on poor professionalism and lack of specialization in their field as civil servants working at public service agencies.

"To curb the problem, our office has come up with a reward and punishment mechanism, performance appraisals, as well as setting the minimum standards of public services," Mangapul pledged during the discussion hosted by IPCOS.

He said that if passed into law, the bill on public services, currently being deliberated at the House of Representatives, was expected to effectively force civil servants to serve the public better or at least in accordance with the minimum standards.

House member Ferry Mursyidan Baldan suggested that the government speed up the introduction of the policy of establishing a single identity number to prevent citizens from dealing with the same procedures and requirements over and over each time they apply for new documents.

"The House of Representatives will approve the policy despite a huge amount of money needed from the state budget to set up the information and technology infrastructure for this purpose," he said.

Mixed results in government's anti-corruption campaign

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

Reiner S., Jakarta -- A massive clean-up of the country, seen by most Indonesians as deeply corrupt after decades of authoritarian rule, has become a top priority of the country's first directly elected president. So far Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's results have been mixed; and there are worrying signs that corrupt forces are fighting back -- and are equally as aggressive.

When the antigraft court delivered in April its first verdict by sending then Aceh governor Abdullah Puteh to ten years in prison for embezzling more than a third of the Rp 12.6 billion in state funds for the purchase of a Russian-made helicopter, there was fresh optimism that authorities were finally serious in tackling the rampant corruption, which has become a major obstacle to luring badly needed investment.

In a further boost to Susilo's antigraft campaign, law enforcement institutions shocked some of the country's erstwhile "untouchables" by unveiling more high-profile graft cases and declaring several greedy state officials, politicians and businesspeople graft suspects. Many others face investigation. The Cipinang penitentiary in East Jakarta, where four high- profile convicts, including former chief of the state logistics agency (Bulog) Beddu Amang, former minister of trade and industry Rahardi Ramelan, business tycoon Probosutedjo (who is also the half-brother of former authoritarian president Soeharto), and Puteh are now in detention for corruption, may soon have to be refurbished to accommodate other top corruption convicts.

But despite some successful cases, it remains open to question whether Susilo, who has been criticized for his often indecisiveness over a number of crucial issues, will succeed in rooting out corruption, which is deeply entrenched in Indonesian society.

According to Transparency International's 2005 Corruption Perception Index, out of 159 countries surveyed, Indonesia is categorized as the sixth most corrupt country in the world with a score of 2.2, a slight improvement from last year's fifth position and a score of 2.0, but still on par with war-ravaged Iraq.

"In terms of fighting terrorism, the achievements are quite good. But in terms of fighting corruption, (the government) is impotent," said Akil Mochtar, a member of the House of Representatives from the Golkar Party, which officially supports the current administration, during a recent seminar.

The Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), an independent graft watchdog, is also starting to question the effectiveness of the antigraft campaign led by Susilo, whose relatively clean image and a strong determination to fight corrupt forces during the presidential campaign had won him the election last year. The results are very minimal, although we have to acknowledge that rooting out corruption is not an easy task," said ICW coordinator Teten Masduki, who won the prestigious 2005 Ramon Magsaysay Award for his role in helping to curb graft in this country.

Some say that natural and disease-related disasters plaguing the country this year may have somewhat distracted the antigraft drive. But others have pointed out that the aggressive campaign launched by Susilo (with more than 40 speeches delivered in various occasions this year) seems to have had just a slight response from bureaucrats, who have started to regain their old patronage role over the business sector after several years of a consolidation process following the downfall of Soeharto in 1998.

Businesspeople are still complaining about the corruption they have to face at all levels of government. One example, which could be seen as microcosm for the bureaucracy, is that the Jakarta driver's license departments still require bribes to expedite applications.

"The (President's) vision has not been effectively translated into concrete measures (by his subordinates)," said chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Taufiqurrahman Ruki, pointing out the absence of credible measures to boost governance at ministries, state/provincial-owned companies and regional administrations.

Despite a slow-start in 2004, the KPK, whose special prosecutors can investigate alleged misconduct by state officials involving possible losses of more than Rp 1 billion to the state, and have wide-ranging power, have started to unveil and resolve a few high profile graft cases including the Puteh case and the corruption by top officials of the General Elections Commission (KPU) during the implementation of last year's successful elections. It is now collecting evidence to handle the alleged bribery in the judicial system, which may implicate Supreme Court Chief Justice Bagir Manan. The KPK is facing tough challenges in investigating this case as evidenced by the initial rejection by Bagir to the summonses made by the commission. He later agreed to be questioned at his own office following intervention from the President.

The inter-departmental, anticorruption team set up by the President himself in a bid to clean up the country, has so far been a little slow in acting. From a target to resolve 16 graft cases at ministries and state-owned companies, the team has so far only managed to start to uncover the abuse of haj pilgrimage funds worth Rp 700 billion by officials at the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

The Attorney General's Office (AGO) has also had a dismal performance. The office claims to have resolved a total of 450 graft cases in the first 10 months of the year, while 15 were suspended due to lack of evidence. But the cases, mostly in regional administrations, are considered petty corruption, with total combined losses to the state of approximately Rp 19 million. It has also resolved the suspicious loan cases at the giant state-controlled Bank Mandiri.

These developments have been a disappointment, ICW's Teten said, pointing out to the huge resources at the AGO's disposal -- a total of 6,000 prosecutors in 350 prosecutors office across the nation.

"Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh is a good person, but he seems to have failed to come up with credible, concrete measures to fight corruption," said one businessman who asked for anonymity. When Susilo appointed the former Supreme Court justice as Attorney General last year, there was a lot of hope among the public that he could help accelerate efforts to root out the endemic corruption in the country.

The only positive achievement so far of the AGO is that the institution no longer seems to have as strong an appetite to freeze high-profile graft cases, ICW said. A total of 43 cases were dropped during the era of previous attorney general MA Rahman.

But there have been strong calls from the public for the AGO to also resolve the massive theft of the state-sponsored bank bailout funds by bankers in the wake of the late 1990s financial crisis, a demand that insiders say is against the wishes of Susilo, who seems to want to move ahead by focusing on eradicating ongoing corruption. Against this backdrop, there are worrying signs that corrupt forces are fighting back through various means, including bribery, political blackmailing and even physical attacks.

One recent example, is the naming of Khairiansyah Salman, a whistle blower in the KPU corruption case, as a suspect in the haj pilgrimage funds graft case for allegedly receiving Rp 10 million of the funds when conducting an audit at the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Khairiansyah, a former auditor at the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK), was named a suspect on Nov. 21, several days after he won the internationally prestigious Integrity Award from Transparency International for his role in uncovering the KPU case. The award was supposed to encourage other people to become whistle blowers and help the KPK uncover graft cases.

The move by the Jakarta High Prosecutors Office to name him a suspect (while in fact other high-profile figures including senior politicians who have illegally enjoyed a greater amount of the religious ministry funds have not even been questioned) has irritated antigraft activists as it would discourage other would-be whistle blowers for fear they could end up like Khairiansyah.

Executive Director of the Indonesian Transparency Society, Agung Hendarto, said that the move against Khairiansyah was part of a grand scenario launched by certain forces to crush the current anticorruption campaign. "This is a drastic setback. We must be vigilant in the years to come. If the anticorruption program is only symbolic in nature, merely aimed at maintaining popularity, but devoid of a true spirit to create good governance, it will not work. If it is not designed as a massive national movement to mobilize all government resources, the public and the business sector, then there may not be significant progress from what has been achieved now," warned ICW's Teten.

Many admit to bribing officials

Jakarta Post - December 24, 2005

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta -- In what is seen as further proof that corruption is entrenched in Indonesian society, up to 30 percent of Indonesian adults may have bribed officials in 2005 for speedy government service in obtaining either an ID card, a driver's license or a business permit.

This fact was revealed in the 2005 Global Corruption Barometer, a report issued by Transparency International. The report was submitted on Friday to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has made the fight against graft one of his top priorities.

However, Indonesia was not the worst offender. According to the report, in Cambodia, Cameroon, Paraguay and Mexico between 31 percent and 45 percent of the population bribed authorities in 2005.

The report said Indonesians regarded political parties as the most corrupt institution in the country. That was a common perception, with people in 43 of the 69 countries where the survey was carried out sharing this same opinion.

In the survey, which was conducted by Gallup International on behalf of Transparency International, Indonesians gave political parties a score of 4.2. Scores ranged from 1 to 5, reflecting the least corrupt to the most corrupt.

Coming right behind political parties in Indonesia were the House of Representatives, the police and the customs and excise office, which all received a score of 4.0. The judiciary and the tax office both received a score of 3.8.

"Corruption remains a big concern for citizens around the world, who pinpoint their political and judicial systems first and foremost. However, while political corruption is cited as a major problem in many countries, it is also clear that bribery and petty corruption weigh heavily on the public in many poor nations," the report said.

Unlike many respondents in other countries, however, Indonesians believe there is always a silver lining behind the dark clouds. The report found that Indonesians are the most optimistic in expecting a decline in corruption during the next three years.

As many as 81 percent of Indonesian respondents believe the level of corruption in the country will eventually decline. That figure is a record high for the country, up from 66 percent in 2004 and 55 percent in 2003.

Forty percent of Indonesian respondents believe corruption levels have already begun to decrease over the past three years. A positive perception of corruption eradication was also seen in Columbia (40 percent), Georgia (46 percent) and Kenya (48 percent).

This optimistic attitude in Indonesia is largely related to the work of the Corruption Eradication Commission, which showed significant progress in dealing with high-profile graft cases in 2005, TI Indonesia said.

TI Indonesia supervisory board chairman Todung Mulya Lubis said the government must maintain this positive sentiment by intensifying its antigraft campaign.

"It's a fantastic figure. We told the President that the antigraft movement that he has led has raised the public's expectations. We have to maintain the momentum," Todung said after a meeting with Susilo.

He said TI Indonesia asked the President to continue "going after the big fish" and to enact a law protecting whistle-blowers to bolster the antigraft movement.

The Global Corruption Barometer is different from the Index Corruption Perception, which is also issued by TI. While the Global Barometer surveys regular people, the Index Perception targets businesspeople and executives.

Regional/communal conflicts

Bomb blast kills eight in Indonesian province

Associated Press - December 31, 2005

Abdi Mari, Palu -- A bomb tore through a meat market crowded with people shopping for New Year's celebrations Saturday in an Indonesian province plagued by sectarian violence, officials said. At least eight people were killed and 45 wounded -- many of them Christians.

The attack occurred as scores of people flocked to the morning market that sold and slaughtered pigs in the town of Palu on Sulawesi island, said Brig. Gen. Oegroseno, the police chief of Central Sulawesi province. The town is about 1,000 miles northeast of the capital Jakarta.

The bomb appeared to be a homemade device, he said, loaded with ball bearings and nails to maximize the number casualties.

"The explosion was so loud, I couldn't hear for a couple of seconds," said Tega, a resident who lives nearby and uses only one name, like many Indonesians. "I ran out of my house and saw bodies lying around."

Television footage showed police carrying bloodied bodies into ambulances. One man, apparently unhurt, was holding his head in his hands and screaming. Hospital workers and intelligence officials said at least eight people died and Oegroseno said another 45 were wounded.

Police said it was too early to say who was behind the attack, but it followed repeated warnings that the al-Qaida-linked militant group Jemaah Islamiyah was plotting strikes in the world's most populous Muslim nation over the holidays. The government responded by deploying tens of thousands of troops nationwide to protect churches and places where foreigners gather.

Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for a series of bloody bombings in Indonesia since 2000, including two strikes on Bali that together killed 222 people, many of them foreigners. It is also accused in Christmas Eve church bombings five years ago that left 19 dead.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned Saturday's blast, and urged police to investigate whether it was linked to other attacks on Christians on Sulawesi earlier this year, said his spokesman Andi Mallarangeng.

Ninety percent of Indonesia's 210 million people are Muslim, and most people practice a moderate form of the faith. But attacks against Christians have increased in recent years amid a global rise in Islamic radicalism.

Almost half of Sulawesi's population is Christian. The province was the scene of fierce battles between Muslims and Christians in 2001 and 2002 that killed about 1,000 people, and despite a peace deal, violence against Christians has continued.

In October, unidentified assailants beheaded three Christian high school girls in Poso, east of Palu. In May, two bombs in the Christian-majority town of Tentena killed 20 people. Police have questioned several suspects in those attacks, but have not formally brought charges against anyone.

Security officials and former militants have told The Associated Press in recent interviews that Jemaah Islamiyah was involved. One Christian clergyman said Saturday he was losing patience.

"Whenever an incident takes place, senior officials ask us to tell the people to remain unprovoked," said Rinaldy Damanik, leader of the Synod Churches of Central Sulawesi. "When will the authorities be able to reveal the barbaric perpetrators in the province?"

Maj. Gen. Firman Gani, the Jakarta police chief, said last week that Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists might use the holidays to retaliate for the November death of bomb-making expert Azahari bin Husin, who was gunned down in a police raid.

On Christmas Eve, bomb squads searched for explosives at churches in the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities, where thousands gathered to worship. Security forces also tightly guarded dozens of churches on Sulawesi.

Protest marks Poso conflict anniversary

Jakarta Post - December 29, 2005

Ruslan Sangadji, Palu -- Some 250 residents observed the 7th anniversary of the Poso conflict on Wednesday by staging a protest outside the Central Sulawesi Police Headquarters. The three-hour protest, initiated by the Poso Center organization, was aimed at reminding people of the conflict, which started in December 1998 but escalated in 2000, killing over 2,000 people and leaving 17,000 families homeless.

Following the conflict, many security disturbances rocked Poso, from the May 2005 Tentena bombings to the beheading of three Christian schoolgirls in October this year and mysterious shootings.

"The security disturbances show there are human rights violations in Poso," said Poso Center coordinator Yusuf Lakaseng in his speech during the protest.

He said the security disturbances happened because the cases were not taken seriously by the authorities.

The protesters also demanded that the government immediately set up a joint fact-finding team to uncover those responsible for the conflict and subsequent cases, including a high profile graft case related to the distribution of aid to people displaced by the sectarian conflict.

The protesters alleged that Andi Azikin Suyuti, the then Social Welfare Office chief, who was also the project's chief officer, embezzled billions of rupiah from the fund.

Yusuf claimed that their investigation showed the money also went to several officials in the province and in Jakarta.

The police have so far named five suspects in the case, including Andi. The graft case centers on the construction of almost 1,300 houses in Poso regency after the conflict. The local government was given Rp 6.4 billion (US$640,000) for the construction, but it was later discovered that a portion of the funds had been diverted by government officials and private contractors for their personal gain.

Meanwhile, Wednesday's protest was also used by religious leaders, including priest Jimmy Tumbelaka, to urge President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to order the Central Sulawesi Prosecutor's Office to postpone the execution of three men -- Fabianus Tibo, Marinus Riwu and Dominggus da Silva -- convicted of mass killing during the sectarian clashes.

He said the three men were key witnesses in the Poso conflict, who knew those responsible for the incident.

"If they're executed, the masterminds behind the Poso conflict will be buried with them. So we call on the President to postpone the execution until the masterminds are found," Jimmy said, adding that the authorities had never questioned the 16 people who Tibo identified as having involved them in the sectarian conflict.

Focus on Jakarta

Tangerang to be 'religious city': Mayor

Jakarta Post - December 30, 2005

Multa Fidrus, Tangerang -- The Tangerang municipal administration destroyed on Thursday thousands of bottles of name-brand alcoholic drinks, pornographic pirated VCDs and six gambling machines confiscated in a string of raids this month.

"The raids were made as the introduction to the newly endorsed Bylaw No. 7/2005 that limits the sales of alcohol and includes regulations against piracy and gambling," said Mayor Wahidin Halim who presided over the destruction at his office compound.

Tangerang Police chief Sr. Comr. Raja Erizman, Council speaker Krisna Gunata, chief judge Suhadi, chief prosecutor Bambang Rajardjo and religious figures also witnessed the mayor and staff as they bulldozed at least 19,000 bottles of liquor and burned 31,061 VCDs and the gambling machines.

"The municipal administration has set out to make Tangerang a "religious city"... therefore I have also ordered officers to seize and destroy pornographic calendars and posters sold by sidewalk vendors," Wahidin added.

Bylaw No. 7 was endorsed in one package with Bylaw No. 8/2005 that formally outlawed prostitution late in November.

To uphold the bylaws, the administration would soon form a police-backed task force to disseminate the contents of the bylaws to society and monitor their enforcement.

Violators may face imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to Rp 50 million (US$5,000).

'Bajaj' to have total make over

Jakarta Post - December 28, 2005

Jakarta -- An object of resentment as it often seen as a source of sound and air pollution in the capital, the three-wheeled diesel-fueled bajaj will soon be modernized.

An official of Jakarta's Association of Public Transportation Owners (Organda DKI), Jauhari Perangin-angin, said on Tuesday that 3,000 bajaj belonging to 100 individuals would be modified.

"Organda will appoint a referral auto repair shop, but the owners still have to pay for the modification," he said, declining to reveal the total cost of the repair work for each vehicle.

The new bajaj, he said, would use more environmentally friendly gasoline and be able to accommodate three passengers and 20 kilograms of luggage, plus a bigger motor capacity to enable it to travel at 70 kilometers per hour, faster than the current around 40 km per hour.

Sutiyoso builds monuments, people stay poor

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

Damar Harsanto, Jakarta -- Jakartans can easily recount the promises made by media-savvy Governor Sutiyoso for the city in 2005 by delving into his well-documented statements in various media.

But, asking which promises and plans have been materialized by his administration raises more concerns on unfulfilled promises and unmet plans than satisfaction over achievements.

When presenting the city's 2005 budget draft to the City Council on Dec. 13, 2004, Sutiyoso spelled out five priorities of his administration for 2005.

The priorities were law enforcement, professionalism among city apparatuses, the betterment of the people's economy, the fulfillment of people's basic needs in health and education and a healthy urban life.

A significant rise in 2005's budget to Rp 14 trillion, up from Rp 11 trillion in 2004, was also accompanied by an increase in the budgetary allocation for public service improvement. Unfortunately, no significant improvements in day-to-day services appear to be on the horizon.

While the city enjoys an increase in budget, currently nearly fivefold from that of 2000, when the city budget only hovered at Rp 3.38 trillion, residents here continue to experience the same problems, including flooding, evictions, undernourishment and unemployment.

Over 20,000 residents had to flee their homes for temporary shelters as floods hit again in January, killing a resident and paralyzing the city for at least two days.

The number of poor households hovers at 101,000 this year, just the same as 2001's figure. In the meantime, in what could be called a glaring show of insensitivity, Sutiyoso's administration did not hesitate to spend Rp 26 billion for a Las Vegas-style water fountain project in the National Monument (Monas) park to enliven the city's 478th anniversary, just as 8,455 of the total 923,000 children in the city were in desperate need of nutritious food.

Aggressive developments are ubiquitous across the city, but poverty lingers at the very heart of the metropolis.

Mismanagement, inefficiency and corruption are still rampant, with little effort taken to address the residents' problems.

Unconventional episodes were the order of the day in 2005. A drunk public order officer, who was still donning his uniform, attempted to steal a cab in September. In February, another senior public order shot dead a gang member at point-blank range. Some senior officials are reportedly involved in graft cases, including the forgery of operational licenses for taxis.

Unfortunately, most undisciplined civil servants have been left unpunished, while Sutiyoso's repeated threats of demotion or dismissal for "bad" officers appears to be a bluff.

It is no wonder that major backlogs of big project programs are evident this year, with Sutiyoso putting the blame squarely on his subordinates' poor performance.

The land acquisition program for the East Flood Canal project, the development of high-tech waste treatment facilities in the capital, transportation and parking projects are among those that have been proceeding slower than first hoped.

The rate of progression of the East Flood Canal, which has been on the drawing board since the time of former governor Ali Sadikin in 1973, has been just as slow. The canal aims at helping mitigate flooding in the eastern part of Jakarta.

The 23.6-kilometer canal, worth Rp 5 trillion, has been strongly opposed by residents whose properties are affected by the project. Landowners are also demanding higher compensation from the administration.

Sutiyoso's administration has also found it difficult to reduce its dependence on the Bantar Gebang dump in Bekasi, where it has been disposing of a massive 6,000 tons of garbage every day for more than 15 years.

The city's only waste treatment plant, built by a private company in Bojong, Bogor, West Java, has not been able to operate to date following objections from people living in the area.

Critics have also blasted the slow progress made by Sutiyoso's administration in improving the public transportation system in the city, including the unclear fate of the Mass Rapid Transit and the slow development of additional busways.

The City Parks Agency and City Forestry Agency have also been criticized for their failure to increase the percentage of green spaces to keep pace with the city's target of 13.9 percent out of the capital's total area of 650 square kilometers by 2010.

Environmentalists estimate that green spaces in Jakarta alone account for 9 percent of the city's area, with an apparent trend of continuous shrinking in size.

Of course, some of Sutiyoso's projects and programs are worthy of praise, especially programs that focus on the empowerment of the residents and strengthen the arm of subdistricts and districts offices, which are at the frontline of public service delivery.

The city administration has earmarked Rp 267 billion for Subdistrict Residents Empowerment Scheme (PPMK) funds to be given to 50 subdistricts and 10 districts this year.

The fund could also be used to finance infrastructure projects in subdistricts, social assistance and the empowerment of small entrepreneurs through a micro-credit scheme.

Councillors: Who exactly do they represent?

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

Bambang Nurbianto, Jakarta -- The 75 city councillors have been in office for almost 18 months, long enough for them to illustrate commitment to their election pledges.

When they were inaugurated on Aug. 26, 2004, more than 1,000 people demonstrated outside the City Council building to remind them of their election promises -- clean governance and improved welfare for the public at large.

The demonstrators, mostly urban poor, were in particularly calling on the new councillors, who were directly elected in the 2004 elections, to promote clean governance.

They handed the city councillors a dustpan and a broom -- signifying their wish for the councillors to get rid of corruption, collusion and nepotism, known to be commonplace in the council and city administration.

"The new councillors must not engage in collusion, corruption or nepotism," said Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) coordinator Wardah Hafidz during the demonstration.

Other protesters called on the councillors to pay attention to the lot of poor families in the capital, urging that more funds be allocated for programs that benefit the poor. Indeed, under the existing system, city councillors have the right to allocate funds from the budget proposed by the governor.

One-and-a-half years later, however, the expectations of Jakarta residents -- clean governance and improved welfare -- appear to have been too high for city councillors to fulfill, despite the fact that most of the 75 city councillors are still new in politics and thus presumably not contaminated by the old practices of corruption, collusion and nepotism. Most of them are also members of political parties that ran on an anticorruption platform in the 2004 legislative election.

Instead of considering how to serve their constituents best, the councillors have since their early days in office been busy fighting for short-term party interests.

The councillors, for example, spent almost three months fighting over chairmanships of council commissions overseeing development projects in the capital.

Most of the factions in the council fought, for example, to chair Commissions D for development affairs, which supervises agencies tasked with carrying out most development projects in the capital.

It is public knowledge that some councillors ask for projects from the city administration. Governor Sutiyoso has always refused to admit outright that city councillors ask for projects, saying only that he receives reports from many officials about such practices.

The councillors have also been criticized for their lack of discipline in carrying out their daily tasks.

Plenary sessions and commission hearings are often delayed because councillors not only arrive late at the meeting venue but also to the office.

Council speaker Ade Surapriatna promised that the City Council would deliberate and endorse one or two new bylaws or revisions to existing bylaws every month.

However, the council has so far produced only three bylaws this year -- one on regional fees, one on a Betawi cultural village and another on air pollution control (PPU).

On budgetary function, the council has twice deliberated city budget drafts -- for 2005 and for 2006 respectively -- but like other activities in the council, the budget deliberations often took place behind closed doors, a practice that has long been criticized by corruption watchdogs because of the lack of transparency.

Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (Fitra) coordinator Arief Nuralam says closed-door deliberations makes it impossible for the public to learn what transpires during the discussions. Budget deliberations, he says, have to be open to the public as it concerns the interests of the populace as a whole.

If the councillors have made any achievements, then it must be its role in revealing alleged corruption in the Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta), for which its chairman Muhamad Taufik, member A. Riza Patria and treasurer Neneng Falupi have been charged.

The case has been forwarded to the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office, which has completed its investigation and submitted the case file to the South Jakarta District Court. The trial should start early next year.

This achievement, however, pales in insignificance amid allegations of rampant irregularities within virtually all city agencies. It is also insignificant for councillors who earn between Rp 18 million and Rp 23 million a month, even more so considering Sutiyoso issued a regulation this year that makes it possible for each of them to take home up to Rp 70 million per month.

14,549 caught in operations

Jakarta Post - December 24, 2005

Jakarta -- Those detained in raids this year numbered 14,549 people, with Rp 133 million (about US$13,523) being collected in fines, Jakarta Population and Civil Registration Agency head Abdul Kadir Kamil said on Friday.

Abdul said that from the 60 raids organized during the year, North Jakarta held the record for the most violations with 3,921 people detained, 1,033 people tried and Rp 20 million collected in fines.

South Jakarta came second with 3,131 people detained, 1,214 people tried and Rp 34 million collected in fines.

Abdul also said that during the operations 8,019 people were found to possess multiple identification cards, and as of November 45,633 foreigners were found to lack proper identification.

He said that apartments would be next on the raid list over Christmas and New Year in which the validity of immigration and work papers would be checked.

Environment

Government warns Freeport to stop polluting river

Jakarta Post - December 31, 2005

Tb. Arie Rukmantara, Jakarta -- A dark cloud appears to be dogging PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) following news reports exposing its payments to soldiers guarding the world's largest gold and copper mining firm in Papua, and its alleged poor pollution record.

The government said on Friday that the company was illegally dumping hazardous waste in a river near its mine in the resource-rich province.

PTFI must stop disposing of its mining waste in the Otomina river as it was endangering biodiversity and public health in the surrounding area, senior officials from the Office of the State Minister for the Environment told The Jakarta Post.

"What Freeport Indonesia is dumping in the river is toxic waste. We are sure of that," said Rasio Ridho Sani, an assistant to the deputy minister for the management of hazardous materials and hazardous waste in the mining, energy, and oil and gas sectors.

"What is more important is that the company has no license to dump its tailings, neither in the river, on land, nor in the sea. It has only been granted a license to recycle its waste." However, Rasio declined to comment on why the firm had been allowed to carry out such practices for over 30 years. "The current government has more political will to protect the country's environment," he merely said.

He said the environment ministry was investigating the pollution allegations against Freeport to obtain convincing evidence before taking legal action.

However, Rasio stressed that what was even more important was the preventing of further damage to the river and its hinterland.

"We want the tailings disposed of on land and the company must reuse or recycle its waste to minimize the amount of waste dumped," he said.

The next step was that Freeport had to stop polluting the Ajkwa river, which flows into the Otomina river.

Deputy Minister for Nature Conservation Enhancement and Environmental Destruction Control Masnellyarti Hilman confirmed a New York Times report that she had reprimanded Freeport over the pollution and told it to come up with an alternative tailing system. "When I was the deputy for compliance, I asked the company to stop using the river for waste disposal," she said.

Freeport's Aquatic Ecological Risk Assessment, carried out by the Washington-based Parametrix, an environmental consultancy firm, in 2002, which was obtained by the Post, stated, "Copper and tailings solids were the primary substances posing potential risks, and all other metals except zinc in sediment posed negligible risks."

However, the document also said that "it appears that as tailings settle out, they do not affect most species in the uppermost water column (i.e. nekton and plankton), but do pose potential risks to organisms living on and in the bottom."

In its executive summary conclusion, Parametrix advised that, "although it has been comprehensive, ongoing, and multi-year, it is desirable to modify this program (tailings) to address potential risks and uncertainties identified in this document."

State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar said his office would protect the country's environment by forcing major companies, such as Freeport, to comply with the nation's environmental legislation and regulations through its PROPER annual environment audit system.

"We are in the process in increasing the number of companies in the PROPER system from only 466 to include more firms prone to polluting, including Freeport and others," he said, adding that around 250 more companies could be included in the system.

Meanwhile, executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Chalid Muhammad, demanded that the government set up a special team comprising the police, prosecutors, relevant government officials and environmentalists to investigate the Freeport pollution case.

"The government has to show its full authority in enforcing the law against any institution the violates our laws," he said.

Freeport executives refused to comment when the Post tried to reach them.

However, the firm's 2004 economic, social and environment report said PTFI secured a government-approved AMDAL (environmental impact analysis) in 1997 as well as the ISO 14001 certificate, which showed that the company was adhering to environmentally- friendly mine management.

The report also said it had conducted two environmental audits last year, involving Crescent Technology Inc., and had taken a number of actions to comply with the recommendations made by the auditor.

Pollution in city rivers worse: BPLHD

Jakarta Post - December 30, 2005

Damar Harsanto, Jakarta -- Jakartans' out of sight, out of mind attitude to domestic and industrial waste has caused the city's 13 rivers to become so polluted that if the city administration does not clean them up it will have to give up on its dream of riverine transportation.

The Jakarta Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD) reveals in its official website that the pollution level in the city's rivers is only getting worse.

Samples taken from at least 51 of its monitoring posts, which are found at 66 riverside locations in the capital, show that good quality water plunged to zero this year from 1 percent last year and mildly polluted water dropped to 5 percent from 9 percent. Moderately polluted water declined to 18 percent from 19 percent in 2004.

Parameters used to test the pollution level include salinity, turbidity, suspended particles and diluted hazardous particles (nitrate, nitrite, chloride, ammonia, phosphate, etc.) "The worsening trend in the quality of river water reflects the administration's failure to do its duty in maintaining sustainable natural resources for the community," environmental activist Tubagus Haryo Karbiyanto told The Jakarta Post.

Tubagus, who is also a member of the Public Interest Environmental Lawyers (PIEL), called on the administration to start involving residents, particularly squatters living on riverbanks, in clean-up campaigns.

"Learning from the experience of developed countries, where the residents have become river guards in ensuring the cleanliness of the rivers, the administration can also adopt such a program," he said.

The city's rivers are under the supervision of at least 14 city agencies and governmental institutions: The public works agency is responsible for dredging and widening rivers; the municipal administration's water control offices and the BPHLD for monitoring the water quality; the City Sanitation Agency for removing rubbish floating on, and around, rivers and the City Parks Agency and public order officers for the use of riverbanks.

The role of the central government is represented by the Ministry of Public Works as city rivers run through areas belonging to other provinces.

Environmentalists have blamed uncoordinated programs among those agencies and institutions for the city's heavily polluted waterways.

Jakarta Bay in the north of the city, where all 13 rivers end, has been treated like a dump, with reports of thousands of dead fish and a damaged marine ecosystem alarming residents but doing little to change their ways.

Walhi uncovers illegal logging within Aceh reconstruction

Tempo Interactive - December 29, 2005

Jakarta -- The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) has requested that the government immediately halt illegal logging in Southeast Aceh and Aceh Singkil which has been disguised as wood requirements for rehabilitation and reconstruction following the tsunami disaster.

"Those behind the illegal logging activities told the locals that the wood was for the reconstruction process, even though the wood was taken out of Aceh," Walhi Executive Director Chalid Muhammad told TEMPO on Tuesday (27/12).

Saying that wood is to be used for rehabilitation purposes, said Muhammad, has become the new modus operandi of those involved in acts of illegal logging.

The results of Walhi investigations between October and December have confirmed that wood was sent to Medan, Singapore and Malaysia.

During its investigations, Walhi discovered that every week, several wood containers had been sent to Aceh but it was unclear what the wood was to be used for.

In October, Walhi recorded that as much as 120 cubic meters of illegal wood were sent from Indragiri Hulu regency, Riau, and on December 15, a total of 28 cubic meters of illegal wood entered Aceh from Batang Gadis, North Sumatra.

The wood was sent to Aceh because there it is worth more, Rp1.5 million per cubic meter compared to the usual Rp900,000 paid per meter cubic.

Walhi, stated Chalid, has asked the government to immediately evaluate wood for reconstruction in Aceh and to make use of confiscated wood, or other wood which does not come from forests, to fulfill wood needs for house construction in Aceh.

(Oktamandjaya Wiguna-Tempo News Room)

Islam/religion

Groups up in arms over transvestism, condoms

Jakarta Post - December 31, 2005

Ruslan Sangadji, Palu/Jakarta -- Conservative Muslim groups have openly campaigned against transvestism and the use of condoms.

They rallied against on Friday a New Year's Eve contest for the most attractive transvestite in Pekanbaru, Riau and the installation of an automatic condom dispenser in Palu, Central Sulawesi.

More than 100 women from the Muslim Women's Network marched to the Pekanbaru legislative building to demand a meeting with the speaker to complain about the government-sponsored contest.

"The plan to hold a transvestite contest means that the Riau government supports transvestism, which will lead to free sex," Elvira Rosa, coordinator of the group, was quoted as saying by detik.com news portal.

The protesters told councillors the law did not recognize tranvestism and that the contest, to be held in a hotel in Pekanbaru, was forbidden under Islam. "State money will be wasted on this joke of exploiting transvestites," Elvira said.

Hundreds of kilometers to the east of Pekanbaru, Muslim students staged a protest on Friday against the installation of an automatic condom dispenser in Palu, Central Sulawesi. The demonstration was held at the city's Hasanuddin traffic circle by activists of the Palu branch of the Association of Muslim Students (HMI).

Muhammad Maswin, a 19-year-old protester, said condom machines encouraged promiscuity among teenagers. "This means the government approves of premarital sex. Our government has indeed become more secular," the law student at the Palu-based Tadulako University told The Jakarta Post.

The group also took the time to protest several economic policies of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration, particularly the recent fuel price increases.

The Palu branch of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) said it was yet to take a stance on the condom issue, adding that it was awaiting instruction from the council's central board.

There are 25 units of automatic condom dispensers across the country, seven of which have been installed in Jakarta. The rest are in West Java, East Java, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, Lampung, Riau, Papua and West Irian Jaya.

The automatic condom machines in Jakarta are located in the office of the National Coordinating Board of Family Planning (BKKBN) in East Jakarta, the Gatot Subroto Army Hospital in East Jakarta, Indonesian Military Headquarters in Cilangkap, East Jakarta, National Police Headquarters in South Jakarta, and the Pasar Baru clinic in Central Jakarta.

The installation of condom dispensers was aimed at promoting the family planning program in the world's fourth most populous country, as well as preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS.

The program, however, has met strong opposition, particularly from conservative Muslim groups who equate promoting condom use with encouraging promiscuity.

Sect leader, followers arrested

Jakarta Post - December 30, 2005

Abdul Khalik, Jakarta -- In a move that many saw as unnecessary, Jakarta Police declared on Thursday Lia Eden and 32 of her followers suspects for defamation of religion a day after members of the cult were forcibly evacuated from their headquarters on Jl. Mahoni in Senen, Central Jakarta.

Another 15 people also evacuated from the house by the police to prevent a clash with local residents on Wednesday were not named suspects because they were just participants in the gathering at the headquarters.

Jakarta Police Insp. Gen. Firman Gani added the police would charge members of the cult, known as Salamullah, under Article 156a of the Criminal Code on religious defamation.

Former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid, however, criticized the move saying that the authorities should hold a dialog with the group to straighten things out. "If they are considered a heretic group then the authorities should hold a dialog to clear things up instead of arresting them," he said during a discussion on freedom of religion in Jakarta.

Gus Dur said the government should leave religious affairs to civil society as it was not the government's concern. He proposed that a new institution with clear-cut jurisdiction be set up to determine if a religious teaching was a heresy or not.

Many of the residents in the neighborhood even acknowledged they did not know, or at least did not care about the presence of the cult headed by Lia, who was previously known as Lia Aminuddin, located at Jl. Mahoni No. 30.

Neighbors only become aware of the group after Lia, who claims to be the Holy Spirit, distributed flyers to her neighbors announcing that the house had become the Kingdom of God or Eden Palace on Dec. 5.

Several other flyers, including a clarification on a report that the cult's teachings were heresy and an invitation to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to the house, were also distributed to houses in the neighborhood several times after that.

"They never bothered or intimidated us before. Sometimes Lia's followers went outside and we met them. However, they recently became active distributing several flyers to us. We just don't like the content of the flyers. They should have kept their teachings to themselves," Firdaus, 40, whose house is only 20 meters from Lia's place, told The Jakarta Post.

He said that they considered Lia and her followers strange people with a different way of thinking.

Lia's flyers, however, were responded to by members of the congregation of nearby Meranti Mosque, which also distributed flyers condemning Lia's teachings as heresy, and asked residents to join a gathering in front of Lia's house on Dec. 30.

Lia, who this time claimed to be God's messenger Gabriel, responded with new flyers on Dec. 25, threatening to take the lives of the Meranti Mosque's committee members if they held the gathering.

The flyers invited residents to gather in front of her house on Wednesday to see what kind of people were there in the house.

"We were just very curious in the beginning. But as more people came, many began to shout and boo at them. I think it would have ended up in violence if the police had not come quickly," Rahman, 30, another neighbor said.

Armed forces/defense

Defense minister calls for probe into payoffs

Associated Press - December 30, 2005

Jakarta -- Indonesia's defense minister called Friday for an investigation into allegations that a US gold-mining giant paid US$20 million to military commanders guarding its mine on Papua island.

Juwono Sudarsono said defense ministry regulations prohibited any such payments. "It is not allowed for soldiers or their commanders in the field to receive money directly," Sudarsono told The Associated Press.

He was reacting to admissions by military commanders that they had received "support" from foreign companies, including US gold-mining giant Freeport-McMoran Co. (FCX), which operates a massive copper and gold mine in the remote province of West Papua.

The New York Times reported this week that the New Orleans-based company had paid US$20 million to military commanders in the province over the last seven years.

Such payments are seen as encouraging corruption among military commanders, and jeopardize government efforts to bring the powerful military brass -- who are still allowed to operate largely independently of the defense ministry's supervision -- under civilian control.

On Thursday, a spokesman for PT Freeport Indonesia said the company had broken no laws and dismissed the reports as "old news."

"We have been transparent about our logistical support for the Indonesian security forces," Siddharta Moersjid said in a statement.

"Support for the government security institutions is provided pursuant to government requests for its legitimate requirements and is in accord with our contract of work, applicable laws... and internal procedures."

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has vowed to crack down on endemic corruption that has turned Indonesia into one of the most graft-ridden countries. Since he took office in October 2004, the anti-corruption campaign has netted several high-profile suspects.

On Friday, officials of the Commission for Corruption Eradication said Theo Toemion, a former chairman of Indonesia's investment promotion agency, has been detained following allegations that he misappropriated money earmarked for bringing foreign investors to Indonesia. The allegations involve losses of about IDR30 billion (US$3 million), according to Erry Harjapamengkas, deputy head of the government's corruption watchdog.

Reshuffle at TNI announced

Jakarta Post - December 31, 2005

Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta -- The Indonesian Military (TNI) announced on Friday its latest reshuffle affecting three-star generals, including former Aceh commander Lt. Gen. Endang Suwarya as TNI's chief of general affairs.

Endang, the current Army deputy chief of staff, will be replaced by Maj. Gen. Herry Tjahjana, currently operations assistant under the TNI chief of general affairs.

In the order issued by TNI Commander Gen. Endriartono Sutarto on Thursday night, another three-star general, Lt. Gen. Djadja Suparman, will be replaced by three-star Navy officer Vice Adm. Sumardjono as the TNI inspector general. Djadja, a 1972 graduate of the Armed Forces Academy (Akabri), is retiring.

Sumardjono's old post as commander of TNI staff and command schools will be filled by Rear Marshall M. Basri Sidehabi, who is currently security affairs assistant to the Air Force chief.

The current reshuffle, however, failed to appoint a three-star military officer as the TNI intelligence chief, despite the fact that the post is considered strategic. The post of TNI intelligence chief has remained vacant since last month when Vice Adm. M. Luthfie retired.

The TNI leadership has appointed Maj. Gen. Nurdin Zainal to temporarily hold the post. Nurdin's main job is as intelligence assistant in the TNI general affairs department.

"To date, members of the Rank and Promotion Council for High- Ranking officers (Wanjakti) have yet to find the right man to serve as TNI intelligence chief," TNI's head of information Col. A. Yani Basuki told The Jakarta Post.

"But the series of reshuffles affecting high-ranking officers will continue," he added, hinting at another reshuffle in the very near future.

The latest reshuffle was announced ahead of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's plan to propose candidates to replace TNI Commander Gen. Endriartono next month.

Activists ask for Freeport's TNI payments to be audited

Tempo Interactive - December 31, 2005

Jakarta -- NGO activists consider think that the security of foreign companies such as Freeport McMoran must be provided as a compensation for tax payments to the state.

"The obligation of Freeport to pay taxes in turn obligates the state to provide and guarantee the security of the company," Usman Hamid, coordinator of the Commission for Missing Person and Acts of Violence told reporters in Jakarta on Thursday (29/12).

Hamid was responding to a recent report released by The New York Times that Freeport, a gold and copper mining company in Papua, allocated US$20,000 to Indonesian Military (TNI) officers and institutions and the National Police.

Freeport considered this normal to guarantee the security of tens of thousands of its employees.

According to Hamid, as an institution, it was not correct for the TNI to allow its officers both active and non-active to receive illegal funds from Freeport.

"This has indicated bad management by the government, the security apparatus and private companies like Freeport," he stated.

Therefore, Hamid has urged the carrying out of an audit at Freeport in order to identify the allocation of company funds in relation to security service provided.

If Freeport were found not to be involved, he stated, the TNI must carry out an internal investigation, "It's not enough just to deny the matter."

According to Hamid, TNI commander General Endriartono Sutarto must trace any embezzlement that might have been carried out by TNI officers or personnel, and identify those involved. (Fanny- Tempo News Room)

Companies urged to stop paying soldiers

Jakarta Post - December 30, 2005

Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta -- Minister of Defense Juwono Sudarsono has told local and international companies not to make direct payments to the military officers guarding their operations as the practice is illegal.

He said a Ministry of Defense policy issued in 2000 stipulated that voluntary direct payments for security arrangements should be disbursed to related government agencies, such as the upstream oil and gas regulatory agency BP Migas in the case of contributions made by oil and gas firms.

"When I was first appointed as minister of defense in 2000, I issued the policy, which does not allow local and international companies to make direct payments to security personnel who are assigned to guard the companies' compounds.

"If such practices are continuing, I suppose we must design a clear policy to stop it, and if there is evidence in the form of documentation, I guess the military's inspectorate general can start examining the violation," Juwono told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Juwono's remarks came following reports -- which first appeared in The New York Times on Wednesday -- that according to authentic documents, military and police personnel in Papua had received direct payments worth US$20 million from US gold miner Freeport-McMoRan between 1998 and 2004 to provide security at the latter's mine in the conflict-prone province.

The reports were confirmed by Maj. Gen. Mahidin Simbolon, a former commander of Trikora Military Command overseeing Papua province, who told the Post that the money from Freeport was used to cover military expenses, including meals, transportation, clothing and medication.

He also confirmed that on-duty soldiers received daily allowances, the total amount of which was set by Freeport.

With the Freeport payments, the military benefits from extra income as the government also covers soldiers' needs and basic expenses.

Mahidin, the Army's inspectorate general, is one of the senior TNI and police officers named in the Times investigative report as having received many thousands of dollars. He, however, dismissed the accusation, saying that Freeport directly provided the funds to officers in the field.

The practice has raised criticism from the National Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), which has called on the government to establish an independent team to examine the cash flow of Freeport's security funds.

"The state has to design a mechanism to supervise the disbursement of funds in a bid to evaluate the social responsibilities of the private companies, as well as to examine whether civilian authorities, the military and police officials have misused the funds," Kontras coordinator Usman Hamid said.

"It is the responsibility of the state to provide security with its territory," he added.

Usman further said the close relationship between businesses and security officers had in some cases led to "criminal activities." "The clearest case is seen in the murder of businessman Boedyharto Angsono, president of a company called PT Arena Sarana Bakti, in 2003," Usman said, citing the murder case in which Navy soldiers were found culpable.

Human rights activists have accused security officers in conflict-prone areas such as Papua and Aceh of intentionally maintaining instability to secure funding from businesses.

"Even a top-ranking intelligence officer like (Maj. Gen.) Muchdi (Purwoprandjono) has admitted that the bills for his official cell phone were voluntarily paid by PT Timber Pacific," Usman said.

Police/law enforcement

Gambling: Can police bite the hand that feeds them?

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

Abdul Khalik, Jakarta -- Immediately after taking office in July, National Police chief Gen. Sutanto ordered police chiefs across the country to crack down on gambling, threatening that those who failed to deliver would lose their posts and face criminal charges.

Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Firman Gani took up the challenge by announcing publicly that he would close down all gambling dens in the capital and surrounding towns within one week. In effect, Firman was suggesting that he could do better than the police chief.

Gambling centers did indeed appear to be closed, but people familiar with gambling in the capital said it was business as usual even at the height of the crackdown.

"We know very well how the police behave. They are serious only at the beginning of a campaign. They staged massive crackdowns on gambling just to please the public in the first few months.

"We had stop just for a while and then resumed operations soon after. Gambling is one of the police's sources of income, you know," Yohannes, who owns several gambling dens in the capital, told The Jakarta Post recently.

City police arrested hundreds of suspected gamblers immediately after the campaign was announced, but the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office revealed in November that it had not received one single case file on gambling from either the Jakarta Police nor the National Police Headquarters.

The public is cynical about the police's seriousness in fighting gambling as no big gambling den owners have been arrested.

High-ranking police officers are thought to accept monthly payments from gambling lords, while low-ranking officers earn additional income from street gambling, including togel (illegal lotteries).

"How can they arrest us when we give them huge amounts of money every month? Every gambling boss in the capital gets protection from high-ranking officers either with the Jakarta Police or the National Police. We wouldn't have the courage to operate without a guarantee from a police general," Yohannes said.

The way police handled gambling activities is indicative of the way other crimes were fought this year.

Hilman, 36, a resident of Kebon Jeruk in West Jakarta, for instance, complained that city police had failed to solve his case involving a stolen car.

After he bought a car, presumably from a businessman, Hilman tried to renew the car's registration, only to be arrested for buying a stolen car.

"I showed them (police) all of the car's documents to convince them that I got the car legally and that they should arrest the seller. But instead of tracking down the seller, some police officers forced me to leave the car at the Jakarta Police Headquarters and since then nothing has happened," Hilman told the Post.

He has no idea what happened to the car, let alone to the money that he gave the man who fraudulently sold him the car.

"I found out later that the police officers were friends with the seller. I forgot about getting my car back, but I swear I'll never ask the police for help again. I've had enough of them," Hilman said.

According to data from the Jakarta Police internal affairs division, the number of police officers reported for criminal involvement increased 400 percent to 80 this year, compared to merely 20 cases last year.

"Criminals know that they can buy police officers. They are not afraid of committing crimes over and over again. In this case, the law cannot deter people from criminal activity," University of Indonesia legal expert Rudy Satrio told the Post.

He said the involvement of police officers in crime, including robbery and drug dealing, for additional income also reduced their credibility when cracking down on those crimes.

According to data from the Jakarta Police, more than 4,000 armed robberies, some involving police officers, occurred this year, up from around 3,000 last year.

Special operations aimed at curbing traffic violations in the capital are seen by many as a way for city police to get additional income.

"I was ticketed in the operation, but I have no idea what I did wrong. They were just looking for mistakes to extort money for me. That's why I always feel nervous if a cop stands near me," Pujianto, an employee of a private bank, said.

Wanted, an integrated approach to thuggery!

Jakarta Post - December 26, 2005

Abdul Khalik, Jakarta -- Three days after his release from a police detention center in July, Salim, 23, was back on the streets, extorting money from drivers passing by Tanah Abang market.

"I was arrested together with dozens of others in a big raid in July. I spent one week inside the cell and was released after my family paid the police Rp 200,000. Several days after that, I came back to work here," he told The Jakarta Post while pocketing money from a driver on one of the market's roads recently.

Salim was but one of thousands of thugs who were arrested but later released by the police during a crackdown against thuggery here in May. The operation, called Sarutama, was launched by National Police chief Gen. Sutanto after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono received complaints about thuggery via SMS.

Hundreds of suspected thugs were arrested during the raids, but police realized not too long after the detention centers were too crowded. The presence of so many thugs in detention centers created another problem for the cash-strapped city police: how to feed them.

In the meantime, the police were criticized by some experts for failing to look at the problem in its entirety, as young men were becoming thugs out of desperation brought about by poverty. They said any attempt to crack down on thuggery needed to be accompanied by a job creation scheme.

Overwhelmed by problems in feeding and accommodating the detainees and relentless criticism from experts, many police officers decided to release the thugs for quick cash.

As early as August, it had become apparent that the operation was a failure as many thugs were back in business.

That prompted some observers to accuse the city police of using the operation to earn extra income following the massive crackdown on gambling activities in the capital.

An officer at Jakarta Police Headquarters, who requested anonymity, admitted that questioning and pressing charges against so many thugs was not an easy job, and that many officers at sub-precinct, precinct and headquarters level chose to quietly release the detainees.

"Of course, many officers get additional income by letting the thugs go. The families of those arrested people will be happy to pay. Releasing them also means that the problem of too many people in detention centers is solved," he told the Post.

Noted criminologist of the University of Indonesia Adrianus Meliala criticized the police's lack of planning and measures in cracking down on thuggery in the capital.

"What is the objective of the operation? If it is just an effort to appease the public in the short term then it is fine, but if it aims at eradicating thuggery then it will be ineffective unless other agencies take an active part," he said.

Adrianus said that other agencies, including the social affairs agency and local administrations, should take part as the police could not do much in dealing with social problems such as thuggery.

"All along, the police have fought alone. Remember, thuggery requires a social approach, not only a legal approach. And the police are law enforcers. So, the social affairs agency must take part and provide funds to help the thugs (find jobs)," he told the Post.

He said not all the arrested thugs needed to be kept in state custody as rehabilitation programs run by other agencies could prepare them to go back into society.

Not only did the city police fail to eradicate thuggery on the streets, but in Greater Jakarta organized groups were able to take the law into their own hands.

Police, for instance, chose to do nothing when a group of people blocked roads leading to three churches in Jati Mulya housing complex in Bekasi, West Java. They were also silent when a group of people claiming to be members of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) stopped the construction of a church in Cikarang, also in West Java.

Police also did nothing when restaurants and cafes in Kemang, South Jakarta, were forced to cease operations during Idul Fitri after alleged FPI members threatened to raid them if they remained open.

A restaurant chain owner in Jakarta complained that unless the city police took harsh action against organizations that take the law into their own hands, the country would lose its existing foreign investors, let alone attract new investors.

Business & investment

Kalla sees no pride in owning ailing Garuda

Jakarta Post - December 31, 2005

Rendi A. Witular, Jakarta -- With ailing Garuda Indonesia unlikely to get back in the black anytime soon, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, in response to the airline's privatization plan, sees little pride in the state owning a national flag carrier that keeps suffering losses.

Kalla argued that a country, via its government, should not always own an airline as the image of an airline today was not like what it was in the 1950s, when such a company was seen as a matter of national pride that had to be maintained at all costs.

"Garuda should be healthy by commercial means... A airline today is not everything for a country. If it makes profit, it will be good for the country, but if it always suffers losses, investors should be welcome to come in," said Kalla after Friday prayers.

"There is almost no country that has a state carrier today. For example, Qantas is not owned by the Australian government and KLM (Royal Dutch Airline) is currently owned by Air France. So it is not a big deal if we don't have a (state-owned) airline," he said.

However, Kalla said that the government would not sell off the airline entirely to investors.

Kalla was responding to the current problems faced by Garuda, which recently announced a failure to pay US$50 million of its floating-rate bonds due in December following cash flow problems resulting primarily from the second bomb attacks on the resort island of Bali on Oct. 1, which badly affected its revenue.

However, the airline reaffirmed that it would continue paying interest, and aircraft leasing fees.

While the airline has made significant progress in developing a basis for presenting another debt restructuring plan to its stakeholders since commencing discussions in November, additional work was required to reconcile complex inter-creditor and governmental issues.

The Bali bombings, which killed 23 people, significantly reduced foreign tourist arrivals not only on the island but also in other parts of the country.

This year's target of six million foreign tourists has been revised down to less than 4.5 million by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, down from 5.3 million tourist arrivals in the archipelago last year.

Garuda, which controls more than 50 percent of the domestic airline market, said the bombings had substantially affected its fourth quarter revenue, and this situation was expected to continue during the first half of next year.

"In particular, the Bali bombings in October continues to have a significant impact on Garuda's cash flow and makes predicting cash available for servicing debts a very challenging task over the short term," said the airline in a press statement.

The airline also cited higher fuel prices, a weaker rupiah against the US dollar, rising interest rates and increased competition as other major factors causing a further downturn in its business this year.

Due to the various problems, the airline is likely to book a widening loss of more than $70 million this year -- higher than its initial estimation of around $50 million. Last year, the company recorded a net loss of Rp 811.3 billion.

As of March, Garuda had debts amounting in total to $826 million, with the largest portion coming from the European Export Credit Agency, with the remainder in the form of promissory notes and bank loans.

At present, Garuda operates 57 aircraft serving 30 domestic routes and 20 international destinations.

Investment climate still walking a tightrope

Jakarta Post - December 27, 2005

Urip Hudiono, Jakarta -- "Philip Morris buys Sampoerna for US$5.2 billion." If there was one sentence that could summarize Indonesia's investment sector in 2005, that could well be it. The US tobacco giant's purchase in March of a 97 percent stake in Indonesia's third largest cigarette producer was clearly the event of the year for investors and the business community.

The new administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who came to office promising to improve the country's investment climate, touted the deal as proof that investors had regained their confidence in Indonesia.

Investment is indeed once again becoming a main driver of Indonesia's economic engine, along with consumer spending and exports, after having collapsed in the aftermath of the 1997-1998 monetary crisis.

According to the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM), actual foreign direct investment (FDI) from January to November more than doubled to US$8.7 billion on 831 projects, from $3.7 billion on 456 projects over the same period last year. Realized domestic investments also showed an upward trend, nearly doubling to Rp 26.9 trillion (some $2.69 billion) on 192 projects, from Rp 13.6 trillion on 104 projects.

These investments provided jobs to 244,996 people as of November, compared to 206,298 in 2004.

Along with direct investments in the mining and financial sectors, which are outside the control of the BKPM, Indonesia's investment sector grew by 12 percent as of the third quarter of 2005, accounting for 21 percent of gross domestic product. Last year, direct investments grew by 18 percent, accounting for a similar share of the GDP.

Meanwhile, portfolio investments in Indonesia's stock and bond markets also saw vigorous growth in 2005. The highlight here was the government's two global bond offerings -- $1 billion in April and another $1.5 billion in October, with both offerings oversubscribed.

And despite a few ups and downs due to the economic shock of soaring global oil prices, inflation and interest rates, investors maintained their interest in Indonesian stocks, with the country's composite index managing to stay above the 1,000- point threshold for the entire year.

Indonesia's improving economy over the past few years, along with peaceful elections in 2004, can be credited with creating the political and economic stability needed for the business and investment sectors to thrive.

In terms of winning back investor confidence, Susilo's new administration went as far as attending investment forums in world financial centers such as London and New York, as well as making state visits to Australia, the US and China, among other countries, to drum up possible investments.

At home, the government held in January the first "Indonesian Infrastructure Summit", a major event that gave private investors the opportunity to help develop the country's infrastructure.

However, as always with any good news, there will always be that one joker in the crowd who blurts out: "So what's the bad news?" In the case of Indonesia's investment sector, there is still unfortunately a lot of "bad news". One can start with the Infrastructure Summit itself, which underlined that promotional efforts alone will never succeed in luring more investment if they are not accompanied by concrete policies to create a more favorable business and investment climate.

As of October, only six toll road projects out of a total of 91 projects worth $22.5 billion offered at the Infrastructure Summit were in the bidding process. Although one could argue that the offered projects were long-term ones, problems of land acquisition, lengthy bureaucratic procedures and unsatisfying investment rates of return have plagued the projects from the start.

Add to this the recent economic slump that has turned off investors and the first Infrastructure Summit is beginning to appear as nothing more than an overhyped event. As a result, the second Infrastructure Summit, which was slated for November with another $57.5 billion worth of projects to be offered, has been delayed until February.

In the portfolio investment sector, Indonesia's newly developed mutual fund industry nearly crashed from massive redemptions in September.

Fortunately, the government moved quickly to remedy the situation, issuing a presidential regulation providing incentives for private participation in infrastructure development -- including tax incentives and risk management support -- to complement an earlier presidential regulation on land acquisition for infrastructure projects.

Nevertheless, Indonesia's investment climate is still plagued by such "classic problems" as legal uncertainty, red tape and -- ironically -- poor infrastructure, all of which should have been addressed five years ago. It is difficult for any investment forum, seminar or workshop to generate much excitement as long as the government and the public seem to lack the will to reform.

The latest update of the World Bank's "Doing Business" study conducted in 155 countries placed Indonesia among the most frustrating places in the world for doing business.

Although an improvement from last year's 155 days, setting up a business in Indonesia still takes some 80 days, far above the global average of between 40 days and 50 days, and even farther from the government's own 30-day target.

A separate study by Regional Autonomy Watch found 297 of 881 bylaws issued in recent years have impeded trade and discouraged investment, although the government -- invoking last year's amendments of the Law on Decentralization -- has since moved to review and revoke 60 of the bylaws.

In an interview earlier this year with the Post, Sampoerna's new president director, Martin King, said that although investors were generally optimistic about the government's commitment to reform, they underscored the importance of supportive legal and regulatory framework, particularly a framework that provides a level playing field between all businesses and a level of predictability.

Speaking of legal revisions, one revision that has recently been of particular public concern is the ongoing deliberation of the tax amendment bills. The business community has complained of a perceived inequality between taxpayers and tax officials in the bills, which they say give tax officials too much authority in the assessment and collection of taxes. They warn this could lead to abuses of power that would hurt the country's business and investment climate.

Meanwhile, nothing has been heard of the much-awaited Law of Investment, with Minister of Trade Mari E. Pangestu and BKPM chief Muhammad Lutfi only saying it is currently in the final stages of drafting for submission to the House of Representatives.

The bill, which will combine the existing foreign and domestic investment laws, is needed to improve Indonesia's investment climate by addressing such important issues as equal treatment for investors, a clearer and simpler negative investment list, and improved dispute resolution.

Dispute resolution is probably the most important issue here, as the government has not been able to resolve the prolonged and high-profile investment debacles involving Karaha Bodas, Exxon and Cemex. It is not yet clear that investment is a sustainable source of economic growth, as investment has slowed along with the recent rises in inflation and interest rates.

Despite this year's "success" for the investment sector, much more work has to be done to improve the sector and make it more sustainable. If this happens, in the future we may be able to read about investment success stories without having to look for the bad news.

2005: Yet another year of ad hoc measures

Jakarta Post - December 27, 2005

Leony Aurora, Jakarta -- From elementary school on, students have the postulate drummed into them that Indonesia is rich in natural resources, including abundant oil and gas, to be used for the greater good of all.

While this assumption, presumably encouraged to build one's pride in being an Indonesian, is true in theory, the challenges in extracting and making use of these resources efficiently are often not addressed. Therefore, it came as a big surprise when fuel scarcity began to creep up on the nation in March and swept across the archipelago in June. Gas stations posted "no gasoline" signs and motorists became accustomed to queuing.

Domestic stockpiles for premium gasoline and diesel fuel dropped to 12.7 days and 14.5 days respectively, far lower than the ideal buffer of at least 22 days of supply.

State oil and gas firm PT Pertamina blamed the shortage on cash- flow snags, which it had experienced from March onward due to late fuel subsidy delivery by the government amid the soaring global oil prices.

Pertamina also admitted that it had reduced daily offtake as fuel consumption had increased and exceeded the pro rata quota -- calculated from the 2005 total allocation of subsidized fuel of 59.6 million kiloliters (kl) approved by the House of Representatives -- by 10 percent, in spite of fuel price increases of 29 percent on average in March.

For the man on the street, it became a baffling question: "Shouldn't high oil prices be a good thing for us? Don't we produce oil in abundance?"

Many did not realize that Indonesia has effectively become a net oil importer. Production of the aging oil fields has declined by 5 percent per year, standing at 1.075 million barrels per day (bpd) on average in 2005, while fuel consumption rose by 6 percent. To secure domestic demand, Indonesia, through Pertamina, has to import 400,000 bpd and 300,000 bpd of refined products.

Global oil prices have continually climbed since the beginning of the year, hovering at around $60 per barrel from June onward in New York with a record-high of $70.85 per barrel on Aug. 30 after Hurricane Katrina hit the United States.

The government was forced mid-year to revise the 2005 budget and drastically raise the fuel subsidy to Rp 76.5 trillion (US$7.8 billion), assuming oil prices of $45 per barrel, from Rp 19 trillion and $24 per barrel, respectively, in the previous draft.

The fuel crisis subsided after the ever-populist President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered Pertamina to pour fuel first and worry about the subsidy later. On another front, the year also saw numerous threats of power cuts due to limited capacity and dependence on fuel-fired plants.

The usable capacity in the Java-Bali grid stands at around 15,500 megawatts (MW) from an installed capacity of 19,615 MW, leaving reserves of about 600 MW during the peak hours of between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Lack of investment has stalled the development of new power plants since the monetary crisis hit the country in 1997, even as power demand rises by some 6 percent annually.

State power firm PLN called early in June on customers in Java and Bali to turn off two lights per house to save 500 MW in the grid as natural gas supply to several plants was cut for two weeks. Public participation managed to prevent the expected blackouts.

PLN announced more possible power shortages in the network serving the two most-populated islands in late June and August, as a 750-megawatt (MW) plant had to stop operating due to late delivery of petroleum fuel and a 600-MW unit suffered from technical problems.

The incidents, however, paled in comparison to a massive blackout that turned light into night throughout Java on the morning of Aug. 18, only to be fully resolved some 11 hours later.

Preliminary findings suggested that a glitch in the interconnection system between major power plants Saguling and Cilegon in West Java caused five other plants to disengage from the network, reducing supply by 4,000 MW.

The industrial sector was the first to shoulder the burden of the apparent energy crisis as the government allowed state firms to take drastic measures to reduce demand.

To reduce the strain on the power grids, PLN has since September raised the multiplying quotient from 1.4 to 2 for electricity used by industries in peak hours, meaning that power will be twice as expensive as that utilized at other times. The state firm also applies penalties for industries using more than half of their average usage during peak hours.

The new policy managed only to push down demand on the Java-Bali grid by 200 MW the following month. Pertamina kept the subsidized fuel quota by requiring industries since July to pay market prices -- more than double the subsidized prices at the time.

As for the rest of the country, the government's response to the crisis was the issuance of Presidential Instruction No. 10/2005 on energy conservation on July 10, requiring government offices to reduce power consumption by air conditioners, lighting and office appliances, and the use of official vehicles.

Each department will be allowed to issue their own directives on the matter; local governments are encouraged to establish a progressive vehicle taxation system and require big-engine cars to guzzle only non-subsidized high-octane fuel; television stations are not permitted to broadcast after 1 a.m.

In the months that followed, government officials forwent their power suits for batik, and lights dimmed across the city. The effect of the energy-saving drive was not evident, however, as power consumption stayed pretty much at the same level. As the days passed, the campaign lost steam.

As of early December, no regulation had been issued to reduce fuel usage in the transportation sector as suggested before. Shopping centers and offices are as air-conditioned and harshly lit as before.

In fact, the only policy that significantly reduced fuel usage was the government's decision to raise fuel prices by 126.6 percent on average on Oct. 1 in an attempt to save the stretched state budget.

According to Pertamina's data, monthly sales of premium gasoline declined by 19 percent to 1.3 million kl in October from 1.59 million kl in August. Diesel fuel sales in the transportation sector dropped by 22 percent to 896,000 kl throughout October from 1.15 million kl in August.

It remains to be seen whether the government will also apply a pricing policy on the power front. PLN has proposed an increase in power charges by between 23 percent and 39 percent next year, depending on the amount of subsidy it would receive of between Rp 25.5 trillion and Rp 12.98 trillion, respectively, to be able to cover costs. The House has allocated Rp 17 trillion in the 2006 state budget for the company.

Despite all the signs and data available to anticipate an energy crisis, 2005 remained a year when, once again, reactive measures were favored over preventive actions.

It is everybody's hope that, next year, the government will see it fit to take significant steps to start saving energy, keeping the people informed rather than relying merely on campaign rhetoric. The public has no desire to be left in the dark.

Textile sector faces multifarious problems

Jakarta Post - December 27, 2005

Anissa S. Febrina, Jakarta -- The already-ailing Indonesian textile sector had the ladder kicked away from it this year.

Early in 2005 it was charged with being ill-prepared to face the termination of the Multi Fabric Agreement (MFA), which 20 percent of textile manufacturers here were previously reliant upon. The termination agreement was in fact reached a decade ago.

Without the global textile quota system, the market will indeed be freer, that is for those with high competitiveness, which currently reads, China.

With considerably rich natural materials, higher productivity and more integrated infrastructure, in the first five months of 2005, China's exports to the European Union (EU) increased by almost 50 percent while Indonesia's dropped by 12.7 percent.

Exports to the EU are among the most important for Indonesia as countries under the group absorbed some 40 percent of global textile imports, followed by the United States with 30 percent.

To give some relief, based on the Central Statistics Agency's data, Indonesia's 2005 average monthly exports to the US increased to US$160 million from $130 million in 2004. However, later in the year, those figures were strongly questioned.

And while China's strategy is clearly working, Indonesian textile and garment companies are facing more complicated challenges in increasing their competitiveness.

Let us start with surging imports from China to, not only the US and EU markets, but also to the Indonesian domestic market.

Shopping in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta -- known as Southeast Asia's largest textile market, with daily transactions amounting to Rp 150 billion (US$15.33 million) -- one cannot help but be taken aback by the predominance of made-in-China textiles and garments, rather than those produced here.

In the first quarter of the year, garment imports from China increased tenfold to $4.27 million from the same period last year, the Indonesian Textile Association (API) said. Along with the increase in imports, exports to the US in the first five months of the year also increased by 10 percent, raising suspicions of transshipment.

The API argued that such an increase was unlikely as 77 textile manufacturers had stopped operating the month before.

The Ministry of Trade then required a stricter procedure in the issuance of Country of Origin (COO) documents for exported textiles. However, illegal practices have not significantly decreased.

To make things worse for the sector, illegal imports flooding the domestic market have also been a chronic problem, both in terms of new and secondhand goods.

At Senen Market, also in Central Jakarta, three levels of kiosks sell imported secondhand garments with shirts priced at Rp 5,000 and quality suits for an unbelievable Rp 20,000. So, that takes the biscuit for the mass lower domestic market.

Meanwhile, in the upper market, foreign brands from the US or EU dominate with, once again, outsourced products from China or Vietnam.

Aside from the external problems, textile manufacturers must deal this year with increases in both power rates for industrial use and fuel prices. State power firm PLN raised later in the year the industrial coefficient rate, and on top of that applied a kind of penalty for those using power more than the allowed quota during peak time.

API chairman Benny Soetrisno said the sector was among those operating 24 hours a day to maintain productivity and the policy to increase fuel prices would increase operating costs by at least 25 percent.

Energy costs contributed to almost 30 percent of total operating expenses. The Oct. 1 fuel price increases -- which saw the prices of premium gasoline and diesel fuel nearly double and that of kerosene triple -- in the end also leads to higher transportation and labor costs. The two factors contributed quite significantly to the increase in expenses as the sector is labor-intensive.

In terms of company infrastructure, the productivity of manufacturers lags behind those in China since they still utilize old machinery. The industry ministry estimated that the sector would require a $5 billion investment to revamp its production facilities.

Separately, industry players calculated that they would require at least $100 million for a first-phase rejuvenation of their machines.

This would require the support of the banking sector, which unfortunately remains reluctant to grant loans to textile companies. Not to mention the currently high interest rates.

As a result of these overlapping problems, the sector only grew by 1.1 percent in the first nine months of 2005, as compared to 4.2 percent in the corresponding period of 2004.

The industry is likely to fail to meet the targeted growth of 4.2 percent by the year end, despite the increase in total exports.

However, there is a silver lining. According to the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM), foreign investment in the textile industry had reached Rp 1.57 trillion as of September, with the commitment of two more foreign investors.

In November, considering the on-paper data of exports and investment, then minister of industry Andung A. Nitimihardja, before being replaced by Fahmi Idris on Dec. 7, set the 2006 exports target at $8.3 billion. His projected exports target for 2009 was even more optimistic at $11.8 million.

Such positive thinking needs to be followed up by action. First of all, the annual growth of the global textile and garment market is estimated at a steady 5 percent at the moment. Indonesia will always have a large market, though it must fight for its share.

Second, the termination of the quota system could be perceived as a blessing in disguise as companies are increasing their efficiency while opportunities for increasing exports are wide open. For the textile industry to get back on its feet, fresh investments to revamp old machinery and increase productivity are crucial.

In line with this, as generally required by other export-oriented sectors, the government must be able to built integrated infrastructure that could speed up exports and imports processes.

Those two may be easier said than done, but the jobs of 1.2 million textile and garment workers are at stake.

Opinion & analysis

Many local films, but has quality improved?

Jakarta Post - December 29, 2005

Lisabona Rahman and Paul F. Agusta, Contributors, Jakarta -- Indonesian cinema saw an eventful year in 2005, with more than 50 titles either released or produced, making it the most prolific year in Indonesia's film history in almost a decade.

The year's spate of releases began in February with the premieres of Jatayu Films Panggung Pinggir Kali (Stage by the River), a musical directed by veteran filmmaker Ucik Supra that tells the rags-to-riches story of a dangdut singer, and SinemArt's Tentang Dia (About Her) from popular director Rudy Soedjarwo, a tale of friendship between two women brought together by trauma and heartbreak.

Panggung had a rather unfortunate blink-and-you'll-miss-it run in large theaters but was able to maintain a somewhat steady run is the cheaper, smaller theaters within and outside of Jakarta.

Tentang Dia proved to be quite a box office draw, as well as a merchandising coup, with a very popular soundtrack album by singer Melly Goeslaw and a short story collection also by Melly, featuring the story on which the film was based.

March saw the release of five films that varied in type and appeal. First was Bobby Sandy's postcolonial melodrama Anne van Jogja, followed by Pingkan Utari's Me vs. High Heels, a successful adaptation of a highly popular teen novel.

Hanung Bramantyo's Catatan Akhir Sekolah (Notes from the End) was about three best friends who are labeled as outcasts at their school, while Fantasi (Fantasy) was a musical starring the contestants of the Akademi Fantasi Indosiar talent show produced by the TV station Indosiar.

Salto Films Banyu Biru, a surrealistic drama directed by Teddy Soeriaatmadja was possibly the bravest and most original release of the month, if not the year.

April welcomed the highly successful directorial debut of Arisan coscreenwriter Joko Anwar in Janji Joni (Joni's Promise), the story of a film reel delivery boy on a very bad day. Janji also featured a popular soundtrack album that featured some of the best artists in Jakarta's indie music scene.

That month also saw the repackaging and rerelease of last year's controversial teen comedy from Multivision Plus Pictures Buruan Cium Gue! (Kiss Me Quick!) into a tamer version titled Satu Kecupan (Just One Kiss).

Recognition of local filmmakers May saw an important milestone set by maker of short films Edwin, whose Kara, The Daughter of a Tree, had the honor of being the first Indonesian short film to be included in the Directors' Fortnight at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France.

The two films released theatrically this month were Lovely Luna, the feature-film debut of music video director Lasja Fauzia that was based on yet another popular teen novel, and Inikah Rasanya Cinta? (Is This How Love Feels?), an adaptation of a popular teen TV drama directed for the screen by Ai Manaf.

June was marked by a quite uplifting achievement for the Indonesian film scene. Director Ravi Bharwani's Impian Kemarau (The Rainmaker) was selected as Best Film for the Asian New Talent Award at the 8th Shanghai Film Festival.

Impian Kemarau is a very exotic depiction of a community dealing with drought and the nation's politics, very much reminiscent of Hindu aspects of Javanese culture.

The Indonesian film scene also witnessed the debut of director Rako Prijanto with feature film Ungu Violet, a tearjerker set in present-day Jakarta with adorable cinematography and appealing character development.

In July director Riri Riza1s released Gie, a biopic of Indonesian-Chinese student activist Soe Hok Gie. There was a great response from audiences of all ages. Costing about Rp 7 billion to make, Gie is one of the most expensive contemporary Indonesian films produced since 1998.

Despite public enthusiasm, critics had split opinions about the film, making for a lively debate about the representation of the most mysterious period in modern Indonesian history, namely the alleged slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians accused of being Communists.

Amid the unholy trinity of love, teenage romance and horror -- the predominant themes of this year's releases -- another film by Riri Riza, Untuk Rena (For Rena) was released in time for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadhan and Idul Fitri holiday in late October, a kind of continuation of Garin Nugroho's offering last year, Of Love and Eggs, which could well indicate the genesis of a Ramadhan film genre in years to come.

Another theme raised quite often on the silver screen is drug trafficking. One example is director Nanang Istiabudi's Detik Terakhir (Final Moment), a story combining an insight into the life of drug addicts, and lesbian love.

Controversy, JiFFest, overall conclusion

One of the most anticipated pics has been director Garin Nugroho's Javanese opera-film Shinta Obong (an episode from the Ramayana epic), produced at the invitation of US opera director Peter Sellars, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in Vienna. Though still in the middle of production, the film has already triggered a reaction from a Hindu organization claiming the adaptation is misleading.

Finally, one of the highlights of the year: The Indonesian Film Festival (FFI 2005) chose Gie as best picture and Hanung Bramantyo (Brownies) as best director.

The festival jury was quoted as saying that Gie was awarded best film on grounds that are quite irrelevant to film aesthetics because the film proves that the young generation of Indonesian filmmakers is brave enough to raise political issues.

It was therefore somewhat uprising that Gie was chosen as the year's best film, and not Janji Joni, which, many would argue, has content of greater interest, unique characters and better story telling.

Another important year-end event was the highly successful seventh year of the Jakarta International Film Festival (JiFFest). This year's JiFFest shifted the focus more toward documentaries and the holding of technical workshops by film and television professionals from all over the world, rather than feature films.

Another notable feature of this year's JiFFest was the complete lack of Indonesian feature films at the festival, a decision that produced some grumbles among industry folk.

JiFFest asserts that one of its functions as a festival is to premiere films that have not been or could not be released at theaters in Jakarta; however, all of this year's local productions had been released prior to JiFFest and could not be included.

The year 2005 will go down as an important one in the history of the reemergence of Indonesian cinema, due to the quantity of films made and released.

However, the question to ask at this point is whether quantity alone is enough. Indeed there were a lot of films made but what of their artistic merit? Were filmmakers producing lightweight works merely to draw in larger audiences? Hopefully, next year will bring a stronger focus on quality as well as quantity.

Year of disasters

Jakarta Post Editorial - December 31, 2005

This time last year, we ended 2004 on an extremely subdued note. The powerful earthquake and massive tsunami that killed over 160,000 people and rendered another half a million homeless in Aceh and Nias island towards the end of last year stunned the whole nation, and the whole world for that matter. New Year 2005 was understandably greeted everywhere around the globe with subdued fanfare, out of respect for the victims.

But we did begin 2005 with high hopes, secured in the knowledge that things could not possibly get any worse, and that there was only one direction: Forward. The global solidarity shown to the victims of one of the worst natural disasters on record also gave a sense of hope that things would get better in 2005.

And what a year 2005 turned out to be for Indonesia. It was a year filled with tragedies; some inflicted by Mother Nature, others man-made. If good news is not news and bad news makes headlines, there was never a shortage of headlines for this newspaper over the past 12 months.

We had two major plane crashes, in Surakarta and Medan. We had an outbreak of polio at the beginning of the year, and an outbreak of bird flu half way through 2005. There was starvation in places known to have food surpluses. Nias island, which suffered little damage in the December 2004 earthquake and tsunami, was hit by a more deadly and destructive earthquake in March. The government appropriately expanded the portfolio of the newly established Agency for Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (BRR) to cover both Aceh and Nias island.

Economically, things also took a turn for the worse for the majority of us. Soaring international oil prices finally took their toll on the economy, forcing the government to launch two rounds of massive hikes in domestic fuel prices. The distribution of cash subsidies intended to cushion the poor from the impact of these increases turned into a sham.

The fuel price increases forced inflation to an annualized rate of more than 18 percent, leaving most people, particularly low and fixed-income earners, even poorer. The economy was still growing at around 5 percent (depending on whose estimate you use), but it was not enough to absorb the swelling ranks of the unemployed, including newcomers to the labor market.

There were, however, a few bright spots in 2005. And yes, they made it to the headlines, providing us with a welcome break from the constant stream of bad news. Ironically perhaps, the best news during the year came from Aceh, the very same area that caused us so much anguish and distress at the beginning of the 2005.

In Helsinki in August, the government signed a peace agreement with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), ending nearly 30 years of bloody conflict, and thus allowing the massive post-tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction program to proceed without interruption. No doubt the tsunami, with more than a little prodding from the outside world, helped force both sides to come to the negotiating table in faraway Finland.

Thus far, both the government and GAM appear to have fulfilled their obligations under the Helsinki peace deal. The second half of the implementation of the peace agreement begins in 2006. From now on, much will be in the hands of the House of Representatives in reviewing laws to accommodate GAM demands.

After the hectic but peaceful three rounds of elections in 2004 to elect the House of Representatives and the president/vice president, many regions held their own local elections this year, to directly choose governors, regency chiefs and mayors. In another sign that democracy was taking root in Indonesia, the great majority of these elections went peacefully.

For President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, this has been a year of learning, after he won a strong mandate to rule in October last year. There have been times when the President and his administration could have handled situations better, such as in increasing fuel prices and in parceling out the cash assistance for the poor. But he has made adjustments, including reshuffling the economic team in November.

But to be fair to the President, the tragedies, many of which were completely beyond his control, took a lot of his time and attention so that he has not been able to focus more on the issues for which he was chiefly elected: Eradicating corruption and accelerating economic recovery.

So what do we have to be hopeful about in 2006? Tragedies, particularly natural disasters, are largely beyond anybody's control. But even if these disasters persist in different forms and scales, the nation has now grown more resilient in facing them. The year 2005 has been both a year of disasters and a year of learning.

Let us all look forward to a happier and more prosperous 2006.