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Archived Urgent Action
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The Indonesian armed forces are currently engaged in their largest military operation since the invasion of East Timor. The war in the province of Aceh has already led to widespread human rights violations. In Indonesia, KAIROS works closely with KONTRAS, the Committee for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence. Human rights defenders are under increasing risk in Aceh, and KONTRAS is among the groups that have been targeted in a new crackdown on Indonesians who monitor and advocate for human rights. On June 19, Nuraini, volunteer coordinator of KONTRAS Aceh, was arrested at her father’s home in the village of Lueng Dama in Pidie district. Army and police units arrived at 5 am, beat and blindfolded Nuraini, and took her to Delima police headquarters along with her father and a neighbour. Although Nuraini was released on July 3, she is under severe restrictions and threats to KONTRAS continue. |
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Introduction |
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The Indonesian armed forces are currently engaged in their largest military operation since the invasion of East Timor. The war in the province of Aceh has already led to widespread human rights violations. There have been reports of extra judicial execution including the killing of children as young as 12. More than 500 schools have been burned and at least 50,000 people are displaced from their homes. Foreign reporters and aid workers have been banned.
In Indonesia, KAIROS works closely with KONTRAS, the Committee for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence. Human rights defenders are under increasing risk in Aceh, and KONTRAS is among the groups that have been targeted in a new crackdown on Indonesians who monitor and advocate for human rights. The threats are particularly severe against KONTRAS Aceh, but members are at risk elsewhere in Indonesia too. KAIROS has already issued an urgent action regarding a militia attack on the KONTRAS Jakarta office on May 26-27.
Fourteen human rights defenders have already been murdered in Aceh between 2000 and 2002. Since martial law was imposed on May 19, KONTRAS Aceh has been effectively prevented from carrying out its work. Many of its staff and volunteers have been evacuated; others are in hiding.
On June 19, Nuraini, volunteer coordinator of KONTRAS Aceh, was arrested at her father’s home in the village of Lueng Dama in Pidie district. Army and police units arrived at 5 am, beat and blindfolded Nuraini and her father Zakaria Ismail, and took them to Delima police headquarters along with a neighbour named Zulkifli. Nuraini reports being sexually harassed while in transport. Nuraini is a 29-year old religious teacher who has coordinated KONTRAS volunteers in Pidie district (considered one of the most dangerous in Aceh) as well as working with the Civilian Peace Monitoring Team in Aceh since January 2003. She has documented a number of human rights violations including the kidnapping of villagers. Her father was arrested in 1990 and according to KONTRAS was tortured while detained by the Indonesian army. Nuraini was released on July 3 but is still under severe restrictions and may be re-arrested at any time.
Meanwhile, attacks on KONTRAS and other human rights organizations
continue. On June 28, the offices of the Legal Aid Institute in
Aceh were attacked by men believed to be police looking for Asiah,
coordinator of the KONTRAS investigations unit. The army has stepped
up its repression of human rights defenders and engaged in a strategy
of blaming the victim. “While it may be true that attacking
the organization is against the law, maybe they (KONTRAS) should
look at themselves in the mirror,” said army commander General
Endriartono Sutarto.
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Recommended Action |
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Please call on the Canadian government to immediately urge the Indonesian government to:
1) Ensure the security and safety of KONTRAS and other local human rights organizations, both in Aceh and in Jakarta. Indonesia should respect its obligation under international law to allow human rights defenders to work free of restraint.
2) Ensure the security and safety of Acehnese civilians, stop military operations in Aceh and reinstate the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement signed in December 2002 in order to bring the two warring parties back to the negotiating table. Peace dialogues should also include Acehnese civil society organizations.
3) Allow full access to all areas of Aceh for international and local organizations and media. In particular, humanitarian relief should be delivered by international organizations rather than by one party to the conflict.
Write to:
The Honourable Bill Graham
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Lester B. Pearson Building
125 Sussex Drive,
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0G2
Fax: 613-996-3443
E-mail: Graham.B@parl.gc.ca
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Background - Aceh: Indonesia’s hidden war |
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More than 10,000 people have died in a simmering war in Indonesia’s Aceh province (pronounced Acheh). A peace agreement was reached in December 2002, but in May 2003, the Indonesian armed forces launched a new military offensive. It is their largest operation since the invasion of East Timor in 1975. The new war threatens the basic human rights of all people in Aceh and poses a threat to the future of Indonesia’s fragile democracy.
The conflict in Aceh is often portrayed as a religious war: Aceh is generally considered to be the most devoutly Islamic province of Indonesia. But the Free Aceh Movement (known as GAM) is not an Islamic organization, it is an independence movement. The Indonesian government has tried to link GAM to terrorism and accused it of being linked to the networks behind the Bali bombing that killed at least 180 people, but there is absolutely no evidence for this. This is not a religious war or a war about terror. It is a conflict about local control, a conflict about natural resources, and a conflict about the future of all of Indonesia.
:: Sources of conflict
History & local control
Aceh has a unique place in Indonesian history as a powerful pre-colonial state that fought the longest and the hardest against Dutch colonialism and was at the forefront of the successful war of Indonesian independence in 1945-9. After independence, however, it was merged into neighbouring North Sumatra province and denied any effective local control. This led to alienation from the national project and a rebellion in the 1950s that ended with the agreement to establish an autonomous Special Province of Aceh. However, autonomy was quickly eroded, particularly after General Suharto came to power in Indonesia in 1966. In 1976, the Free Aceh Movement was established, demanding for the first time that Aceh become an independent state. Initially there was little support for independence, but a harsh crackdown by the Suharto regime further alienated the Acehnese from Indonesia’s central government. Thousands died during a decade that saw Aceh defined as a special military operations zone (DOM). By the time this was lifted after the fall of Suharto in 1998, many in Aceh’s fast-growing civil society saw independence as the only solution. A year later, one million people — a quarter of the entire provincial population — attended a rally in Banda Aceh calling for a referendum on independence along the same lines as the one promised for East Timor.
Resources & unequal development
Aceh is one of the four provinces that produce the bulk of Indonesia’s wealth. Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of liquid natural gas and a major oil supplier. Aceh provides 30% of its oil and gas exports. The province has been a significant source of revenues for Jakarta, but local people see few benefits. For instance, the provincial unemployment rate remains around 30%.
Oil production in East Aceh was started by a Canadian company. Calgary-based Asamera Oil drilled 450 wells between 1961 and 1991. (Asamera was later absorbed by Gulf Canada and is now part of the ConocoPhillips conglomerate.) Today, resource production is dominated by the oil and gas production facilities of North Aceh, run by the state oil company Pertamina and by ExxonMobil. This complex is worth over a billion dollars a year to Jakarta, and is guarded by thousands of Indonesian soldiers. ExxonMobil has been accused of complicity in torture of protesters, with evidence including the presence of mass graves on Pertamina-owned land. It is no accident that GAM is strongest in North Aceh, where uneven development has brought great wealth to outsiders and none to local people. Activists have attempted to take action against ExxonMobil in US courts under the Alien Torts Claims Act: in response, the Bush administration is now attempting to have the law revised in order to prevent this sort of lawsuit against American corporations.
Human rights
Human rights violations by the Indonesian army have been the best recruiting tool for the Acehnese independence movement. Under Suharto, summary executions, arbitrary arrest, disappearances and torture were widespread in Aceh. The new government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri appears to be returning to this path, which will in all likelihood only increase opposition to Indonesian rule.
The root of the problem is the role of the Indonesian armed forces. Under Suharto, Indonesia was a form of military dictatorship. Since 1998, it has been attempting to democratize, but the army’s reluctance to give up its “dual function” in both defence and politics remains the biggest obstacle to effective democratization. Simply put, there are many in the army who do not wish to give up power. The army insists it still has a special duty to safeguard Indonesia’s unity and territorial integrity. Aceh is the ground on which that task can be carried out, and Megawati’s willingness to let her generals call the shots in Aceh shows a possible route back to power for the army. If martial law is the answer to separatist sentiment in Aceh, it may be tried next in Papua, another resource-rich and restive province at the far end of the archipelago. The army may even be able to act as the guarantor of stability against the “messy excesses” of democracy at the centre and secure an effective veto on national politics. There could be few things better calculated to hinder democracy.
:: A shattered hope
It did not have to come to war. For a time, the Indonesian government and GAM were engaged in a process of dialogue seeking a peaceful solution, mediated by the Geneva-based non-governmental organization Henry Dunant Centre. In May 2002, they reached an agreement for a cease-fire. Indonesia offered special autonomy to Aceh, including a larger local share of resource earnings, and GAM accepted this as a starting point for further talks. But the Indonesian government wanted autonomy accepted as a final solution, and GAM refused to give up its demand for eventual independence. Talks were revived under heavy international pressure, and in December 2002 the two sides reached a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement that provided the framework for further negotiations. Aceh, it seemed, was on the road to a peaceful resolution of its long conflict. Canada was among the international donors that gave funds to pay for the agreement’s implementation ($500,000 initially, with more to come). A Canadian government statement expressed hope that the agreement “would break new ground in conflict resolution in Indonesia that can help a return to stability and growth in other conflict-prone regions.”
:: Martial law
In May 2003, however, Megawati declared “I cannot tolerate [separatism] any longer,” imposed martial law, and ordered as many as 50,000 troops into action against the 5,000-strong GAM. Officially, martial law will last for six months and has four components: military, humanitarian, law enforcement and “stabilization of local government.” In effect, that means a beefed-up army offensive, the removal of international aid workers in favour of agencies of the Indonesian government (a party to the conflict), a crackdown on peaceful dissent, and the political screening of all civil servants leading to replacement of “unreliable” officials, in many cases by retired soldiers. And there are already noises about extending the martial law period. “It could last one year, ten years, a thousand years if that is what it takes,” the army chief of staff said.
:: The new war
Martial law has already led to extensive human rights problems. Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission has reported six types of rights violations by the martial law authorities: rampant burning of schools, summary executions, arbitrary arrests, torture of unarmed civilians, sexual harassment and forced relocations. Over 200 people have died so far, most of them likely to be civilians (including a German tourist shot on the beach while vacationing). There are too few efforts to distinguish “armed civilians” (the army’s term for GAM) from “unarmed civilians.” Both sides have been accused of targeting civilians. Children as young as 12 are among those villagers who have been lined up against a wall and shot on suspicion of supporting GAM. Local non-governmental organizations report more than 40,000 displaced people, refugees in their own homeland. Over 500 schools have been burned to the ground, leaving 60,000 children or more without access to education. A prison island is being prepared to receive the country’s newest political prisoners. Even GAM peace negotiators have been arrested. Indonesia has for the first time used its US-supplied F-16 fighters to bomb GAM positions, calling the escalation “shock therapy.” New restrictions have been imposed on the press, with foreign reporters banned and Indonesians required to work as “embedded” journalists attached to security forces. One journalist, television cameraman Mohamad Jamaluddin, has bean found murdered in a riverbed, his eyes and mouth sealed with adhesive tape, a stone roped around his neck. In a worrying development, militia gangs have been formed among the non-Indonesian population, reminiscent of the militias that ravaged East Timor in 1999. On July 1, Megawati gave a speech endorsing the creation and arming of militias throughout the country.
:: Human rights defenders
One of the most worrisome developments in today’s Indonesia is the increasing incidence of attacks on activists who try to monitor and advocate for human rights. Fourteen human rights defenders have been murdered in Aceh alone since 2000, when the barely-recognizable body of human rights lawyer Jafar Siddiq Hamzah of New York was found in a ravine, naked, mutilated by stabbing wounds, and wrapped in barbed wire. Activists also face arrest and jail simply for human rights work. For instance, Mohamad Nazar, head of the pro-referendum organization SIRA, has served ten months in jail for “sowing hatred against the Indonesian government” and was arrested again this year for his non-violent protest activities and sentenced to a five-year prison term. Cut Nur Asikin, another human rights activist with the women’s group Srikandi Aceh, is charged with being head of the GAM women’s brigade.
One NGO that has been targetted is KONTRAS, the Committee for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence. KAIROS has been supporting this group’s human rights monitoring, documentation and advocacy projects. Since the declaration of martial law, program implementation has become very difficult, since KONTRAS in Aceh has been prevented from carrying out its work. Many staff and volunteers have evacuated, and the rest are in hiding. Staffers are harassed and accused of being GAM supporters. Volunteer coordinator Nuraini was arrested on June 19 and taken, blindfolded, from her home. Her father and a neighbour were arrested at the same time. All three prisoners are reported to be in danger of torture or ill-treatment in police custody, and Nuraini reported that she had been sexually harassed on the trip to local police headquarters. Intimidation against KONTRAS has even spread to previously-safe Jakarta. Thugs from a pro-military militia gang attacked the Jakarta KONTRAS office on May 26-27. KONTRAS chair Ori Rahman was forced to perform the national anthem as an expression of loyalty while being pushed, hit, and kicked. Authorities did nothing while KONTRAS staffers were beaten and humiliated.
Meanwhile, martial law authorities have banned foreign NGOs. There can be little hope for human rights in Aceh if even those whose only involvement is to monitor the situation and advocate for increased rights are attacked, killed and harassed.
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