A reporter calls on his peers to tell Aceh's story

A reporter calls on his peers to tell Aceh's story

Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia's Secret War in Aceh

John Martinkus

Random House Australia, 2004

326 pp

Using the word "secret" as a book title is bound to be a magnet
for curious readers, the tease to draw them in to find out more
about its promise of providing more information.

It's what we expect from John Martinkus, an acclaimed
Australian journalist who wrote the tremendous accounts of the
strife in East Timor,A Dirty Little War, and Paradise Betrayed:
West Papua's Struggle for Independence

His revealing account of his journey through the province
fills in the gaps for Indonesia's long ambivalent press, as well
as the increasing lack of attention paid by the international
community to what is going on in Aceh.

The area's story is a long, violent and tragic one, marked by
pitiful accounts of orphaned children, widows and traumatized
villagers in remote corners of the province.

It includes the elderly whose sons and daughters take up arms
for war and who are tortured and jailed for their parental
connection. It is also the story of the mysterious mass graves
found in the province.

Who has the most blood on their hands, the so-called rebels or
the Indonesian Military (TNI)? In Martinckus' view from his
travels and data, it is the latter in the effort to stamp out the
independence movement.

Indonesia first made Aceh a designated area of military
operation (DOM) from 1988-98, keeping the province under virtual
martial law, sealing it off from the rest of the country and
leaving the military to its own devices. President Megawati
Soekarnoputri imposed martial law last year.

The Indonesian media, although championed as "free" in the
reform era following Soeharto's fall in 1998, has not shown that
boldness in its reports (or lack thereof) about Aceh. Martinkus'
own "journalistic trip" can be an eye opener for the public and
especially fellow journalists in reporting on the situation.

In one of his bus trips, Martinkus talks to one of the
passengers, who boldly said: "Eighty, no, 90 percent of the
people here support GAM."

His source was not a prominent figure nor a vocal student
activist, but the proverbial man in the street, experiencing the
trauma for himself on a daily basis.

While the world's media is occupied by "hot" news stories,
from Baghdad to Kabul, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden,
Indonesian media devotes a shamefully meager amount of space to
the drama going on in its own backyard.

It would have been quite understandable during the repressive
Soeharto era, but it appears incongruous today in the "anything
goes" climate of journalism.

Perhaps, the lack of understanding about what is really going
leaves media vulnerable to accepting and parroting the one-way
directives and strong appeals made by the Indonesian government
and its apparatus to revisit and redefine the word "nationalism
and patriotism" in their daily reports.

What Martinkus writes are, in fact, the same type of field
reports that Indonesian journalists also collect. He mentions
numerous meetings with Indonesian journalists, but it's ironic
that he presents such honest and clear reports, most of which
never make it to the front pages of Jakarta's dailies.

Early in his narrative, Martinkus begins his descriptive
stories about the ongoing armed conflicts between the armed wing
of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the TNI along with the
National Police.

Martinkus writes that one must first be familiar with the
history of Aceh, and its long history of conflicts, from
resistance to the Dutch in the 19th century to the Darul Islam
rebellion of the 1950s, to understand its present situation.

He makes it clear how the GAM liberation movement in their
struggle to reclaim their identity as a free, independent nation.
It rejects the long-standing contention of the Indonesian
administration that the movement was fueled by injustice and the
imbalance in revenue sharing between the local and central
governments.

GAM fighters have shown, in Martinkus' view, a high resilience
and growing tactical skills -- itself a legacy of the fighters
against the Dutch colonists. The TNI, shadowed by economic and
political interests, is more concerned in beefing up its numbers.

No one knows what will happen next in Aceh but Martinkus
astutely devotes his final two chapters to the independent East
Timor and Papua, with its own burgeoning separatist movement.

Although opinions may be split about the value of the book
according to the reader's own perspective of Aceh, with some
pointing to the "partisan" view of an "outsider", Martinkus has
definitely given a voice to thousands of Acehnese whose stories
have been denied by the Indonesian media.

His parting hope is that there will be those brave enough to
stand up and be counted, reporting on the reality of the
situation in the province.

In his words, the international community has put Aceh on the
back burner of priorities long enough. For this moment in history
-- with a tragedy going on far from the eyes of the world -- may
not seem very long to us, but is an eternity to those caught in
the crossfire.