Aceh atrocities boost people's demand for autonomy

By Pandaya

BANDA ACEH, Aceh (JP): The fragile-looking Baharuddin Lopa stood in a crowd of 1,000 people surrounding an excavated hillside mass grave under a scalding sun, alternately acting like a fossil auctioneer and a fiery orator.

"So far we have taken out 24 pairs of thigh bones, six blindfolds, eight pairs of arm bones tangled in plastic string, five skulls, four pairs of pants and four pairs of underpants," the secretary general of the National Commission on Human Rights announced what the body exhumers had found on Sentang hill in North Aceh on Aug. 21.

Amid emotional screams of condemnation against the Soeharto administration, the leader of the commission team probing the atrocities paused, rebuttoned his shirt and adjusted his pants.

He continued, "We are certain that 12 bodies were buried in this single grave. This strengthens our belief that massacres took place in Aceh."

A dark-skinned man with a light mustache on the other side of the pit stood up and shouted, "On behalf of the people of Aceh, I demand that the commission should not just talk but do something to help us seek justice." Others yelled in support of him.

The emotional man certainly did not have any mandate to voice the Acehnese's demands but the essence of his demand for justice closely reflects local people's views.

Although the operations are believed to have claimed thousands of lives and caused untold suffering, it was only last month that the victims spoke out, when an investigation team from the House of Representatives led by Maj. Gen. Hari Sabarno visited them.

The subsequent stories of horror, such as massacres, rapes, lootings and house burnings prompted the government on Aug. 7 to stop the operations targeting the Free Aceh Movement's low-level uprising that began in 1989.

Spearheaded by human rights campaigners, people are increasing the pressure for legal solutions to the numerous crimes. Former president Soeharto, who was also ABRI (the Armed Forces) supreme commander, is their end target.

Activists who doubt the independence of the Indonesian legal system to try the crimes against humanity have been pondering about taking the cases to The Hague-based International Court of Justice once the independent probe is completed.

"The government should offer compensation to relatives of those killed during the operations and restore the respectability of their names," Amran Zamzami, chairman of the Solidarity Committee for the Respect of Human Rights in Aceh, says.

The combat troops' withdrawal, which began on Aug. 20, and President B.J. Habibie's apology to the Aceh people for the atrocities have been most welcomed but are considered "inadequate" unless justice is upheld.

The people of Aceh, who take pride in their Islamic tradition, use religious jargon to attract the Habibie administration's attention to their plight.

"Aceh people are very forgiving but they will revolt when their dignity is harmed," says Humam Hamid, a lecturer at Banda Aceh's Syah Kuala University.

The extreme fear that the military created by use of excessive force proved to be an effective way to silence people so that the atrocities continued unchecked for nine years, he says.

Now that the military has loosened its grip on Aceh, common people are mustering the courage to voice their demand: autonomy. Unlike previous generations, some intellectuals have gone as far as openly supporting the idea of making Indonesia a federal state.

"We imagine that in the future, each state will be free to manage their resources and run their own government," says Humam. "They will offer a kind of fee to the central government for services such as defense and foreign diplomacy."

It is understood that the secessionist problem in Aceh that began in the 1970s stemmed from the small share it obtained of the exploitation of the province's rich natural resources.

Critics say that Jakarta plunders the westernmost territory's wealth and leaves it impoverished.

Sayed Mudhahar Ahmad, a respected informal figure who helped found the Care Human Rights Forum for Aceh, reckons that since it began operating in 1977, the Arun gas refinery in Lhokseumawe, North Aceh, has generated Rp 30 trillion (US$2.6 billion) a year.

If income from the giant industries like fertilizer, paper and timber are added, Aceh contributed an estimated Rp 31 trillion a year from Lhokseumawe alone to the state coffers.

"As a comparison, Aceh's 1997/1998 provincial budget was only Rp 102 billion or less than 0.35 percent of the value of its natural wealth exploited and handed over to the central government," Sayed says.

Aceh, which has a population of about 3.5 million, boasts more than four million hectares of forest but all of it is controlled by people Sayed calls "friends from Jakarta" who divided it into 19 concessions.

"Armed only with a piece of paper, Bob Hasan's PT Alas Heleu won a concession to control 160,000 hectares of pine forests in the Central Aceh district of Gayo," he says.

Demands for greater autonomy have also been voiced by Ismail Suny, a well-known Acehnese constitutional law expert.

Suny says that if a federal state is ruled out, greater autonomy should be given to Aceh and other provinces.

"Aceh should be governed like a federal state," he says. "Autonomy would strengthen the nation's integration and speed up the achievement of justice and prosperity."

The National Commission on Human Rights has found repeated evidence of human rights abuses during the Red Net Operations led by the Army's Special Force (Kopassus).

Lopa, a one time chief of the Aceh Prosecutor's Office, says he does not want to hear officials claim that the Aceh affair has been dramatized with the intention of discrediting the government.

"The people can no longer be silenced," says Sayed.