Autonomy policy no solution to Aceh conflict

Autonomy policy no solution to Aceh conflict

Santi WE Soekanto
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

Another year is whizzing by leaving Aceh with wounds agape and
questions unanswered. Hardly a day in 2001 has gone by without
murders being committed in the strife-torn region -- the
Indonesian Red Cross workers in Aceh recently testified that over
the past year at least 1,500 people have been killed while
thousands of others will carry lifelong scars, both physical and
mental.

Even the Red Cross's figure has been described as conservative
because other estimates put the death toll from various violent
incidents that took place after the launching of the so-called
peace talks between Jakarta and separatist fighters, at around
6,000. No day in this war is apparently sacred enough to prevent
both the security personnel and the armed Acehnese separatists
from engaging in violence because the murders continued even
during the fasting month of Ramadhan. The casualties came from
various quarters -- the military and security personnel, the
armed separatists but mostly among the innocent, unarmed
civilians.

The year opened for Aceh with a degree of cautious optimism as
an agreement between the government and the separatists to cease
violence was nearly successful. The accord was soon broken and
lawlessness prevailed. The loss of thousands of lives has
continued without legal redress ever having even been considered,
let alone actually carried out.

In separate incidents in January, for instance, a umber of
military and police personnel were shot dead by unidentified
assailants. On Feb. 3, an armed mob attacked the housing complex
of a state-owned plantation company, PT Perkebunan I Langsa, in
East Aceh district and killed three workers. On Feb. 25, another
unidentified group of assailants attacked and killed a married
couple -- as their four small children witnessed the horror -- in
the same region.

Early in March, the Langsa hospital some 435 kilometers east
of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, received the bullet-
ridden bodies of ten men executed by an armed group of assassins.
The best that the police could do was issue an empty promise to
hunt down the perpetrators. Also in March, gun battles between
the security authorities and separatist guerrillas on the eastern
coast of Aceh claimed 11 lives.

On March 20, the helicopter carrying then-minister of energy
and mining Purnomo Yusgiantoro on his visit to the American oil
company ExxonMobil was shot at. The direct result of the incident
that was blamed on the independence-minded fighters was Jakarta's
declaration to impose a controversial "limited military
operation" in the region.

In May, unidentified assailants gunned down the chairman of
the provincial branch of Golkar, HT Djohan, when he was leaving
the Baiturrahman Mosque in Banda Aceh. "We are chasing whoever
did this," said Aceh Besar police chief Sayed Husaini. A former
deputy governor of Aceh, Djohan spoke out in February against
protracted violence in the region and called for all involved
parties to sit together and take counsel.

In the following month, a policeman died in a grenade attack
in front of the house of the Aceh Police deputy chief. By mid-
June, full-scale armed clashes between security personnel and the
independence fighters from the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in
Bandar, Central Aceh, resulted in the death of six people and the
exodus of thousands of residents to the capital city of Takengon.
Hundreds of houses and other property were burned to the ground.
The total number of people killed within those ten days of
violence as at least 45.

More atrocities were revealed shortly thereafter, also in
June, with the discovery of 31 bodies in Central Aceh by Red
Cross workers. This followed the discovery of 27 corpses
following battles between the military and GAM. "Only six of the
bodies could be identified, while the rest were badly disfigured
to the point that identification was not possible," said one
worker.

More deaths took place in July and August, when two children,
aged eight and ten, were apparently tortured and found dead
outside of Banda Aceh. Riska and Hafiz El Arif were the children
of Police Brig. M. Zein of the Aceh Besar Police Precinct. Again,
police promised to investigate and reveal who was behind the
brutality.

Also in August, 31 armed assailants killed workers of a palm
oil plantation in East Aceh. "Our small clinic is now full of
corpses," a horrified Dr. Munawir exclaimed at a local village
health clinic. Both sides blamed each other, however
international rights groups seemed to indict military personnel,
by reporting that the massacre did not fit with the GAM modus
operandi.

In September, local legislator Zaini Sulaiman was shot to
death by a group of unidentified "guests" shortly after he
performed the dusk prayer. The "guests" knocked and opened fire
as soon as he opened the door. Police blamed the assassination on
GAM, who denied responsibility and told the police they had
better come up with hard evidence before slinging accusations
every which way. "In Aceh today, GAM personnel are not the only
ones with weapons," said GAM spokesman Ayah Sofyan, referring to
government security authorities.

Numbing statistics aside, one murder sent shockwaves across
all of Indonesia. Dayan Dawood, the chancellor of the respected
Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, was shot dead when he was
driving his car home from campus. This came almost a year after
the killing of Professor Safwan Idris, the chancellor of the Ar-
Raniry State Institute of Islamic Studies. Again, both sides
blamed each other for the murders, and any investigations have
been fruitless.

Dawood's death caused an uproar, not only because he was a
renowned scholar, but also because his assassination took place
shortly after the visit of President Megawati Soekarnoputri.
Minister of National Education Malik Fadjar was outraged,
pointedly saying that "the late Dawood was a teacher, not a
politician" and that his assailants must be out of their minds if
thought there was any reason to kill him.

The security authorities readily lay the blame on GAM, but
could not prove anything. GAM again denied the accusation and
accused the military or police. An element of surprise was lent
by then-Ambassador of the United States to Indonesia Robert S.
Gelbard who told the press immediately afterward he was shocked
by the murder of Dawood with whom he was apparently close.

"Another death in Aceh today would be one to many," said
Gelbard, who visited the region on a mission, re-affirming
Washington's commitment for the unity of Indonesia and its
opposition to any separatists groups in any country which use
terrorist tactics.

Less than two weeks later, another death, this time that of a
man clad in military-style fatigues, was reported in Bireuen,
followed by the massacre of a family in Pidie district. Diana,
60, Ambiah, 35, and Fajar, an infant, were hacked to death in the
early morning hours of Sept. 28 by a group of, again,
unidentified men. Another session of accusation and counter-
accusation ensued between the military and the separatist
movement, and more promises to investigate were again repeated.

Violence claimed more lives in October, November and December
despite Vice President Hamzah Haz's assertion that the government
would scale back its "excessive" militaristic approach in the
region. Another lawmaker, Ghazali Usman, was kidnapped by GAM
while other rights abuses continued unabated.

When one reads the hundreds of news stories about the almost
daily atrocities in Aceh, one soon shifts from being horrified to
feeling tired and numb because of the frequency with which the
violence takes place. But one also may sense a pattern in the
vicious cycle of violence in the resource-rich region, where
armed rebellion began in 1976, followed by a decade-long counter
insurgency military operation during which egregious violations
of human rights occurred.

Most people would think that in the relative absence of
foreign threats to Indonesia (in fact, the Indonesian Military is
currently basking in the renewed support of the United States and
Britain as evidenced by the resumption of the arms trade "as long
as they are not used for domestic repression"), and given the
relatively poor civilian control over it, the military
authorities would turn into sleeping dogs.

Most people thought that the abolition in 1998 by president
B.J. Habibie of the military operations (DOM) in Aceh would mean,
not only an end to the violence, but also the start of a serious
attempt at real peace.

In fact, no such thing has materialized and, as it turned out,
the introduction of the Presidential Instruction (Inpres) No.
4/2001, which outlines six "comprehensive" steps to solve the
Aceh question that includes a renewed permission for security and
law enforcement measures, has only caused violence to escalate.
Some have blamed the violence on the decree because it reportedly
promoted excessive militaristic measures.

Many people also thought that the introduction of the special
autonomy for the region, which officially, is now called Nanggroe
Aceh Darussalam, would appease the Acehnese and satisfy their
demands for a greater empowerment and profits from the natural
resources. But it also has not apparently worked, as most
Acehnese have become too hardened and too resentful of the
central government to agree to any sort of cooperation with what
they consider "Javanese colonialists".

Though the region is now literally called "the kingdom of
peace and prosperity," and a new fiscal arrangement will come
into effect in January 2002, many Acehnese remain skeptical of
its effectiveness to solve the Aceh question.

Legislator Ghazali Abbas recently pointed out that the
autonomy policy was drafted to ensure that Aceh would be free to
elect their own leaders and, with its own security personnel, to
manage their security and legal affairs in the region. The
finished legal products, however, was one that would keep power
and control deeply entrenched in the hands of the power brokers
in Jakarta.

Besides, activists say, the new autonomy policy is by no means
a solution to the Aceh conflict. "If GAM rejects the policy, it
does not automatically give the government authority to
immediately undertake repression," said Munir of an Indonesian
human rights organization, Kontras, recently, in response to
chief political minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's promise to no
longer tolerate separatism in Aceh, especially after they
rejected the autonomy policy.

In fact, many questions persist as the year 2001 draws to an
end. Why, if the military really wants peace to prevail in Aceh,
has it established a command structure, the Kolakops, that
resembles the abolished military operation, DOM and which caused
even more deaths and human rights atrocities? Why has it planned
to establish a special command for Aceh when more than 91 percent
of Acehnese in Banda Aceh (according to a 1998 survey by the
University of Indonesia's School of Social Sciences) believe that
the Indonesian Military too often resorts to undue violence when
facing a problem?

Why has Aceh accepted as its governor Abdullah Puteh of
Golkar, a party that was also responsible for the introduction of
the deadly operations in the late 1980s? Puteh was elected
despite the reported breakdown of civilian bureaucracy in parts
of the region. Why have no serious attempts been taken to ensure
that perpetrators of rights abuses in the region be held
accountable?

As in any cycle where one end needs to meet the other in order
to exist as a cycle, each of the "warring parties" in Aceh needs
the other's continued existence. It does not matter who initiates
each violent incident, the other side just retaliates. If
independence groups, for instance, hit the government forces or
their assets, the security authorities merely hit back with an
even deadlier action, and the Acehnese again strike back with
equal ferocity. Each violent incident reaffirms the existence of
the perpetrators, and increases their capacity to beget more
violence. The losers are always the weak and the defenseless.

A pebble inside one's shoe irritates one, but if one allows
that pebble to be there long enough one develops a kind of
resistance and one's skin gets tougher where the pebble creates
the friction. Such is the relation, perhaps, between the
Indonesian security authorities and the majority of Acehnese. The
military authorities may indeed be irritated by GAM because the
movement represents domestic instability, but the latter's
presence also serves many purposes and interests for the military
and police.