Autonomy policy no solution to Aceh conflict

Santi WE Soekanto The Jakarta Post Jakarta

Another year is whizzing by leaving Aceh with wounds gaping and questions unanswered. Hardly a day in 2001 has gone without murders being committed in the restive region -- the Indonesian Red Cross workers in Aceh recently testified that over the past year at least 1,500 people have been killed while hundreds of others would bear the marks of violence permanently.

Even the Red Cross's figure has been described as conservative because another estimate 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 is sacred enough to prevent both the security personnel and the armed guerrillas 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 separatist guerrillas but mostly the innocent unarmed civilians.

The year opened for Aceh with an agreement between the government and the separatists the cease violence. The accord was soon broken and lawlessness prevailed. The less of thousands of lives has continued without legal redress ever having been initiated.

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 o0f a state-owned plantation company, PT Perkebunan I Langsa, in East Aceh district and killed three workers. On Feb. 25, another unidentified mob attacked and killed a married could in the same region, before the eyes of their four small children.

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 yet another unidentified mob of assailants. The best that the local police could do was promise to hunt down the perpetrators. Also in March, armed contacts between the security authorities and separatist guerrillas in the eastern coast of Aceh claimed 11 lives.

On March 20, the helicopter carrying the then Minister of Energy and Mining Purnomo Yusgiantoro on his visit to the American oil company ExxonMobil compound was shot at. The direct result of the incident that was blamed on the separatist guerrillas was Jakarta's declaration to impose a "limited military operation" in the region, to the consternation of many.

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 after saying his Maghrib (dusk) prayer. "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 explosion in front of the house of the ACeh Police deputy chief. Mid-June, armed clashes between security personnel and 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 razed to the ground. The total number of people killed within ten days of violence neared 45.

Another carnage took place in June with the finding of 31 bodies in Central Aceh by the Indonesian red Cross workers. This followed the discovery of 27 corpses following armed contacts between the military and the separatists. "Only six of the bodies could be identified, while the rest were badly disfigured that identification was not possible," said one worker.

More deaths took place in July and August, when two children by the ages of 8 and 10 were tortured and killed by a fishpond in Neuheun village off Banda Aceh. Riska and Hafiz El Arif were both 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 with corpses," said Dr. Munawir at a local village health clinic.

In September, local legislator Zaini Sulaiman was shot to0 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 killing on the separatists, who denied responsibility and told the police they'd 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.

Numbing statistics aside, one murder sent shockwaves across Aceh and Indonesia. Dayan Dawood, the rector 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 Prof. Safwan Idris, the rector of the Ar-Raniry State Institute of Islamic Studies, which remains unsolved until now.

Dawood's death caused 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, pointing that "the late Dawood was a teacher, not a politician" and that his assailants could not been right in their mind to kill him.

The security authorities readily lay the blame on GAM, who again denied the accusation. An element of surprise was lent by the then controversial Ambassador of the United States to Indonesia Robert S. Gelbard who told the press immediately afterward he was shocked by the murder of Dawood who he knew.

"Another death in Aceh today would be one to many," said Gelbard, who visited the region on a mission, re-affirming Washington's support for the Unitary States of Indonesian and its opposition to the separatist movement.

Less than two weeks later, another death, this time that of a man clad in a military fatigue, was reported in Bireuen, followed by the massacre of a family in Pidie district. Diana, 60, Ambiah, 35, and Fajar, 2.5-year-old, were hacked to death in the early morning 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.

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

When one reads clippings of news on Aceh this year, one soon shifts being horrified to feeling tired and numb because of the rapidity with which the violence took place. But one also gets to 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 Indonesian integrity (in fact, the Indonesian Military is currently basking in the renewed support of the United States and Britain as evidenced in 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 have been led to believe that the abolition in 1998 by then 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 applying the law on violators.

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 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 have thought that the introduction of the special autonomy for the region, which accordingly is now called Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, would appease the pain of the Acehnese and satisfy their demands for a greater say on their fate. But it has not. Though the region is now literally called "the kingdom of peace and prosperity," and a new fiscal arrangement would be effective in January 2002, many Acehnese remain skeptic 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 holders 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 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, only questions remain 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 and caused more victims to fall? 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 research by the University of Indonesia's School of Social Sciences) identify the Indonesian Military as a force that 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 19802? Puteh was elected despite the reported breakdown of civilian bureaucracy in parts of the region. Why has 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 circle, each of the "warring parties" in Aceh needs the other to continue to exist. t does not matter whether the security authorities or the separatists who now start the violence, the other side would soon follow suit. If the rebels started and caused damage, the security authorities would respond with an even deadlier action, to which the separatists would 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 lets that pebble to be the indefinitely one develops a kind of resistance and one's skin gets tougher with each frictin. Such is the relation between the Indonesian security authorities and GAM, may be. The military authorities may indeed be more than irritated by GAM because the separatist movement represents domestic instability, but the latter's presence also serves many purposes and interests of the military and police.