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 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.