DPR team denies visiting mass grave

JAKARTA (JP): Military legislator Lt. Gen. Hari Sabarno denied yesterday that a House of Representatives (DPR) fact-finding team had visited a site in Aceh, locally known as Skulls Hill, reported to have been a torture chamber and mass grave used by the Armed Forces during its operations there.

Antara said Hari, who led the team in a recent visit to some regencies in the westernmost province, told Edmund McWilliams, a political counsellor of the United States Embassy yesterday that the team had not visited the Skulls Hill site.

"We did visit a place suspected to be a mass grave, but we found only one grave with three victims of the military operations. (The victims) were identified as members of the security disturbance group (GPK)," he said.

The Armed Forces stepped up security operations in the province during the early 1990s in response to increased activity by various armed groups -- collectively termed as GPK by the military -- struggling for an independent Aceh.

He said the place which locals had called a torture chamber was actually a small building used by the Army's Special Force (Kopassus) as its local headquarters. "There were rooms there which served as sleeping quarters for the (Kopassus) soldiers," he said.

Hari said his team's visit was not intended to verify media reports about the number of victims from military operations. "We went there to see whether there were any victims of the GPK and the military," he said.

He admitted that the military was guilty of human rights violations in the area during 1990 and 1991. He pointed out that military personnel had interfered in various spheres of life, including personal feuds and land disputes, and had manipulated the existing legal system.

Responding to reports of the disappearance of thousands of Acehnese during military operations in the province, Hari said further attempts to clarify the reports were still needed.

He acknowledged, though, that the military operations had disrupted the lives of the Acehnese.

He said armed rebels were still active in Aceh, though their operations had slowed down.

The DPR team will prepare a report on its visit to Aceh, and submit its recommendations to the government. He pointed out, however, that Aceh was never officially declared a military operations area.

"If it had been (declared), martial law would have been in effect there," he said.

Reports

Several publications have dedicated large amounts of space on human rights violations allegedly committed by military units, including Kopassus, in Aceh during the early 1990s. Reported atrocities include abductions, rapes, torture and executions.

The articles also described momentary elation by some over the DPR fact-finding team's visit, followed by disappointment when Hari remarked that the visit was not meant for legal or judicial reasons, but for security purposes.

The weekly D&R said 1,654 people had been reported missing in Aceh between 1989 and 1998.

The weekly Ummat put the number at 1,635.

The two publications cited similar tales of horror recounted by survivors or relatives of the victims of the military operations. Locals, for instance, mentioned that Skulls Hill in Jambo Aye, North Aceh, was the mass grave of some 300 bodies.

They also named Rumah Geudong in Aceh Pidie as a torture chamber. Tengku Abdurrahman, a survivor, was quoted by D&R as saying that he was abducted by military personnel on suspicion of possessing illegal weapons.

He said he was made to strip and was beaten for three days, given electric shocks on his genitals and ordered to dig a hole, where he was forced to get in to be stomped on repeatedly on the abdomen.

A woman, identified only as SH, 32, described how she was raped by a soldier in Bandar Dua district in Pidie regency.

When she realized she had become pregnant, the soldier's superior gave her Rp 500,000 and told her not to make trouble. The baby is now 14 months old.

Another woman claimed to have been gang-raped by three soldiers. Yet another woman told of how her hand was broken by soldiers as her husband and four children were executed.

Nyak Ubit and Aminah Ali, residents of Mutiara district, said their husbands had been picked up by soldiers last March and had yet to return.

The tabloid Adil reported about a woman who was not only tortured for her suspected involvement in the separatist movement, but was also made to witness her father electrocuted and another woman stabbed with a stick in her genitals.

Survivors and victims' relatives have indicated that the atrocities were committed by members of Kopassus. When Hari Sabarno asked several of them how they knew it was Kopassus personnel who had committed the rights violations, the residents were quoted by D&R as saying: "We know them well."

On July 31, student Muhammad Nur, a member of the Aceh Students for Reform (KARMA), told the Indonesian Legal Aid office in Jakarta of a 1990 execution that he had witnessed in Pidie. He said a group of soldiers wearing red headbands, carrying rifles tied with red cloths, forced adult villagers to form a circle around a man and a woman about to be executed.

The man was then shot at point blank range, followed by the woman who was made to strip first.

"I saw that with my own eyes," Nur said as quoted by Adil. (swe)