GAM rejects Tokyo meeting

Nani Farida and Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh/Jakarta

The effort to bring peace back to Aceh faces another stiff test after the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebel group threatened to boycott a Joint Council meeting if it went ahead in Tokyo as planned.

GAM senior envoy to the Joint Security Committee (JSC) Sofyan Ibrahim Tiba insisted on Monday that the meeting be held in Geneva, saying Switzerland was known to be a neutral country.

"We just want the meeting to be held in Geneva. Why should we go to another country?" Sofyan said.

He denied the Indonesian government's claim that GAM had agreed to Tokyo as the venue for the crucial meeting scheduled for Friday, which will determine the future of the dialog.

Sofyan emphasized that the negotiations would not revise the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA), but simply discuss why the peace zones and the demilitarization process had failed to work.

Due to the disagreement, the Henry Dunant Centre (HDC), which has been facilitating the peace talks, is seeking a new venue for the Joint Council meeting.

HDC project manager David Gorman said that he had discussed the plan to hold the meeting with the warring sides.

"They agreed on, for example, the date and the agenda to be discussed, but at this moment, we have no agreement on the location of the meeting," David told The Jakarta Post in Banda Aceh on Monday.

Meanwhile, escalating tension in the province has seriously affected the daily activities of local people. The latest fatality was a student Mayasari, 18, who suffered gunshot wounds to the head.

Local military spokesman Lt. Col. Firdaus Komarno said he had received a report on the finding of a body in the village of Manyang Cut, Pidie, 150 kilometers east of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.

Nearby residents said that they had heard gunshots at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday. But they were too afraid to go outside and found the dead body the next morning.

Commenting on the efforts to salvage the peace deal, M.M. Billah of the National Commission on Human Rights suggested on Monday a reshuffle in the membership of the JSC, arguing that representatives of Acehnese civilians should be included, whom he said knew the situation on the ground better.

"The presence of Acehnese civilians would help both the government and GAM to heed the real aspirations of the silent majority. If these civilians do not have a forum for articulating their views, who will speak for them?" Billah told a press conference at his office.

The tripartite monitoring team comprises 50 representatives each from Indonesia, GAM, and HDC.

The differences of opinion between the government and GAM in their interpretations of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement have been deepening, with GAM claiming that special autonomy serves as the starting point for the all-inclusive dialog, whereas the government insists that special autonomy is the last word.

"It will be impossible for the two warring groups to meet half way if the silent majority is ignored in the peace talks," Billah said.

The rights body also supported a peaceful solution in the province through dialog, and urged the government to refrain from using military force.

The HDC, a Swiss-based non-governmental organization, has been facing challenges in its efforts to bridge the differences between Jakarta and GAM in the form of physical threats and mob attacks over what the mobs say is "the JSC's failure to stop GAM from extorting, kidnapping and terrorizing civilians."

Earlier in the day, National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said the separatist movement had been violating Articles 106 to 110 of the Criminal Law by organizing a secessionist movement in the country.

Asked whether a military operation was the answer to quelling separatism in Aceh, Da'i declined to comment but stressed that "since GAM fights with guns, we have to crush them in the same way."

Da'i said that in line with the demilitarization process as stipulated in the COHA, the duties of the police's elite Mobile Brigade (Brimob) troopers stationed in the province had already been changed from those of combatants to those of a security restoration unit dealing with law and order.

"But should the planned Joint Council meeting on April 25 result in the need for them to go on the offensive again, then they will do so," Da'i said on the sidelines of a three-day working meeting at National Police Headquarters in South Jakarta.