Gus Dur and Aceh's 'velvet' protest

Gus Dur and Aceh's 'velvet' protest

By Aboeprijadi Santoso

BANDA ACEH (JP): "If a referendum is allowed in East Timor,
why not in Aceh? That won't be fair." President Abdurrahman "Gus
Dur" Wahid's first response to the mass rally at Great
Baiturrachman Mosque in Banda Aceh on Nov. 8, in which protesters
demanded a referendum, is now displayed on a banner in the Aceh
capital to keep the public reminded of the President's promise.

Any solution to Aceh should consider the show of people power
on Nov. 8 -- the first big meeting, perhaps, since the historic
all Aceh religious scholars conference (PUSA) in 1950. The one-
million-protest rally was peaceful and held virtually without any
help from the authorities, which meant that the student bodies
and non-governmental organizations which organized it could rely
on the society's own resources.

It was a culmination of the rallies all over Aceh and
demonstrated the strength of the civil society vis-a-vis the
state. No security assurance was requested "yet not even one egg
was broken", as one witness put it. The message is clear: the
Acehnese do not need the Army to keep peace at home. After all,
for them, the security apparatus has become synonymous with
insecurity and humiliation.

The self-reliance was also demonstrated at the Dec. 4
province-wide commemoration of the 23rd anniversary of the
founding of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). This, too, proceeded
largely peacefully, contrary to Jakarta's warning of a bloodbath
and despite a few brutal incidents.

The Nov. 8 and Dec. 4 events are potential milestones in what
might become the Acehnese version of, let's say, changes in
Eastern Europe 10 years ago. For, just as the Czech opposition
forces were united in Prague's "Velvet Revolution" after decades
of pain and silence, so the proreferendum rally and the
celebration of GAM in Aceh too mean that something painful has
run deep into the heart of members of the society, which now
unite a great part of Acehnese to peacefully confront the state.

Like it or not, GAM has gained some sympathy. On Dec. 4,
activities in Banda Aceh and other towns were almost dead as the
public observed both the authorities' and GAM's call to keep the
peace and not to raise the flag of GAM. Such public restraint
represented society's respectable efforts to prevent casualty.
For a country deeply traumatized by past terrors, it was a test
of latent anger and frustration. In the countryside, too, no GAM
flag was seen in private yards, but the villagers peacefully
celebrated the day by raising the crescent, star and stripes red
flag along the main roads, on the trees, gates and bridges. Like
the rally, the helmet boycott and the ignoring of traffic lights
on Nov. 8, it was a mass, and massive, expression of protest. The
faces of villagers returning home from the GAM ceremony -- a
mixture of euphoria and worry -- remind one of the sight of East
Timorese on the ballot day last August: joyful, but also fearful
of looming danger.

The refugees crisis provides another example of the intensity
of the Aceh problem. It reveals the depth of the Acehnese'
trauma. First, the few thousand non-Acehnese, who were driven out
of South and West Aceh, were not simply victims of "ethnic
cleansing" or a semblance of it, but demonstrated a political
frustration since these Javanese and other (trans)migrates were
stigmatized as "Anak Anak Soeharto" (Soeharto's children) by the
locals. No one could be certain, though, of the real actors; it
could be GAM, Army elements or provocateurs.

The second type of refugees was the most dramatic. Thousands
of villagers ran simply because they were terrified. Testimonies
from camps in Seulimeum, Beureunuen and Darussalam suggest,
whenever armed soldiers enter villages, hundreds of poor people
will run away. No wonder, however much they suffer, the refugees
refuse any help from the government and rely on dedicated
student-activists and local supports. This crisis too is a highly
political protest at the grass roots level.

At issue, basically, is the accumulation of pain and
humiliation. Once the atrocities became widely known (as they
should), they created an increasing momentum of public fear and
anger. On top of that, many cases -- i.e. the barbaric rapes of
women without any mea culpa and compensation, the torture of
respectable religious scholars and the killings without the
corpses being returned -- symbolize the era of evil and
backwardness, the Jahiliah (i.e. the pre-Prophet Mohammad
civilization), and are particularly painful.

For Acehnese -- both as Muslim and as Acehnese -- such
experiences mean a great humiliation. The public hate is such
that they reserve the strongest Acehnese pejorative word pa'i
(originally meaning "slave", but here used as "bandit") for the
Indonesian Military (TNI) and the Army's Special Force
(Kopassus), which are Apa Suh. As the graffiti at the former
torture camp Rumah Geudong reveals, the title of "the greatest
pa'i" is designated for "the Soeharto-Prabowo regime".

Old wounds remain fresh in Aceh. In March 1993, for example,
some 200 villagers in Jeunib, North Aceh, were forced to help
identify the GPK, which is the Army's term for GAM, meaning
"security disturbance actors", but they said they knew little to
nothing. So they had to lie down on a soccer field and the
soldiers punished them by running over their bodies. The event
left all of them traumatized and many with permanent injuries. As
the method failed, the local commander, Col. Syarwan Hamid, came
later to Baitil Istiqanah Mosque, Teupin Raya, Pidie, and issued,
according to the three witnesses, a strong warning: "Anyone who
helps the GPK, even giving one cigarette, will be killed!"

Worse human rights violations were noted in East Timor. But if
the Timorese could seek spiritual strength in the local church
and call for international support, the Acehnese had to turn to
themselves and "to Allah, God Almighty," as they put it. They had
to build strong determination, self-confidence and solidarity in
their efforts to resist, which, in turn, strengthened both their
religious bond and Acehnese identity. It shaped a new consensus,
enabling the society to support and unite in rally and
celebration, as on Nov. 8 and Dec. 4.

It is this, rather than the small groups of GPK, which
revolutionized the Acehnese political arena in recent years. The
GAM "only" added a new, but significant dimension into the public
consciousness by campaigning on "the historical continuity of
Aceh's independence". This in itself did not necessarily make GAM
popular; the fact, moreover, that its leadership, the Wali
Neugara (head of state) Dr. Chik di Tiro Mohammad Hasan and his
staff, reside abroad (in Sweden and Malaysia) and the lack of
clarity of its strategy and policy (being not supportive of
referendum) has not contributed to its strength. So, although
sympathy may be growing for GAM's ideal of independence, it is
difficult to gauge the extent of its active support at the grass
roots level.

In any case, it was Jakarta's atrocities and humiliation
during its military operation campaign (DOM) from 1989 to 1998
which created and sustained the new momentum. Only five to six
years ago, few Acehnese knew GAM and many hated what they knew of
the GPK, whose actions provoked Army's harsh measures, but once
the cycle of state violence started and the horrors widely
socialized, the pendulum swung swiftly to the pro-independence
camp. Widows (inong balee) who lost husbands at TNI's hand,
proudly joined GAM's Cut Nyak Dien unit. Today, it is a general
consensus here that Aceh should have a referendum. As the key
role shifted from the ulema to the civil movement, i.e. students,
NGO's activists and intellectuals, the demand for a referendum
with independence option becomes inevitable and nonnegotiable.

Time is running short for Gus Dur. Last July, when he planned
a trip to East Timor and Aceh, he told Radio Netherlands, "As a
nationalist, I wish both will remain parts of the Republic, but
as a democrat, I know, I should respect their rights to self-
determination". The tension between the principle of nationalism
and human rights and democracy hinted here, should encourage one
to rethink on our nationalism, and search for a new discourse.

Gus Dur has been consistent on East Timor, but on Aceh, he
says, as president, he has to work with others, including TNI.
Attempts to force a hasty solution by repression, or even limited
martial law, will be very dangerous. With too many atrocities
perpetrated by the Army and firmly kept in the memory of the
Acehnese, TNI has little moral ground left to deal with Aceh. As
TNI only has a few seats (which it was "appointed")in the
legislature, its political weight too should be much reduced. One
wonders, then, why TNI still assumes the same role and moral
position as before, and why Gus Dur should also ask the generals
to decide on Aceh. As Gus Dur implies, Aceh is a big test of
Indonesia's new democracy.

The writer is an Indonesian journalist with Radio Netherlands,
Hilversum. He visited Aceh recently.