HDC seeks government protection for JSC members

Tiarma Siboro and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Henry Dunant Centre (HDC) has asked the Indonesian government to provide security for members of the Joint Security Committee (JSC) stationed throughout the troubled province of Aceh.

HDC Spokesman David Gorman told The Jakarta Post on Saturday that his office had started discussing security arrangements for JSC members with the government on March 13.

"We've discussed how to protect monitors in the field, how to evacuate them (if they were attacked) and how it is to be implemented," Gorman told the Post by phone on Saturday.

HDC is the Swiss-based non-governmental organization that brokered the peace agreement between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) on Dec. 9, 2002, in which both parties agreed to cease all hostilities in the country's westernmost province.

HDC, according to Gorman, has left it to the government to decide which party would be responsible for the safety of JSC members in Aceh.

"It could be the police, or both the police and the military. But we do not intend to ask for a multinational force," he said.

JSC is the committee in charge of monitoring the implementation of the Dec. 9 peace agreement, its members consisting of 50 representatives each from the Indonesian Military (TNI), GAM and the HDC, who are mostly international monitors from Thailand and the Philippines.

Mobs attacked a JSC office in the East Aceh town of Langsa on Thursday after an unfounded report suggested that GAM had taken a man hostage and was demanding a ransom of Rp 70 million (US$8,000).

The attack was the second to occur in 10 days. Earlier, dozens of people attacked a JSC office in the Central Aceh town of Takengon over disappointment with the committee's partiality. Three JSC members were injured in the incident, including representatives of both TNI and GAM.

TNI chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto asked JSC earlier to formulate a standard operating procedure in a bid to optimize their tasks and activities in the strife-torn province of Aceh.

Meanwhile, TNI spokesman Maj. Gen. Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin said on Saturday that the military was supposed to be excluded from security efforts in Aceh in a bid to maintain their neutrality.

"It is the JSC that needs a security arrangement to help them cope with difficulties in carrying out their duties in Aceh. If JSC requests a security arrangement, it must do so with the Indonesian government, instead of asking for foreign assistance or multinational troops, because Aceh is part of Indonesia as a sovereign country," Sjafrie told the Post on Saturday.