House grills military top brass over Aceh

JAKARTA (JP): Coordinating Minister for Political Affairs and Security Gen. Wiranto and top military officials were questioned over allegations of human rights abuses in the restive province of Aceh during an investigation by a special House of Representatives committee on Thursday.

Gen. Wiranto, the former Indonesian Military (TNI) chief, denied the military had engineered unrest in the province as a pretext to deploy troops to crush separatist rebels there.

"It is entirely untrue ... When I was the commander of the TNI, I was clean of engineering something as that," Wiranto replied when asked by the special House committee on Aceh.

The province has been wracked by violence after a decade of strong military control was implemented to crush separatist rebels.

An independent inquiry accused military leaders on Tuesday of ordering human rights violations in the province which were tantamount to "war crimes".

The House committee has been holding sessions all week, summoning top officials and the National Commission on Human Rights to present testimony on the troubled province.

The committee announced on Tuesday that it would also summon former defense minister Gen. (ret.) L.B. Moerdani and Armed Forces chiefs Try Sutrisno and Feisal Tanjung.

Accompanying Gen. Wiranto to the 50-member House committee on Thursday were National Police chief Gen. Roesmanhadi, TNI chief Adm. Widodo Adi Sucipto and defense minister Juwono Sudarsono. Also present were Attorney General Marzuki Darusman and State Minister of Human Rights Affairs Hasballah M. Saad.

Several committee members emotionally queried Gen. Wiranto and other military officers on the military's involvement in the province.

Legislator Zulfan Lindan of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle laid suspicion of engineering the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) threat.

He questioned why journalists often had access to interview GAM members while the military supposedly had trouble tracking them down.

Another legislator, Pramono, also accused the military of contriving the whole affair.

Both Gen. Wiranto and Adm. Widodo contended that in recent months the military had adopted a defensive stance rather than pursuing rebels and that the military were refraining from house to house searches in villages since in the past the practice had triggered a mass exodus.

Defending the military's actions, Gen. Wiranto said there could have been false information distributed or might have been indisciplined steps taken by soldiers on the ground.

He contended that the military had taken steps to bring these violators to court, reiterating once again that 151 cases had been brought to court.

"It could be that the violations by the soldiers were done without the knowledge of their commander," Wiranto said.

The independent investigation said on Tuesday that it documented 5,000 cases of human rights abuses in Aceh, including cases of summary executions, torture, rape and abductions.

Troops

Adm. Widodo told the hearing that no more troops would be sent to Aceh. "The TNI will not add any more troops even though the conditions are still unsafe for troops securing (government) facilities and their families," he said.

He claimed that there were only 814 army troops, 600 marines and a platoon of the Air Force's special force (Paskhas) now in Aceh.

Meanwhile, Roesmanhadi said police, who were responsible for security in the province, had just sent two police battalions there, increasing the number on the ground to more than 11,000.

He defended the decision saying that the two battalions were necessary to anticipate mounting tension ahead of the 23rd anniversary of GAM on Dec. 4.

"We predict that there will be a massive mobilization of people, the removal of Indonesian flags and attacks on military and police posts and state projects," Roesmanhadi said.

Separately, former Lilawangsa commander overseeing volatile regencies in Aceh Lt. Gen. (ret) Syarwan Hamid said on Thursday that he was ready to face a tribunal to account for his alleged involvement in past violence in Aceh.

"I am ready to face the trial as long as it is not set up only to merely satisfy public opinion," Syarwan said on the sidelines of a discussion on federalism here.

The state-funded independent inquiry into the violence in Aceh disclosed earlier this week that Syarwan was among top military officials who were directly or indirectly involved in alleged human rights abuses in Aceh.

Syarwan said, however, that what he did in Aceh was only "carrying out orders".

"As a soldier, I received orders to resolve the insurgency in Aceh ... There was no order to kill or rape innocent people," he said.

Meanwhile, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Sudrajat said the military would support a trial of its members who were accused of rights abuses in Aceh as long as the trial was not "a political show".

He called on the public to treat the accused soldiers fairly as they were only carrying out orders.

"We do as what we are ordered to do, the (military operation in Aceh) was the government's decision at that time," he added. (04/byg)