Indonesia tells U.S. senators to mind own business

Indonesia tells U.S. senators to mind own business

Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta

The government told United States senators on Sunday to mind
their own business and not to interfere in Indonesia's internal
affairs.

Twenty U.S. senators sent a letter to UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan last week urging the latter to appoint a special envoy
to monitor and report on the situation in Papua and Aceh where
troops are fighting against secessionist movements.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Marty Natalegawa said on
Sunday that U.S. lawmakers should focus on their own domestic
problems.

"Thanks for the concern, but I think they have to focus on
their own internal affairs," Marty told The Jakarta Post on
Sunday.

The senators had suggested the UN assign a special envoy to
monitor and recommend steps the UN Security Council and its
General Assembly might pursue "to end the troubling and deadly
conflicts that continue to engulf these regions".

They argued that the international community has remained
silent for too long over the continued conflict in Aceh and Papua
where the scale of human rights violations warrant special
attention.

"In Aceh, the year-long period of martial law that ended in
May with the imposition of a civil emergency has had an
extraordinary human cost. While it is impossible to verify the
precise number of extra-judicial incarcerations and killings,
accounts suggest that more than 2,000 people have been killed in
the past year, the majority of whom have been civilians," the
senators said in their letter.

They cited a recent report by the National Commission on Human
Rights (Komnas HAM) which said that even the Aceh martial court
failed to prove whether the unarmed civilians killed, tortured,
raped and sexually abused were GAM members.

"Komnas HAM alleged that most violations were committed by the
Indonesian security forces, including both high-level political
and military authorities, though some deaths have been attributed
to GAM," they said.

While in Papua, where the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM)
has engaged in a low-level armed struggle for decades, the number
of civilian casualties are inestimable following a military
campaign in the territory, the senators said, citing recent
reports documented by the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence
Against Women and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

Separately, Komnas HAM member Hasballah M. Saad told Indonesia
that any violence could no longer be hidden from international
eyes and that "the country should have anticipated it by taking
stern legal action against violence."

"If we (Indonesia) fail to handle the violence by ourselves,
we cannot prevent international interference," Hasballah said.

He said the Attorney General's Office and other law enforcers
must immediately take the initiative to file cases of rights
abuses in the two provinces, so that Indonesia would not lose
face when the UN assembly asked about the cases.

The UN assigned last year special envoy Malaysian Tansri
Razali Ismail to Myanmar to meet with the country's opposition
leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi who is being held
under house arrest by the Myanmar junta.