Javanese pessimistic about return to Aceh

Javanese pessimistic about return to Aceh

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Medan

Syaimin, 59, still feels he is the most unfortunate man in the
world. He lost almost everything he had to the Acehnese rebels:
his wife, six of their eight children, his home and his coffee
plantation in North Aceh.

Of Javanese descent but born in Langkat, North Sumatra,
Syaimin now lives alone in a squalid refugee camp outside of
Medan. His two remaining sons have moved to Riau to begin a new
life.

"I have nobody, I have nothing now. Sometimes, I wanted to
commit suicide," Syaimin said, recalling the horrid events of
March 23, 2001, when suspected Acehnese rebels came to his home
in Raunya village, Bireun Bayeun district, North Aceh in search
of Javanese.

He said his children were watching television, while he and
his wife had gone to bed when the suspected rebels came. The men,
equipped with guns and machetes, ordered all of them to leave the
village at once.

Most of them refused and argued that they were born there. The
rebels then reportedly began killing them one by one.

"One by one, my wife and children were executed in front of
me. Wagio, Machmud, Suroso, Boiman, Sugimin, and Mamek, my
youngest son. I can no longer stand this," he said.

He said his wife was killed for trying to protect their
children who declined to leave since they were all born in the
village.

Hundreds of Javanese and Batak families who have fled Aceh for
similar reasons are still occupying refugee camps and village
buildings in Langkat and Deli Serdang regencies.

They have come from East, North and Central Aceh and Aceh
Besar, four regencies which have been the stronghold of the
separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

Soeratmin, 54, who is now living in a refugee camp in Kuala
Begumit, Sei Dendang, Stabat, some 50 kilometers north of Medan,
said he and his six-member family took refuge on the border area
in early August after his house was burned down by unidentified
people.

"At the beginning, we refused to leave the village, but after
a series of intimidations that reached its peak on the burning of
our house, and the mysterious killing of migrant people, we
decided to leave the province," he said.

"It was very difficult for us to leave our houses and hundreds
of hectares of coffee trees which had been ready for harvests,"
Soeratmin, a refugee from Timang Gajah in Central Aceh, said.

Sumiran, 30, a father of three small children in Perlak, East
Aceh, said he and his family left their home village on Feb. 20,
2001 after intimidation from rebels, including the burning of
migrants' houses.

"I left with my family after I was intimidated by six
unidentified armed men on the bank of a river near my village.
The men threatened to kill me and my relatives if we refused to
leave the province," he said.

Tengku Amri bin Abdul Wahab, field commander of GAM's military
wing, said GAM had never driven migrant people out of the
province because such an action was against humanity and Islamic
teaching.

He noted that many Javanese and Batak people had joined GAM
and several of his bodyguards were Javanese.

Amri conceded that GAM had suggested that migrant people flee
the mounting tension in Aceh and come back to the province when
the situation had returned to normal.

But Javanese refugees like Sumiran were pessimistic about
their possible return to Aceh.

Sumiran said East Aceh regent Ajeman who visited the refugee
camp late last month, told the refugees not to go back to their
villages in the regency until the situation returned to normal.

"We are pessimistic about returning as the tension in the
province is mounting," he said.

Sumiran, who was born in Perlak in 1978 and married an
Acehnese woman, said he was forced to divorce his wife but
succeeded in bringing her and their children out of the province.

"After I listened to their dialect, I thought the rebels were
Acehnese, but they were armed with guns similar to the ones used
by the Indonesian Military. They also had cellular phones. The
security forces would have difficulties to detect these rebels
because they live in remote jungles and use a hit-and-run
defense," he said.

Muchlas Sumarto, who along with his Acehnese wife Juhariyah
and their four children, has lived in the Tuntungan low-cost
housing compound, outside Medan, for two and a half years, said
he left his village in Meunye Cut Bahagia Village in Kuta Makmur
Subdistrict, North Aceh, following a GAM meeting in the village
in 1999.

"During the meeting presided over by Ibrahim Saleh, a GAM
commander in North Aceh, all migrant people, especially Javanese,
were ordered to leave the village because in their next move to
Aceh's independence, the province will not have any Javanese
people who, they claim, have occupied the Acehnese land
illegally," he recalled.

Before the meeting, he said, all migrant people in the village
were directed to join the so-called People's Gathering in Banda
Aceh to demand a self-determination referendum for the province.

Muchlas, whose younger brother was killed by suspected GAM
rebels, including his brother-in-law after refusing to leave
their village, was also pessimistic about the possibility of her
family returning to Aceh since their house had been burned down
and their four-hectare farm had been given to Acehnese people, as
ordered by GAM he claimed.

"So far, my family has been staying in a vacant house
belonging to a Batak Karo family. We are allowed to stay here for
two and half years. I have worked as a construction worker and my
wife has worked as temporary worker in farming near the housing
complex, to support our six-member family," he said.

Sido, of Acehnese descent, said he and his family joined the
migrant people to leave the province after opposing the
separatist movement's struggle he considered untrue.

"I don't believe in GAM which has exerted violence and
extorted villagers to finance their struggle and the rebellion
will end in the immediate future following the deployment of
hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the province," he said.

GAM is fighting for an independent state in Aceh, while other
Acehnese are pushing for a referendum on independence. During the
last 30 years under Soeharto's transmigration program, thousands
of Javanese families relocated to Aceh and were given farm land
and housing which has created resentment. Both the GAM and
Indonesian military are accused of human rights violations with
several question marks regarding which side was responsible on
any given occasion. Both sides have allegedly posed as the other
while committing atrocities over the last twenty years.