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.