Medan-Meulaboh paved with illegal charges

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post/Meulaboh

The bus is full and the passengers sigh as it grinds to a halt, barely half a kilometer from the last stop. The driver gets out from the vehicle and approaches a man in uniform, to whom he passes two Rp 1,000 bills.

The men at these security posts do not seem to be particularly busy securing anything -- they are either smoking, checking pimples in the mirror or reading the paper -- but their rifles are on the ready.

At one of the posts, a man wearing a police's Mobile Brigade (Brimob) uniform struts up to a minivan, trying to look important but unable to hide the purpose of his "security check".

Other men standing around the post bark at the driver, "A thousand more!".

The bus plying the Medan-Meulaboh route, which takes some 15 hours, has passed dozens of posts since leaving Medan, and will face a dozen more before reaching the West Aceh town.

One or two of the soldiers or police on guard are less forward -- they have young Acehnese men scramble to the minivan to take the driver's money, while others ask "Any newspapers?", knowing full well that the driver has run out of newspapers and can only offer cash. A few more posts even demand Rp 20,000 for a sticker that says they provide an escort -- which they don't.

And in the minivan, a mother with a crying baby asks her husband, "When will we ever arrive? We'll miss the connecting bus."

The young family was bound for their devastated hometown on Tuesday, where the baby's grandparents were eagerly awaiting his arrival.

"In the first 15 days, there was no aid and we were very worried about the delivery," said the woman's husband, Hazar.

Along the busy route from Medan to Meulaboh, a town on the west coast of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam -- which was among the worst hit by the tsunamis -- there are at least 198 posts.

Motorists and passengers have learned that you have to pay at every post except those manned by local police precincts (Polsek) or the elite military troops, the Raiders.

"They don't take money," says a passenger, as the driver hands over the latest edition of a racy tabloid from Medan.

Local businesspeople have taken all the pungli (illegal levies) along this route into account, "That's why we pay so much for everything," says Hazar (one name).

One wonders whether, if everyone protested, there would be a stop to this chronic extortion. The posts display their insignia and paintings and graffiti that shamelessly tell everyone where they are from -- Brimob Metro Jaya (Jakarta), Riau, or platoons from Bengkulu, Yogyakarta and Central Java.

Most of the painted slogans are along the lines of "To protect and to serve."

"We're ready to take your money," sneers one passenger at a post that offers the words, "We're ready to serve".

"People do protest and it stops a bit -- but if the media keeps going on about it, then people will eventually turn on the press," she said.

Locals are thankful at least that vehicles are no longer stopped for ID checks, or worse -- beatings have been reported.

And, in the early days, Rp 2,000 from each driver was far from enough -- there were demands for alcohol, for instance.

The security officers' supervisors have not had much luck improving the situation -- while the guards change every few months, their habits are the same.

The illegal levies along the road reflect only a small part of the widespread corruption in Aceh.

Wiping out corruption, the International Crisis Group once noted, is an opportunity to win over the Acehnese, which if used well, would be much more effective than the military approach against the rebels.

Apart from the criminal charges brought against Aceh's suspended governor Abdullah Puteh, little else is visible in regards to government action or political will to stop corruption.

What is more visible -- aside from the illegal levies -- one passenger points out is "those birds." Cages of attractive birds decorate some of the Brimob posts. The officers allegedly "visited" the locals and "asked" for their birds.

"It's difficult for us," the passenger said, "we've raised them from when they were born".

A similar story has been related of the ships of troops departing the former conflict areas of Ambon and East Timor being filled with the sound of birds -- those "requested" from locals.

One way out for the locals is to report the various cases of extortion to the posts' supervisors, which does work sometimes.

But another way out, albeit temporary, is humor. "Imagine all the buses passing here in a day," says one stall owner. "At the end of their terms, they'd have lots and lots of celengan (piggy banks) to break open!"