Medan-Meulaboh paved with illegal charges

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!"