Megawati fails to show mother's touch with Aceh

Kornelius Purba, Staff Writer, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, korpur@yahoo.com

The President would hopefully have been greatly moved if she watched the film Some Mother's Son, broadcast by Indosiar TV station last Tuesday night. At least she might stop imitating the "Iron Lady", former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher who, in a brief documentary scene in the film, was shown giving a speech on how the Irish Republican Army (IRA) would be crushed.

After assuming her post in 1979, Thatcher announced her three principles of the "Northern Ireland Solution": isolation, criminalization and demoralization. It meant that IRA members arrested for terrorist acts would be treated as criminals and not as enemy soldiers. Her government refused the demands of IRA captives to be treated as prisoners of war.

The aforementioned movie focuses on the struggles of Kathleen Quigley (starring Helen Mirren) and Annie Higgins (Fionnula Flanagan), in accompanying their dying sons, IRA fighters who go on hunger strikes in prison to demand, among other things, the status of prisoners of war.

Our President could possibly save thousands of lives if she were to compare the sufferings of the mothers of young IRA members in Northern Ireland with the grieving mothers in Aceh who have lost children in the war-torn Aceh. Mothers, and fathers, in positions of power should imagine how they might feel if their own children were among the victims of armed conflict.

"Surely, no mother would allow her son to die," a British official in the movie tells the Irish mothers. Would Megawati readily say "of course"?

There was hope in the beginning of Megawati's rule, of having a president with a woman's touch; a woman might not have let the Acehnese be humiliated again, she might have at least asked soldiers to treat people with dignity. The rebels are basically also the nation's children -- albeit children who have revolted against the central government -- as are the personnel of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and National Police sent into the war.

But no one in power or seeking power would think this way. Some Mother's Son evoked thoughts of atrocities committed by both sides in the Aceh conflict, and in other conflict areas as well.

If she is as heartless as Thatcher appeared to be, of course the President will also treat the rebellious Acehnese as criminals and ignore their fundamental human rights. The impression so far of Megawati and her generals is that they have an obsession to kill the rebels at any cost.

There has been little indication, at least from her public statements, that she is concerned about the fate of thousands of women and children who have had to flee their homes because of the Aceh war, nor with that of the students forced to take their exams in open spaces because their schools were burned down.

Hopefully it is not because she regards the casualties as mere collateral damage worth the price for the sake of the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia, which is perceived as a heritage from her father, first president Sukarno.

According to one of her top aides, the President is highly confident that the military offensive is the only solution to end the rebellion. She is also apparently convinced that she will not fail in Aceh like her four predecessors, even though Soeharto also launched a military operation in 1989, which lasted until just after he resigned in 1998.

The President apparently has not considered giving more room for the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) to maneuver, because according to the law GAM will never have any influence in the province, except through an armed struggle.

Megawati's Cabinet appears strongly united behind her. The soft-speaking Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirayuda apparently was so eager to demonstrate the unity and the determination of the Cabinet to ensure the success of the military operation in Aceh, that he spoke in a rather undiplomatic fashion when he told international agencies and non- governmental organizations to leave the province.

Hassan said any foreign humanitarian assistance for the Acehnese should be channeled to the people through either the Indonesian government or the Indonesian Red Cross. Is he feigning ignorance of the rampant instances of manipulation of humanitarian aid for victims of natural disasters in the country? Financial aid for Acehnese refugees in North Sumatra has been misused and refugees have frequently staged demonstrations to demand their rights, but to no avail.

In announcing the ban on foreign agencies in Aceh, the minister, who is the country's top diplomat, sounded strangely like a high-ranking officer in charge of security, or an Army or police general.

The authorities would do well to remember that one factor that contributed, or was used, to ensure the fall of Abdurrahman Wahid from the presidency in 2001 was his inability to convince the House of Representatives that the US$2 million donation for Aceh from the sultan of Brunei, given to Abdurrahman personally, was aboveboard.

Only time will tell whether Megawati is much more capable than her predecessors in "taming" Aceh. A military victory in Aceh would pave the way to realize her ambition to win next year's presidential election, probably at the cost of the lives of innocent people, and the lives of her soldiers. Military officers will also get big promotions, while some among the rank and file will receive medals for their bravery.

The fate of more than Aceh's population of four million will remain largely ignored. And as for many other Indonesians, the Acehnese could well be living on another continent, given that huge crowds demonstrated their solidarity with the people of Iraq during the Iraq war but there are no huge crowds for the people of Aceh.

However, there are small private groups in Jakarta collecting donations for Acehnese refugees. Such efforts may symbolize only a very small portion of the nation who remembers that the Acehnese are fellow brothers and sisters.