Megawati fails to show mother's touch with Aceh

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.