Military involved in Aceh's Takengon incident: Kontras

Military involved in Aceh's Takengon incident: Kontras

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A fact-finding team of the Commission for Missing Persons and
Victims of Violence (Kontras) have discovered that the local
military was allegedly involved in the recent attack on the
office of the Aceh peace monitoring team in Takengon, Central
Aceh.

The military, however, denied the allegation and described the
Kontras report as "absolute rubbish".

According to the team's report, released to the press in Banda
Aceh on Friday, some Army soldiers as well as trained militiamen
were among the angry mob who launched the attack on the
monitoring team's office.

The monitoring team is part of the Joint Security Committee
(JSC), a tripartite body supervising the implementation of the
cessation of hostilities agreement signed by the Indonesian
government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Geneva on Dec. 9,
2002, to end the 26-year conflict.

According to the report, the local military had prepared some
500 militiamen, several of whom were believed to be members of
the Army's Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad), in Bukit regency
of Takengon, Central Aceh, around 8:30 a.m., and transported them
under security escort to join some 2,500 civilians from Bandar
district in the Buntul Kubu area.

"Thousands of civilians, along with the militiamen and
soldiers, staged a protest in front the JSC office while yelling
for the dissolution of the Committee, which they accused of
unfairness in handling their complaints on GAM's violations of
the peace agreement.

"Four JSC members -- one from Indonesia, one from Thailand and
two from GAM -- tried to negotiate with the angry mob and held a
dialog at Meusara Alun field in Blang Kolak, one kilometer from
the JSC office. JSC members, at the time, were being guarded by
five TNI soldiers from Kostrad's 431 battalion and dozens of
Mobile Brigade personnel," the report said.

The dialog turned violent when protesters attacked the JSC
members and torched a car belonging to the JSC, the report said.

"In efforts to stop the violence, several soldiers fired
warning shots while giving a signal to protesters to go on with
their action. A police personnel even drove the protesters closer
to the building and JSC members," the report said.

A Thai member of the monitoring team was injured, the GAM flag
was burned and a JSC car was torched.

The situation remained tense until the angry mob dispersed at
around 14:00 p.m.

According to the report, some 400 of 3,000 protesters were
militiamen who had been trained and armed by the military. They
were living in the villages of Pondok Kresek and Pondok Sayur in
Bukit regency, and the villages of Pondok Gajah and Pondok Baru
in Bandar regency, all in Central Aceh, the report said.

GAM has accused militiamen and the local military of being
behind the violent protest.

Several witnesses said that militiamen were actually
responsible for the incident, including the attack on the
monitoring team's members. The report also said that a day before
the incident, militiamen had intimidated the locals to join the
protest, otherwise they would be blacklisted as GAM supporters.

Central Aceh is one of several regencies which have proposed
the formation of a new province to prevent the whole province
from being influenced by the separatism issue.

Meanwhile, Aceh military spokesman Lt. Col. Firdaus Komarno
described the Kontras report as "absolute rubbish."

"The Indonesian Military did not engineer that incident. The
accusation of a military-trained militia is nonsense. It is
untrue," Komarno said.

He blamed the attack on "an accumulation" of disappointment by
local residents over continuing extortion by GAM.

"But if the public want to fight GAM...should we stop them?"
the military spokesman said.

Separately, Komarno said residents have found the severely
tortured bodies of two men who were abducted near Takengon hours
after the office attack.

Komarno said that, based on witnesses and preliminary
investigations, GAM was responsible for the abduction. Some
witnesses even saw the abductors taking turns raping one of the
men's wives, he said.

GAM could not immediately be reached for comment.

An estimated 10,000 people have been killed in the 26-year
conflict in the province on the northern tip of Sumatra island.

The number of killings has fallen greatly since the peace
pact, the first to be monitored by foreign observers, came into
force.

In Jakarta, 54 Aceh clerics called on the Indonesian
government to stick to the peace accord and support the Henry
Dunant Centre in facilitating peace in the province.

They also warned of a possible breakdown of the peace accord,
since both the military and GAM had misinterpreted it in favor of
their own interests.