Military reports more deaths of civilian in NAD province

Military reports more deaths of civilian in NAD province

Agence-France Presse, Banda Aceh/Jakarta

The Indonesian military (TNI) reported on Thursday that 14 people
died in the war-torn Aceh province this week, seven of them were
villagers massacred by separatist rebels.

More than 20 members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) shot dead
the seven residents of Gunung Semelit village in Central Aceh on
Tuesday, said spokesman of the Aceh military operation, Lt. Col.
Ahmad Yani Basuki.

He said the rebels seized the villagers' ID cards and fled to
a nearby mountainous area. GAM denied the report.

"It is impossible that the shooting was carried out by us,
because none of our troops were operating in the village on that
day and we have no reason to shoot innocent villagers," spokesman
Sofyan Daud told AFP in Jakarta by phone.

Yani also said residents found the bodies of a husband and
wife bearing gunshot and knife wounds at Peureulak in East Aceh
on Wednesday.

A male corpse bearing severe torture marks was found floating
on a river in Bireuen district the same day.

Troops on Wednesday shot dead a rebel at Lhoksukon in North
Aceh and gunned down another one in the Paya Udang area of Aceh
Tamiang district, Yani said.

Also on Wednesday, soldiers shot dead a rebel and confiscated
an automatic rifle during a gunfight in the Kluet Utara area of
South Aceh. And soldiers also found the body of a rebel, believed
to have died of malaria in the Samahani area of Aceh Besar
district on the same day.

The spokesman said soldiers also captured seven suspected
rebels during three separate operations on Wednesday.

On May 19, the government launched a massive military
operation to crush the guerrillas, who have been fighting since
1976 for independence for the energy-rich province.

The military said Tuesday that at least 752 rebels had been
killed and more than 1,700 had been arrested or had surrendered
since the start of the operation. Thirteen police and 46 soldiers
have died.

In a related development, GAM has urged the Malaysian
government to release more than 200 Acehnese asylum-seekers.

Ishak Daud said Malaysia should not repatriate them like the
group of Acehnese repatriated there in 1998.
"The Malaysian government must protect the Acehnese who fled
the war caused by the Indonesian military and police operations,"
he said.

Daud said he was one of the asylum-seekers forcibly
repatriated in 1998.

"If such an incident happens again, the Acehnese people will
some day take revenge," he warned.

A total of 232 Acehnese, including women and children, were
detained last week as they tried to seek asylum at the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Kuala Lumpur.

Separately, the Indonesian Commission on Human Rights (Komnas
HAM) said on Thursday it has given the Indonesian Military (TNI)
recommendations on ways to fight a "clean war" in Aceh province
from now on.

Komnas HAM hoped that the martial law administration in the
province would seriously consider its input, chairman of the
commission's ad hoc team for Aceh M.M. Billah said.

"We hope to receive a positive reaction in the sense that the
administrator of the military emergency in Aceh can accept our
inputs and discuss them in a serious manner," he told reporters
here.

Billah said the commission has sent several recommendation
letters to the authorities but gave no details. He said he hoped
authorities would follow the recommendations.

"Or at least that they can improve their surveillance of the
implementation and operations of the state of military emergency
in a more effective and efficient way," he said.