More troops to be sent to Aceh, death toll hits 39

More troops to be sent to Aceh, death toll hits 39

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian Military (TNI) Commander Gen.
Wiranto, pledging to uphold the law at all costs, said on
Thursday riot troops will be dispatched to Aceh, where the death
toll from Monday's military shootings has risen to 39.

"The government has decided to send PPRM (crack riot troops)
to Aceh on Friday," Wiranto told reporters at Merdeka Palace
after accompanying President B.J. Habibie at a meeting.

Wiranto, however, gave no details about the strength of the
contingent to be dispatched, saying only it would consist mainly
of the police's elite Mobile Brigade personnel, reinforced by
troops from various military units.

The troops will be under the command of a police colonel, he
said.

"It is not intended to revive DOM in Aceh," Wiranto said,
referring to the notorious 10-year military operation, halted
only last August, to quell a separatist movement in the province.

Human rights activists have said the military committed
widespread human rights abuses, and Wiranto in August apologized
for the military conduct in the province which he said "had
exceeded acceptable norms".

Meanwhile, the recorded death toll from shootings of
protesters by the military in Krueng Geukueh, 15 kilometers west
of the North Aceh capital of Lhokseumawe, rose to 39 after one
person died in Lhokseumawe General Hospital on Thursday morning.

"Nurmaliah, 32, of Dewantara subdistrict, died from bullet
wounds in her back, and her body has already been claimed by her
relatives," Safaruddin, a staff member at the emergency ward of
the hospital, told The Jakarta Post by phone from Lhokseumawe.

Officials from the local government's fact-finding team said
earlier that at least 115 people were injured in the violence.

Meanwhile, two subdistrict offices in Samadua and Sawang in
South Aceh were set on fire by a group of unidentified people
early on Wednesday, Antara reported.

Fajri Anwar, an official from the local information office,
was quoted by the news agency as saying that the offices were
only slightly damaged because locals quickly put out the fires.

He also said red flags bearing a star and crescent, symbols of
the separatist Free Aceh Movement, were found in the offices'
front yard.

Meanwhile, leading human rights campaigner Marzuki Darusman
reiterated on Thursday that Aceh will remain unstable unless
those guilty of past human rights abuses are brought to trial.

"President B.J. Habibie, in his first visit to Banda Aceh in
March, pledged to carry out an investigation into past rights
abuses, but he has done nothing," Marzuki, who chairs the
National Commission on Human Rights, told the Post.

At the time, Habibie said the civilian or military offenders
would be taken to court, but brushed aside calls for a referendum
on self-determination.

More than 1,000 people were believed to have been killed and
many thousands suffered during a decade-long military campaign
begun in 1989 to crush the separatist movement.

A fact-finding mission from the National Commission on Human
Rights was scheduled to leave for the troubled province next
Monday to investigate the violence.

It will be the rights body's second visit in five months.

In January, it visited the province to investigate the
violence against civilians following the killings of nine off-
duty soldiers in East Aceh last December which were blamed on
separatist rebels.

Dozens of civilians were killed in a number of military raids
on villages in and around Lhokseumawe in searches for alleged
separatist leader Ahmad Kandang in January.

Meanwhile, the Association of Indonesian Lawyers (IPHI) called
on Wiranto on Thursday to resign, over his failure to halt human
rights abuses in the country. (byg/prb/rms)