Rights body to probe Aceh 'mass killings'

JAKARTA (JP): The National Commission on Human Rights will soon begin investigating reports that more than 39,000 Acehnese have died in various military operations over the past decade and that 1,000 others are still in military detention in Indonesia's westernmost province.

The commission will set up a fact-finding team by the end of this month to probe the allegations, commission member B.N. Marbun said when addressing dozens of Acehnese students who took the reports to commission's office yesterday.

Marbun said the commission planned to meet Minister of Defense/ Armed Forces (ABRI) Commander Gen. Wiranto to discuss the current status of Aceh as a military operation region.

"We will ask ABRI to pull out all soldiers deployed to crush the separatist rebel movement, as well as lift the military operation region status in the province," he said.

Along with Irian Jaya and East Timor, Aceh has been given a special status of military operation region. It enable the army to facilitate the suppression of separatism in the three provinces.

The Aceh students, who called themselves the Aceh Non- Governmental Organization (NGO) Forum, reported that at least 39,000 women in the province were widowed when their husbands were shot to death in military operations between 1989 and 1998.

They did not say how they came up with their figures.

Armed Forces spokesman (ABRI) Brig. Gen. A. Wahab Mokodongan told The Jakarta Post that "even simple logics" would say that it was impossible for the military to kill that great number of people.

He admitted there were military operations in the province, and that some people might have died because they were caught in crossfire, but "none were shot at deliberately."

Those who died were the side effects of the military operations, he said, adding that all of the workers previously detained have all been released.

Yesterday, student Abdul Gani Nurdin said: "Those women's husbands -- accused of being members of the separatist disturbance group or GPK -- were killed in sadistic ways. Most of them were executed without trial. Their bodies were dumped in roads to be picked up by passers by."

He said thousands of Acehnese were still going missing while others were serving jail sentences in two prisons in Lhokseumauwe, North Aceh, and in the provincial capital Banda Aceh.

"The prisoners are serving between eight and 20 years for their alleged involvement in the separatist movement," he said. He added that many women have reported being raped by soldiers while their husbands were being detained.

The students rejected that the victims and those who were missing or jailed were members of the Aceh separatist movement, saying they were peasants and mostly illiterate.

Sorrow

Two widows whose husbands were allegedly executed in a 1991 military operation in Pidie, North Aceh, joined the group of students yesterday. They expressed their sorrow and urged the government to investigate the alleged military brutality.

Ti Aminah said her husband, Muniruddin, was abducted by a group of soldiers on April 27, 1991. On May 1, 1991, he was brought home briefly before he was taken away again.

On May 7, 1991, he was found dead on a road near their village, Cat Keng, in Bandar Dua district.

Ti Aminah said she herself was interrogated and intimidated by the soldiers, and was told that her husband belonged to the separatist group. "They threatened to kill me if I took (my husband's death) to court," she said.

Ti Aminah, a jobless 26-year-old mother of three sons, said her complaints to the local administration and the military had thus far been ignored.

Juariah, 41, said her husband was "fetched" by a group of men in green fatigues when she was giving birth to her fifth son on May 2, 1991.

"On July, 2, 1991, I heard from the local administration that my husband had been given a mass burial along with five others," she said. She added she was made to pay Rp 50,000 (US$5 at the current rate) for the burial.

The two widows urged the rights body to investigate "the Aceh genocide" and to ask for ABRI's response to the allegations.

Fahmi Mada, a member of the Aceh NGO Forum, said that more than 1,000 of around 3,000 Acehnese workers deported by the Malaysian government recently have been detained in military and police detention houses in the province for their alleged links to the Aceh separatist movement.

"The arrests of the workers are groundless. And they cannot be treated as political detainees because they are not GPK members," he said.

He acknowledged that many Acehnese people had escaped overseas, including to Malaysia, South Korea and Brunei Darussalam because of fears of persecution, torture, arrest and interrogation by local military authorities over their alleged links to the separatist movement.

During the Malaysian authorities' operations to deport illegal migrants, thousands of whom were Indonesians working in plantation sectors, a group of Acehnese refused to be shipped home, citing persecution. Some forced their way into the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees seeking asylum. (rms)