Why GAM should be held accountable

Why GAM should be held accountable

Kirsten E. Schulze
The Straits Times
Asia News Network
Singapore

When the top three leaders of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) --
Hassan Tiro, Zaini Abdullah and Malik Mahmood -- were taken into
custody last week on suspicion of "grave breaches of
international law", a number of pro-independence supporters,
Acehnese activists, human rights groups and liberal academics
voiced their protest.

The detention had only come about because of pressure from
Jakarta, they asserted. Or even worse, it was pandering to
Washington's "war on terror". GAM was clearly being victimized,
they claimed.

After all, it is a legitimate national liberation movement
representing people who had suffered for decades. Look at Aceh's
tortured history. One academic even went on to say that GAM
leaders had always respected international conventions and rules
of military engagement.

Aceh has indeed had a tortured history. Since the beginning of
the conflict in 1976, Acehnese have suffered from torture,
kidnappings, rapes and murder. But Aceh is not a one-sided
conflict, and GAM is far from fighting an honorable war.

Over the past year alone GAM has taken some 300 civilians
hostage. These kidnappings included RCTI television journalist
Ersa Siregar, cameraman Ferry Santoro and their driver Rahmatsyah
on June 29 last year. Their crime? Freedom of expression. Or, as
GAM saw it, biased reporting.

For months their journalist colleagues demonstrated against
these kidnappings and family members pleaded with GAM to release
them. All to no avail. Rahmatsyah was rescued six months later in
December after a gunfight between GAM and Indonesian troops. Ersa
Siregar was killed later that month during a shootout. Ferry
Santoro, along with 22 other hostages, was released on May 17.

Alongside the RCTI journalists, the wives of two air force
officers, Cut Safrida and Cut Soraya, were also abducted. Cut
Soraya was then two months pregnant. But even after the pregnancy
became obvious, GAM did not release her. At eight months, the
baby was stillborn. Cut Soraya was still hemorrhaging when she
and her sister were rescued by Indonesian troops a month later.

Family members of the Indonesian security forces and
journalists have not been the only non-combatants targeted by
GAM. Civil servants, local politicians, legislators, village
heads and teachers have all been victims of GAM intimidation,
shootings and kidnappings -- often for ransom.

GAM has burnt local government facilities, schools and health
centers. It has extorted from contractors and companies. In 2001,
it severed ExxonMobil's pipelines, forcing the corporation to
shut down and evacuate its workers.

The movement has also systematically terrorized Javanese
migrants living in Aceh. These Javanese had left their home towns
in search of better prospects for their families. In the eyes of
GAM, however, they represent the "Javanese neo-colonial"
government in Jakarta.

The first Javanese migrants arrived a century ago with the
Dutch to work on coffee plantations. After the discovery of
natural gas in 1971, more came to work in and around the growing
industrial complex in Lhokseumawe. Others came through government
transmigration schemes.

GAM stepped up its attacks on the Javanese in 1999, extorting
money from them, burning their houses and terrorizing them into
leaving. Some 120,000 people who have fled Aceh are today living
in refugee camps in neighboring North Sumatra. They are virtually
all Javanese.

The movement has constantly appealed to the United Nations and
the international community for support in its struggle for
Acehnese independence. However, it is violating the same
international law it seeks to invoke in pursuit of its aims.

It is not an organization that adheres to rules of engagement
or to the Geneva Conventions. It is not an organization that
respects the rights of non-combatants. It has shown little
tolerance for dissenting views.

Teachers have been shot for teaching the Indonesian curriculum
instead of GAM-tailored history. Politicians have been shot
because they saw merit in autonomy rather than independence.
Village heads have been shot for raising the Indonesian flag.

Murder in the name of freedom is still murder. It is time that
liberation movements, just like states and the military, are held
accountable for their actions. Not because of political pressure
from the governments fighting them or because it conveniently
fits into the "war on terror" but because organizations like GAM
have been violating international law for far too long.

The writer is a senior lecturer in International History at
the London School of Economics and author of The Free Aceh
Movement (GAM): Anatomy Of A Separatist Organization.