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.