Wolves, lambs and accountability in Aceh

Shane Joshua Barter Bangkok

Swedish courts recently decided that Hasan Tiro, the figurehead of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), is innocent of coordinating human rights abuses in Aceh from Sweden. The expected responses from organizations and academics who had opposed the proceedings in the first place will be enlightening.

No doubt, they will applaud the Swedish courts and support Tiro, demand that other GAM leaders' trials end and entirely miss the point of why these trials are so important. What these courts offer is a fair criticism of GAM according to Swedish law; the proceedings are indeed specific because context does not change whether or not specific laws were breached.

These trials, along with any other assessments of GAM in terms of human rights violations, have been met with hostility from otherwise gifted writers and activists. These people assert that the trials are a result of political pressure from Indonesia; obviously they are, but this does not change the guilt or innocence of the accused, nor does it change the fact that this trial is a nonviolent path to fighting GAM, which human rights defenders should encourage.

For the vocal minority of activists, any negative assessment of GAM, the supposed lamb, is resisted with great emotion and little clarity. This result is no mere legal or academic debate, but is representative of a fundamental issue for armed conflicts around the world.

A recent article by Prof. Kirsten Schulze documents the human rights abuses committed by GAM in light of the ongoing trials in Sweden. She notes that GAM is guilty of burning schools, kidnappings, assassinations and racial violence against Javanese migrants. She concludes that the importance of the trials is not the politics involved, but instead the victims of GAM violence.

But her article, like the Swedish courts, defied the unwritten rule in civil society to judge the worth of the lamb solely by the actions of the wolf, and the responses to the article can teach us a great deal about the Aceh conflict.

One response was from Prof. Damien Kingsbury, who evoked images of Stalin in his personal attack on Schulze. Kingsbury did not offer any specific points of contention, instead insisting that Schulze leaves out, neglects and forgets actions by the Indonesian Military (TNI). The most troubling part of his response is that he justifies the abuse of the Javanese on the grounds that GAM has support from the majority of people in Aceh.

Other responses have been no better; an article from the Aceh Center in the United States evoked images of Hitler in Poland and made the horrendous claim that it is not hostage-taking if no ransom is demanded. Again, the responses to criticism of GAM are not actually disagreements regarding the guilt of GAM, as it would be difficult to prove their innocence, but instead demands that descriptions of GAM must be in strict proportion to those of the TNI.

The responses to Schulze's article shed light on the responses to the trial of the GAM leaders as well as the continuation of the conflict as a whole. Criticizing GAM is not an act of allegiance to their enemy; for a human rights advocate or academic protecting human lives or conducting balanced research, there is nothing wrong with being anti-GAM, and nothing inconsistent with being anti-GAM as well as anti-TNI.

In fact, the two militaries have several similar tendencies when it comes to how they deal with opposition groups. The trials in Sweden deserve our full attention because they are impartial and may provide justice for GAM's victims. To condemn the trials without specific reasons demonstrates a political bias and is contrary to human rights, supporting an imagined lamb that does not deserve our protection.

Defending GAM from criticism helps perpetuate the conflict. Unless the actions of GAM are judged according to the same standards used for other actors, there will be little motivation for GAM to improve itself or for the creation of new political spaces in Aceh.

A nonviolent political space must be based on civil society, groups that are already strong and have a vast deal of expertise in Islamic human rights, rehabilitation, environmental activism, anticorruption, microfinance, student solidarity and women's rights.

As a critic of the TNI, I welcome any possible contribution to unmasking GAM human rights violations in Aceh. Any human rights advocate or academic who rejects enquiries into GAM human rights abuses has simply taken sides in this conflict, and in so doing helps perpetuate the violence by seeking to reward this violent lamb with its own state.

A more balanced approach rejects violence and terrorism, which means no less than rejecting the TNI and GAM, two wolves, and seeks to empower all nonviolent segments of civil society in order to create a just peace.

The writer is the author of Neither Wolf, Nor Lamb: Embracing Civil Society in the Aceh Conflict, released on July 24 in Bangkok at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Thailand.