Dying for peace in Aceh

["F A B I O C C H I::" <eco_fabiocchi@tin.it>]

Dying for peace
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/21/1069027333504.html

The Acehnese are paying a mounting price for the relentless Indonesian advance against local guerillas. Matthew Moore, one of the few journalists to get into Aceh recently, reports.

This week more than 400 sympathisers of the Free Aceh Movement, called GAM, walked out of their prison camp near the provincial capital of Banda Aceh while Indonesian soldiers stood by and did nothing. 

This was no mass break-out; the Indonesian Army had given them permission to go back to their villages to be with their families for next week's Muslim celebration of Lebaran.

Six months into the military's latest offensive against GAM, such humanitarian gestures are rare. But there are a few and they do suggest the military is making some attempt to modify its behaviour long criticised by human rights groups, particularly those reporting on Aceh.

The camp itself is a step up from the way GAM sympathisers have normally been treated. Vocational skills and even national anthem lessons have replaced force in trying to convince inmates Aceh must remain in Indonesia.

Six months of martial law have left the civilian rural population terrified as they are forced once again to feed and hide a guerilla army pursued by 40,000 Indonesia troops. Contact with GAM, or co-operating with the military, are capital offences - depending which side you are on. 

Azhar Abidin, a 42-year-old driver, surrendered five months ago because he knew his family was at risk after he had contact with GAM. "I gave cigarettes to them, Marlboro, two or three packets," he explained. "People told the soldiers, so they came to me."

Arriving in Aceh, it's obvious martial law has made the towns much safer. Shopkeepers and hairdressers say business is better because it's more secure - but it's not so safe that they will have their names published.

Night buses ply the main road down the coast to Indonesia's third-largest city, Medan. In the first months of martial law, the road was sprinkled with burnt vehicles, and drivers were so afraid they would move only in daylight and only with a military escort.

The price for this small advance has been huge. If you believe the military, and few do, their forces have killed more than 1100 GAM guerillas for a loss of only 67 of their own. Add nearly 400 civilians who, the Indonesians say, GAM has killed, and deaths since the collapse of a five-month ceasefire are averaging more than eight a day.

It's not so much the numbers that are in dispute, it's who is dying and how: innocent villagers or GAM warriors.

General Bambang Darmono, Aceh's military commander for the first six months, insisted last week that all GAM members who had died had been killed in battle. "Never", he said, had his soldiers deliberately executed a single suspected GAM member.

Overwhelmingly, the evidence shows otherwise. 

In the first week of martial law, the Herald and a dozen other international media organisations went to more than seven villages where unarmed people had been shot. In addition to eyewitness accounts, there was incontrovertible evidence of extra-judicial killings, such as a corpse with a point-blank bullet wound fired upwards from just below the ear.

The big question in Aceh now is how much of this is still happening. And it's a question the martial law administration has ensured can no longer be openly answered.

Martial law has divided Aceh between village and town. Almost all of the deaths are in the villages where first-hand evidence is no longer accessible. Because of claimed safety concerns, foreign journalists and human rights workers are now barred from the places where the bodies and the witnesses are.

The early days of shock and awe air-strikes and parachute drops choreographed for the cameras have long since ended. More conventional means have been used, forcing villagers to abandon their houses so the GAM among them can be identified. All citizens have had to apply for a new red and white (national colours) ID card. Without one you're a GAM suspect.

GAM's depleted forces have retreated to hamlets closer to the mountains. As well as those GAM members killed, the military says it has captured nearly 2000, but GAM leaders are not among them.

Bambang says they have cut GAM's total strength from nearly 6000 to 3000 and found a quarter of its weapons, but estimates of GAM numbers are notoriously elastic. Last February, the military put GAM strength at just 2000, less than the forces they say they are now still facing.

Human rights groups don't really know what's happening in the villages or are too scared to speak. Three activists the Herald approached said it was simply too risky to talk; one has stopped going to his office altogether.

Indonesia's National Commission for Human Rights, Komnas Ham, sent a Jakarta-based official, Zoemrotin Susilo, to Aceh this week where she found villagers so scared they'll say whatever they think is safest: "If GAM asks about martial law they say it must be stopped. If the military asks, they say it must be extended. And if the police ask, they'll say a civil emergency is best."

Even she ducked the question about whether extra-judicial killings are still taking place.

Zulfikar Mohammad, a member of the student executive at the University Malikussaleh in Lhokseumawe, said extra-judicial killings did take place in the first three months, but martial law had not been as bad as Soeharto's ruthless campaign through the 1990s. 

Yet he said people now fear that with GAM in retreat and martial law extended, the military will have more time to pursue its own interests and take over more and more government roles. 

Akhiruddin Mahjuddin agreed. The co-ordinator of the UN-funded anti-corruption group, SORAK, says it is too early to say whether martial law will compound Aceh's legendary graft problems but already there are signs that concern him. But he said any new authority should be better than the current administration led by Governor Abdullah Puteh.

"The negative side is that PDMD [military headquarters] can just change where government funds go, so money for schools could now go to roads," Akhiruddin said. With the military now signing off on all projects, it can pick who gets the lucrative jobs, he said.

It might be struggling to win its 27-year fight against GAM, but martial law had certainly delivered the armed forces a financial victory. With $380 million extra for the campaign so far, the military is settling in for years more war. In Banda Aceh workmen are busy expanding the military headquarters, adding a three-storey office block and putting the finishing touches to a swish new mosque. The bulldozers are elevating the parade ground and top dressing the soccer field, while the new tennis court is ready for play.

Across the road, Acehnese living in grim poverty look on and wonder.

On the plane into Aceh, a lowly paid intelligence officer was throwing his money and his weight around, refusing to get off his two-way radio as we taxied down the runway, and spending more than $200 on perfumes, even throwing in a bottle for the passenger seated next to him.

Such displays fuel support for GAM, which has pressed its campaign for independence by contrasting the poverty of villagers with the province's substantial wealth, especially from Exxon's gas field.

As a tropical storm built up over Banda Aceh, a labourer who'd just lost his job tried to explain where his homeland is headed. "When you're five and you see your parents killed, you only want revenge. Revenge is what's going to drive this war forever.

"Aceh is a body so full of disease, no drugs can work any more."

With additional reporting by Karuni Rompies.