Violence breeding violence in Aceh

Decades of conflict have killed thousands in Aceh. JOHN MARTINKUS travelled through the restive Indonesian province.

NORTH ACEH - For the fourth time in less than 100km the public bus travelling south from the capital Banda Aceh is stopped and surrounded by Brimob, the Indonesian riot police.

The men are ordered off at gunpoint and strip searched for weapons. Police, with weapons ready, check the luggage and the interior of the bus for weapons as the frightened passengers sit still, not daring to complain.

One by one the men are allowed back on and the bus is free to proceed, past the trucks of frightened young police in their brown uniforms with guns at the ready. They are protecting the post from, what has become in this area, frequent attacks by the fighters of GAM (Free Aceh Movement).

A huge flag of the rebel movement hangs from the power lines by the highway and in the next town two old men with Muslim caps and beards man a machinegun in the main square. They are the local GAM representatives, unchallenged by the Indonesian police who have set up yet another roadblock at the entrance to the town, where they peer out at the traffic slowed by the barbed-wire barricades in front of their sandbagged post.

In this area the police are the targets of the GAM rebels. The rebels claim they are only responding to the brutality of the Indonesian police and the armed forces who, according to human rights organisations in the capital Banda Aceh, kill civilians suspected of involvement with the guerrillas on an almost daily basis.

The coordinator of Kontras, a legal aid NGO that documents human rights abuses in the province, Aguswand, describes the killing in the area. "For the GAM the target is very clear; the military or the police or the informers.

"Sometimes the Camat [village head] or the Bupati [district head] if they do not have good relations with the people," he said, referring to the local Indonesian-appointed officials. "For the military the targets are not so clear. The majority of the civilian killings are by the police and the military. If we look at every report we can see the civilians are killed after the arrest. We believe the police and the military are responsible."

At present there is a continued operation by the Indonesian security forces to wipe out the GAM guerrillas despite a "humanitarian pause" that was signed by both sides in June last year and is due to expire on Monday.

"The bodies are found almost every day now. We publish the reports but the aides of the President always accuse GAM of the violence. We know it is the Indonesian security forces," said Aguswand.

The presence of gunmen in civilian clothes at roadblocks throughout North Aceh is the result of the humanitarian pause. Human rights workers say the police and military are simply not wearing uniforms on operations so the violence can be blamed on GAM.

The recruitment of local Acehnese into militia units, like those formed by the Indonesian military in East Timor in the lead-up to the United Nations-sponsored vote for independence, has also been reported by human rights groups.

A group called Front Pulyumat (Safe) Aceh is now active in West Aceh under the leadership of Syaifruddin Latief, a local leader with links to the Indonesian military. According to a former member, who made a statement to Kontras two months ago, the group is trained by the local Indonesian military command (Kodim) in East Aceh and sent on operations with the Army and police in West Aceh. The defector told how on operations they were simply told that a certain house was the target and they were to kill those they found there. The men were paid and their weapons collected by the military after the operation was complete. They were told not to be afraid of the military and the police.

Kontras reports that between the start of the agreement in June and December last year there have been 524 people killed, 140 disappearances and 549 people arrested and tortured. Almost all of these incidents have been traced back to the military but no prosecutions have resulted. The only case when action was taken against military personnel for abuses in Aceh was after the massacre of 53 civilians in Beutang Ateuh in July 1999. In that case, the Indonesian commanding officer of the operation, Lieutenant-Colonel Sujono, simply disappeared, leaving 31 of his subordinates to be tried and sentenced to an average of two to three years for the killings.

Feisal Hadi, a human rights worker for the Aceh NGO's coalition for Human Rights in Banda Aceh said the culture of impunity among the Indonesian security forces for their actions in Aceh is one of the main reasons for the recent escalation of the violence.

GAM representatives and human rights activists also point to the continuing operations of foreign oil companies, particularly in the north Aceh province, as one of the main motivations for Jakarta's reluctance to entertain the idea of independence for the province - the central demand of the guerrillas.

Last week, the GAM commander in North Aceh, Abu Sofyan Daud, warned Mobil Oil, which runs the Arun liquefied natural gas production in Aceh, that their facilities would be threatened as GAM would be forced to attack their operations which also serve as bases for the Indonesian military. According to Kontras, Exxon Mobil provides money for 17 Indonesian military posts to be maintained to protect the company's North Aceh operations. The company reportedly pays 5 billion rupiah a month to maintain more than 1000 Indonesian soldiers and police in the Lhoksokun subdistrict.

Yesterday, three days after Indonesia's Government and the GAM rebels agreed to halt violence in Aceh, police said that at least four more people had died.

Those working on the pause committee in Banda Aceh were sceptical before the talks that there was any chance of success. "The dialogue is very important because it can solve the political issues. But they just want independence and it is impossible," says Indonesian police colonel Ridhwan Karim, the head of the pause committee Indonesian security delegation. The GAM representative to the pause committee, Zulfani, says it is the Indonesians who are preventing the continuation of the dialogue by continuing operations.

While this deadlock remains, both sides continue operations amid the province's five million residents. In the small town of Junip, on the main highway south from the capital, near the oil town of Lhokseumahwe, fighting between GAM and the police has once again blocked the highway. The traffic is banked up in the main street and shopkeepers reopen their stores to take advantage of the unexpected trade.

A young man of 24 tells how he is going to Lhokseumahwe to see if his parents have returned to their house after being forced to flee by an Indonesian military operation a month before. He says that "80, no 90 per cent of the people here support GAM," then quickly lowers his voice as the mostly Indonesian bus passengers glare at him after he says the word.

The fact his family live in an area where there is a lot of GAM activity does not mean they are involved but it does not mean they don't support them either.

"We all support them here. Independence is the only way to stop this," he says, but adds that he shouldn't talk any more because there are many spies here and tomorrow he could be dead.

At the next police roadblock the police are young and nervous, pointing their weapons further along the road, in the direction the bus is headed. They give the bus only a cursory search and we are quickly through. At night in this part of the country it is they who are under threat.

- HERALD CORRESPONDENT