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COMMENTARY
Aceh: The more things
change ...
By Lesley McCulloch
MELBOURNE - Extrajudicial executions,
disappearances, torture, rape and the targeted
harassment of human-rights defenders. This was life in
Aceh five years ago; it is also life in Aceh today. Add
to that the attacks by unknown persons on
peace-monitoring teams and their infrastructure, and the
arrest of official negotiators, and one has described
the environment within which the Cessation of
Hostilities Agreement (CoHA) struggles to survive.
The agreement is an attempt to bring peace to
the troubled Indonesian province, but the threatened
collapse of the internationally brokered CoHA will pave
the way for the Indonesian military to unleash its might
on 4 million Acehnese, the majority of whom want an
independent state.
The Free Aceh Movement (GAM)
and the Republic of Indonesia signed the CoHA on
December 9. The main points of the document are a
gradual process of demilitarization, an all-inclusive
dialogue, and elections in 2004. In addition, the
agreement provides for a joint security committee (JSC)
to monitor implementation and investigate violations.
But there are some fundamental and structural
flaws within the agreement. The fine detail of some of
these points could not be agreed upon in the negotiation
phase, and so were neglected. The result? The CoHA had a
crisis of identity which has led to its imminent
failure. Its personality as recognized by the Indonesian
government is quite different from that recognized by
GAM. The three points over which the identity of the
COHA is in crisis are the following:
Demilitarization - GAM has offered a phased
storage of its weapons, Jakarta has offered to shuffle
troops from one village to another while at the same
time sneaking more military personnel in under cover of
darkness and by sea.
All-inclusive dialogue - this remains
elusive. Moreover, the process through which this
dialogue will be achieved has yet to be agreed. And the
identity of the dialogue itself remains a mystery.
Elections in 2004 - the Jakarta-based
government interprets this to mean the regular general
elections due in that year. But to GAM (and to most
Acehnese), it means local elections to allow the people
a democratic voice about a local issue.
In
addition to these structural flaws in the agreement,
there have been three quite obvious and clumsy attempts
by the Indonesian government to undermine the CoHA.
First, attacks on the JSC by groups of militia. Cast our
minds back to the militia in East Timor: recruited,
armed and trained by Indonesian military. It is the same
scenario in Aceh, and the presence of militia is not new
there but has only recently been acknowledged. The JSC
itself, thought by many to be pro-Jakarta, has said it
believes the attacks were well orchestrated and
acknowledged the likelihood of the involvement of these
military-backed groups. The JSC was returned to Banda
Aceh - the provincial capital - for security reasons,
leaving the military free to act with impunity, as there
is now no investigation of the violations of the CoHA.
The second attempt to undermine the agreement
was the issuing of the ultimatum that GAM renounces its
political goal of independence as a precondition of the
continuation of the dialogue. The Jakarta government is
also insisting that further dialogue take place in
Indonesia. This is unacceptable to the separatist
movement.
The third and latest worrying
development is the arrest of four senior GAM negotiators
in Aceh on Friday May 9. They were detained for two days
before being released. In the interim, the police and
military said they intended to charge these four with
terrorism. All these actions are against both spirit and
letter of the CoHA. The mandate of the agreement was
narrow: a cessation of hostilities. This has proved to
be unachievable.
GAM was motivated to sign this
less-than-perfect agreement in the hope it would open
democratic space for the civil-society movement in Aceh
to pursue a peaceful and political solution to the
decades-old conflict. Article 2(f) of the COHA makes
provision for civil society to express their democratic
rights or opinions without hindrance. But the common
ground between what is written in CoHA and practical
outcome is noticeable only by its absence. Since
December there has in fact been a narrowing of the
democratic political space in Aceh. Those who have dared
to protest at the continuing violence and lack of
justice, and to demand a platform for their voice to be
heard, have themselves become targets.
At a
demonstration in January, four villagers were shot by
the elite mobile police brigade when they attended a
peaceful rally to request the government's full
implementation of the civilian's role in the CoHA.
In addition, police have arrested a prominent
member of the civilian movement, Muhammad Nazar,
chairman of the Aceh Referendum Information Center
(SIRA). He spoke critically about the agreement at the
January meeting. Now accused of spreading sedition
against the government, the local chief of police has
said he would like to see Nazar spend five years in
prison.
The authorities have a growing list of
those who they accuse of spreading hatred against the
state, including Kautsar (former chairman of the
Acehnese Democratic Resistance Front - FPDRA). Kautsar
and many others have gone into hiding to avoid the same
fate as Nazar. The local police and military, under
orders from the government in Jakarta, are in effect
silencing the voices of these people and of those whom
they represent.
Troops in Aceh have been put on
high alert; many more are on their way to the
battlefield and provision has been made in neighboring
areas for the expected refugee flow from the troubled
area if war breaks out. The war clouds are gathering
over Aceh. The international community with one voice
has said it supports the unity of the state of
Indonesia. The question is "at what cost?"
The
international community must pressure the Indonesian
government to uphold the letter and the spirit of the
CoHA. The process of dialogue should resume with no
preconditions, and a document signed on protection of
negotiators. One cannot have a meaningful dialogue when
one of the parties is under constant threat of arrest by
the other. There should also be broad recognition and
condemnation of attempts by the Indonesians to undermine
the whole process. This may be the last opportunity for
peace in Aceh for several years. But the Indonesians
have fired a "no interference" warning shot across the
bow of the international ship. They have said this
action is insignificant compared with the Iraq war, as
only their own sovereignty is at stake. The unspoken
message: We noted the precedent set by the invasion of
Iraq and the ousting of an "undesirable" regime, and we
intend to take full advantage of the current
international political climate to pursue a military
solution in Aceh.
Today's international political
climate provides the perfect arena for a massacre. One
of the world's most brutal military is converging on
Aceh. The roadmap to war, death and destruction is clear
for all to see. Our great champions of democratic values
appear to be dancing to the tune of the Indonesian
military. The Acehnese will be sacrificed in the name of
the war on terrorism, economics and realpolitik. Lessons
learned from East Timor? It appears, none.
Lesley McCulloch is a
research fellow at the Monash Asia Institute,
Melbourne.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
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