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Aceh: Echoes of East
Timor
By Prangtip Daorueng
JAKARTA - The Indonesian government is once
again using nationalistic propaganda and media
censorship to gain public support for its military
offensive in Aceh, but journalists and activists say
Jakarta would do well to learn from its previous
mistakes in East Timor.
Indeed, critics say, the
start of the crackdown on Aceh on May 19 not only marked
the launch of armed operations but the start of
propaganda warfare in the province that lies at the
northern tip of Sumatra island.
A separatist
rebellion by the Free Aceh Movement, known by its
Indonesian acronym GAM (Gerakin Aceh Merdeka), has been
simmering there for 27 years. Jakarta declared martial
law in May, after the latest peace talks collapsed.
At least seven Indonesian soldiers were killed
in a clash with GAM rebels this week, military officials
said on Tuesday. The military claims to have killed more
than 150 rebels since May 19, but GAM disputes this.
Journalists have been told that nationalism and
censorship are the rules of the day. Minister for
Communications and Information Syamsul Muarif has said:
"Indonesian journalists should be concerned with the
country's interests."
But this remark shows that
Jakarta officials have not learned enough from the
government's failure in East Timor, says journalist Moch
Faried Cahyono.
In 1999, East Timor voted to
secede from the Indonesian state, 24 years after Jakarta
sent troops to occupy it in 1975.
Cahyono, who
was with Tempo magazine in 1999 when Indonesia's
repression in East Timor reached its peak, recalls
former president Suharto's words on reporting on East
Timor back then. "Suharto said in 1991 that he hoped
that Indonesian media would not report on East Timor
except when they received information from government
sources," he said in an interview.
In 1994,
Tempo and two publications were banned from publishing
by the Suharto government, among other reasons because
of their independent reporting on East Timor.
Today, Cahyono says, Indonesia's military is
using a new media strategy, adapted from the US-led war
on Iraq, of embedding journalists with the troops. But
though it is new, it has the same aim of ingraining into
journalists the idea that patriotism means supporting
the government's position and offensive on Aceh.
Shortly before May 19, about 50 Indonesian
journalists assigned to cover the war in Aceh received
training from the military on war survival tactics. They
have since been allowed to follow military units in
their operations, to wear military uniforms and use
their equipment.
Local and international media
groups have criticized these as an attempt by the
military to manipulate reporting by the media.
"It is an attempt to manipulate information -
something that they [the military] learned from what the
US government did in Iraq," said Solahuddin, secretary
general of the Jakarta-based Alliance for Independent
Journalists.
In May, Aceh's martial-law
commander, Major-General Endang Suwarya, frankly told
journalists that they were free to report on actions of
security personnel, "but there should be no reports from
GAM and reports that praise GAM".
"We will bring
a halt to the news from the spokesmen of GAM because
they are turning the facts upside down," he argued.
Local media reports say that the military is
considering more media restrictions under martial law,
possibly including the expulsion of journalists not
accredited with the armed forces.
Meanwhile,
there have been a growing number of reports in local and
international media on the military's brutality against
civilians in Aceh and the number of people displaced by
the war.
In late May, human-rights groups
estimated that more than 15,000 people had been
displaced by the military operations in Aceh, but
Jakarta authorities say these reports are biased. Muarif
complains that media tend to report on "soldiers
dragging corpses" rather than on the government's
efforts to rebuild damaged schools.
"We are weak
in international public relations, and because of that,
reports by foreign media are often damaging," he said.
But nearly a month into the latest offensive in
Aceh, both media and non-government reports continue to
cite human-rights abuses, including the killing of
children and civilians. Hundreds of schools have been
torched by unidentified arsonists while the military and
GAM blame each other for the attacks.
Indonesian
media and activists working on Aceh say that gathering
information has also become more difficult. Local
sources, they say, are afraid to talk because of threats
from both the military and GAM.
Journalists have
not been immune from these threats. "Acehnese
journalists have experienced threats from both the
military and GAM for a long time," said Solahuddin.
"These threats include their lives and their families.
Now they have been extended to journalists from outside
Aceh."
The New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists has also issued a statement on several cases
of the shooting of journalists by unidentified gunmen.
An Inter Press Service source in Banda Aceh says
two Acehnese journalists who work for an international
magazine were sent out of the province this month, after
receiving several threats.
An Acehnese
journalist from the independent Tempo Daily is under
interrogation by military for the sources of a story
that reported on the killing of villagers, including a
13-year-old child, by the military. The magazine says it
quoted a foreign news agency in the report, which said
the soldiers had insisted that the villagers were with
GAM.
Cahyono says that although the media tactics
used by the military in East Timor and Aceh do not
differ that much, what does make a big difference is
Indonesia's political environment today.
While
journalists were muzzled in the Suharto era and for much
of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor - Suharto was
ousted in 1998, after which East Timor was allowed to
vote on its future - they are now free to be critical of
the state. "It is not the time for the military to
control media anymore," Cahyono said.
In a May
30 editorial titled "Don't shoot the messengers", the
English-language daily Jakarta Post urged the Indonesian
military to remember what happened in East Timor.
"The moment the [military] starts shooting
journalists, either literally or figuratively, is the
moment when it starts losing the propaganda war. And we
know, based on our experience in East Timor a few years
ago, how costly that could be," wrote the daily.
(Inter Press Service)
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