Aceh a forbidden province as military step up war on rebels

By JOHN MARTINKUS Herald Correspondent

A convoy of 25 military trucks headed in to Aceh with the drivers draping their armoured vests at head height from the side windows as protection against snipers. The minibus in which I was travelling in followed them through the border without being stopped.

Lines of vehicles stretched back on the outgoing side of the highway. Soldiers were positioned to prevent anyone leaving the stationary vehicles before they had been searched. As the soldiers ordered people out of the vehicles to check their identity cards other soldiers emptied the contents of the minibuses and cars on the road.

In this kind of situation it only takes one shout from an over-zealous soldier and you quickly find yourself being interrogated. Sure enough, there he was: a Javanese sergeant standing by the side of the road peering at passing vehicles. Luckily our convoy accelerated and I just glimpsed the shock on his face at seeing what he thought might have been a foreigner in the speeding bus.

I was trying to get in to Aceh on the only route left open, the main Banda Aceh highway that runs 500km straight through the major towns of the province to the capital.

It is also along this highway that the heaviest fighting is taking place as the Indonesian operation to wipe out the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) enters its sixth week.

A few days before I had been queuing for a plane to Banda Aceh when I was approached by two plainclothes policemen who demanded to see my visa. I was travelling on a journalist visa but I had been issued with a Press Card that said "not for Aceh". The police told me I would be jailed for five years if I boarded the plane.

With the province of 4 1/2 million people now under martial law and sealed off from the rest of the country by roadblocks, a 19km coastal waters exclusion zone and monitored airports, the chances of working undetected were very slim.

Ever since the Indonesian military launched its operation on May 19 to wipe out the 5000 GAM fighters the Indonesian Government and military have done all they can to keep foreign journalists out.

Initially, reporters were welcomed by the military who set up a media centre in the oil and gas rich town of Lhokseumahwe which also serves as the command base for the operation. Foreign and local reporters were treated to daily briefings by the military complete with maps and details of the Indonesian military's deployment of 50,000 soldiers and police to the province at the northern tip of Sumatra.

Once the foreign media began to report mounting civilian deaths in the first weeks of the operation the relationship quickly soured and, as in East Timor, the military wanted them out. Most foreign journalists chose to leave. The last two, Malaysians, were thrown out. One journalist, William Nessen, an American freelancer, had been with GAM through the whole operation but was mostly unable to file.

On June 24 he surrendered to the Indonesian military and the next day he was charged with violating immigration laws. He is still in custody in the capital Banda Aceh.

Journalists not based in Indonesia are either not granted visas or forbidden to visit Aceh. Resident journalists are told they need special permission to go to Aceh.

The rows of shop-houses in the town of Langsa, about 30km inside of Aceh, look like rundown parts of old Singapore but now Indonesian flags have been hung from every building. Banners prepared by the local police and military commands are draped across the main streets exhorting citizens to be vigilant against GAM and declaring goodwill to the local population.

Most of the shops are closed and as it gets dark there are few people on the street. Acehnese men in a coffee shop tell how the road further north is blocked and there has been a lot of fighting. They talk openly about how the Indonesians here are scared of GAM and that this operation is nothing and will not destroy GAM.

"We have been living like this with the military here for years. This is no different from DOM," said one, referring to the period from 1989 until 1998 when Aceh was declared a military operation area and closed to foreigners by then President Suharto.

About 10,000 Acehnese are believed to have died in that period and mass graves of victims were exhumed shortly after Suharto fell. Arrests and interrogations in Langsa have become commonplace. GAM attacked the local Brimob office on the first day of the operation and five people were arrested. Two human rights workers were arrested and beaten and an unspecified number of people have been detained at the roadblocks on both sides of the town as they have tried to flee south out of Aceh.

Langsa is on the edge of where the serious fighting is taking place. It is fortunate to still have power. All the towns to the north were without power for at least two weeks following the toppling of four power pylons by unidentified groups: the military blames GAM and GAM blames the military.

The power blackout has seriously affected GAM's ability to contact the outside world or each other as they normally do, with mobile phones. But the information from GAM's side is coming out in bits and pieces.

On Monday, June 16 they reported that they were being attacked by British-made Hawk fighter aircraft and United States-supplied OV-10 Bronco ground attack aircraft. The details are specific. Ten bombs at 2.36pm in Jambo Aye and Baktiy districts dropped by two Hawks and two Broncos. It is this area, 90km east of Lhokseumahwe, where the Indonesian Army claims the GAM leadership is based.

It isn't the first report of Indonesians bombing and strafing villages: that was on May 30 and there have been several others since.

The picture that emerges is of a civilian population treated as brutally as if they were combatants with houses destroyed, beatings, executions and disappearances common.

To anyone familiar with the tactics of the Indonesian military in East Timor and Papua the dumping of their victims' mutilated bodies in public places is one way in which the military has attempted to instill fear in to the population in past operations.

It is usually done to force them to flee to a Government-controlled area and end their support for the guerrillas. Behind the Indonesian military's studiously updated GAM bodycount, which at the time of writing was 262, is the reality of tactics like these.

The aim is to separate the guerrillas from the population.

The same Indonesian officers who served in East Timor are in charge of the current Aceh operation and, despite the statements of the current commander Brigadier General Bambang Dumarno regarding respect for human rights, that respect doesn't apply to anyone associated with GAM.

The air attacks against GAM have been well covered in the Indonesian media, but there is no mention of the civilian casualties. The military claims it has so far killed 262 GAM members and lost 32 of its own police and military.

Last Wednesday the Indonesian Red Cross announced it had removed 179 "bodies in civilian clothes" from the areas where there has been fighting, mostly along the main Banda Aceh-Medan highway.

Indonesia's military chief, General Endriartono Sutarto, told the Jakarta Post that "the jet fighter deployment was merely aimed to show the community that TNI is more powerful than GAM rebels" and added he had no objection to their use as long as they were not used to attack civilians.

The Indoesian Air Force also admitted it had begun using F-16s: the most sophisticated weapon they possessed.

On May 18 I received my last message from the GAM spokesman in north Aceh. "The escalation of violence here is getting worse by the hour. Many civilians killed by TNI in the last three days. TNI force civil society to become refugees. It is difficult for me to update you like usually," he wrote from the area where the air attacks were continuing.

It was in the same area of north Aceh that Indonesia's National Commission of Human Rights, Komnas Ham, claimed to have information about a mass grave containing "dozens" of military victims of the latest offensive. They also detailed other summary executions of civilians during the current operation.

The commision is now facing threats and criticism from the military and the Government regarding the revelations.

north Aceh has always been a stronghold of the freedom movement. It was there that the exiled leader Hasan Cik di Tiro secretly returned to Aceh from overseas to declare independence in 1976 and effectively reignite the independence sentiment that had existed since they fought a 30-year war against Dutch occupation at the turn of last century.

Last December when I visited camps in the area the GAM fighters were well-armed and seemed to have the support of the population in the villages where they lived.

Many of those villagers recounted abuses from the Indonesian military in the past including, rape, extortion and arrest and execution and said they felt safe with GAM, even though there were major military bases only a few kilometres away.

On the Indonesian Government's own figures, 358 of 390 villages in north Aceh have no functioning government.

It is no coincidence that the oil and gas regions adjacent to the Exxon Mobil gas fields in Lhokseumahwe, Bireuen, north and East Aceh, contained nearly 40 per cent of all TNI and police force in the 16 regencies of Aceh.

They are the areas now under intense attack by the Indonesian military using armoured vehicles and air power and where the reports of civilian deaths are mostly coming from. These are also the areas that it is impossible to access without authorisation from Indonesia's department of foreign affairs and the martial law commander in Banda Aceh.

The situation for NGO workers, who would normally investigate abuses, is precarious. On June 9 six were arrested in the capital for alleged links with GAM. Four from the Centre for Human Rights, including the director, were held and questioned by the police and two volunteer workers from the Indonesian Red Cross were also detained.

Another six were arrested in the East Aceh town of Langsa.



The Indonesian military has strict regulations for Indonesian journalists covering the war. There are 54 reporters "embedded" with TNI troops who have had to undergo a brief training course, wear military uniforms and are ordered to report patriotically.

Some networks have enthusiastically embraced the war, including one north Sumatran station that runs nightly combat footage re-runs to the background music of the Rolling Stones' Paint It Black.

In Langsa I sat in the cockroach-filled upstairs room watching the street through broken louvres. At 10pm the power went out and the equatorial heat and mosquitoes became oppressive. An insistent knocking at the door at around 11pm revealed the police had found me.

They told me they would be back first thing in the morning after I pretended not to understand and to be half asleep. I left before they came back.

A few kilometres out of town to the north lines of military vehicles clogged the road. The soldiers were putting on body armour and pulling down the metal shutters over the windows of their trucks.

GAM fighters in the next area along the road have reported 34 clashes with the TNI since May 19 including two successful RPG attacks on TNI trucks.

Civilians waited patiently in a long line of buses and trucks on the other side of the road as each vehicle was searched and identities checked.

Locals told me there were four other checks like this before Lhokseumahwe and then the road to Banda Aceh was more or less permanently closed to traffic.

Without the right papers I didn't think I'd make it and with the soldiers so jumpy I thought I might have an "accident" like the one that killed a German tourist with six shots to his head and chest two weeks before. His death provided a pretence to ban foreigners from the province.

There were no more roadblocks until the border where all the passengers had to get out and line up. My passport was checked and handed back to me.

It was obvious they couldn't tell what kind of visa it was and presumed I was the last of the tourists.

The official said: "As long as you are not American. We are looking for an American. If you are American I kill you".

It was a bad joke. He was referring to William Nessen, who at that time was still at large.

I was relieved and wound down the tinted window of the bus to get some air.

But travelling back in to north Sumatra groups of men in civilian clothes with automatic weapons were checking all the houses by the side of the road.

Military and police trucks were everywhere and troops were searching through the scrub and in the trees for the next 2km past the border.

The operation against GAM doesn't stop at the border.

According to Indonesian news reports at least eight GAM members have been caught in the north Sumatran capital, Medan, in the last four weeks. In Jakarta residents have been asked to watch the activities of Acehnese neighbours.

The Indonesian state is doing everything it can - internationally and domestically - to wipe out GAM, seal off the province and cover up the details of their operation.

If the Indonesian military learned one thing from East Timor it is that information is dangerous.