New York -- Human Rights Watch today challenged the Indonesian government to systematically prosecute widespread atrocities in Aceh. The call came as a long-delayed human rights trial was finally set to begin in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital
The crimes in Aceh deserve the same attention that the crimes in East Timor are getting," said Joe Saunders, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The abuses in Aceh were systematic, but the government's approach so far has been piecemeal and ineffective. The current trial will be significant only if it is followed by a much more comprehensive effort to bring perpetrators to justice."
The trial that is scheduled to begin today is the first of five planned "connectivity trials," in which joint panels of civil and military judges will hear evidence of alleged military atrocities against civilians. The trial, being held in Banda Aceh, capital of the province of Aceh, will seek to establish responsibility for the killing of more than fifty people at an Islamic boarding school in Beutong Ateuh West Aceh on July 23, 1999. Soldiers opened fire on religious teacher Tengku Bantaqiah and his family and students. The army has claimed that there was an exchange of fire, but eyewitness accounts and preliminary investigations suggest the shooting was unprovoked.
Human rights organizations in Indonesia raised concerns when the prospect of a "connectivity" trial for the Bantaqiah massacre was first announced last November and the highest ranking defendant named was only a lieutenant colonel. Now the officer in question, Lt. Colonel Sudjono, has been reported missing and is either in hiding or is a victim of foul play himself. Without the chief suspect, the trial will focus on twenty-five lower-ranking defendants, and it is unlikely that the trial will produce significant evidence on the chain of command involved in the decision to open fire.
Human Rights Watch noted several other deficiencies in the government's efforts to date. Only five trials are envisioned and only one, the Bantaqiah trial, has been pursued vigorously. Hundreds of other cases have gone completely unaddressed. In addition, the joint civil/military panel, though an improvement on a purely military court, is flawed. One problem is that the military judges on each panel can be expected to be biased in favor of military defendants. A second defect is that Indonesia's existing criminal code does not specify many human rights offenses recognized under international law.
Human Rights Watch has called instead for creation of national courts for past cases of gross abuses and has urged that such courts be staffed by civilian judges and expressly given jurisdiction over internationally recognized human rights crimes. Such courts could hear not only the East Timor trials but also the Aceh trials and all other cases of alleged atrocities against civilian populations.
"Some of the government officials who have been pushing for the Bantaqiah trial sincerely want to bring abusive officers to justice and this is a step forward," said Saunders. "But even so, there are glaring deficiencies in the current trial. Without a more decisive effort to establish justice, there is a real danger that the Acehnese public will see this trial as tokenism and dismiss the entire justice effort as an empty gesture."
Human Rights Watch urged those countries, including the United States, now reconsidering military cooperation with Indonesia to recognize the weaknesses in the Aceh trial and to insist on an end to counterinsurgency abuses and credible prosecutions of the most senior culpable officers before resuming military sales or training programs. It called on countries concerned with reform efforts in Indonesia, including Japan, the European Union and its member states, and the United States to send observers to the trial to monitor how it is conducted. It also called on the Indonesian attorney general's office to provide adequate protection to the witnesses, several of whom have reported intimidation in recent months.
Background
Twenty-three years ago, a small group of Acehnese rebels declared independence from Indonesia and have been fighting a guerrilla war ever since. Although the rebels have grown stronger over the past year as exiles returned from abroad and popular support swelled, the rebels have never been particularly respectful of other people's rights and are by no means universally well-liked in Aceh. The situation in Aceh has become far more complex than a simple insurgency, as a broad-based coalition of students, clerics, intellectuals, civil servants, and entrepreneurs—though opposed to the violent methods of the rebels— have become outraged at the government's failure to put an end to the military's dismal record of abuses in the province and now share the insurgents' anti-Jakarta sentiment.
The Bantaqiah massacre, as it has come to be known, is just one of hundreds of cases of alleged abuses against civilians resulting from a decade of counterinsurgency operations in the province. In 1989, guerrillas using weapons acquired largely from raids on military posts within Aceh carried out a series of attacks on soldiers and non-Acehnese migrants to the region. In ensuing years, the Indonesian army responded with ferocious and indiscriminate force, killing more than a thousand civilians, often leaving their mutilated bodies by the side of roads or rivers. Many more were arrested, tortured, and arbitrarily detained for months, sometimes years. Hundreds of men disappeared. Many women whose husbands or sons were suspected of involvement with the guerrillas were raped.
Although martial law was lifted in August 1998, just three months after Soeharto was forced to step down, intensive counterinsurgency efforts continue and new atrocities have continued to come to light, fueling separatist sentiment in Aceh.
