Human Rights Watch warned today that the deteriorating situation in Aceh was rapidly becoming a test of President Wahid's authority and of civilian control over the military.
As student groups and nongovernmental organizations plan for a major rally in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh this weekend in support of a referendum on Aceh's political status, police and military units have been raiding NGO offices, arresting those involved in rally preparations, blocking transport, searching all vehicles headed for the capital, and shooting at rally participants trying to reach Banda Aceh. A similar rally last November 8 drew an estimated one million people to the capital.
"The Indonesian armed forces seem to be reverting to the worst days of the Soeharto era," said Sidney Jones, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "In the misguided notion that the push for a referendum is led by GAM, the army and police are turning their guns on civilians." GAM is the acronym for Gerakan Aceh Merdeka or the Free Aceh Movement, a guerrilla group operating in Aceh since 1976.
In the latest incident, armed police on Friday afternoon raided the office of an organization called PEMRAKA (Command Post of Concerned Students and Acehnese) and arrested three student leaders, all of whom were members of the steering committee for the rally. Muhammad Taufiq Abda, Iqbal Selian, and Bustami, all in their mid-twenties, were believed to be in detention in the Banda Aceh police station as of Friday night.
Some twenty people are confirmed to have been killed in the last two days in efforts to travel to Banda Aceh for the rally. Some local organizations put the death toll at over one hundred.
These violations are occurring even as senior Indonesian officials, led by the President, have publicly castigated the military for firing on demonstrators and activists, but thus far, nothing has been done to stop the shooting or arrest the perpetrators.
Indonesian security forces are making no effort to distinguish between actions by the guerrillas and peaceful protest on the part of civilian, mostly student, organizations.
Human Rights Watch called on Indonesia's donors and other governments to:
1. Express strong concern at the actions of Indonesian security forces to obstruct freedom of movement, assembly, and expression. These concerns should be raised immediately in connection with the rally. The upcoming APEC meeting in Brunei on November 15-16 would be an appropriate forum to raise ongoing concerns about lack of accountability for human rights violations in Aceh and apparent inability of Jakarta to control the behavior of local field commanders.
2. Send diplomats of Jakarta-based embassies to Aceh to review the situation with a view toward making direct demarches to the Indonesian government.
3. Use the new human rights legislation passed by the Indonesian parliament last week to intensify investigations and begin prosecutions into past and ongoing human rights abuses in Aceh.
