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Indonesian army massacred unarmed civilians in Aceh: probe team

"The only shooting was by the TNI (Indonesian army) and there is not enough evidence of resistance," said investigation team member Azhary Basar, quoted by the official Antara news agency.

The government team said the villagers in the Beutong Ateuh area of West Aceh had the opportunity to flee the area after learning of the military's presence four hours before the July 23 attack.

"They (the civilians) could have run away or if they had had weapons they could have consolidated their troops to fight," Basar said, adding there was no evidence of separatist rebel activity in the area at the time.

The fact-finding team -- composed of government officials, human rights activists and police -- conducted the investigation into the massacre in August and briefed the press in Aceh on its findings on Saturday.

Rights groups have said the villagers were asked to gather for an identity check on a field near an Islamic boarding school run by former political prisoner Tengku Bantaqiah.

The villagers were then allegedly lined up and sprayed with bullets, leaving at least 51 people dead, including Bantaqiah.

The military insisted the civilians were separatist rebels killed in an armed skirmish and that soldiers were carrying out an operation to find guns allegedly hidden by Bantaqiah and armed followers in mountainous West Aceh.

The team suspected after the massacre a group of people, whom Basar did not identify, had come to Beutong Ateuh to destroy evidence, the Media Indonesia newspaper quoted the commission member as saying.

Basar also said the team found no signs of Bataqiah growing marijuana, as alleged by the military.

"The team believes that at that time Tengku Bantaqiah was not growing hemp plants or hiding arms as he was accused of," he said, adding Bantaqiah had then only been released from prison for three months.

On Sunday the head of Aceh branch of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), Iqbal Farabi, urged the government to immediately follow up the team's findings by bringing the case to court, Antara reported.

Farabi said the military as an institution should be held responsible for the massacre, not individual soldiers who committed the shootings.

"In my opinion, (the local and regional military commanders), then-armed forces chief General Wiranto and (former) president B.J. Habibie should be held responsible," he said.

Violence in Aceh has spiralled since early May, when troops shot dead 41 civilians as a campaign demanding a referendum on self-determination in the staunchly Islamic region gained momentum.

Armed Acehnese groups, believed to be members of the Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh) movement which has been fighting for an Islamic state since 1976, have killed scores of soldiers in the past months.

About 260 people including soldiers, rebels and the 51 killed in the field have been killed since May in Aceh. Hundreds of buildings, including schools, have been torched and some 200,000 people have fled their villages fearing violence.

Most of the violence has been concentrated in Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh, which bore the brunt of harsh decade-long anti-rebel military operations that were only halted last year.

Soldiers and officials have been accused by human rights groups of widespread violations during the decade.

The bitterness against the government has been further fuelled by dissatisfaction over the exploitation of Aceh's natural resources as little of the profit generated has been reinvested in the province.

The discontent has led to mounting calls for an East Timor-style referendum on self-determination, and last week tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital Banda Aceh to demand independence.

Previous governments have bluntly ruled such a vote out but Indonesia's new president, Abdurrahman Wahid, has signalled a new approach to managing the country's disparate regions by granting wider autonomy through a federal system.

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