Copyright © South China Morning Post - Published On Sunday, June 13, 1999
Aceh Running From Military Might
Ellie Zuwairiah Yusuf, 25, gave birth to twins on a dirty wooden school floor in a refugee camp in Indonesia's most northwestern province of Aceh last weekend. She wanted to bear her babies at home. But with no-one else in the village, she had no choice.
"I was scared to give birth here," she said in the makeshift camp in Samalanga. "But there was nobody left in the village, so I had to leave."
Ms Yusuf is one of tens of thousands who make up a new refugee tragedy just as the world hopes the Kosovar crisis is ending.
Makeshift refugee camps are springing up by the day in Aceh as the people leave their villages en masse. They are scared out of their wits - by the military.
Roving army patrols are hunting down resurgent separatist guerillas. The people fear the military massacres and gang rapes that haunt the past of this oil-rich province.
Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, was independent until the Dutch colonised it in the 1950s. Joining the Indonesia-wide fight against the Dutch, the local religious leader led the province to join the new, unitary state of Indonesia. And rebels have sought independence ever since.
With rebellions in 1953 and 1962, Aceh was declared independent in 1976 by now-exiled leader of the National Liberation Front of Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh), Hasan de Tiro. The soldiers moved in to crush the separatist groups. Human rights groups calculate that nearly 2,000 people have been killed and 3,200 tortured. There were about 3,000 other cases of abuse, including rape and house burnings, between 1989 and last August.
Locals claim some 30,000 people were killed or remain missing.
The military operation was announced to be over last August, and General Wiranto, apologising for the atrocities, promised an investigation into abuses during the past decade. In March, President Bacharuddin Habibie promised the deaths would stop. Yet the killings have continued.
At least 41 unarmed civilians were killed in May at Kreung Geukuh, near Lhokseumawe. And with tanks on the streets urging people to vote during last week's election and rebels threatening retaliation against anyone who did, the people have had enough. They are on the move.
In one camp at Peudada, more than 12,000 huddled together into a single school, with many forced to sleep outside on the mud under plastic sheeting.
About a dozen other such camps of varying sizes have emerged so far, mostly in schools, mosques and other public buildings, though many such buildings have been torched by unknown provocateurs.
"We have seen how brutal the military has been. We are worried they may attack us again," said Teungku Ismail Umar, 38, who heads a refugee camp at Peudada.
Fever, diarrhoea and other illnesses are spreading fast as numbers swell by the day. Many have been taken to hospital.
Philippe Beauverd, of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only international aid worker on the scene, said: "Sanitation and water are the main problems, but we have had no reports of epidemic."
"Not a single civil servant has come to see the conditions we are living in and what has happened to us," said Mr Ismail, who set up the Peudada camp a fortnight ago. "It is like they have forgotten us."
Yet while little international aid has arrived, the refugees say they will reject any offers of central government help on principle.
Most are sympathetic to the Free Aceh Movement's (GAM) separatist cause, though not all condone violence.
In some parts of the rebel province, there is barely a road or wall in Aceh without the words "Referendum, Yes!" in giant letters.
Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno, promised the province special status in 1959. The Acehnese are still waiting. And for many, greater autonomy is no longer enough.
Spurred on by the East Timorese success in getting an independence referendum in August, they too want a vote of their own.
The East Timorese armed resistance movement's success has encouraged GAM to escalate its own hit-and-run campaign.
"We will win through guerilla tactics," said Ismail Syaputra, GAM's international spokesman, speaking at a secret hideout near Lhokseumawe.
The province is hugely rich in natural resources - including oil and gas - but its four million population remains impoverished.
Aceh contributes about 23 trillion rupiah (HK$20.7 billion) to Jakarta each year and gets back only 10 per cent for its own spending, causing deep resentment.
Zainal Arifin Panglima Polem, vice-chairman of the Aceh investment co-ordinating board, said: "We have sacrificed too much and been cheated for too long. All the revenue goes to Jakarta. We want the right for this province to manage our own resources."
Saifuddin Bantasyam, executive director of Care Human Rights Forum in Aceh, claims the foul play has returned with the military reinforcements.
"We've had students stripped naked, intimidated and accused of being GAM activists. Soldiers have said they'll kill all Acehnese," he said.
Villagers claim that interrogations, beatings and torturing of their men by soldiers has resumed during this latest witch-hunt for elusive GAM militia.
Colonel Johnny Wahab, military commander in the province, dismisses these allegations as "evil lies", while admitting he understands villagers' resentment and fear.
"It is natural for them to have feelings of fear towards the military because of what happened in the past," the colonel said.
"We now have to do good deeds to get our reputation back. We want people to go back to their homes."
On general election day last Monday, convoys of tanks with military motorcycle outriders bearing machine guns paraded the streets, blaring music through loudspeakers, urging people to exercise their right to vote.
Most people dared not go outside.
In 1991, Indonesian troops descended on the village of Cotkeng, massacred all the men and raped the women.
Now no-one remains in Aceh's so-called Widow's Village. Cotkeng, like many other villages in the "problem" regencies of Pidie, north Aceh and east Aceh, has been deserted since the military patrols returned.
Usman Abdullah, the 45-year-old headman of the village from which Ms Yusuf fled, said their experience was similar.
"People are still traumatised by what happened in 1991 when the military came into our village, tortured and kidnapped the men and raped the women. Many of those men never returned."
Sauban bin Abdul Jalil, a 30-year-old unemployed man in the same camp, said: "We want an international body to come in and take care of matters and get rid of all the armed soldiers."
Some Acehnese have called for United Nations intervention.
Meanwhile, said Mr Ismail from the Peudada camp, "We are not going anywhere until we get letters both from the government and all the military forces guaranteeing our safety to go back to our villages."
The total number of displaced people is unknown, but includes not just Acehnese, but also trans-migrants from over-crowded Java who have received death threats from GAM and been told to return home.
The transmigrants, whom the Acehnese blame for taking their land and jobs, have been setting up their own refugee camps with government help and military guards.
Suwarno Kastruri, a 35-year-old Javanese farmer, said: "We have been threatened we will be killed, if we do not get out of the area. We are frightened. We want to get out of Aceh." Mr Suwarno is staying in one of two trans-migrant refugee camps in Lhokseumawe.
Instead, the military has told them that they will be escorted back to their new Acehnese homes and guarded.
GAM proudly admits mounting guerilla attacks on soldiers and police, and boasts of killing more than 170 soldiers during the recent general election campaign alone. The military says GAM's figures are grossly exaggerated.
GAM also admits torching the ruling Golkar Party's campaign office just before the election and various government buildings.
But GAM's Mr Ismail denies the rebels are responsible for the burning of schools and buses.
"School is very important for the children. We cannot destroy their future," he said.
The guerillas blame unknown provocateurs from within the armed forces wanting to deny refugees places to hide.
Travellers forced off some of the buses last week say they were held up by a gang in civilian clothes but with military-style haircuts and weapons.
The people's greatest fear is that the military may be deliberately stirring up trouble to provide an excuse to revive their military occupation in greater numbers.
And so the Acehnese are running scared.
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