Articles - Inside Indonesia: The peoples and cultures of Indonesia

In this issue

Viva Timor Lorosae! Gerry van Klinken A free East Timor was one of the dreams that inspired the birth of Inside Indonesia in 1983. We published more than sixty articles in support of it. Now that it's here, this edition goes out with our best wishes to the people. From his Jakarta cell after he was captured in 1992, independence fighter Xanana Gusmao inspired Indonesian activist Titi Irawati by saying Indonesia could not be democratic unless East Timor was free. Not just Titi, but all the Indonesians featured in this edition - seven of them! - continue to believe that, even if now-president Xanana has prudently stopped advising Indonesians about democracy. After 30 August 1999, with East Timor no longer 'inside' Indonesia, we restricted our coverage to the post-colonial issues for Indonesia. This edition shows those issues remain urgent. So what's still on the agenda? First of all, the very freedom of East Timor itself. East Timorese fought for a state of their own that would protect them from exploitation and human rights abuse. As the forces of globalisation are stripping protective powers from states everywhere, the question is: can East Timor become a state that protects its weaker citizens? Mansour Fakih asks this question in his lead article, as do several others. Second, freedom with justice. The audacity with which Indonesian troops destroyed East Timor in front of the eyes of the world in September 1999 must not be forgotten. It was the finale of 24 brutal years that have scarred the nation for a long time to come. A short attention span is causing international support for a war crimes tribunal to wane. John Miller in this edition explains one alternative - civil courts around the world. The demand for justice over these crimes won't just go away. Richard Tanter, in our strong human rights section, reminds us that similar crimes committed in Indonesia over 35 years ago continue to cast their shadow today - and not only on Indonesians. Right now, similar crimes are being committed in Aceh. New beginnings Not as dramatically as Timor Lorosae perhaps, Inside Indonesia is also making a new beginning. We have a new board, new editors and office staff, and new energy. Five long-standing board members have said goodbye after years of devoted effort. They are David Bourchier, Kathy Gollan, Krishna Sen, Pat Walsh and Ron Witton. Most have been with the magazine since 1983. David, Kathy and longest of all Pat edited it at one time or another. We owe them a big terima kasih. We know they'll always be there for us still. Four new members took their place: Michele Ford, Leon Jones, Anton Lucas and Stanley Adi Prasetya. Three stayed on from before: Ed Aspinall, Vanessa Johanson, and Gerry van Klinken. We now have two Jakarta-based board members. We are also broadening the editorial base. Four editors will each take on one edition a year. They are : Dave McRae, Vanessa Johanson, Jennifer Lindsay and Michele Ford. I will stay on as coordinating editor. The Melbourne office also has new staff: Clare Land and Dilrukshi Gajaweera. Melinda Venticich will say goodbye after nearly ten years. Melinda has been in many ways the backbone of the organisation,. These new people are all exceptionally talented. One of Clare's jobs will be to talk with potential funders. If you are one of them, she'd love to be in touch. Gerry van Klinken is the Editor of Inside Indonesia Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

East Timor on the Net

The latest on this new nation at your fingertips John M Miller News The east-timor (formerly reg.easttimor) list is an e-mail news list that distributes news and documents from a wide range of sources, mainstream and alternative, official and non-governmental. The frequency of postings varies with the pace of events. A selection of past postings going back to mid-1998 is available at http://etan.org/et/default.htm. For information about subscribing to the full list or an abridged alternative send a blank e-mail to info@etan.org. For daily web-based news often with pictures, video or audio try Radio Australia (http://goasiapacific.com/specials/etimor/default.htm), the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/default.stm) and Easttimor.com (http://www.easttimor.com/). Lusa provides regular coverage in Portuguese (http://www.lusa.pt/) with some English translations. The UN The UN's Untaet site (http://www.un.org/peace/etimor/etimor.htm) will no doubt soon be renamed for the new UN mission, Unmiset - but the link will remain the same. It contains Untaet's regulations and media briefings and links to UN documents and Unamet's archive. It also has links to UNDP in East Timor and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights sites. News from UN headquarters in New York is available at its Countdown to Independence site (http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocusRel.asp?infocusID=27&Body=timor&Body1=) ReliefWeb (http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/vLCE/East+Timor?OpenDocument&StartKey=East+Timor&Expandview), another UN site, focusses on refugees, humanitarian relief and reconstruction, collecting documents from UN agencies, humanitarian and other NGOs and governments. From East Timor The website for the East Timor government (http://www.gov.east-timor.org/) is currently haphazardly maintained, but offers contact info for government departments. The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation is found at http://www.easttimor-reconciliation.org/. East Timorese NGO's and media are beginning to find their voices on the web. See for example the NGO Forum (www.geocities.com/etngoforum/), Lao Hamutuk (http://www.etan.org/lh) and Suara Timor Lorosae (in Bahasa Indonesia, though other languages are promised http://www.suaratimorlorosae.com/). History, culture and economy Although no longer maintained, TimorNet (http://www.uc.pt/timor/atop.html) contains historical, ethnographic and other background. As do the Timor Aid and Etra sites. Mother Jones offers a primer on the history of the Indonesian occupation (http://www.motherjones.com/east_timor/), and Znet archives much of Noam Chomsky's commentary on the issue (http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Timor/timor_index.htm). InfoTimor links to documents on economics and development in English and Portuguese (http://www.uc.pt/timor/atop.html). The Conference on Sustainable Development covers those topics in English and Bahasa Indonesian (http://members.tripod.com/sd_east_timor/) Documents on Timor Gap oil issues from the official Australian view can be found at http://www.isr.gov.au/resources/timor-gap/index.html and from an alternative perspective at http://www.gat.com/Timor_Site/. Human rights Tapol (http://www.gn.apc.org/tapol/home.htm), Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org) and Amnesty International's (http://www.amnesty.org/) web sites contain many of the reports and media releases on East Timor. A database of suspects in 1999's violence is available at: http://yayasanhak.minihub.org/mot. The Justice System Monitoring Project is watching trials in East Timor (http://www.jsmp.minihub.com/). While many activist sites are no longer maintained, other support groups are still actively campaigning and regularly posting analyses and action suggestions. The International Federation for East Timor site contains a global directory of activist groups (www.etan.org/ifet). Some of the more active sites, in addition to the human rights groups above, include the East Timor Action Network (www.etan.org), Asia Pacific Coalition for East Timor (http://www.iidnet.org/adv/timor/overview.htm), International Platform of Jurists for East Timor (http://www.antenna.nl/~ipjet/) and the Back Door Newsletter that focusses on Australia (http://www.tip.net.au/~wildwood/). A comprehensive list of active web links on East Timor can be found at http://www.etan.org/resource/websites.htm. John M Miller (fbp@igc.org) is media and outreach coordinator of the East Timor Action Network (http://www.etan.org/), facilitates the east-timor news list, and is webmaster of the Etan, International Federation for East Timor, and Lao Hamutuk websites. Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

Theatre blossoms

A sampling of performances in Java Julie Janson My travels in Java coincided with the writing of my own new play The crocodile hotel, about a teacher's experiences in the Northern Territory, the Yolgnu (Aboriginal people in Arnhemland), and their relationship to Indonesia. I saw many Indonesian plays and was seduced by the vibrant energy of artists who were enjoying the creative freedom of Indonesia's reformasi era. Yudi Ahmad Tajudin is the artistic director of Teater Garasi in Yogyakarta; Kusworo Bayu Aji is its executive director. The company creates two new performances a year and often tours to Jakarta and Surabaya. At Utan Kayu theatre in Jakarta, I lined up with the young crowd eager to see Garasi's latest production, Percakapan di ruang kosong (Conversation in an empty room), a collaboration between the performers and the writer/ director Gunawan Maryanto. We crowded into the theatre space and took a place on the concrete floor, crouching in the darkness in anticipation. Three ash-covered actors, looking like they were set in concrete industrial cylinders, stared at us in the darkness. The audience was given medical masks, and the floor was covered in ash, perhaps a reference to the World Trade Centre disaster site. The actors recited the poem about a man taking a second wife. A beautiful woman entered, sheltering from rain under a banana leaf. She edged through the ash in a storm to the music of Sundanese drums and an electronic soundscape. She encountered a dog-man and eventually she too became a dog. Then the 'other woman' entered, creating a rich physical distortion between ugliness and delicate emotion. Much of the work is non-verbal, but Garasi is intoxicated by Javanese traditional music and the influence of the Jathilan performance, which has a ritual basis and is performed in the open streets. They take their inspiration from Jalan Malioboro, Yogyakarta's main thoroughfare, which throbs day and night with music, and where it is possible to see seventy-year-old buskers playing the zither and singing to Dutch tourists. In Yogyakarta, I met an old friend from Sydney, the musician Sawung Jabo. He was workshopping an innovative movement performance with street people, the desperate and creative young. He spoke about the inter-gang fights in Jakarta, with homemade bows and arrows. He hoped that the theatre and music would give them a means of expressing their feelings about current events. When I returned some months later, Jabo invited me to a rehearsal of Diantara langit dan bumi kita bergerak (We move between earth and sky) by the group Teater Oyot Suket (Grass Roots). The setting was dramatic, an earth floor outside an old house set amongst rice paddies and surrounded by flaming torches. Aceh Another friend, the playwright and actress, Ratna Sarumpaet, told me that her group was performing at the Bandung Performing Arts School theatre and said that I had to come. Her new play Alia, luka serambi Mekah (Alia, the wound of the verandah of Mecca) is about the war in Aceh. As in all of Ratna's plays, it concerns a woman fighting for justice. There were 32 actors so the performance had a strong ensemble character. The use of traditional Acehnese dance created a strong sense of village community. Ratna wrote about her play: Alia becomes number one enemy of the authorities ... breaking through the trap of traditional convictions for women, she becomes a person of vision and carries out the teachings of her religion (Islam) with the perspective of justice, the rights of men and women, including the rights of the dead. When Ratna arrived in Bandung on 16th August she was interviewed on television. Immediately after the broadcast, the police came to the STSI university campus to see her. They asked her why she had not obtained permission for the performance, and she replied that it was art and as it was in a college it was no concern of theirs. The police left. I was struck by this woman's bravery, remembering that she had begun the play while in jail for three months during the days leading up to the overthrow of Suharto. In political terms, her plays are powerful documents that she takes around Indonesia, Europe and the US to educate people about human rights issues in Indonesia. In theatre terms, the plays are didactic and are prone to long impassioned declamatory speeches. Nevertheless they display a courage that is unmatched anywhere. Overall, the modern and traditional theatre I witnessed in Java during 2001 is vital and dynamic, and it is time it was showcased in international arts festivals. If more Indonesian corporate sponsors would support these groups then the task of touring overseas would be less daunting. Indonesian theatre arts are unique, and the world awaits them. Playwright Julie Janson (juliejanson@bigpond.com) was the Asialink Literature Resident in Indonesia 2001. Her travels were supported by the Australia Indonesia Institute and the Australia Council for the Arts. Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

Witness denied

Australian media responses to the Indonesian killings of 1965-66 Richard Tanter In the aftermath of the Untung coup and the Suharto countercoup of September 30th and October 1st, 1965 between 100,000 and 1,000,000 Indonesians were killed by the Indonesian army or by civilians supported and encouraged by the army. This genocide was the foundation of Suharto's three decades of power, and beyond that for the whole of post-Vietnam War Southeast Asia. The killings can be regarded as the constitutive terror of the New Order state. How was this genocide seen in Australia? What could Australians have learned from reading the press of the day? In mid-1966, while the killings that had started in October the year before were continuing unabated, the Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt visited the United States. Speaking to the Australian-American Association at the River Club in New York, Holt expressed his satisfaction with the pro-Western shift of Indonesian foreign policy and economic policy under Suharto after March 1966. This was hardly a surprising position for a conservative politician, but the language that Holt chose to employ was startling: 'With 500,000 to 1 million Communist sympathisers knocked off, I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place.' As a representation of genocide, the casual brutality of the first part of the politician's sentence (a million people 'knocked off') is stunning. Surely this is what the American psychologist of state terror, Robert Lifton, calls 'psychological numbing' at work: an adjustment to the normality of mass murder. And yet the brutality of Holt's throwaway line was enhanced for his listeners by the smug joke in the second part of the sentence: 'I think it's safe to assume a reorientation has taken place'. It is not hard to imagine the knowing smiles and even guffaws of the powerful and wealthy American audience. Yet Holt's slip in New York was significant not just in the brutal clarity of his manner of speaking. Holt's remarks were reported the next day in the New York Times, but not, so far as I can discover, in any Australian newspaper. It is most implausible that no Australian US-based correspondents were present. The fact the remarks were not reported at home was not an accident. Even in the roughhouse atmosphere of Australian 1960s anti-communism, Holt had gone much further than would have been safe. Speaking to an invitation-only audience of powerful friends abroad, Holt relaxed his normal political guard and openly revealed the fundamental outlook of Australian anti-communism and racist perceptions of Indonesia. The Australian reporters touring with the Prime Minister or their editors protected their readers from the need to face the historical and moral reality of the genocide next door. (It was to be thirteen years before Holt's remarks were brought to wider attention in Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's pathbreaking study of the systematic media differentiation of 'constructive' terror (Indonesia) and 'nefarious' terror (Cambodia) in their The Washington connection and Third World fascism.) In Australia today there is very little awareness of the 1965 killings. In my own experience, apart from those with a close interest in Indonesian affairs, very few people have any knowledge of this set of massive crimes against humanity. While recent public opinion polls show a widespread negative image of New Order Indonesia in Australia, this is largely derived from perceptions of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. And of course, most people who know nothing of the Indonesian killings in 1965-66 know a great deal about the Khmer Rouge killings a decade later. This ignorance is not a matter of forgetting something once known. An Australian public opinion poll conducted in the early 1970s by the political scientist Rodney Tiffen showed that while more than half the respondents could identify President Suharto, not a single person mentioned the killings as part of their description of their image of Indonesia. How can this ignorance or amnesia of genocide in the country nearest Australia be explained? The first question is a simple question of fact: exactly what information about the killings in Indonesia was provided by the mainstream media of the time? The newspapers of the city of Melbourne Australia's second largest city and the heartland of the old-monied conservative dominance epitomised by Holt make a reasonable sample of the press coverage of the day. I examined all issues between October 1, 1965 and August 30th, 1966 of Melbourne's two daily morning newspapers. These together dominated the Melbourne market: the tabloid Sun News-Pictorial and the 'quality broadsheet' The Age. Both newspapers published many articles on Indonesian politics at the time at least one or more each day. This was almost as many as were published on Vietnam, and far more than at any other time in Australian media history. Most stories were given great prominence in the papers, appearing either on the front page or the principal foreign affairs page. The Sun Coverage of the killings in both papers was extremely limited, and grossly distorted. The Sun, the more popular paper, while publishing almost daily major reports on Indonesia, published only five articles in eleven months that even mentioned killings of communists. Two minor articles in November 1965 reported small numbers of PKI members killed in Java. The execution of D N Aidit, the PKI leader, was reported in December. President Sukarno's statement in January 1966 that 87,000 had been killed was reported on two occasions, but in a manner that suggested it was an unreliable report by an irrational politician. On March 9th 1966, the political columnist Douglas Wilkie discussed Jakarta students as 'rioting in a good cause' (ie. anti-Sukarno), but then went on to make an extremely intriguing statement: 'Many of the students are tools of the Moslem extremists who butchered some 300,000 of their Communist countrymen with kris and club after the September 30 revolt.' Two aspects of the way this single sentence is written are important. Firstly, in March 1966, the columnist is referring to the mass killings in a way that suggests they are common knowledge already: he sees no need to explain the reference to his readers. Yet those readers would not have been able to find that information in The Sun. Secondly, Wilkie's allusions to killings by 'kris and club' and to 'Moslem extremists' are characteristic of contemporary Australian (and US) references to both the killings and to Indonesian politics as a whole. 'Indonesia' is a different world from 'here' (Australia), one characterised by immaturity ('It's children's hour in Jakarta'), and by unknowable and irrational causation ('Moslem extremists'), with connotations of racially informed separateness (Indonesians kill with 'kris and club'). Apart from these tiny allusions and reports, nothing appeared in this newspaper until early August of 1966, by which time most of the killings had stopped. On August 5, The Sun's prolific Jakarta correspondent Frank Palmos published a powerful and detailed report beginning: 'More than one million people died in the massacres triggered by the attempted coup in Indonesia on October 1 last year.' The graphic detail in the full-page report came from army participants in the killings, and from a military research report carried out in part by university students. Palmos' report also emphasised the irrational 'blood lust' and 'constant semi-amok' behaviour of young Islamic men. In sum then, the largest newspaper in Melbourne barely mentioned the killings in the ten months while they were in full sway, and then allowed only a single detailed report to be published. There were no follow-up articles after Palmos' report. The limited information that did appear represented Indonesians as irrational and unknowable racial others. The Age Coverage of Indonesia in The Age was even greater than in its popular rival, and coverage of the killings was more extensive. Despite this, The Age's coverage was equally limited and distorting. Like The Sun, The Age published several minor reports of communists killed in fighting in late 1965. It also reported President Sukarno's January pleading for an end to the killings, though in a less hostile manner. In the remainder of 1966, The Age published three articles reporting the killings in some detail. Two of these were somewhat detailed reports by New York Times senior correspondents C L Sulzberger in April and Seymour Topping in August. The flavour of Sulzberger's report, which did emphasise the genocidal quality and scale of the killings, can be guessed from its original title in the New York Times: 'When a nation goes amok'. Topping's article in August was a much more sober and more detailed account, based on extensive travel in Java, Bali and Eastern Indonesia. There was no editorial comment on Topping's report, nor any follow-up by any of The Age's own writers. When I asked one journalist who wrote extensively on Indonesia that year for The Age why he and his colleagues did not cover the genocide story, he answered, 'Well it's easy to criticise now, Richard. But in those days it was near impossible to get out of Jakarta.' When I put this to Seymour Topping, who like other New York Times correspondents travelled widely and reported in depth on the genocide, he replied, 'That was simply untrue. You could do it if you wanted to.' Yet in January 1966, much earlier in the period of the killings, The Age published a detailed eyewitness account of the killings by one of its own reporters, Robert Macklin. In 500 words Macklin provided a graphic and convincing account of mass murder that could have left no reader in doubt of what was happening in Indonesia. In journalistic terms, it was a world scoop. Yet, given both its importance and its virtually unique status, Macklin�s article was published deep in the newspaper, well away from both the front page and the foreign affairs section, next to the daily cattle market price reports. Short of not publishing it at all, there could have been no better way of ensuring it went unnoticed. There was no follow-up either by Macklin or the paper's Southeast Asian correspondent. Macklin himself wondered at the time whether editors of the paper who he even then knew to have close relationships with Australian security organisations had effectively spiked the story. The choice of words with which The Age discussed Indonesian affairs in themselves carried powerful effects. As in The Sun, paternalistic and racialist assumptions of irrationality and immaturity were common. The day that Sulzberger's April article with its emphasis on amok and kris appeared, The Age editorial discussed Indonesia, without mentioning the killings, expressing the hope for a new direction in condescending but revealing terms: 'It is too much to hope that the new Indonesian regime will be logical; our best hope is that it will be practical.' Yet there was a far more effective rhetorical device used by the Australian media to deal with the delicate problem of both acknowledging and denying the fact of genocide at the same time. The Southeast Asian correspondent of The Age, a senior journalist and academic political scientist named Creighton Burns, published a great many articles on Indonesian politics in this period. However, only one sentence in many hundreds actually mentioned the killings: 'Djakarta virtually escaped the violence which swept Indonesia in the wake of the October coup, and which resulted in the death of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, mostly Communist supporters and sympathisers.' Burns here provides an early example of a formulation that was to become widely employed in the years to come in western writing on the killings. As George Orwell might have noted, the key to the political effect of the passage lies in the grammar: there is no agent of violent death here. Abstract and disembodied violence 'sweeps Indonesia', resulting in Communist death. In other versions, which were to be repeated during the East Timor crisis of 1999, the phrasing is even more telling: 'X number of Communists died in the wave of violence...' The agent-less and passive voice was appropriate for what was needed in 1966, and was repeatedly used. Because of the report by Macklin (and later by Sulzberger, Topping, and other sources such as Palmos), it was impossible to deny the holocaust directly. Equally, it was politically highly undesirable that the agency of the army and its instigation of Islamic groups be emphasised. Wherever possible The Age avoided direct reference to the killings, and effectively suppressed its own inconvenient world scoop by Macklin. When reference to genocide was unavoidable, the highly effective solution was to use the rhetoric of the passive voice. Writing about mass murder in the passive voice provided a remarkably effective complement to simple avoidance and suppression via a form of words that allowed both knowledge of genocide and denial of genocide at the same time. Denial - in the psychoanalytic sense - always involves a process of actively repressing knowledge. Witness 'Witness' has a double meaning in English. There is firstly the person who takes the role of 'witness' in relation to an event, the person who says 'this is what happened'. My first question then is, where were the Australian witnesses? In what way did Australian newspapers report the Indonesian killings of 1965-66? What did Australian political figures say at that time? What was said in the Australian community at that time? But there is a second meaning of the word 'witness' in English, a sense captured in the phrase 'to bear witness', meaning to speak of what has been seen, to speak actively of what has happened, and to not be silent. The Australian media and political response to the Indonesian genocide was a matter of 'witness denied' in this sense as well. This is significant not just in the real-politik world, but in the moral sense that many people assume flows from Auschwitz onwards: a responsibility to bear witness to holocaust and genocide. Unlike in Indonesia itself, in 1960s Australia, speaking truth to power required no great risk. Yet, witness was systematically denied. I began this work trying to answer what seemed to me to be an odd puzzle: why didn't people my age and older in Australia know about the killings? That simple puzzle has led to somewhat more complicated puzzles, bearing a great deal of moral and intellectual weight. It has been a saddening study, particularly tracing back through the intellectual history of the study of Indonesian politics and history in Australia. All of our work is an act of representation, but we have paid astonishingly little attention to our own intellectual history. The story of the representation of the Indonesian genocide is the point where anti-communism, the demands of the national security state, and in the Australian case at least, a deep measure of racism, fused to smother and then sever the connection to a shared humanity and moral responsibility. Richard Tanter (rtanter@hotmail.com) teaches at Kyoto Seika University in Japan. Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

Combat zone

Aceh is the military's stepping stone back to power David Bourchier In the years since Suharto, Acehnese resolve has done much to push forward the national agenda on human rights and regional autonomy. Decades of military repression gave Acehnese demands for reparation of past wrongs a special legitimacy and intensity. Yet the Indonesian military has consistently opposed concessions to the Acehnese and is now using the ongoing resistance there as a stepping stone back to power. There is no more tangible symbol of this process than the establishment in February 2002 of the Aceh regional military command, known as Kodam Iskandar Muda. On one level, the new regional military command (Kodam) changes little. After all, there is no territory in Indonesia that is not covered by one or another Kodam. Kodam Iskandar Muda had itself existed prior to 1985 when it was absorbed into the larger Kodam Bukit Barisan, a Medan-based command that covered most of northern and western Sumatra. But a closer look at the dynamics behind the formation of Kodam Iskandar Muda reveals a worrying picture. Kodams are the key units in the military's so-called territorial apparatus, an intricate hierarchy that shadows the government's civilian administration from the national to the village level. Following the fall of Suharto, when anti-military sentiment was at its height, several pro-democracy groups called for this entire apparatus to be disbanded. Their calls had some support among reformers within the military who saw the involvement of territorial officers in local politics, business and criminal activities as detrimental to the military's image. Expansion plans Hardliners in the mainstream military, however, scoffed at the idea of abolishing the territorial apparatus. They used the outbreak of communal violence in several parts of Indonesia in 1999 and 2000 to argue instead for its expansion. Away from the gaze of Indonesia's newly empowered parliamentarians, planners in armed forces headquarters hatched a scheme in 1999 to increase the number of Kodams from the existing ten to seventeen. The idea here was to resurrect the system of smaller Kodams that armed forces commander General Benny Murdani had rationalised in 1985. The first move came on 15 May 1999 with the creation of the Pattimura Kodam in strife-torn Ambon, splitting the large Trikora military command that had covered West Papua and the Moluccas. The Pattimura Kodam was named Kodam XVI while the shrunken West Papua command began to be referred to as Kodam XVII. The use of this pre-1985 numbering system left observers in little doubt that the military intended to push ahead with its controversial expansion plan. This was confirmed when armed forces commander Wiranto announced to a bemused parliamentary commission in June 1999 a ten-year schedule for increasing the number of Kodams to seventeen, starting with the Moluccas, Aceh, West Kalimantan and Central/ South Kalimantan. If Wiranto encountered little opposition to his plan from parliament, the same was not true of the Acehnese. From the moment they got wind of the plan in late 1998, there was strong opposition from student, human rights and community groups. Arguments put by Aceh's then governor, Syamsuddin Mahmud, that the resurrection of our own Banda Aceh-based Kodam would lead to a more culturally sensitive military were quickly howled down. The military was deeply unpopular in Aceh. Intense local opposition appears to have been a crucial factor in delaying the plan. Presidents Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid both understood that the deep resentment against the military in Aceh could easily translate into support for independence. In August 1999 Habibie announced an end to Aceh's status as a so-called military operations zone (DOM) and ordered Wiranto to apologise for past abuses by the security forces there. Abdurrahman Wahid went further, engaging representatives of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in negotiations aimed at a peaceful resolution of the long-running conflict. On the ground, however, military actions went on regardless. Local commanders viewed Wahid's negotiated humanitarian pause with contempt. By April 2001 the central command had succeeded in pressuring Wahid into allowing a formal resumption of hostilities. This led immediately to the formation of a new combat command for Aceh called Kolakops, under the effective command of Brigadier-General Zamroni, former deputy chief of the feared Special Forces (Kopassus). Zamroni brought with him an elite force of about 2,000 troops trained by Kopassus. He was also put in command of all territorial troops in the province as well as all other outside forces including Kopassus and Strategic Reserve (Kostrad) troops, giving him control over at least 12,000 troops. Kolakops coordinated its actions at least in theory with the 20,000 police stationed in Aceh. Kolakops forces launched a major offensive against AGAM, the armed wing of the liberation movement. Given the extent of support for GAM in the towns and villages of Aceh, however, troops under Zamroni's command frequently targeted civilians and only succeeded in further alienating the population. According to the Legal Aid Foundation, an average of seven people was killed every day in 2001. Megawati's ascension further cemented the military's political power. Sukarno's daughter was far more simplistic in her approach to regional problems than Wahid had been, and far more friendly to the military. She made her attitude quite clear in December 2001 when she told her military audience: 'Suddenly we are aware of the need for a force to protect our beloved nation and motherland from breaking up. Guided by the soldier's oath and existing laws, carry out your duties and responsibilities in the best possible manner without worrying about being involved in human rights abuses. Do your job without hesitation.' Soon the plans for a new Kodam were on again. This time the opposition was even more widespread, triggered in part by the killing of guerrilla leader Abdullah Syafi'ie by Indonesian forces on 22 January. A range of academics, NGOs and public figures spoke against the plans, warning of an escalation of conflict and an increase in predatory activities by territorial soldiers. In mid-January a three-day strike against the new Kodam reportedly succeeded in crippling two-thirds of businesses in Aceh. There was also muted opposition from within Megawati's government. Speaking to reporters last January, Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister Hassan Wirayuda expressed his scepticism about the plan, stressing the need for dialogue with GAM. This reflected the long-standing frustration in Indonesia's foreign affairs establishment with the military's repeated undermining of its attempts to negotiate a peaceful solution. Local parliamentarians, however, had an interest in promoting the idea, with the new governor, Abdullah Puteh, one of its strongest supporters. By this time the position of Kolakops commander had been taken over by Brigadier-General Muhammad Djali Yusuf. New faces On 5 February Kodam Iskandar Muda was officially reinstated, with Djali Yusuf becoming Kodam commander. Much was made of the fact that he was Acehnese. Like most Kodam commanders across Indonesia today, Yusuf graduated from the military academy in Magelang, Central Java, in 1972. Between 1996 and 1997 he was responsible for operations in the Udayana military command that included East Timor. After serving for two years in East Kalimantan he became Zamroni's deputy in Kolakops in Aceh. He has repeatedly indicated that he endorses a hard-line solution to the Aceh conflict. Yusuf's chief of staff is Colonel Syarifudin Tippe, the Buginese combat engineer who until April 2001 commanded Korem 012, the Banda Aceh-based military district that covers the northern and western half of Aceh. When Tippe was first appointed to his position as Korem commander he spoke of 'slaughtering enemies of the state.' After a time, however, he began to make conciliatory statements and even recommended negotiating with GAM. He wrote at least two books on Aceh that tackle the question of Acehnese nationalism and the reasons for the military's unpopularity. At the same time, he opposed the humanitarian pause and now appears committed to follow the same path as his new commander. For military purposes, Aceh is divided into two district commands (Korem) and eight smaller military districts (Kodim). The latter correspond to civilian regencies (kabupaten). The current commander of Korem 012 is Colonel Gerhan Lentara, who had a long history of combat in East Timor. In Dili in November 1991 as deputy commander of Battalion 700, he was the officer whose slashing was followed by the Santa Cruz massacre. Meanwhile Colonel Azmyn Yusri Nasution, a 48-year old Kostrad officer with experience in many areas including Aceh, now commands Korem 011 covering eastern and southern Aceh. His most recent appointment was Operations Assistant at Kostrad headquarters in Jakarta. Whether the new Kodam will replace the Kolakops structure is as yet unclear. If East Timor is any guide, the combat command will continue to exist alongside the territorial apparatus. This would leave ample scope for confused lines of command and friction between territorial and non-territorial forces. But as we saw in East Timor, such confusion is useful because it allows maximum deniability when things go wrong. The formation of the Aceh Kodam bodes ill for peace in Aceh and for reform in Indonesia. It suggests that Jakarta is now fully committed to a military solution. Aceh is already reliving the nightmare of being a bloody combat zone. It is also a sign of growing military assertiveness at the national level. Weak resistance from national parliamentarians is another nail in the coffin of reformasi. With this success under their belt, the military is likely to push ahead with its plan to increase its influence by establishing more military commands throughout the country. David Bourchier (davidb@arts.uwa.edu.au) teaches at the University of Western Australia Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

Is Indonesia a terrorist base?

The gulf between rhetoric and evidence is wide Greg Fealy Indonesia has frequently been cast as a country with a serious international terrorism problem. The US, Singapore and Malaysia claim to have evidence of terrorists being based in Indonesia or of Indonesians leading offshore terrorist groups. Singaporean senior minister Lee Kwan Yew declared that Indonesia was a hotbed of terrorism. The claims have been used by the Bush administration to pressure Indonesia to take strong action against them. A close look at the evidence suggests, however, that the terrorist threat has been overstated and that foreign officials and the media have been alarmist in their claims. The emphatic anti-terrorism policy pursued by the US and some of its allies towards Indonesia is misguided. Among many alleged instances, I shall restrict this present discussion to the two most prominent and instructive cases. These are that: (1) al-Qaeda fighters received terrorist training in the Poso region of Central Sulawesi; and (2) Indonesian Muslims played a leading role in the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM) and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist groups in Malaysia and Singapore respectively, both of which have been linked to Osama bin Laden's network. The claims of terrorist training bases in Sulawesi emerged originally in testimony given to a Spanish judge by eight al-Qaeda activists. They claimed 200-300 fighters had trained in Poso and mentioned an Indonesian, Parlindungan Siregar, as a pivotal figure. The claims were soon taken up by Hendropriyono, the head of Indonesia's State Intelligence Agency (BIN), who stated publicly in mid-December 2001 that his officers had found evidence of foreigners training near Poso. The US press also began carrying stories, presumably based on briefings from Bush administration officials, that high-resolution satellite imagery had confirmed the existence of the camps and their foreign personnel. Much of this evidence, however, was soon shown to be equivocal. Key allies of the United States regarded the satellite photographs as inconclusive, because they failed to show who might have been using the base. A number of Western missions in Jakarta sent their own teams to Poso but found nothing to support the foreign base claim. Hendropriyono's statements were also contradicted by senior Indonesian police and military officials, who admitted that, while there were certainly Indonesian paramilitary training bases in Poso, they had no evidence of outsiders training there. Finally, there was the general question of how the training of several hundred foreign Muslims could go unnoticed by the large Christian community around Poso or by local security officials. The KMM and JI allegations surfaced following a series of arrests in Malaysia and Singapore between mid-2001 and early 2002. Officials in both countries claimed there were links between the two organisations. They said that testimony given by the detainees pointed to three Indonesians as having a leading role in KMM and JI. The three were Abubakar Ba'asyir, a fiery Islamic preacher from Central Java and supposed spiritual leader of both organisations, Riduan Isamuddin (commonly known as Hambali) who was credited with the daily management of JI, and Mohammad Iqbal. Iqbal was captured by Malaysian authorities in late 2001 and has not been seen in public since; Ba'asyir has returned to Indonesia where he maintains a high public profile; and Hambali went to ground after Indonesian police issued a warrant for his arrest. Malaysia and Singapore have pressed the Indonesian government to arrest Ba'asyir but have been told there is no case against him. This has led to highly critical reporting in the international press of Indonesia's soft stance on terrorism. The JI-Indonesia connection received further coverage when Philippines officials arrested an Indonesian, Fathur Rohim al-Ghozi in January 2002, on charges of importing explosives. Al-Ghozi, a former student at Ba'asyir's boarding school, was soon identified as JI's bomb expert and accused of involvement in various bombings across the region. This was followed in mid-March by the detention of another three Indonesian Muslims Tamsil Linrung, Abdul Jamal Balfas and Agus Dwikarna in Manila on charges of smuggling C4 explosive in their luggage. Philippines authorities claimed the men were linked to JI and other terrorist organisations. Tamsil and Balfas were eventually released in mid-April for lack of evidence but Dwikarna remains in detention, reportedly at the request of BIN. Sweeping claims The KMM-JI connection has been frequently cited by foreign officials and the media in sweeping claims about Indonesia's terrorism problem, but the available evidence only warrants a narrower interpretation. In the case of JI, the Singaporean government has released substantial documentary and video evidence to back its claim that this was a genuine terrorist group, and there appears little reason to doubt this information. The case against al-Ghozi is also strong. Much of the original JI testimony that led to his arrest has proven accurate and al-Ghozi has admitted his involvement in terrorist training and bombings. He was found guilty in the Philippines in mid-April and sentenced to a minimum ten years jail. But the Singaporeans have failed to present evidence proving that Ba'asyir, Hambali and Iqbal had a role in JI's terrorism. The KMM case is far less credible. The Malaysian government has offered the public almost no evidence to back its assertion that KMM is a terrorist group. Indeed, so flimsy is the government's case that a number of analysts have queried whether KMM even exists. The Mahathir administration has clear political and diplomatic motives in playing up the terrorism issue. It has sought to discredit its main political foe, the Islamist PAS, by alleging links between PAS and the KMM. It has also curried US favour by appearing pro-actively anti-terrorist. As with the Singaporeans, the Malaysian government has not revealed evidence showing the complicity of Ba'asyir, Hambali and Iqbal in KMM's terrorism. Indonesian police who have examined the testimony of the KMM detainees claim that, while it clearly shows that Ba'asyir and Hambali were militant preachers, it does not indicate any terrorist intent. Also dubious is the case against Tamsil, Balfas and Dwikarna. Almost from the outset, their arrest showed signs of being a frame-up. Tamsil told the Indonesian press that he and his two associates had been the only passengers searched from their flight and that they had seen Filipino officials plant the explosives in one of their suitcases. Filipino police had later told them that their arrest had been ordered by Hendropriyono and that a senior BIN official had travelled to Manila to oversee the operation. Meanwhile the Filipino police refused to allow a visiting Indonesian police team access to the smuggled explosive. The role played by Hendropriyono and BIN has attracted strong criticism from Islamic groups, the press and parliamentarians. Misinformation A number of conclusions can now be drawn. The first is that there is little basis for asserting that Indonesia is a proven base for terrorist groups. While a small number of Indonesians can reasonably be assumed to have engaged in terrorism, the data regarding bases and cells is, at best, inconclusive. This is not to say that Indonesia has no terrorists, but rather, that those who assert it has a serious international terrorist problem lack sufficient evidence or are not placing what they know on the public record (I suspect the former). A second conclusion is that US and Malaysian officials as well as Hendropriyono appear to be engaging in deliberate misinformation over the terrorism issue, apparently for domestic political and diplomatic purposes. The Indonesian government and Islamic community have grounds for scepticism over foreign claims of terrorists within its borders. It is in part true, as outsiders often point out, that Megawati is wary of arousing Muslim sentiment. But the point remains that those doing the accusing have failed to provide compelling reasons for Indonesian law enforcement authorities to act. Rather than excoriate Jakarta, the international community should commend it for upholding the principle of presumption of innocence and not arresting citizens without evidence of guilt. The above conclusions call into question the wisdom of the current US policy towards Indonesia, which entails pressuring it to step up action against terrorists. Indonesia's intelligence services, for example, have a notorious reputation of fabricating evidence and abusing human rights. The greater the US pressure, the greater the risk that these services will act in an unprofessional if not illegal way. It seems that the Bush administration is planning to give a leading role to Hendropriyono and BIN as part of its anti-terrorism solution for Indonesia. In so doing, they appear willing to overlook the lamentable record of Hendropriyono and the organisation he leads. Apart from bungling the issue of al-Qaeda bases in Poso and arousing controversy over his role in the arrest of Tamsil, Balfas and Dwikarna, Hendropriyono has been accused of involvement in the massacre of more than a hundred Muslim villagers in Talangsari, Lampung, in 1989, when he was the local military commander. More recently he has attracted adverse press attention over his extensive business interests and for his suspected complicity in the assassination of Papuan leader Theys Eluay. BIN's record under his leadership is little better. It has been publicly ridiculed for its inaccurate and often politically loaded reporting. In early 2002, it was derided by ministers and senior politicians when it emerged that BIN had written separate and contradictory reports on the economy for cabinet ministers and a parliamentary committee. BIN also prepared an error-filled briefing for parliament's Foreign Affairs and Security Commission prior to John Howard's visit to Indonesia in February. Among other things, it alleged that Australia's Lt-Gen Peter Cosgrove had written an autobiography denigrating Indonesia's role in East Timor. It also asserted that the Howard government had formed a secret twelve-person committee to engineer Papua's secession from Indonesia. The cornerstone of any US anti-terrorism policy in Indonesia should be to win the confidence of the Islamic community. Cooperation from Muslims is critical if terrorists are to be exposed. This is only possible if the US and Indonesia's security officials and ASEAN partners provide reliable information to a community where anti-Western sentiment is already high. Dr Greg Fealy (greg.fealy@anu.edu.au) is a research fellow in Indonesian politics at the Australian National University in Canberra. Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

By the book, please

East Timorese students in Yogyakarta suffer intimidation Faustino Gomes The wedding had been beautiful. Manuel Martins, a student in Yogyakarta from East Timor, had just exchanged vows with Agustina Maria Yosefa at the St Albert church. On that sunny 18 December last year, well-wishers were milling in the church grounds. Suddenly the atmosphere was shattered by the arrival of a gang of thugs, also East Timorese living in Yogyakarta. Shouting 'You pricks! We'll cut off your heads!', they bashed a number of those present. I had acted as a witness for the happy couple. Later that day the same thugs, led by Octavio Osorio Soares, bashed up another student, demanding to know where I lived so they could come and kill me. In the evening they gatecrashed the wedding party and again beat up several guests. This was one of ten such incidents reported to the Yogyakarta police by the East Timorese student association Aetil in a letter dated 14 January 2002. All involved attacks against East Timorese students completing their studies in Yogyakarta by a group of pro-integration East Timorese under the leadership of Octavio Soares. Octavio, a recently graduated doctor, is the nephew of the last Indonesian governor of East Timor, Abilio Osorio Soares, now on trial in Jakarta for crimes against humanity. Octavio accuses the students of being anti-Indonesian because most of them supported independence in the August 1999 ballot. There are about 200 East Timorese studying in Yogyakarta. Most began their studies before 1999, but took leave of absence to help the independence campaign in East Timor in 1999. Afterwards they returned to Yogya to complete their studies, most with financial help from the UNDP and the Ford Foundation. The Untaet office in Jakarta has an officer responsible to help these students. Besides Yogya, substantial numbers are also continuing their studies in Malang (East Java) and in Jakarta, with smaller numbers in other places. Others have also reported intimidation by pro-integration East Timorese associated with the former regime, particularly in Bali where many civil servants from East Timor now live. Indonesian universities still treat students from East Timor as if they are Indonesians, meaning they pay only the low Indonesian fees instead of the high fees denominated in US dollars foreign students pay. Some universities have indicated that after independence on 20 May they will move to the foreign fee system. This would be very hard for the East Timorese. Indonesia has a historical and moral obligation to the East Timorese. An entire generation was educated only in Indonesian. Many want to do their university education here. In our experience the universities have continued to welcome East Timorese students. I hope they will consider keeping the present fee structure. This has also been the hope of the UN transitional administration, Untaet. We have no problems with our Indonesian neighbours in Yogyakarta. They like anyone who rents rooms and eats at local food stalls, and they have offered to protect us from the crude intimidation of Octavio Osorio Soares and his mates. Apodeti The Osorio Soares family claims it founded the Apodeti party in 1974. This party favoured integration with Indonesia, and its members were prominent in the Indonesian administration. Jose Fernando Osorio Soares was the first secretary-general of the party. His younger brother Abilio Soares became the last governor in 1992. A sister named Elsa Olandina Pinto Soares now lives in Yogyakarta, and her three children are part of Octavio's gang as well. Octavio, who studied medicine at Gadjah Mada University, was Jose Fernando's son. This all shows how 'integrasi' with Indonesia became a personalised affair. Actually another family, that of Arnaldo dos Reis Araujo, also claims the key role in establishing Apodeti. But they do not agree with the aggressive anger of the Osorio Soares family. Their relatives in Yogyakarta generally show a friendly attitude, especially after the ballot, and they sometimes join the East Timorese students in social gatherings. The Osorio Soares family has lost its formal authority. But police inaction over the intimidation in Yogyakarta shows that they continue to have friends in high places. Octavio Soares dreams of one day 'returning' East Timor to the Indonesian fold, and feels angry and frustrated that so many people are deserting him. Even the East Timorese civil servants who have become Indonesian citizens and live in Yogyakarta are embarrassed by his tactics. In the meantime, however, he is proving himself an impediment to restoring normal relations between East Timor and Indonesia. Faustino Cardoso Gomes (aetil@eudoramail.com) is completing a PhD at Gadjah Mada University. He is an advisor to the students association Aetil. Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

The forgotten of West Timor

Poverty, refugees, militias, and too many soldiers Elcid Li In Kupang in the 1980s I sometimes heard a salvo fired at the Heroes Cemetry about a kilometre from my home. The next morning I would see a new grave. Another soldier or police officer had died in battle in East Timor. When I returned to Kupang at the end of 2001 I saw the body of a little girl. She had died of hunger in the Noelbaki refugee camp near the city. Her grave was dug among other little graves on the land belonging to a local resident. In the past it was like a myth - I heard from an uncle about the road running with blood at the Santa Cruz cemetry in Dili. Now I feel that what happened in East Timor could also happen in West Timor, as if death had moved from one place to the other. West Timor today is like the dark side of the moon, where the sun never shines. Perhaps only some dramatic massacre will open the eyes of the world. Antonius Seran Wilik, a retired teacher in Belu district near the border with East Timor, will not easily forget the date 4 September 1999. On that day he took 42 East Timorese refugees into his home. The Raihat refugee camp would be built there later. But it was not the first time the Raihat sub-district, which borders directly with Bobonaro district in East Timor, had seen refugees. The first time was 1946, just after the Second World War. The second was 1975, when East Timor was in upheaval and Indonesia came in and took over. There were even still stories of refugees from a war in Manufahi in the 1880s. If in 1975 the refugees numbered about 4,000, in 1999 there were about 24,000 - for a population in Raihat of only 7,000. As a respected local leader, Antonius Seran Wilik ordered six square kilometres of traditional land to be set aside for the refugees. They were also allowed to live in the gardens and backyards of the locals. Antonius said the refugees came from an area that had traditionally supplied brides for his people. Belu district has the same language and culture as East Timor. The 1999 refugees were on the whole greeted as if they were relatives. At first the world took a lot of notice of the refugees. But when three staff members of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees were murdered on 6 September 2000, nearly all international agencies helping the refugees pulled out of West Timor. Reduced assistance for refugees placed an increasing burden on the locals. Theft increased in the town of Atambua near the border. Forests in South Belu were chopped down and turned into agricultural land. No locals had ever dared to cut down those trees for fear of being fined. But the refugees just said 'we are defending the red-and-white (flag)', and after that the law was powerless. The locals knew this was illogical, and they worried about droughts and flooding for generations to come. But the refugees were hungry, and they were relatives. The province of East Nusa Tenggara of which West Timor is a part is the poorest in Indonesia. Military The slow rate at which refugees were returning proved that the militias retained a strong influence in the West Timor camps. They used guerrilla tactics to avoid handing over their weapons to the military. Anyway, many of them had been soldiers, or trained by them. It is common knowledge that the weapons are still there, even if they are not openly visible. The area near the border has become heavily militarised. In January 2002 there were an estimated five battalions. Although some welcomed the increased military presence because it would control the militias dangerously frustrated with the new Jakarta policy, many feared that West Timor could be turned into a military operations area as in Aceh or Papua. As in East Timor Bishop Belo became a symbol of the people's resistance, so in West Timor the Catholic Church speaks out through the priests. In Kefamenanu, priests rejected the establishment of a base by Infantry Battalion 744, formerly from East Timor. The commander of the Udayana military area, based in Bali, said to them in a meeting: 'Who will look after the priests' safety if not the soldiers?' There have been instances of intimidation against the church. A homemade bomb was found at the bishop's palace in Atambua. Refugees No one knows how many refugees there are - numbers are a political commodity for all those involved, both the government in East Timor and Untas, the refugee umbrella organisation. Untas, who said it was too early to ask them to make up their minds, sabotaged a survey of refugees in 2001 that wanted to ask their intentions. The survey resulted in numbers that were quite incredible. Official assistance for the refugees ended on 1 January 2002. This is a risky way to force them to make up their minds whether to go home or stay. Some are already using the word 'new residents' rather than 'refugees' to describe them. They had enough food stored to last them until May, but after that things could get tense. Hunger can drive people to desperate acts. The Udayana commander has threatened to shoot rioters on sight. They have been living in these basic camps for nearly three years now. They feel like hostages against the possibility of international sanctions against those military officers who committed crimes against humanity in East Timor. Once again, the little people have become the victims. Moreover, many West Timorese feel that political turmoil in Jakarta has resulted in scant attention being paid to peripheral areas such as their own. One local politician has called for UN intervention. However, this remains a sensitive issue. While the new country of East Timor obtains a lot of international help, West Timor gets none. Not surprisingly, many farmers near the border have turned to small trade across the border. The trade profits the soldiers and police guarding the crossings too. They take Rp 5,000 (one Australian dollar) in 'safety money' for every box that passes by. A young Brimob policeman told me he earned Rp 300,000 a day that way. The situation in West Timor is like a boil waiting to burst. First, unless the refugee problem is solved, it will lead to conflict with the locals, especially over land. Second, the continued presence of the militias, although now more or less clandestine, has introduced a volatile element. In a stressful situation these people create fear. They feel they are at war and the law does not apply to them. Third, the excessive number of soldiers to guard the borders is becoming a burden on the local population. I now place my hope in Xanana Gusmao and his offer of reconciliation. His visit to Atambua on 4 April 2002 did much to counter the negative campaign in the camps that there would be a revenge attack into East Timor once the United Nations was gone. May President Xanana bring peace to us all. Elcid Li (domingguselcid@lycos.com) is a freelance journalist. Thanks to Dony for his help in Atambua. Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

The Oecussi-Ambeno enclave

What does the future hold for this neglected territory? Arsenio Bano and Edward Rees The Oecussi-Ambeno enclave is an isolated district of East Timor on the north shore of Indonesian West Timor. Seventy kilometres west of East Timor proper, it is 2700 square kilometres in size, with nearly 50,000 inhabitants. Its citizens find themselves inside Indonesia. Oecussi's unique geography points to a unique relationship with Indonesia. Historically, the enclave has had a distinct relationship with both the western and eastern regions of Timor. The Portuguese, the first Europeans in Timor, arrived in the sixteenth century at Lifau, Oecussi. It served as the capital of Portuguese Timor until the arrival of the Dutch, a hostile local kingdom, and prospects of a better harbour caused the Portuguese to shift their capital to Dili in the eighteenth century. The Portuguese tradition, and the enclave's position as the birthplace of Catholicism in Timor, are the source of considerable pride there and throughout East Timor. At the end of the nineteenth century the Dutch and Portuguese formalised their shared border in Timor. The enclave remained politically and sentimentally attached to Portuguese Timor, but not geographically. Towards the end of Portuguese rule, a ferry linked the enclave to East Timor proper, and there was a limited air link to Dili. The end of Indonesian rule took Oecussi back to this peculiar status. Politically it now looks to the east. Economically it looks to the west. However, the people also share ties with Indonesian West Timor. Trade and family links extend from Atambua to Kupang. They are centred on Kefamenanu, West Timor's fourth city. The indigenous language of the enclave is Baiqueno, a dialect of Meto, one of West Timor's major ethno-linguistic groupings. The Indonesian invasion and occupation did not visit as much violence on Oecussi as it did on the rest of East Timor. Early resistance was light, and no Falintil guerrillas operated in the enclave. However, underground resistance organisations played an important role in the national resistance to the occupation. In 1999, Interfet did not arrive in Oecussi until 22 October, a month after its arrival in Dili. As a result the enclave experienced the mass destruction of property, theft and the murder of many pro-independence activists. The Passabe Tumin massacre of September 1999 was the country's second largest mass killing. This story was part of a desperate plea carried to Interfet soldiers by a heroic boy named Lafu. Isolation East Timor's independence has imposed an acute isolation on Oecussi. It is an island within an island. An international border now seriously disrupts its connections with West Timor and East Timor proper alike. Transport links with East Timor have meanwhile been largely severed. Untaet established air and sea links to move goods and personnel between the enclave and East Timor. But these largely exclude ordinary East Timorese and will end with the peacekeepers' departure in 2004. A small ferry service was intended to commence in June 2002, but it relies on a heavy and unsustainable subsidy from an international donor. Efforts to develop land access have not borne fruit. An expensive and limited Telstra service is the only public means of communication with the outside world. Oecussi residents do not enjoy the same access to services and information as the rest of the country. A lack of trade hampers economic recovery. Given its geography, the enclave's long-term economic prospects are tied to West Timor. So what to do with this isolated enclave? The Untaet period achieved little progress towards long-term sustainability for the enclave that might secure East Timors sovereignty there. However, some initiatives shaped thinking on a future Oecussi policy. In June 2000, the international District Administration proposed that Oecussi should be developed into a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). This called for a soft border regime with Indonesia, reduced tax and tariff rates, and unique land and labour codes - in other words, a commercial framework designed to make the enclave attractive. A SEZ is well situated to exploit the market of 1.2 million people in West Timor. In July 2000 the District CNRT Congress called for a 'governmental' arrangement in which Oecussi would become a province rather than a district. This would enhance its access to central government funds and political influence. Urged by the District Administration, the Minister for Internal Administration at the end of 2000 called for an Oecussi Task Force to develop a comprehensive policy. It never materialised. In July 2001 one of us (Arsenio Bano, then director of the East Timor NGO Forum) proposed the enclave be declared a demilitarised peace zone. The influential Australian Strategic Policy Institute has subsequently echoed this notion. Oecussi could be the centre-piece of the oft-stated foreign policy desire for harmonious relations with Indonesia. Military solutions will only antagonise Indonesia and further isolate the enclave. A peace zone would accommodate Indonesian economic and security interests and thereby help Oecussi to develop. The key is that the future of the enclave requires substantial bilateral negotiations with Indonesia, as its future depends on West Timor and Jakarta second only to Dili. Also during 2001 two community groups formed to discuss the future of the enclave. Based in Oecussi and Dili, the Oecussi Enclave Research Forum and the Oecussi Advocacy Forum both called for various forms of regional autonomy. Most importantly, the constitution of the Democratic Republic of East Timor, passed by the Constituent Assembly in March 2002, created the political space for future debate and legislation on the enclave. It recognises the uniqueness of the enclave in three sections, and states that Oecussi-Ambeno shall be governed by a special administrative policy and economic regime. In the wake of this recognition, and of another proposal by the community and the Oecussi District Administration, the Chief Minister of East Timor's government established a high level Oecussi Task Force. It is charged with finding a holistic solution, linking local governance with border issues and economic development, which is in turn linked to security. It aims to provide flexible administrative solutions to transportation and communication problems. A comprehensive enclave policy would recognise the full range of Oecussi's unique circumstances, be they security, foreign and trade relations, economic development, or internal administration. The population of Oecussi is well aware that they are on the frontline of East Timor-Indonesia relations. They are open and full of good will towards their neighbours in West Timor whether they are family or former political adversaries. They believe the enclave's geographic intimacy and peaceful relations with West Timor and Indonesia between 1999-2002 are good indicators for a unique relationship. It could be that this small region will take a leading role in managing newly independent East Timor's relations with its giant neighbour. Arsenio Bano (arsenio_b@hotmail.com) comes from Oecussi. He is Secretary of State for Labour and Solidarity in the Government of the Democratic Republic of East Timor and sits on the Oecussi Task Force. Edward Rees (e_rees@yahoo.com) was Untaet's Political Officer in Oecussi April 2000-July 2001, then became Political Officer to Untaet's National Security Adviser. These opinions are our own and do not necessarily represent those of Untaet or the Government. Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

Claiming justice amid the ruins

A remarkable grass-roots reconciliation meeting in Ainaro Hilmar Farid Five hours drive south of East Timor's capital Dili, Ainaro township looked beautiful that morning. As the sun drew up the last of the dew, crowds could be seen pouring into town for the big day. A convoy of refugees from West Timor was about to return. Together with 200,000 others, these people had been driven out by the scorched-earth campaign of the Indonesian military TNI, the police and pro-integration militias. Dozens of trucks and minibuses were spotted in the distance. 'Refugiados sira mai!' (The refugees are here!) some youths shouted. Everyone stood up, scrutinising the vehicles as they passed. Tired and tense faces on the trucks. The atmosphere relaxed when some bystanders called out to people they knew. They ran along with the trucks and, not waiting for the tailgate to open, leapt up. One young man kissed the head of an old woman, yelling almost hysterically. Not everyone was welcoming. Some youths stood back just watching. 'Who knows, there could be militias among them', they said. Rumours of militias infiltrating among returning refugees had long been heard. Indeed some in this convoy were ex-militias who had chosen to return once they realised TNI and the Indonesian government wanted to close the book and send them back to Timor Lorosae. It was a reasonable suspicion. No comprehensive investigation has yet explained all the many incidents of violence in 1999. Untaet's Serious Crimes Unit has gathered information on ten big cases and about 640 others all over Timor Lorosae. The Human Rights Unit is also doing research. Reports of lost family members or other violence-related losses continue to come in. Yet still the people have no full report on what actually happened. Elites In the midst of this uncertainty and lack of clarity, Timorese elites want to push ahead with a reconciliation process. 'It's time to look to the future, let us forget the past', is the leaders' refrain. President Xanana Gusmao has even offered a general amnesty for any who committed crimes in the past. Not everyone agrees. 'How can we forgive others if we don't even know what they did wrong?', says Martinho Gusmao, a priest in Baucau. But there is no further discussion. The elites have decided that physical development must be the priority, not truth and justice. The leaders have been promoting this course since before the referendum. But every peace agreement was always broken within a few hours, increasingly robbing the word 'reconciliation' of meaning. The main problem was that the most important players in the conflict, TNI and the Indonesian police, were not sitting at the negotiating table. Yet it was they who were arming, funding and training the pro-integration militias. Ainaro was among the worst affected by the destruction. For its people, elite peace agreements and reconciliation mean very little. 'A head cannot walk without its body,' said Agapito Bianco, from Cassa village, at a reconciliation meeting in Ainaro last November. 'We only see the militia rank-and-file returning, not their heads. It's as if those who gave the orders are eating a juicy steak; they throw us the bones, and we fight among each other over the bones.' Initiatives such as this meeting have the support of local leaders and NGO's like the human rights organisation Yayasan HAK. The aim is to bring survivors together with suspected perpetrators, to hear one another's stories. This is difficult, because many ex-militias deny they were involved in violence even in the face of eyewitness evidence. Former militia leader Joao Pereira, also from Cassa, illustrates the difficulty when he says ambiguously: 'We have to reveal everything, so the families of those who died know. If we are not open, people will continue to bear a grudge, even if we are innocent. We have to tell in public who we are, so that when people meet us in the street everything will be OK and there will be no fear.' Cassa was known as the main base for the Mahidi militia. The group was involved in horrible atrocities in 1999. Its leader Cancio Lopes de Carvalho proudly told SBS televion how his troops ripped open the belly of a pregnant woman, and shot old people whose families were suspected Falintil supporters. Pereira and his men confess to taking part in some operations but say they never killed anyone. That is why they were prepared to return to Timor Lorosae once the Indonesian government had withdrawn its support. At the meeting, several survivors and victims' relatives tell of the appalling things that happened to them. The faces of the ex-militia men show deep sorrow after hearing the results of what they did. 'My husband was murdered then burned, then his body was given to the dogs. He died because he wanted freedom,' says Maria de Conceicao, from Maununo village. Now she has to bring up their five children alone. 'I can't go to my gardens because I am sick and thin. For two years I didn't know where to turn, my house had been burned down, nothing was left. The Red Cross came once and gave me 18 sheets of zinc, but it didn't help much because I still can't work.' The meeting had no powers to demand a legal accounting. But the discussion and the listening showed that the problem was not as simple as finding the perpetrators and putting them in jail. 'What's the use of jailing them?' asks Aniceto Guterres Lopes, former director of Yayasan HAK who now heads the truth and reconciliation commission (see box). 'They should be put on trial, that's true. But will that bring the problem to an end?' Aniceto faces an extraordinary challenge. He knows the violence not only left a large number dead, but destroyed Timor's social fabric and caused such immense material losses that it will take exceptional efforts to rebuild from zero. 'It isn't easy', he says. 'We can't just ask people to shake hands and then think it's over.' The idea of grassroots reconciliation meetings such as this was a way of breaking through the deadlock the elites are in. At least they can identify the widespread consequences of the violence, and also expose the truth as told by both survivors and those accused as perpetrators. The November meeting was not the first. Customary elders and youth leaders had earlier taken a similar initiative to help resolve the increasingly complex refugee-militia problem. The UN refugee agency UNHCR conducted the repatriation by giving more attention to the refugees (including militias among them) than to those who had stayed in Timor Lorosae and coped with the aftermath alone. 'This gave rise to envy', said Aniceto. 'People couldn't understand why those who committed murder and arson were given help so readily, whereas the victims were left to fend for themselves.' In view of these unhealthy signs, the people chose to take the initiative themselves. After long discussions it was finally decided that ex-militias involved in violence should give an accounting of themselves in a traditional way, by rebuilding what they had destroyed such as schools and houses. 'This didn't mean they were then freed from their legal obligations. That's a matter for the government and the law courts later. This is the people's way of imposing sanctions and after that accepting them back openly. But those who were involved have to be taken to court,' says Aniceto Neves, a Yayasan HAK staff member whose older brother was killed in Ainaro by a Mahidi militia group. All the participants, whether victims and their relatives or perpetrators, realise the limitations of this forum. But at least it was a simple step forward on a new path out of the bureaucratic deadlock and the political circus of an elite that seems never to really care for the people's problems - not even those who not so long ago were waving the banner of the people's freedom. Hilmar Farid (hilmarfarid@eudoramail.com) was a volunteer in East Timor in 1999, and has visited repeatedly since then. He edits the Jakarta cultural magazine Media Kerja Budaya (http://www.geocities.com/mkb_id/). Truth and Reconciliation Commission A Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor has been formally established in East Timor. The Commission is an independent authority which aims to achieve dual goals of reconciliation and justice. It will operate for two years, and has three primary functions: First, it will seek the truth regarding human rights violations in East Timor within the context of the political conflicts between 25 April 1974 and 25 October 1999. The Commission will establish a truth-telling mechanism for victims and perpetrators to describe, acknowledge and record human rights abuses of the past. Second, it will facilitate community reconciliation by dealing with past cases of lesser crimes such as looting, burning and minor assault. In each case, a panel comprised of a Regional Commissioner and local community leaders will mediate between victims and perpetrators to reach agreement on an act of reconciliation to be carried out by the perpetrator. Third, it will report on its findings and make recommendations to the government for further action on reconciliation and the promotion of human rights. The Commission does not have the power to grant amnesty to perpetrators of human rights violations. However, those who fulfill the terms of a community reconciliation agreement will be immune from any further civil or criminal liability for those acts. The Commission will complement the formal judicial process. Any evidence of serious crimes such as murder, rape or the organisation of systematic, widespread violence will be referred to the Office of the General Prosecutor. Serious crimes will continue to be handled exclusively by the Special Panels established under Regulation 2000/15. The Commission is supported by the Timorese leadership. Untaet Press Office, January 2002. More details: www.easttimor-reconciliation.org. Inside Indonesia 71: Jul - Sep 2002

In this issue

East Timor on the Net

Theatre blossoms

Witness denied

Combat zone

Is Indonesia a terrorist base?

By the book, please

The forgotten of West Timor

The Oecussi-Ambeno enclave

Claiming justice amid the ruins

Latest Articles

Tetangga: These are the stories of our neighbours

Obit: Adrian Horridge, 1927-2024

Book review: The Sun in His Eyes

Elusive promises of the Yogyakarta International Airport’s aerotropolis

Book review: Beauty within tragedy

Subscribe to Inside Indonesia

Lontar Modern Indonesia