@intro2 = Nurdin Abdul Rahman is the chairperson of the Acehnese Community of Australia. He spoke to Green Left Weekly's NONIE HODGSON about the results of the recent Indonesian parliamentary election and the movement for a free Aceh.
Rahman was concerned that Golkar's 22% vote, the highest of any party, would signal a return to military rule. He laid out a worst-case scenario: "Corruption will go rampant, intimidation of ethnic peoples outside Java will be more intensified, and the grip of all resources will be under the political elite dominated by the Javanese ... tensions between the indigenous people in the territories outside Java will heighten and instability will erupt, which can bring shock waves as far as the other side of the Pacific rim."
The people of the oil-rich province of Aceh have already experienced atrocities carried out by the Indonesian military. Human rights' agencies conservative estimates of the number of Acehnese killed or disappeared at 40,000 people since 1989.
Rahman describes the struggle in Aceh as a struggle for independence from the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia.
"The struggle is to retrieve the long deprived right of the Acehnese people [to govern their country]... without which the control of all our resources and our political and economic policies will be in the hands of the Indonesian rulers."
When asked why the Indonesian elite is so concerned to keep Aceh within Indonesia, Rahman argued: "Aceh is one of [the Indonesian elite's] revenue sources from gas, oil, tin, copper, forest products etc."
He pointed out that in 1985, then-minister for transmigration, Martono, had claimed that settling Javanese people in Aceh, and other regions outside Java, would help create a single nation — presumably by breaking down their identities.
Rahman has been a teacher of English at Syiah Kuala University Darussalam-Banda Aceh since 1986, as well as director of PASKA Development Program of Activities of Socio-economy for Victims of Conflict in Aceh since July 2002. From 1999-2002 he was director of Rehabilitation Action for Torture Victims in Aceh. During this time he travelled to the US, Geneva, India and Malaysia giving presentations and representing the Acehnese civil society.
Like so many other Acehnese, Rahman became a passionate campaigner for Acehnese freedom, partly as a result of his experiences as an Acehnese person, and also because of the aspirations relayed to him by his parents and relatives.
As a university student, he learned even more about the injustice inflicted on the Acehnese people; economically, including the theft of natural resources, educationally and culturally.
When he began to actively campaign and speak out for Acehnese independence in public, in student groups and in mosques, he was arrested by the Indonesia military.
From October 15, 1990 to October 22, 1998 he was "detained" in Banda Aceh prison by the Indonesian authorities, accused of being sympathetic to the banned Free Aceh Movement. When he was tried in Banda Aceh District Court he was not allowed to choose his own lawyer. He was also subjected to various methods of torture during the first five months of detention at a military camp.
Then-president BJ Habibie granted Rahman clemency in August 1998, which led to his release. He was exonerated by another Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid, in December 1999 and was officially re-employed as a lecturer at Syiah Kuala University, in Banda Aceh. Today, Rahman lives in Sydney where he continues to campaign for the right of the Acehnese people to determine their own future.
[Nurdin Abdul Rahman will address a public meeting in Newcastle organised by Action in Solidarity with the Asia Pacific on May 7 at 7:30 pm at the GUOOF Hall (21 Steele St, Hamilton). Two films on Aceh, one on the indigenous culture and the other on the political and military situation will also be shown. For more information phone Nonie on 0417 049 881].
From Green Left Weekly, April 29, 2004.
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