Comment by Shirley Shackleton
I have studied the TNI (the Indonesian military) for 30 years and what is happening in Aceh has striking similarities to what happened in East Timor. The TNI terrorised the East Timorese for a quarter of a century and they have done the same to Acehnese citizens for 31 years.
The TNI tried to crush independence movements in both countries. When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, Western aid goods were seized by the TNI and sold to the Timorese. Those who could not afford to buy the purloined goods starved. In the first year, 60,000 civilians, mostly women and children, died.
After the declaration of martial law in Aceh in May 2003, journalists were allowed briefly into villages where they found scores of young men shot dead. When this was reported around the world, Indonesia quickly imposed a ban on journalists visiting villages.
Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla has now done a back-flip on his demand that foreign military forces were to leave Aceh by March 26, but this sorry episode is emblematic of the Indonesian government's eagerness to rid themselves of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
On tour of Indonesia and other affected regions, the president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, admitted that the disaster was so big it could take three months even to work out a reconstruction plan. Yet he now says he is going to recommend that the US resume its military trade with Indonesia. He should be recommending that money be spent on giving Indonesian soldiers a living wage instead of selling them more weapons of destruction. The TNI soldiers are scandalously underpaid and are expected to find ways of making money even if it means thuggery and extortion.
The problem is not with individual soldiers; the entire military structure is corrupt. An editorial in the January 8 Age explained: "There is no guarantee the aid money will find its way to those in need particularly in countries where corruption is a problem (which is a consideration in Indonesia.)"
If the Timor experience is any indication, our money will be used to fund the war against Aceh. Mark Davis's SBS documentary, Blood Money, showed how the money trail went from the World Bank to the TNI in East Timor via foreign minister Ali Alatas's office in Jakarta. Receipts and account books were in the ruins of the TNI office in Dili. That was the aid money that provided guns, drugs and machetes to kill Timorese.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bush should be demanding a referendum on independence for Aceh; but both are more interested in point scoring. On January 13, Bush explained: "There's a lot of talk about how some in the world don't appreciate America. Well, I can assure you that those who have been helped by our military appreciate America." Similarly, Howard said on January 15 that the aid package, some of which is likely to go to the military, was "to shore up our relationship with Indonesia and to bring our governments closer together".
In the Canberra Times on January 14, Dr Damien Kingsbury, from Deakin University, said that GAM had made tentative overtures to Indonesia's new government to resume the peace process last year, but that the military had no interest in pursuing it and had ensured no progress had been made. "The government seems to want to find a settlement", he said, "the TNI does not".
I fear the TNI will "rehabilitate" the Acehnese in the same way they forcibly removed 250, 000 people from East Timor while the world watched. Many were never seen again.
[A longtime solidarity activist with East Timor, Shirley Shackleton's husband Greg was one of five journalists killed in East Timor during Indonesia's 1975 invasion.]
From Green Left Weekly, January 26, 2005.
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