Andrew Burrell – Four Indonesian state electricity workers arrived in the small village of Bendo in central Java last week on a routine job to replace some power cables. Minutes later, three of them had been bashed to death by a frenzied mob and their bodies burnt.
The fourth is still in a coma. A local villager, apparently believing the men were trying to steal the cables, yelled "thief, thief", prompting a dozen locals to run from houses and take part in the gruesome killings. This brutal mob justice, meted out regularly in broad daylight across Indonesia, usually in the back streets of big cities such Jakarta aganst pick pockets, is often retold in gruesome detail by the tabloid press.
The murders of the electricity workers might seem a long way from the Indonesian government's massive military assault in Aceh, where 12,000 people have died in the past 15 years in a futile cycle of bloodshed. But both examples graphically illustrate many of the deep-seated problems in Indonesia, where violence has long been tolerated and even promoted in the name of national stability and unity.
Many of the most important, and violent, events in Indonesia's bloody past have never been fully investigated, because of the inaction by successive governments, nor have the perpetrators been brought to justice. The anti-communist purges of 1965 which claimed an estimated 500,000 lives, the abortive coup of the same year in which several leading generals were murdered and the bloody riots of May 1998 which led to the resignation of Soeharto, all remain shrouded in mystery.
In Aceh and other conflict areas, gross human rights abuses by the military were covered up by the Soeharto regime and soldiers were not brought to account. Likewise, the army commanders responsible for terrorising East Timor in 1999 have not been brought to justice and there is overwhelming evidence Jakarta's human rights court, which was set up in response to international pressure, is a sham.
Last week, the highest ranking officer to be indicted over the East Timor violence, Adam Damiri, walked from court after prosecutors, in an extraordinary move, argued the defendant was innocent. Damiri is now a leading army commander in Aceh, where the military is engaged in its latest brutal attempt to kill off a separatist movement. His trial had been running for a year, heightening suspicions that prosecutors were under pressure to call for his acquittal to allow him to fight the nationalist cause in Aceh.
As the latest round of conflict in Aceh enters its fourth week, Indonesia is in danger of being overtaken by an ugly form of nationalism. Two weeks ago, a 100-strong nationalist mob wearing fatigues smashed up the Jakarta offices of human rights group Kontras, accusing it of being unpatriotic for expressing opposition to the military's campaign in Aceh. When the Kontras chairman, forced by the thugs to sing the national anthem, stumbled over the words, he was promptly beaten.
According to an editorial in The Jakarta Post newspaper, the incident, which happened in broad daylight, resembled an "ugly scene straight out of the days of the New Order". Armed Forces chief Endriartono Sutarto, a true product of the Soeharto era, did not see it that way. "While it may be true that attacking the organisation is against the law maybe they [Kontras] should look at themselves in the mirror," he said.
Significantly, support among average Indonesians for the military crackdown, aimed at wiping out the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), shows no sign of waning, despite the rising death toll on both sides. Yesterday, GAM said it had killed seven Indonesian soldiers in the fiercest fighting of the past three weeks.
The total number of deaths in the renewed offensive is unclear. According to Jakarta political analyst Andi Mallarangeng, most Indonesians will not care if the death toll in Aceh reaches 20,000, or even 100,000. "Most people say Aceh should remain part of Indonesia, no matter what," he says. "People have a lot of other problems. Forty million people don't have jobs, 70 per cent of them have only elementary education or less. People have a lot of things on their minds."
If anyone is responsible for promoting this fierce patriotism in Indonesia at the moment, it is President Megawati Soekarnoputri. She has urged those who do not support the government's view on Aceh to leave the country, in a line straight from George Bush's "you're with us or with the terrorists" creed. She has also failed to rein in her leading generals who have spoken in bloodthirsty language and labelled those opposed to the cause in Aceh as traitors.
Aceh was Indonesia's golden opportunity to prove it could reform itself and continue along its precarious path to democracy after the repression of the Soeharto era. It was also Jakarta's chance to recognise that armed conflict will never be a solution to what is essentially a political dilemma. Sadly, those chances have been lost and Indonesia's culture of violence continues.