Jerry Norton, Jakarta – Public attitudes towards terrorism in Indonesia have changed dramatically in the two years since the Bali bombing, and the country is now facing up to the problem, the outgoing US ambassador said on Monday. Ambassador Ralph Boyce said he was "quite confident that continued strong attention to the problem of terrorism in Indonesia will be very high up" on the agenda of incoming president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who takes office next week.
On October 12, 2002, the world's most populous Muslim country suffered the deadliest attack since the September 11, 2001 assaults in the United States. Blasts in nightclubs on the resort island of Bali killed 202, mostly foreign tourists.
In August last year a car bomb at Jakarta's JW Marriott hotel killed 12, mostly Indonesians, and last month a similar blast outside the Australian embassy killed nine, all Indonesians.
All three attacks were blamed on the al Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian militant Muslim network, Jemaah Islamiah.
Boyce, who arrived in Indonesia in late 2002, told reporters that in his first year there was a "sense of pushing a boulder up a hill in terms of getting the terrorism issue on the agenda" with the general public.
Several other Southeast Asian nations criticised Indonesia in that period as a laggard in fighting terrorism.
But Boyce said the series of attacks "altered that completely", adding: "The country has now very much faced up to the challenges of this age we're all living in."
Ex-general Yudhoyono, a former chief security minister, is to be sworn in on October 20 after beating incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri in a September runoff ballot.
The outgoing US envoy was less complimentary about Indonesia's performance in dealing with the accountability of its military for human rights violations in East Timor.
At least 1,000 people were killed in violence surrounding a vote for independence in 1999 in the tiny territory, then under Indonesian rule.
Most of the deaths were blamed on pro-Jakarta militia backed by elements of the Indonesian military. Indonesian courts tried some of those accused of violence, but nearly all of those indicted were acquitted. Rights groups say far more should have been put on trial.
These "much touted East Timor ad hoc trials on human rights violations didn't produce anything. If anything they were a deep disappointment," said Boyce, adding that until there was a good-faith effort at accountability over East Timor, there could not be normalisation of military-to-military relations between Indonesia and the United States.
Washington's dissatisfaction over the issue excludes Indonesia from purchasing US military equipment and from other programmes involving access to military gear.