Norbert Vollertsen, Banda Aceh – I feel almost as if I am back in North Korea again. The military road blocks, heavily armed police tanks at every street corner and thousands of soldiers everywhere all remind me of the 18 months I spent in the Stalinist state.
Like so many others horrified by the pictures of the devastation wrought by the tsunami, which killed at least 108,000 people in the Indonesian province of Aceh alone, I – together with a team from the Korean Medical Association – rushed here to try to help.
The devastation is almost beyond belief. Whole areas have been flattened by the tsunami and thousands of bodies are still buried under the rubble.
In one harbor alone, I saw more than 300 bodies. Another eight bodies were pulled from the rubble of a house opposite the makeshift hospital we had established in a downtown area of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.
Within minutes of opening this emergency medical tent, we were besieged by dozens of children, old people, pregnant women and other people – many traumatized by their experiences – and all in desperate need of treatment. Again and again, they begged us to stay and even encourage more foreigners to flock to this formerly closed region.
But that's not the attitude of the Indonesian government. Jakarta only reluctantly lifted long-running restrictions on foreign visits to this war-torn province – which has been the scene of an insurgency for several decades – in the aftermath of the tsunami.
Now Indonesia is trying to close Aceh to outsiders again. In the past few days, new restrictions have been placed on the movements of foreigners.
Some areas have been placed completely off limits, ostensibly because of the threat of attacks by the pro-independence movement, known as GAM. Aid workers have been ordered to apply for approval before they can travel outside Banda Aceh, and told they may have to accept military escorts.
But it's clear the Indonesian military is taking advantage of the situation to step up their campaign against the pro-independence movement, even though the leadership of GAM declared a cease-fire in the immediate aftermath of the December 26 tragedy. Sporadic sounds of gunfire can be heard from nearby hills.
And there are huge numbers of Indonesian military helicopters in the air. I saw helicopters unloading guns, weapons and soldiers at Banda Aceh military airport and in the mountains near the provincial capital.
Increasingly Western aid workers are confined to the provincial capital. And that, again, gives me a terrible sense of dij' vu. Just as in North Korea, where Pyongyang is a Potemkin capital used to keep foreigners isolated from ordinary North Koreans and so hide the worst excesses of Kim Jong Il's regime, so Banda Aceh is rapidly evolving into the same role in post-tsunami Indonesia.
Stockpiles of food, medicine and other relief supplies are going to waste in the provincial capital due to the increasing restrictions on aid workers traveling to the rural areas where they are most desperately needed.
Our own team was blocked from going into the countryside and forced to open another rescue tent in already crowded Banda Aceh. Members of other aid organizations complained of encountering the same problem. The military says it wants to take over everything – from the warehouses to distribution. But that means there will be no one to stop the army diverting aid for its own purposes, in a province long bedeviled by official corruption.
No wonder I feel almost as if I am back in Pyongyang again – save for one crucial difference. In North Korea, the military were acting on the instructions of an evil leader who cared not the slightest for the welfare his people.
Indonesia, by contrast, has a new, popularly elected president. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has advocated reconciliation in Aceh in the past. He can hardly fail to be aware of what the military is now trying to do in his government's name. And now is the time for him to put the welfare of his people first, and put a stop to their actions.
[Dr. Vollertsen, a physician from Germany, worked in hospitals in North Korea from July 1999 to December 2000, when he was expelled from the country. He is currently based in South Korea, where he organizes rescue and asylum efforts for escaping North Koreans.]