Desmond Wrightm, Banda Aceh – Indonesia's president on Friday apologised to the restive province of Aceh for years of human rights abuses, as thousands of protesters demanding self-rule clashed with police and soldiers.
Hospitals said 111 people were injured, eight seriously, in clashes between protesters and security forces. Three people had been shot.
"I deliver an apology for what has been done by the security forces, by accident or deliberately, to all the people of Aceh," President B.J. Habibie said during Friday prayers.
"Especially the excesses that occurred," he added to polite applause from a crowd of 6,000 inside and outside the main mosque in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.
Indonesia's military led mass human rights abuses during a nine-year crackdown on separatists in the staunchly Moslem region at the northern tip of Sumatra island.
While Habibie spoke, protesters carrying placards and wearing headbands pushed against a security cordon some 50 metres from the Baiturahman mosque. "Through a referendum our problem will be solved," one banner read.
In response to a question whether Aceh could have a referendum, Habibie replied: "Let parliament decide." Police fired warning shots and used tear gas to control the crowd ahead of Habibie's arrival in Banda Aceh, some 1,700 km northwest of Jakarta.
The crowd dispersed but gathered again after Habibie left, prompting security forces to fire more warning shots and tear gas. Calm had returned by evening.
Habibie called on Aceh to work with the rest of Indonesia to solve the country's problems and not to support separatism.
Indonesia recently agreed at the United Nations to allow another trouble spot, the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, to have a direct ballot to decide its own future.
"We don't want a future in a cage. We want a better future," Habibie said. "Don't use this reform era to support unhelpful things such as separatist movements, because it is a betrayal of our heroes who died for independence.
"Don't listen to rumours and calls for disintegration because if we do listen it will be a disaster." Promises for development programmes for the resource-rich province were greeted with groans. There is widespread resentment that Aceh's oil and gas wealth is siphoned off by Jakarta.
This week, Habibie ordered the release of 40 Acehnese political prisoners, some convicted of belonging to the separatist Free Aceh Movement, amid calls for him to cancel the visit.
Once a thorn in the side of Dutch colonial rulers, the province of around 3.5 million people flared up again in the late 1980s when the separatist movement resurfaced after being dormant for more than a decade.
Since the downfall of autocratic former president Suharto 10 months ago, demands for independence have grown in Aceh.
"We want them to choose what they want – autonomy, a federal country or independence," said Islammudin, a protest organiser.
The demands have been echoed in other parts of the giant archipelago, where a crushing economic recession has sparked some of the most savage unrest in Indonesia's history.