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Government mulls election delay in Aceh

Source
Agence France Presse - May 27, 1999

Jakarta – Voting in Indonesia's June 7 general election may be delayed in troubled Aceh province by up to a month because of recent violence, a report said Thursday.

"There is a possibility the elections will be delayed for security reasons," Home Affairs Minister Syarwan Hamid was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post.

Three Aceh districts – Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh – have born the brunt of the new violence. All were badly affected by a decade of harsh anti-rebel military operations halted only last year. "It will be impossible to hold elections if the people there do not feel safe," Hamid said.

The June 7 election is the first since the fall of former president Suharto who ordered harsh anti-rebel military operations in Aceh in the late 1980s. The operations were halted last year by Suharto's successor, President B.J. Habibie.

Indonesian military and officials have said voters in the three districts were being intimidated and terrorized by supporters of a referendum on self-determination in Aceh.

They have blamed the intimidation for low voter registration and calls for a boycott of the polling there. But an independent electoral monitoring network, JAPPIN, has blamed the low turnout on the presence of the Indonesian military, especially at registration centers.

While the military said guards were necessary to prevent intimidation of voters when registering, the network said the presence of the soldiers discouraged voters from registering.

Party campaigns in the three districts have been subjected to attacks, with at least three party vehicles torched last week.

Attacks, allegedly by alleged separatist rebels, in Peudada district in North Aceh on Tuesday left six people dead, including two policemen.

On May 3 soliders near Lhokseumawe, the main town in North Aceh, shot into a crowd of civilian protestors leaving 41 dead.

The 38 political parties registered in Aceh have said they would skip campaigning in areas in Aceh where security could not be guaranteed, election officials have said.

Soldiers were widely accused of human rights violations during the decade of military operations that fueled local resentment and hatred against the government and armed forces.

The Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh) movement has been fighting for an independent Islamic state in the staunchly Moslem province for decades.

[On May 27, Agence France Presse reported that an office of the Indonesian ruling Golkar party was torched in the North Aceh district police in Lhokseumawe. Police said that two unidentified men threw gasoline at the two-story building in a predawn attack but they were no casualties - James Balowski.]

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