Agencies in Banda Aceh – For the first time in Indonesia's landmark human rights trial in Aceh, soldiers yesterday admitted they had executed civilians but said they were innocent of murder because they were only following their commander's orders.
The 13 soldiers testified one after another that 26 students who had been injured in a military raid on their Islamic boarding school in Aceh last July were then taken into the countryside and shot dead.
While the trial continued, five people were killed in the latest round of fighting, three days before Indonesian officials and Aceh rebel leaders are scheduled to meet in Geneva for peace talks that could lead to a ceasefire in the 25-year-old separatist insurgency.
The unprecedented rights trial was launched in April by Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid as a way of reaching out to the war-torn province in northwestern Indonesia. The rebels are fighting for independence, a greater share of the profits from the oil-rich region and the right to impose Islamic religious laws.
The 13 soldiers who admitted executing the students said they should not be held accountable for the crime because they were following orders.
One of the defendants, Lieutenant Trijoko Adiwiyono, said he questioned the order to shoot the injured students but was slapped by his commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Sudjono, and was forced to carry out the order. Sudjono later disappeared and remains at large. "He might have shot me if I had rejected his order," Adiwiyono testified in the heavily fortified courtroom.
The executions followed the deaths of 30 students and a teacher who were shot dead by the military during the same anti-guerilla sweep. The 11 soldiers and a civilian accused of being responsible for those deaths testified on Monday that they had opened fire in self-defence. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty in the case against the 24 military and one civilian defendants.
Since coming to office in October, Mr Wahid has been reducing the tremendous power that the military enjoyed under former president Suharto, the authoritarian leader who was driven from power in May 1998 by widespread pro-democracy protests and rioting. During Suharto's 32-year regime, police and soldiers were often accused of killing civilians, especially in areas where insurgencies were under way, such as Aceh and East Timor.
In the latest fighting, Lieutenant-General Syafei Aksal, a local police chief, said three rebels were shot dead in a gunbattle with security forces that also left seven soldiers wounded in northern Aceh. But rebel spokesman Teungku Ismail Syahputra said the three people killed were civilians.
On Monday, unidentified gunmen shot dead a civilian on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Sayed Huseini said. An Indonesian Red Cross volunteer, Ridwan, said another civilian was found dead in the capital. The killings bring this year's death toll in Aceh to 345.
Also yesterday, the state-appointed National Human Rights Commission's chairman, Djoko Soegianto, announced he would appoint a new team of officials to investigate ongoing human rights abuses in the province, saying that atrocities were still being committed.