APSN Banner

Aceh rights trial 'does not bode well'

Source
Green Left Weekly - May 31, 2000

James Balowski – On May 17, 24 Indonesian soldiers and one civilian were sentenced to between eight and a half and 10 years' jail for the murder of Islamic teacher Teungku Bantaqiahand and 56 members of an Islamic boarding school in western Aceh in July 1999.

Although these are some of the harshest sentences ever meted out to military personnel for human rights abuses, according to the May 18 South China Morning Post, most people in Aceh "reacted coldly" to the verdict, saying it was just "window dressing".

Leading Acehnese had plenty of harsh words about the way the trial was conducted. "The trial is not interesting to the people", said Nurdin Rahman, head of aid group Rata, which helps the thousands of torture victims around the province. "These are only the men who did that, while those at the top were not held accountable."

Saifuddin Bantasyam, executive director of Care Human Rights Forum in Banda Aceh told the Post the next day: "No one cares ... They already knew the result of the trial. This trial could not bring justice to the people. We need a body to investigate all human rights abuses in Aceh."

Controversy

The trial was controversially held in a joint civilian and military court and under criminal law rather than the laws specially designed to address human rights issues, which are now going through parliament. Some human rights lawyers believe the case should have been delayed, but was pushed through in an attempt to quell increasing popular discontent and violence in the province. Nearly 400 people – mostly civilians – have died this year alone in a military crackdown against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

Indonesian human rights minister Hasballah Saad, who is Acehnese, played a leading role in the arrangements for the trial, and some believe he pushed the case through early.

Even before the trial began the mysterious disappearance of a key witness – the officer who led the attack – Lieutenant-Colonel Sudjono, cast a shadow over the proceedings. Sudjono, an intelligence chief at the Lhokseumawe-based Lilawangsa Military Command, was officially declared a "deserter" on January 18 after failing to return to duty after taking two weeks' leave in his home town in western Java.

The Indonesian military has repeatedly denied suggestions that they were involved in Sudjono's disappearance.

On February 16, the Jakarta Post reported that the Independent Commission on Rights Abuse in Aceh suggested that the disappearance of Sudjono was engineered to conceal the identity of the "intellectual perpetrators" of the violence.

Commission chairperson Amran Zamzami said it was too much of a coincidence for Sudjono simply to disappear after his name was implicated in the commission report: "His name has been included in our list [in the report] since September [last year]. After we pushed for trials, suddenly the attorney general says Sudjono is missing."

In their testimonies, several the defendants said Sudjono had ordered them to shoot 24 of the victims wounded after the initial attack.

A 'public relations exercise'

Indonesian human rights activists also heaped scorn on the convictions, saying they set a bad precedent for future human rights trials for a host of unsettled cases.

They said that the convictions had allowed those who planned the operation against the school to get off scot-free.

Asmara Nababan, secretary-general of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas Ham), was quoted in the May 18 South China Morning Post as saying the prosecutors should have waited several months for new laws relating to special human rights tribunals to get through parliament. Under these laws, those who ordered the killings could also have been brought to trial.

In a May 19 article titled: "Aceh massacre trial 'missed real culprits'", the Sydney Morning Herald reported that international human rights organisations were also quick to dismiss the trial as "seriously flawed". A joint statement by the London-based Amnesty International and New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that military commanders and not just their troops should have been held accountable for the massacre. They also expressed "serious misgivings" about the sentencing and said that flaws in the trial could make it seem only a "public relations exercise" in the eyes of the Acehnese people.

"The trial shows the Indonesian Government's resolve to put an end to military impunity in Aceh, and that is an important step forward", the joint statement said.

"But it is a seriously flawed beginning. Commanding officers were not charged and key witnesses failed to appear."

Amnesty and HRW said the trial lacked credibility and legitimacy because of the lack of charges against senior officers, an argument also used by the defence lawyers during the trial and protesters who picketed the courthouse during several of its sessions. The statement also said the non-appearance of some witnesses appeared to be because they had not been called or were afraid because there was no witness protection program. "In Aceh, where the security forces have ... a long record of literally getting away with murder, the potential for intimidation is high", the statement observed.

Amnesty and HRW warned that if the massacre trial was a "foretaste" of how Indonesian authorities planned to conduct trials into the post-ballot violence in East Timor last year, "it does not bode well".

East Timor whitewash?

Although Indonesia's President Abdurrahman Wahid has stated many times his government's intention to bring perpetrators of the East Timor violence to court, the government has been slow to put in place the laws required to prosecute people at the top of the military and civilian commands who are politically responsible.

On September 23, Komnas Ham established the Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights Violations in East Timor. On January 31, it implicated former armed forces chief General Wiranto and 32 other military and civilian officers in the violence and destruction.

On April 19, a 64-member investigation team, formed to gather evidence and name suspects, restricted the investigation to only five of the most prominent cases out of more than 100 alleged incidents. Since May 1, only 21 civilians and military and police personnel have actually been summoned by the team and of these, five failed to show up. They were former local government officials in East Timor, including governor Jose Abilio Soares.

All were questioned as "witnesses" and although the team says it will look for evidence and more testimonies from witnesses in East Timor and the neighbouring Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara before it decides on the status of each person some time this month, a date has not yet been set.

The investigations of the military's actions in East Timor were made possible only by the September 1999 law on human rights that stipulates that gross violations of human rights can be prosecuted once a new law sets up a Human Rights Tribunal within four years.

On October 8, President B.J. Habibie issued a decree in lieu of such a law, but on March 13 it was rejected by the House of Representatives because it did not contain a clause that would enable past crimes to be tried in court. The bill on a human rights tribunal underwent another revision with the retroactive clause being scrapped and replaced by a clause that permits the government to set up an ad-hoc tribunal to try suspects. Another revision stated: "Every state official, military or police officer, who allows or fails to prevent his or her subordinates from committing gross human rights violations is liable to face the same possible punishment as those who directly commit violations".

Although the bill has been submitted to parliament for deliberation, it has not been made a top priority and has yet to be passed.

Without the human rights tribunal law, the government has no legal means to prosecute top army officers. It can apply the criminal code, but that does not provide collective responsibility.

As in the Aceh trial, human rights activists have criticised the attorney-general's office for treating the East Timor investigation as "ordinary crimes" instead of political crimes and crimes against humanity. They suspect that officials have been "bought off" to buy the suspects' time.

Wiranto has indicated privately that he is prepared to assume political responsibility for what happened in East Timor last year. However, if the Aceh trials are any indication of things to come, he and the other generals may get away with any criminal liability, while a few low-ranking officers take the blame for what was in reality a systematic and state-sanctioned campaign of mass killings, tortures, rapes, forced evacuations and destruction.

Country