Apriadi Gunawan and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Medan/Jakarta – In support of the government's pledge to quash the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), the police rounded up activists and other individuals and charged them with subversion over their alleged connection with the separatist group.

On Wednesday, the Banda Aceh District Police declared a female activist, identified as 47-year-old Cut Asikin, as a suspect in subversion and terror cases in the province. Cut, who leads the Srikandi Aceh women's rights organization, was arrested at her residence in the Lampula area in Banda Aceh on Tuesday afternoon.

Banda Aceh Police Chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Alfons claimed that Cut was the leader of GAM's women's military wing Inoeng Balee. He told reporters that the police charged Cut for violating articles on subversion from the Criminal Code as well as articles of the Antiterrorism Law, which carries the death penalty. Cut, a mother of five, owns a hotel in Banda Aceh. She is currently being interrogated by the police.

Separately, the North Aceh Police arrested three people over their alleged involvement with GAM during an operation dubbed "Balance Operation". One of the suspects, 40-year-old Sheny Angelina, is the secretary to David Gorman, the spokesman of the Henry Dunant Center (HDC), which facilitated the peace agreement between Jakarta and GAM.

Angelina was later released along with an unidentified activist. The third was still being detained for questioning, said North Sumatra Police Chief Brig. Gen. Edi Sunarno. Edi told The Jakarta Post that Angelina and the two others were arrested at about 1:45 p.m. while on transit at Polonia airport in Medan en route to Banda Aceh from Jakarta.

The police alleged that Angelina, an Indonesian national, was a GAM negotiator, as she had attended the recent peace conference in Tokyo, held in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the peace agreement.

"The arrest is in line with [the government's] commitment to law enforcement in its Balance Operation, which has been conducted due to the tense situation in Aceh," Edi asserted.

However, Gorman said that the arrest was a mistake. "She is a staff of the Henry Dunant Center and has nothing to do with GAM. It [the arrest] was a mistake," Gorman told the Post by telephone.

Indonesian military authorities stationed in Aceh announced that they would take firm action against any GAM supporters, whether individuals or organizations, as part of its efforts to reduce support for the separatist movement as part of the martial law imposed by the government.

Maj. Gen. Endang Suwarya, Aceh's military commander and the military law administration chief for Aceh, accused the Aceh Referendum Information Center (SIRA) – whose chairman is currently on trial for violating the Law on Public Rallies – and the Student Solidarity for the People's Movement (SMUR) of being GAM sympathizers. He threatened to arrest their members if they continued their activities.

Munir, a prominent activist, said that the moves to round up human rights activists showed that authorities were attempting to "kill control agents by oppressing those elements by labeling them GAM sympathizers". "This tendency clearly shows a deviation from the military operation in Aceh, as well as the government's aim to intimidate non-governmental organizations," he added.

Munir said that military authorities must not stereotype NGOs as GAM sympathizers, as many of them work in the area of human rights, and had no political motives.