Dear Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (U.S. State Department, Washington, DC 20520)

and

Dear Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, (The Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301)

Dear Secretary _________,

We are writing to express our opposition to the Pentagon proceeding with plans to conduct joint exercise with the Indonesian military (TNI) despite President Clinton's ban on such training and U.S. law which partially codified that ban.

Not one ranking TNI official has yet been prosecuted for complicity in the September 1999 scorched-earth assault on East Timor. The TNI continues to support militia repression of East Timorese refugees in West Timor while also facilitating the killing of civilians in West Papua, Ambon, Aceh and other areas of Indonesia. For these and other reasons we feel such training is highly inappropriate and counter-productive.

TNI participation in a U.S. CARAT (Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training) military operation planned for this summer is unacceptable. CARAT is a large-scale exercise involving Navy, Marines, and other forces that stages simulated invasions of Indonesian islands. Last year, Indonesian officers who trained in a CARAT program went directly on to East Timor, where they helped carry out the post-independence vote destruction of the country, including thousands of killings and the forced deportations of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

We hope you will agree that rewarding the Indonesian military with more training is entirely the wrong message to send when TNI terror campaigns against civilians and lack of accountability for past crimes are still unresolved dilemmas for that country's civil society. The U.S. should support agents of reform in Indonesia and must refrain from helping arm and train their opponents in the military.

Sincerely,



Address