| Subject: LAT: Military's
impunity under attack
Los Angeles Times December 29, 1999
INDONESIAN MILITARY'S IMPUNITY COMES
UNDER ATTACK; JUSTICE: ARMED FORCES FIND THEMSELVES ON DEFENSIVE AS
GOVERNMENT PROBES ALLEGATIONS OF MISDEEDS.
DAVID LAMB, TIMES STAFF WRITER
JAKARTA, Indonesia
After more than 50 years of unchecked
power and widespread human rights abuse, the Indonesian military suddenly
finds itself humiliated and on the defensive, besieged by a wrathful
public demanding accountability for past misdeeds.
The reversal of fortunes, initiated by
the reform-minded, democratically elected government of President
Abdurrahman Wahid, has stunned the military and sent its top generals
scurrying to hire a team of lawyers to answer allegations that troops
under their command were responsible for murder, rape and torture. The
circle of impunity that once allowed soldiers to ride roughshod over the
Indonesian people is coming more and more to resemble a noose, a human
rights activist said.
Each day the press runs unflattering
articles about military abuses, and generals in recent weeks have been
hauled into the national assembly and grilled about their conduct, an
unthinkable exercise just a year ago. In East Timor and in Aceh province,
in northern Sumatra, human rights teams--one of them sponsored by the
United Nations--are investigating possible war crimes by the army. Human
rights sources said there is sufficient evidence to bring some of the top
brass to trial.
Last Wednesday, U.N. investigators said
an international tribunal should be set up by the Security Council unless
Indonesia quickly investigates its military's involvement in atrocities in
East Timor.
Significantly, Wahid, unlike past
presidents, says he will not protect his generals, including Wiranto, the
former defense chief and now a Cabinet minister. Wahid, however, objects
to any trial before an international tribunal, saying Indonesia should
handle such cases itself.
Wahid is well aware, Western political
analysts said, that nothing could give his government more domestic
credibility than to demand accountability of high-ranking soldiers
involved in terrorizing a sizable percentage of the population for more
than a generation.
Still, it's a risky proposition for Wahid.
The military, which continues to wield great power, regards itself as the
backbone of national unity, and senior commanders are divided over whether
to support reform or cling to the traditional authority the constitution
gives the military. Some generals have publicly said that, if they thought
the country was disintegrating--the territory of East Timor voted Aug. 30
to secede from Indonesia, and Aceh is agitating for independence--the army
would step in to stop the process.
But though Wahid's political survival may
depend on military support, the army's room to maneuver is limited. If it
usurped civilian authority, the international community almost surely
would cut aid, foreign investors would flee, and Indonesia's Southeast
Asian neighbors would shun the ruling generals. The economic repercussions
for Indonesia would be catastrophic. And if the military opts for reforms,
it loses its arbitrary authority to control the civilian population and
create fiefdoms that bring promotions, power and riches. "It's a
lose-lose situation for the top brass," a Western military attache
said.
Once revered as a people's army that won
Indonesia independence from Dutch colonialists in 1949, the military
increasingly has come to view large segments of society as the enemy. More
than 500,000 civilians were killed when the military tracked down
perceived Communists in 1965. Indonesia's 1975 invasion and later
annexation of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, left an estimated
200,000 dead because of warfare, disease and starvation. Two thousand
people are said to have been killed in Aceh since Indonesia declared the
province a military zone in 1990. Twelve hundred died in May 1998 riots in
Jakarta, the capital, that were triggered by the army's fatal shooting of
six students.
The Jakarta riots led to the forced
resignation of President Suharto, himself a former general, and calls for
the military to be reined in. Its bloc of nonelected seats in parliament
was cut in half, to 38, and Wahid--who succeeded President B. J. Habibie,
Suharto's protege--sent a clear signal when he was elected in October: He
made a civilian the minister of defense, bypassed the army with its
sullied reputation to appoint a naval admiral as the armed forces chief
and refused the military's request to reinforce its army contingent in
Aceh.
"More military is not the answer for
Aceh," he said.
"You can't expect the soldiers to go
back to the barracks overnight," said Human Hamid, a human rights
activist in Aceh. "It will take time to change their culture of
violence. They're used to thinking they're the only segment of society
that's capable of saving the nation. But in fact, the opposite is
happening. They're destroying it."
The immediate focus of human rights teams
is East Timor, where the military was closely linked with pro-Jakarta
militias that went on a rampage of killing and destruction after the
territory voted for independence. Among those under investigation are four
two-star generals who answered to Wiranto: Zacky Anwar Makarim, a former
intelligence chief; Adam Damiri and Tono Suratman, both former provincial
military commanders; and Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, former security advisor to
the defense minister.
A U.N. panel of five jurists--led by
Sonia Picado of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights--recently
concluded its inquiry in East Timor and will present its findings and
recommendations to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan by month's end.
Similar inquiries in Africa and Europe led to the establishment of
tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia.
An independent Indonesian human rights
team also visited East Timor in November and December. One militia leader,
Joni Marques, told investigators that he killed two nuns, four male clergy
and an Indonesian journalist on the orders of military commanders, a
member of the team, Helmy Fauzi, told journalists. And the head of the
team, Albert Hasibuan, said, "I believe Wiranto could be charged with
omission or failure to take action" to stop the violence.
Wiranto had been summoned to appear last
Wednesday for the Indonesian inquiry but requested more time to prepare,
officials said.
In Aceh, another inquiry by a national
commission is underway and a civilian-military tribunal has been
established to try soldiers accused of abuses.
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