PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHTS, PEACE AND DEMOCRACY IN INDONESIA

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The following letter was sent by TAPOL to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, on 2 July 2001

See also press release dated 2 July 2001

Mary Robinson,
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Geneva, Switzerland

Dear Mary,

It was a pleasure to meet you again last week and to hear your views on how the UN’s human rights mechanisms might proceed.

I raised with you the question of a more pro-active role by the UN Special Rapporteurs and am writing now with specific reference to the rapidly worsening situation in Aceh. Over the weekend, we received reports about a massacre, or several massacres, in Central Aceh which, at present count, have left 49 people dead [AFP, 1 July]. I have today received the names of 15 of the victims, following investigations currently underway by a team of the Indonesian Red Cross.

Reports from both sides in the armed conflict acknowledge that there have been a large number of deaths as a result of operations in Central Aceh. However, while the Indonesian side say that all the victims were members of GAM, thereby justifying the killings, the GAM spokesman in the region says that only four of the victims were their members and all the others were ordinary citizens. Either way, the killings cannot be justified but with very different versions from the two sides, an outside investigation is clearly called for.

One additional and very disturbing factor about Central Aceh is that there is growing evidence that the Indonesian army have created and trained a para-military militia force known as Puja Kusuma, largely recruited from the sizeable Javanese community in the district. These militias are reported to have been involved in the massacres.

In November last year, three UN Special Rapporteurs, on Extrajudicial Killings, Torture and Violence Against Women, along with the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on human rights defenders and the Chairman-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, wrote to the Indonesian Government calling for investigations to be conducted in Aceh into matters within their mandates. As far as I know, they received no reply and certainly nothing positive has resulted from this highly significant initiative.

From my reading of the present situation in Aceh, especially since the commencement of the Indonesian armed forces’ military operations at the beginning of May, the two most pressing problems for the immediate attention of your office are:

1. The mounting death toll which is now approaching an average of ten a day (not counting the high death toll from the massacre(s) in Central Aceh).

2. A deliberate campaign of terror by the police and the security forces in Aceh directed against human rights and humanitarian NGOs, which have included the murder last December of three workers of RATA, the NGO helping torture victims, the murder in March of a member of the Joint Monitoring Committee on Security Affairs together with his lawyer and driver, moves to bring to trial officials of Kontras-Aceh (the Commission on the Disappeared and Victims of Violence), an attack on the Banda Aceh office of the National Human Rights Commission, and most recently, an recent attack on the office of Yayasan Anak Bangsa, an NGO that helps abandoned children and children in the IDP camps.

This means that the focus should be on an investigation by Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, and Hina Jilani, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders.

I am appealing to you therefore to take what action you can to bring pressure to bear on the Indonesian authorities to allow this to happen. A special initiative may be needed by the UN, bearing in mind the fact that the Indonesian side at the HDC-brokered talks about Aceh in Geneva over the weekend rejected proposals to make the monitoring committees set up in the frame of the Henri Dunant Centre-brokered arrangements, more effective. As Lord Avebury who attended the talks wrote in a letter this morning to the Foreign Office: ‘The impression I got was that they want to get on with their Security Operation without being observed or criticised for the widespread human rights violations accompanying their actions.’

On behalf of TAPOL, I urgently appeal to you to help initiate desperately needed UN investigations in Aceh.

Yours sincerely,

Carmel Budiardjo

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