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| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
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| pesan | In 1965-68 the Indonesian military engineered the slaughter of more than a half million Indonesians whom it alleged had been involved in a coup against the sitting President Soekarno. Employing a tactic it would resort to again in the current period, the Indonesian military allied itself with Islamic forces that did much of the actual killing. The Soeharto regime which rose to power as a consequence of the coup and which directed the massive killings sought to justify them in U.S. and western eyes by labeling the victims as “communists.” Following the Indonesian military's invasion of East Timor in 1975, an estimated 200,000 East Timorese, one quarter of the population, died as a consequence of living conditions in TNI-organized re-location camps or as direct victims of Indonesian security force violence |
| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
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| pesan | In West Papua, it is estimated that over 100,000 Papuans died in the years following the forced annexation of West Papua under a fraudulent Act of Free Choice, perpetrated by the Soeharto regime in 1969. An April 2004 study by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at the Yale Law School concluded that the atrocities in West Papua are crimes against humanity and may constitute genocide. In Aceh, over 12,000 civilians have fallen victim to military operations that have included mass sweeps and forced relocations. These operations, almost constantly since the late 1970’s, have entailed brutal treatment of civilians including extra judicial killings, rape, torture and beatings. While the military’s quarry in these attacks, the pro-independence Gerakan Aceh Merdeka or GAM has also been responsible for human rights abuses, the State Department's Annual Human Rights reports have consistently reported that most of those civilians died at the hands of the military. |
| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
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| pesan | Throughout this period, extending from 1965 to the early 1990's the U.S. military maintained a close relationship with the Indonesian military, providing training for thousands of officers as well as arms. From the late 1970’s to 1992, that training included grant assistance under IMET. The arms provided by the U.S. were employed by the Indonesian military not against foreign foes (the Indonesian military has never confronted a foreign foe except for brief clashes with the Dutch in West Papua) but rather against their own people. In the 70's and 80's, U.S.- provided OV-10 Broncos bombed villages in East Timor and in West Papua. Military offensives conceived and directed by IMET-trained officers against usually miniscule resistance caused thousands of civilian deaths. Even with the end of the cold war, the U.S. embrace of the dictator Soeharto and his military continued as if U.S. policy were on auto pilot. That relationship endured largely unquestioned until 1991 when the Indonesian military was caught on film by U.S. journalists slaughtering peaceful East Timorese demonstrators. The murder of over 270 East Timorese youth by Indonesian soldiers bearing U.S.-provided M-16's so shocked the U.S. Congress that in 1992 it imposed tight restrictions on further U.S. military-to-military aid, including training for the Indonesian military |
| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
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| pesan | Since the imposition of those restrictions various U.S. Administrations, with the support of non-governmental organizations bankrolled by U.S. corporations with major interests in Indonesia have sought to expand military to military ties. Those efforts were accompanied by claims that the Indonesian military had reformed or was on a reform course. Claims of Indonesian military reform were confounded in 1999, when, following an overwhelming vote by East Timorese for independence from Indonesia, the Indonesian military and its militia proxies devastated the tiny half island. U.N. and other international observers were unable to prevent the killing of over 1,500 East Timorese, the forced relocation of over 250,000 and the destruction of over 70 percent of East Timor's infrastructure. The Indonesian justice system has failed to hold a single military, police or civil official responsible for the mayhem. That failure to render justice demonstrated that even when confronted by unanimous international condemnation, the Indonesian military remained unaccountable. |
| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
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| pesan | Moreover, TNI abuse of human rights is not a matter only of history. Indonesian military operations that began in mid-2004 in West Papua continue. Burning villages and destroying food sources, the Indonesian military has forced thousands of villagers into the forests where many are dying for lack of food and medicine. A government ban on travel to the region by journalists and even West Papuan senior church leaders has limited international awareness of this tragedy. More critically, the ban has prevented Papuan church leaders and others from distributing humanitarian relief to the thousands forced into the forests. A similar campaign in West Papua in the late 1990s led to the death of hundreds of civilians who did not survive their forced sojourn in the deep jungles of West Papua. |
| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
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| pesan | The recent devastating Indian Ocean tsunami turned international attention to Aceh, another primary arena in which the Indonesian military continues a brutal military campaign. Notwithstanding calls by President Yudhoyono for a ceasefire and declaration by GAM of unilateral ceasefire the Indonesian military has continued to conduct operations. These operations jeopardize relief operations and will likely stall rehabilitation and reconstruction. Both GAM and the Government appear to be genuinely pursuing a settlement through talks organized by former Finish President Martti Atahisaari. But as the former Finnish President has emphasized, to be successful, both sides must act with restraint in the field. With boasts that it has killed over 230 GAM members since the tsunami struck, the TNI clearly is not acting with restraint. |
| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
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| pesan | Throughout the Soeharto period (1965-1998) critics and dissenters generally were not tolerated. Despite the genuine democratic progress made since the fall of the Soeharto dictatorships, critics of the military and those whom the Indonesian military regard as enemies are in grave jeopardy. Reflecting the Indonesian military’s power in democratic Indonesia, those critics who meet untimely ends are often the most prominent. Indonesia’s leading human rights advocate, Munir, a prominent critic of the Indonesian military died of arsenic poisoning in 2004. An independent investigation authorized by the Indonesian President has uncovered evidence of Government involvement in this murder. In recent years Jafar Siddiq, a U.S. green card holder who was in Aceh demanding justice for Achenese suffering military abuse was himself tortured and murdered. |
| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
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| pesan | Theys Eluay, the leading nonviolent Papuan proponent of Papuan self-determination was abducted and strangled to death. In a rare trial of military officials, his Indonesian Special Forces (Kopassus) killers received sentences ranging up to three and one half years. Yet Army Chief of Staff, Ryamazad Ryacudu publicly described the murderers as “heroes.” Farid Faquih, a leading anti-corruption campaigner who has targeted military and other government malfeasance recently was badly beaten in Aceh by military officers as he sought to monitor tsunami aid distribution. He was arrested and is now facing charges of theft of the assistance he was monitoring. Papuan human rights advocates who supported FBI investigations of the U.S. citizens murdered in 2002 in West Papua are under continuing intimidation by the military and were sued by the regional military commander. |
| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
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| pesan | More generally, the Indonesian military poses a threat to the fledgling democratic experiment in Indonesia. It receives over 70 percent of its budget from legal and illegal businesses and as a result is not under direct budget control by the civilian president or the parliament. Its vast wealth derives from numerous activities, including many illegal ones that include extortion, prostitution rings, drug running, illegal logging and other exploitation of Indonesia’s great natural resources, and as charged in a recent Voice of Australia broadcast (August 2, 2004), human trafficking. With its great institutional wealth it maintains a bureaucratic structure that functions as a shadow government paralleling the civil administration structure from the central level down to sub-district and even village level. |
| tanggal | 06-08-05 |
| pesan | There are also reasons why many of us should be directly concerned about the TNI’s lawlessness. As investors – through our pension and mutual funds – our hard-earned wealth is invested with U.S.-based corporations: ExxonMobil and Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc., among others – that are subject to extortion of “protection money” from the TNI for their Indonesian operations. Recognizing the reputational risks and potential and actual shareholder liabilities resulting from these financial relationships between U.S. companies and the TNI, institutional investors including all of New York City’s employee pension funds have brought shareholder resolutions this year calling on Freeport and ExxonMobil management to review and report to shareholders about the risks associated with corporate ties to the TNI. In short, investors should be concerned, too, about the TNI’s human rights record and the implications for the bottom line. |
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