[list_indonesia] [ppiindia] Testimony for Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific Hearing
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http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/109/mcw031005.htm
Committee on International Relations
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515-0128
March 10, 2005
Testimony for Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific Hearing:
Implications of Recent Indonesia Reform
By Edmund McWilliams, Senior Foreign Service Office (Ret.)
Board of Directors, Indonesia Human Rights Network
The Indonesian Military's Threat to Human Rights and Democracy
The Annual Human Rights Report regarding Indonesia, recently released by the
State Department accurately portrays the Indonesia as a fragile, fledgling
democracy whose government is not yet capable of protecting the fundamental
human rights of its people. As documented clearly in the State Department's
report, the principal menace to those rights and to that fledgling democratic
government itself is a rogue institution with vast wealth and power that has
committed crimes against humanity and perhaps genocide and which remains
unaccountable.
That institution, the Indonesian military, recently saw its stature dangerously
enhanced by a decision of the U.S. administration to end a bipartisan
Congressionally imposed sanction against the military, imposed over a decade
ago.
The decision, announced by Secretary of State Rice, restored International
Military Education and Training (IMET) assistance to the Indonesian military.
The Congress banned that assistance in 1992 in response to the military's
murder of 276 peaceful demonstrators in East Timor. The Congress reinforced
the ban in 1999 in response to the military's ravaging of East Timor following
the Timorese people's courageous vote for freedom. In 2004, the Congress
narrowed the ban to a single condition. It required that the State Department
certify that the Indonesian government and military were cooperating in an FBI
investigation of an August 31, 2002 assault on a group of U.S. citizens at the
Freeport copper and gold mine in West Papua that saw two U.S. citizens killed
and eight wounded.
Dr. Rice's February 26 certification that the Indonesians were cooperating
manifestly misrepresents the obstructions and malign inaction of the Indonesian
side with regards to that investigation. Contrary to the State Department's
contention that the Indonesian side is "cooperating," the Indonesians have
failed to bring charges against or even detain the one individual indicted by a
U.S. grand jury in the attack. Moreover, for over eight months it has stalled
a return of the FBI team to Indonesia to continue its investigation.
This Indonesian obstruction of the FBI investigation is possibly explained by
indications that the Indonesian military itself was involved in the attack.
The initial Indonesian police report, as well as reports by independent
researchers, journalists and others, all point to military involvement.
Recently, evidence of ties between the one indicted individual and the military
was provided to the FBI and the State Department. Moreover, the military's
presentation of false evidence and subsequent military threats and intimidation
targeting those Indonesian human rights advocates who had assisted the FBI also
suggest the military's culpability.
Ms. Patsy Spier who was wounded and widowed in the attack has asked me to share
with you her concern about the importance of genuine Indonesian cooperation in
the investigation:
"The investigation into the Timika Ambush, a terror attack, is completely in
Americans interest. Two American citizens who were working in Indonesia for an
American company were murdered on a secure road. The ambush lasted from 35 to
45 minutes before help came. The eight Americans wounded were American citizens
working in Indonesia (the eighth American being a 6 year old girl). The
investigation, and cooperation needed, is in Americans interest to assure the
safety of the other thousands of Americans working and living in Indonesia. The
Indonesian authorities must cooperate fully with our US investigators. American
companies working, and thinking of working, in Indonesia must be assured that
the murder of Americans is taken seriously by the Indonesian Government...and
cooperating with our investigators would show that."
In addition to being indefensible on the basis of the "cooperation" criterion
established by the Congress, the decision was also a practical blunder.
Restoration of IMET assistance removes the only leverage available to the U.S.
to press for the genuine Indonesian cooperation essential to a successful
completion of the FBI's investigation.
On the basis of this erroneous certification alone, the Congress should restore
the ban on IMET in FY2006. It is also imperative that the Congress maintain
the ban on FMF for the Indonesian military which remains in place despite the
restoration of IMET.
But there are broader issues in play than even the critical matter of ensuring
justice in this case of murdered and wounded U.S. citizens.
The restoration of IMET dangerously conveys to the Indonesian military that
long-standing U.S. concerns about its notorious and continuing human rights
abuses, its threats to its neighbors, illegal business empire and its impunity
in committing these acts is no longer on the U.S. agenda. Such a U.S.
exoneration of the Indonesian military removes a well-founded international
censure that has given Indonesian government and civil society members the
political space to press for reform of that notorious institution. It is not
surprising that leading Indonesian human rights activists reacted with dismay
to the U.S. action.
The notorious record of the Indonesian military is well documented by reliable
reporting of well-respected human rights organizations such as Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, Tapol as well as in the State Department's
Annual Human Rights Reports. Therefore, I will only summarize that record here
and then focus the rest of my remarks on the current activity of the Indonesian
military, specifically its ongoing abuse of human rights, its involvement in a
broad range of criminal enterprises, its contempt for and threat to democratic
institutions and its unaccountability.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Theys Eluay, the leading nonviolent Papuan proponent of Papuan
self-determination was abducted and strangled to death. In a rare tr
ial 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.
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.
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.
For much of the last decade, advocates of closer ties between the Indonesian
military and the U.S. military have contended that a warmer U.S. embrace
entailing training programs and education courses for TNI officers could expose
them to democratic ideals and afford a professional military perspective. This
argument ignores the decades of close U.S. - Indonesian military ties extending
from the 1960's to the early 1990's when U.S. training was provided to over
8,000 Indonesian military officers. This 30-year period also encompasses the
period when the Indonesian military committed some of its gravest atrocities
and when a culture of impunity became ingrained.
The argument for reform through engagement also ignores the fact that the U.S.
Defense Department already maintains extensive ties and channels for assistance
under the guise of "conferences" and joint operations billed as humanitarian or
security-related.
In the wake of 9/11, proponents of restored U.S.-Indonesian military ties have
also argued that the U.S. needs the Indonesian military as a partner in the war
on terrorism. This argument overlooks the Indonesian military's close ties to
and support for domestic fundamentalist Islamic terror groups, including the
Laskar Mujahidin and Front for the Defense of Islam. The Laskar Jihad militia,
which the Indonesian military helped form and train, engaged in a savage
communal war in the Maluku Islands in the years 2000 to 2002 that left
thousands dead. Many thousands more died in Central Sulawesi in the same
period, in fighting that involved militias with security force ties.
Absent tangible evidence of Indonesian military action to curb abuses, to allow
itself to be held accountable, to end corruption, to submit itself to civilian
rule and to end its sponsorship of terrorist militias, the Indonesian military
should be seen for what it is: a rogue institution that directly threatens
democracy in Indonesia. Existing restrictions on military-to-military ties
between the United States and Indonesia must remain in place, conditionality
should be strengthened and the IMET ban reinstated in FY 2006.
Finally, a word about the future. The Indonesian people, Indonesian
non-governmental organizations, the Indonesian media and individual Indonesians
have demonstrated great courage in standing up to the intimidation of
entrenched corrupt interests in their society and most especially its security
forces to demand their right to live in a democratic society. The brave
students who rallied in the streets in 1998 wrought a revolution, though since
that historic victory, entrenched undemocratic elements have sought to undo
reforms. Sadly, in some parts of Indonesia the 1998 reforms have had little
meaning. The military, often employing terrorist militias, have most brutally
repressed the popular struggle for reform in Aceh, West Papua and the Maluku
Islands. It is vital that the central government engage civil society in these
areas in peaceful dialogue and, in order to make such a dialogue viable,
demilitarize those areas.
The U.S. should encourage reform and peaceful dialogue where it can. It should
encourage the Government to enforce worker rights, to make far more serious
efforts and to end injurious exploitation of child labor and human trafficking.
The U.S. should encourage the Indonesian Government to pass legislation
implementing the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women. The U.S. should also urge an end to intimidation
of journalists through physical threat and intimidation through misuse of the
courts. Moreover, the U.S. Government should itself recognize the importance
of social, economic and cultural rights and encourage the Government of
Indonesia to pursue development strategies that address the urgent health,
education and shelter needs of the poor.
But direct U.S. involvement in Indonesian affairs would be unwelcome and most
likely ineffective. Critical questions such as the role of Islam in modern
Indonesia and the shape and character of its economy are for Indonesians to
decide. The most pro-active course for the U.S. at this time is to step back
from its growing embrace of the Indonesian military that remains the gravest
threat to democracy and human rights throughout the archipelago.
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