Thursday, April 1, 2010
Perkembangan Pembunuhan: Tekanan dari Kopassus Kabarnya Membuat TV One Membatalkan Wawancara Langsung
Oleh Allan Nairn (www.allannairn.com)
Pada saat saya sedang menuju ke studio untuk menghadiri wawancara
tentang TNI sebagaimana yang sudah disepakati sebelumnya, saya
mendapat telpon yang mengabarkan bahwa TV One, sebuah TV berita di
Indonesia, telah memutuskan untuk membatalkan acara itu akibat tekanan dari Kopassus.
Kopassus adalah salah satu unit yang telah saya laporkan terlibat
dalam pembunuhan politik di Aceh. Presiden Obama kabarnya ingin
meningkatkan bantuan Amerika Serikat kepada Kopassus, dan laporan saya tampaknya telah menciptakan krisis bagi tentara Indonesia dan AS.
Meskipun TV One telah sepakat sebelumnya untuk mewawancarai saya
selama 15 atau 30 menit, mereka memutuskan secara sepihak -- tanpa
memberitahu saya sebelumnya -- bahwa mereka akan menayangkan saya
hanya jika komandan Kopassus, Jendral Lodewijk, ada disana untuk
memberikan bantahan kepada saya.
Saya tentu saja sangat senang untuk berhadapan langsung dan mengajukan pertanyaan kepada sang Jendral, tetapi masalahnya si Jendral itu menolak untuk menghadapi saya.
Demikianlah, karena Kopassus, wawancara langsung saya dengan TV One
dibatalkan.
Jendral Lodewijk dan TNI, mengapa Anda takut menghadapi kenyataan?
Dan kepada TV One, kenapa Anda takut untuk membiarkan saya berdiskusi kenyataan itu, sebagaimana yang telah kita sepakati sebelumnya?
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TV One Menyebutkan, Wawancara Langsung Tentang Pembunuhan, Rabu, 31 Maret Jam 5.30 atau 6 Petang, Waktu Jakarta
Oleh Allan Nairn
TV One, sebuah TV berita di Indonesia, menyatakan bahwa mereka akan melakukan wawancara langsung dengan saya di studio sehubungan dengan laporan saya tentang pembunuhan-pembunuhan yang dilakukan oleh TNI pada jam 5.30 atau jam 6 petang WIB(jam 6.30 atau 7.00 pagi waktu Timur Amerika).
Semalam mereka sepakat bahwa saya akan diwawancarai sendirian selama
15 atau 30 menit dan akan dijinkan berbicara bebas tanpa penyensoran,
sebagaimana yang sudah terjadi minggu lalu dengan METRO TV (lihat
posting dibawah).
Kita lihat saja apa yang akan terjadi
Karena TNI mengancam akan menahan saya, maka ini ada sebuah kesempatan untuk mereka. Mereka bisa menahan saya dan disiarkan secara langsung oleh TV nasional di Studio TV One, Jakarta. Kemudian, kita akan berhadapan dengan pengadilan public dimana saya akan mendiskusikan fakta-fakta kejahatan mereka, dan mereka yang mensponsorinya yakni pemerintah Amerika Serikat.
Jika mereka gagal melakukannya maka ini akan merupakan pengakuan
diam-diam bahwa apa yang saya laporkan adalah benar adanya, karena
mereka menuduh bahwa saya telah ‘mencemarkan nama baik’ TNI, yang
merupakan sebuah kejahatan di Indonesia, dan karena mereka menyatakan pula bahwa mereka akan membersihkan nama baik itu dengan tuntutan criminal.
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Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Assassinations Development: Kopassus Pressure Cited as TV One Cancels Live Interview at Last Minute.
By Allan Nairn (www.allannairn.com)
As I was making my way to their studio for our agreed live interview on Indonesian armed forces (TNI) assassinations, I received a call with the news that TV One, the Indonesian national news channel, had canceled my appearance due to pressure from Kopassus.
Kopassus, the army's special forces is one of the units which I reported has been involved in the assassination of political activists in Aceh. President Obama reportedly wants to boost US aid to Kopassus, and my report has apparently created a political crisis for Indonesia's armed forces and the US.
Even though TV One had agreed to interview me alone for 15 to 30 minutes, they decided unilaterally -- without telling me -- that they would only let me on air if the Kopassus commander, Gen. Lodewijk was there to rebut me.
I would have been glad to face and question the General, but the catch was that the General refused to face me.
So, due to Kopassus my live TV One interview was canceled.
General Lodewijk and TNI, why are you afraid to face the facts?
And TV One, why are you afraid to let me discuss them live, as you agreed?
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TV One Says, Live Assassination Interview Wed. 31 March, 530 or 600 pm Jakarta Time
By Allan Nairn
TV One, the Indonesian news channel, says they will do a live in-studio interview with me regarding my report on Indonesian military (TNI) assassinations at 5:30 or 6:00 pm WIB,(Western Indonesia Time), ie, 6:30 am or 7:00 am US Eastern time.
Last night they agreed that I would be interviewed alone for 15 to 30 minutes and would be allowed to speak freely without censorship, such as occurred last week on METRO TV (see posting below).
We will see what happens.
Since the TNI has threatened to have me arrested, this is their chance to do so. They can arrest me live on national TV in the TV One studio, Jakarta, and we can then have a long, open public trial in which I will discuss the facts of their crimes, and those of their sponsor, the US government.
If they fail to do so it will be a tacit admission that my report is correct, since they have already stated that I have "defiled the good name " of TNI, a crime in Indonesia, and they have stated that they intend to now clear that name with a criminal prosecution.
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Jalan Keluar Yang Pengecut. Akankah Militer Indonesia (TNI) Secara Diam-diam Mengakui Kesalahannya?
Oleh Allan Nairn (News and Comment, www.allannairn.com)
The Straits Times, surat kabar setengah resmi Singapura, melaporkan
dari Jakarta:
“Laporan jurnalis Allan Nairn [re. pembunuhan oleh TNI] telah
menghancurkan harapan Jakarta agar Amerika Serikat mencabut
larangan yang telah berlangsung 12 tahun bagi pelatihan pasukan
khusus, Kopassus … Sebuah delegasi militer Indonesia telah berkunjung
ke Washington pada awal bulan ini untuk melobi pencabutan larangan
tersebut dan media-media di Indonesia melaporkan bahwa memang
ada tanda-tanda bahwa AS akan mencabut larangan tersebut. Namun,
temuan dari Nairn bisa mengkandaskan harapan tersebut . (Salim
Osman, "Report May Hit Bid to Lift US Military Ban," The Straits
Times, Friday, March 26, 2010).
Militer Indonesia (TNI) telah bereaksi dengan ancaman akan menahan
saya, dan saya sudah menyambut baik ancaman mereka itu serta menantang mereka untuk maju terus jika mereka memang percaya akan apa yang selama ini terus menerus mereka sangkal.
Jika TNI memang sungguh-sungguh tidak melakukan pembunuhan-pembunuhan ini -- sebagaimana juga ratusan ribu pembunuhan lainnya -- mereka boleh menyeret saya ke pengadilan terbuka, dimana kita bisa mendiskusikan fakta secara publik, bila perlu selama berbulan-bulan. Ini jauh lebih baikketimbang mengambil penyelesaian secara pengecut dan diam-diam mengakui kesalahan sambil kemudian membekap, menangkap, atau memanggil saya untuk diinterogasi tertutup dan/atau mendeportasi
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Monday, March 29, 2010
The Coward's Way Out. Will Indonesia's Military (TNI) Tacitly Admit Its' Own Guilt?
The Straits Times, the semi-official Singapore daily, reports out of Jakarta:
"The report by journalist Allan Nairn [re. TNI assassinations] threatens to scuttle Jakarta's hopes of getting the United States to lift a 12-year military training ban for its special forces, Kopassus ... An Indonesian military delegation had visited Washington earlier this month to lobby for the lifting of the ban and Indonesian media reported there were signs the US might do so. But Mr Nairn's claims could dash such hopes ." (Salim Osman, "Report May Hit Bid to Lift US Military Ban," The Straits Times, Friday, March 26, 2010).
The Indonesian military (TNI) has responded by threatening to have me arrested, and I've welcomed their threat and challenged them to go ahead if they believe their own denials.
If TNI really didn't commit these murders – as well as hundreds of thousands of others – they can haul me into open court and we'll discuss the facts publicly, for months, instead of their taking the coward's way out and tacitly admitting their own guilt by backing down or by snatching or summoning me for closed interrogation and/or deportation.
Link to view translation of this posting in Bahasa Indonesia.
Link to view TNI assassinations article in English.
Link to view TNI assassinations article in Bahasa Indonesia.
Link to view challenge to the TNI and US government in English.
Link to view challenge to the TNI and US government in Bahasa Indonesia.
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Friday, March 26, 2010
Tantangan Kepada Angkatan Bersenjata Indonesia dan kepada Pemerintah AS. Pernyataan Allan Nairn Sebagai tanggapan Atas Ancaman Penahanan oleh TNI.
News & Comment (www.allannairn.com)
Selasa, 23 Maret, 2010
Sebagai balasan terhadap laporan saya yang mengungkap keterlibatan TNI
dalam pembunuhan para aktivis politik (lihat posting 21 Maret 2010),
Angkatan Bersenjata RI yang didukung oleh AS telah mengancam akan
menahan saya, atas dasar tindakan criminal pencemaran nama baik (lihat
Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Nurdin Hasan , Jakarta Globe, "Indonesian
Military Threatens Legal Action Over Aceh Party Killings Claims.")
Saya menyambut baik ancaman TNI ini. TNI adalah sebuah kekuatan yang
telah membunuh ratusan ribu jiwa, karenanya saya menantang mereka
untuk menahan saya dan dengan demikian kita bisa berhadapan secara
langsung di ruang pengadilan terbuka.
Saya akan senang bila berdiri di hadapan pengadilan yang dihadiri
public Indonesia, dan saya akan memberikan keterangan secara mendetail
tentang berbagai peranan TNI dalam berbagai penyiksaan, penghilangan
paksa, pembunuhan massal, serta pembunuhan terencana.
Saya menyambul baik kesempatan untuk masuk kedalam proses hukum yang formal, dan terbuka, dimana ada pula kesempatan untuk melemparkan pertanyaan kepada Jendral-jendral TNI yang harus bersaksi dibawah sumpah.
Jika diberikan kesempatan seperti itu, saya juga akan berusaha
menghadirkan personil-personil Amerika Serikat, dan bertanya kepada
militer AS, CIA, Departemen Luar Negeri, dan pejabat-pejabat Gedung
Putih tentang dukungan mereka kepada TNI. Saya akan bertanya kepada
orang-orang Amerika ini mengapa mereka memberikan senjata, pelatihan, dan dana kepada TNI, bahkan ketika mereka telah menyaksikan bahwa kekuatan ini telah berulang kali membunuh rakyat sipil.
Kekuasaan peradilan di Indonesia telah terkenal dengan ketakutannya
kepada TNI. Mereka tidak pernah memenuhi tanggungjawab untuk
melindungi masyarakat dengan menerapkan hukuman atas pembunuhan secara tidak memihak.
Akan tetapi, jika mereka ingin menahan saya ketimbang menahan
perwira-perwira TNI, tidak ada masalah untuk saya.
Ini akan memberikan kesempatan kepada kita untuk mendiskusikan secara
public kejahatan-kejahatan yang telah dilakukan oleh pemerintah
Indonesia -- dan juga pemerintah AS.
Link to view original English language version of this posting.
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Thursday, March 25, 2010
Indonesian Military to Charge Me With Crime for Reporting Assassinations, According to Text Scroll Running on News Channel TV One
The Indonesian news channel TV One is running text scrolls on their screen which say that the country's US-backed armed forces, the TNI, is either planning to or has already filed criminal charges against me.
The crime, the scrolls say, consists of "defiling the good name of TNI."
In today's Indonesia it can be a crime to report assassinations, but, given that no Generals have gone to prison for such murders, it is not treated as a crime to commit them.
Link to view Bahasa Indonesia translation of this posting.
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Assassination Interview Censored by METRO TV, Indonesia.
This afternoon METRO TV, a major Indonesian news channel, invited me to come on the air live for 30 minutes at 8pm tonight WIB (Western Indonesia Time) to discuss my recent report on political assassinations by the country's US-backed armed forces (TNI).
I agreed, and when we went on the air, by phone, shortly after 8pm, I urged viewers to go to this website to read the full, detailed report and then began to name the names of TNI people implicated in the killings.
Within a couple of minutes I was pulled off the air. A producer came on the phone and acknowledged that I had just been "censored."
The producer then sent a text message saying: "Really sorry Allan. Suddenly I have a policy from my boss." I asked on the phone what that sudden policy was but the producer would not say. They said there were too many other METRO TV employees within earshot to speak freely about the matter.
As it happens, before being cut-off, I had only named the names of the low-level killers in one of the murders (Tumijan, see posting of March 21, 2010 for details). Who knows what would have happened if I had started out by naming Generals?
This censorship is especially revealing since part of the TNI's strategy in trying to defuse my report is to say generally that it has no specifics, no facts. But when I give them, they pull the plug.
Bahasa Indonesia Translation of this Posting:
News & Comment (www.allannairn.com)
Rabu, 24 Maret 2010
Wawancara Tentang Pembunuhan di Sensor Oleh METRO TV, Indonesia
Sore ini, METRO TV, sebuah stasiun TV berita swasta di Indonesia,
mengundang saya untuk siaran langsung selama 30 menit pada jam 8
petang (WIB) untuk mendiskusikan laporan terakhir saya tentang
pembunuhan-pembunuhan politik yang dilakukan oleh TNI, angkatan
bersenjata yang didukung pemerintah AS.
Saya setuju. Ketika diskusi lewat telpon itu berlangsung, sedikit
setelah pukul 8 malam, saya meminta pemirsa untuk membaca langsung
laporan tersebut di website. Kemudian saya mulai menyebutkan nama-nama
personil TNI yang terlibat dalam pembunuhan tersebut.
Dalam beberapa menit saya diputuskan dari siaran langsung tersebut.
Produser acara tersebut kemudian menelpon dan mengakui bahwa saya baru
saja “disensor.”
Produser tersebut kemudian mengirim teks SMS yang berbunyi: “Maaf
sekali Allan. Tiba-tiba saja ada kebijakan dari boss saya.” Saya
bertanya lewat telpon apa sebenarnya yang menjadi kebijakan tersebut
tetapi produser tersebut tidak mau mengatakannya. Ia mengatakan bahwa
disana ada terlalu banyak karyawan METRO TV yang lain yang mungkin
menguping sehingga sulit bagi dia untuk bicara secara bebas tentang
soal sensor itu.
Sebelum dipotong, saya hanya sempat menyebutkan beberapa nama
orang-orang bawahan yang melakukan pembunuhan (Tumijan, lihat posting
tanggal 21 Maret, untuk lebih mendetail). Siapa yang bisa menduga apa
yang akan terjadi bila saya menyebut nama Jendral-jendral yang
terlibat?
Penyensoran ini menunjukkan bahwa bagian dari strategi TNI untuk
membantah laporan saya adalah dengan mengatakan laporan tersebut tidak
berdasarkan fakta, tidak spesifik. Namun ketika saya berikan
fakta-fakta tersebut, mereka malah menyensornya.
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TNI, Kopassus, Terlibat Pembunuhan Militer Yang Akan Dibantu Obama Membunuh Aktivis Aceh 2009
www.allannairn.com
Menurut beberapa pejabat Indonesia, kepolisian, dan catatan pemerintah: Tentara Nasional Indonesia, dengan dukungan Amerika Serikat, dan kini menunggu pencairan kembali training AS terhadap Kopassus, telah membunuh sejumlah aktivis pada 2009.
Pembunuhan-pembunuhan ini adalah bagian dari program rahasia pemerintah, didukung oleh Jakarta, dan sebagian dikoordinasi seorang Jendral Kopassus didikan AS. Ia mengakui anak buahnya di TNI memang memegang peranan dalam pembunuhan-pembunuhan tersebut.
Berita ini muncul saat Presiden Barack Obama mempersiapkan pengumuman akan mengubah kebijakan lama pemerintah AS --yang ditetapkan Konggres AS karena tekanan dari akar rumput-- tentang pembatasan jenis-jenis bantuan AS terhadap TNI. Sejak zaman Perang Dingin, ketika TNI menerima pelatihan dari AS, mereka juga membunuh ratusan ribu rakyat sipil di Indonesia.
Informasi bahwa TNI masih membunuhi warga sipil bisa jadi masalah bagi Presiden Obama karena rationale dia membuka kembali bantuan adalah: TNI tak lagi membunuh rakyat Indonesia. Menteri Luar Negeri Hillary Clinton bilang pada Konggres bahwa masalahnya apakah ada pembunuhan baru, namun, pada kenyataannya pembunuhan belu berhenti: TNI tetap melakukan pembunuhan politik.
Seorang pejabat Indonesia, yang kerapkali bertemu dengan para petinggi TNI dan dengan Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, mengatakan pembunuhan tersebut didukung dan disahkan “petinggi-petinggi di Jakarta.” Dia memberikan keterangan detail tentang hal ini: nama korban, metode dan nama-nama pelaku. Dia mau bicara karena dia tak setuju dengan pembunuhan ini. Namun dia menolak disebut nama karena kuatir akan jabatan serta keselamatan pribadi.
Keterangan yang dikutip di laporan ini juga dibenarkan oleh beberapa pejabat lain, termasuk beberapa perwira senior POLRI. Sebagian juga diakui oleh seorang Jendral Kopassus yang membantu operasi pembunuhan ini.
Dari detail yang saya ketahui, sejauh ini, menyangkut serangkaian pembunuhan dan pengeboman di Aceh menjelang pemilihan umum 2009 dan Partai Aceh (PA) ikutan. Partai Aceh adalah partai politik bentukan dari Gerakan Aceh Merdeka.
Setidaknya, delapan aktivis PA dibunuh menjelang pemilihan umum April lalu. Pembunuhan-pembunuhan ini, menurut sumber-sumber tersebut, dilakukan guna meresahkan para pendukung PA dan menekan partai tersebut agar tak membicarakan isu kemerdekaan bangsa Aceh. Keputusan ini berlaku tidak saja di Aceh tapi juga wilayah lain, di seluruh Indonesia, dimana materi kampanye pemilihan umum dilarang bicara soal separatisme, berdasarkan petunjuk Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Seorang aktivis, Tumijan, umur 35, buruh perkebunan sawit di Nagan Raya, diculik dan mayatnya ditemukan dua hari kemudian di sebuah sungai. Lehernya digorok, tubuhnya dicincang, dan terikat oleh kabel listrik. Mayatnya muncul dekat pos TNI. Beberapa anggota keluarga menuduh aparat keamanan sebagai pelaku. Karenanya mereka menerima ancaman pembunuhan dari orang-orang, yang tidak mereka kenal.
Seorang aktivis PA yang lain, Dedi Novandi, umur 33, sedang duduk dalam mobil di luar rumahnya ketika kaca mobil dibuka paksa oleh seseorang berpakain sipil. Dia mengeluarkan pistol dan menembakkan dua peluru ke kepala Dedi alias Abu Karim.
Seorang pejabat POLRI, yang tahu detail pembunuhan ini, menyebutnya sebagai pembunuhan professional, yang memakai orang-orang yang telah terlebih dahulu mengawasi gerak-gerik Abu Karim.
Beberapa jam sebelumnya, Abu Karim menerima delegasi dari sebuah organisasi yang didanai Bank Dunia. Kepada delegasi ini, Karim menyatakan, keprihatinan terhadap pembunuhan yang terkait dengan pemilihan umum, pembakaran dan serangan granat terhadap kantor-kantor PA.
Tak lama setelah pembunuhan, BBC datang ke tempat kejadian perkara. Koresponden BBC, Lucy Williamson dengan mengutip seorang tetangga Karim mengatakan, “… aneh bahwa polisi tak bisa menemukan orang yang membunuh [Abu Karim]. ‘Mungkin karena tidak ada saksi,” ujarnya. “Saya pikir, sebetulnya aneh juga kalau tidak ada saksi, tapi apa yang bisa saya bilang? Setiap orang mengatakan bahwa mereka tidak menyaksikan apapun.”
“Di dalam rumah,” lanjut Williamson, “Istri Abu Karim, Cut Dede, dengan gelisah memandang putra mereka, yang berumur empat tahun. Seperti banyak orang di sini dia tidak memiliki keraguan sedikit pun bahwa ini adalah pembunuhan politik.”
Nyatanya, menurut seorang pejabat senior dan beberapa orang lain yang mengkonfirmasinya, pembunuhan terhadap Tumijan dan Abu Karim adalah bagian dari pembunuhan terencana yang dilakukan oleh TNI dengan koordinasi Pangdam Aceh Mayor Jendral Sunarko.
Sunarko dikirim ke Aceh oleh Presiden SBY setelah sebelumnya jadi Komandan Kopassus. Sebelumnya, Sunarko adalah Kepala Staff Komando Cadangan Strategis Angkatan Darat, yang memiliki batalion di seluruh kepulauan Indonesia dan bermarkas di Jakarta. Tepatnya, dekat Istana Merdeka. Sunarko menduduki posisi kunci ini setelah menangani milisi di Timor Timur. Ia jadi komandan intelijen Kopassus disana pada saat operasi teror TNI di tahun 1999, operasi pembakaran dan pembunuhan massal para pendukung kemerdekaan Timor Leste.
Pembunuhan terhadap aktivis PA tahun 2009 terjadi di seluruh Aceh. Pembunuhan terhadap Abu Karim di Bireuen, diakui seorang pejabat pemerintah, diatur oleh Jendral Sunarko dan dilaksanakan oleh Letkol R. Suharto, komandan Kodim Biereun, dengan memakai beberapa perwira TNI dan bantuan milisi sipil Forum Komunikasi Anak Bangsa (FORKAB) dan Pembela Tanah Air (PETA).
Letkol R. Suharto telah lama bekerja pada BAIS, lembaga intelijen strategis TNI, yang memainkan peranan integral dalam pembunuhan terencana di seluruh Indonesia dan terkenal karena pembunuhan dan penyiksaan di Timor Timur, dan saat ini, di daerah pendudukan de facto Papua.
Ketika saya tanyakan kepada beberapa perwira POLRI tentang Letkol Suharto dan pembunuhan Abu Karim, ia jadi sangat gugup, seperti para tetangga yang dikutip aporan BBC.
Mereka enggan membicarakan peran yang mereka lakukan, kecuali secara pribadi. Kami kemudian memulai rekaman dan saya bertanya apakah Letkol Suharto, yang sesungguhnya menjalankan operasi pembunuhan terhadap Abu karim dan beberapa pembunuhan lain? Saya juga bertanya lebih jauh apakah Letkol Suharto adalah salah satu dari orang yang melakukan “operasi hitam” yang pada saaat itu masih berjalan? Perwira POLRI itu tidak menyangkal apapun dan hanya mengatakan, “Saya tidak bisa memberikan komentar tentang hal itu” dan bersikeras agar namanya tak disebut.
Pada hari Jumat, 19 Maret, sekitar jam 10:30 malam, saya menelepon Letkol Suharto ke telepon genggamnya.
Tidak ada jawaban dan lantas saya kirim SMS, yang dijawabnya dengan pertanyaan siapa yang mengirim SMS ini. Saya memperkenalkan diri dan kami mulai percakapan lewat SMS yang baru berakhir setelah tengah malam. Di tengah-tengah SMS tersebut saya berusaha meneleponnya lima kali, namun setiap kali ia hanya membiarkan teleponnya berdering.
Lewat SMS, Letkol Suharto bertanya saya ada di mana dan lantas bagaimana saya mendapat nomor teleponnya. Ia juga bertanya mengapa saya ingin bicara sama dia. Saya jawab ingin mendiskusikan pembunuhan aktivis PA, termasuk Abu Karim. Suharto menjawab bahwa itu urusan polisi. Saya tanyakan apakah TNI yang melakukan pembunuhan-pembunuhan itu? Letkol Suharto menjawab tidak! Lalu saya bertanya lagi lewat teks, ”Apakah ini berarti Anda tahu siapa pembunuhnya?” Ia juga menjawab tidak. Lantas saya melanjutkan, "Jadi, bagaimana Anda tahu kalau TNI tidak terlibat?”
Saat itu, Letkol Suharto memutuskan komunikasi telepon. Saya berusaha menelepon tapi hanya mendengar rekaman suara perusahan telepon. Saya kemudian mengirim SMS lagi dan bertanya apakah dia, Letkol Suharto, “terlibat dalam pembunuhan Abu Karim, atau pembunuhan para aktivis PA lainnya.” Sinyal dari perusahan telepon mengindikasikan bahwa pesan SMS itu diterima dengan baik, namun hingga saat ini, 51 jam kemudian, Letkol Suharto tidak menjawab.
Beberapa anggota milisi juga mengatakan bahwa orang-orang Letkol Suharto-lah yang membakar dan melempar granat ke kantor-kantor PA.
Namun ini hanyalah bagian kecil dari operasi gelap tersebut.
Di Nagan Raya, di bagian lain dari Aceh, penculikan dan pembunuhan Tumijan dilakukan oleh tim TNI lainnya, juga bekerja di bawah Jendral Sunarko. Ini menurut beberapa pejabat, termasuk dari POLRI, dan sebagian, menurut Jendral Sunarko sendiri.
Dalam kasus pembunuhan Tumijan, barang bukti yang ada tidak hanya pernyataan-pernyataan dari kalangan dalam pemerintahan sendiri, tetapi juga bukti serangkaian penahanan sejumlah pelaku, yang merupakan bawahan Jendral Sunarko.
Pejabat senior Indonesia, yang pertama kali bicara tentang program pembunuhan ini, mengatakan bahwa Tumijan diambil dan dihabisi oleh sekelompok prajurit muda Kopassus dan beberapa serdadu lain, sebagaimana dalam kasus Abu Karim, juga menggunakan milisi ciptaan TNI. Ia memberi nama-nama dari kalangan tentara yang terlibat, macam Kapten Wahyu dan Oktavianus serta milisi seperti Muhyari, Supardi, Kadir, Herwan, M. Yasin, Suprayogi, Tahmid, dan Suparno.
Ia mengatakan orang-orang lapangan yang terlibat telah ditahan secara rahasia selama beberapa bulan sebagai buah kesepakatan politik rahasia antara POLRI, TNI dan para pejabat, yang secara tidak sengaja, mengetahui beberapa aspek program pembunuhan TNI, yang sampai saat ini, masih rahasia.
POLRI, demikian katanya, setuju untuk menahan anggota-anggota milisi. Polisi militer mengambil dua tentara, dan pejabat yang tahu akan operasi tersebut, setuju untuk tak membeberkannya pada publik dan pihak POLRI pun tidak pernah mengumumkan penahanan ini. POLRI berusaha secara hukum memproses anggota milisi tersebut.
Lebih penting lagi, hanya mereka yang menjadi pelaksana langsung yang ditahan. Para perwira yang lebih senior dibiarkan bebas dan melanjutkan operasi.
Perwira kepolisian yang berbicara kepada saya membenarkan keterangan pejabat senior ini. Namun mereka melakukan ini dengan rasa segan luar biasa, bahkan ketakutan. Mereka dengan tegas mengatakan bahwa mereka tidak mau mengejar “para petinggi yang ada di Jakarta,” atau Jendral Sunarko --atau bahkan Letkol Suharto yang hanya komandan Kodim Biereun.
Secara umum di Indonesia, POLRI juga membunuh dan menyiksa warga sipil, dan terlibat dalam operasi bersama polisi, tapi mereka juga bersaing secara kelembagaan, berebut lahan, uang, dan kekuasaan. Sekalipun POLRI tampaknya lebih berotot sesudah jatuhnya Presiden Soeharto 1998, TNI masih memiliki lebih banyak senjata dan uang. Mereka juga tak memiliki beban hukum seperti POLRI, karena POLRI harus menegakkan hukum atas pembunuhan.
Kamis 18 Maret lalu, saya menelepon Kapolda Aceh Ispektur Jendral Adityawarman ke telepon genggamnya. Awalnya dia berkata bahwa dia hanya akan bicara secara pribadi, berhadapan muka, dan kemudian berusaha menghentikan pembicaraan. Namun ia mengakui --untuk pertama kalinya secara publik-- bahwa para pelaku pembunuhan Tumijan telah ditahan.
Ketika saya tanyakan padanya apakah benar bahwa Jendral Sunarko yang merancang pembunuhan aktivis-aktivis tersebut, Jendral Aditya bilang, “Saya tidak dalam kapasitas untuk mengemukakan informasi itu,” dan tiba-tiba menutup telepon.
Pada hari Jumat, saya menghubungi Jendral Sunarko pada telepon genggamnya dan menanyakan padanya tentang pembunuhan para aktivis. Sunarko mengakui bahwa bawahannya di TNI ada yang memiliki peranan dalam pembunuhan tersebut.
Tetapi ia mengatakan bahwa pembunuhan oleh perwira dan prajurit TNI tidak sepenuhnya bisa digolongkan pada tindakan resmi TNI “sebagai sebuah institusi.” Jendral Sunarko luar biasa tenang.
Meski belum sepenuhnya menjadi pengetahuan umum, ia tahu tentang penahanan bawahannya dalam kasus pembunuhan Tumijan (Jendral Sunarko mengangkat masalah ini sebelum saya menanyakannya). Ia mengindikasikan bahwa ia tak kuatir akan langkah-langkah berikutnya dari POLRI atau dari kekuasaan lainnya.
Jendral Sunarko tampaknya sangat akrab dengan pembunuhan Tumijan, dan mengatakan bahwa Kapten Wahyu dan Oktavianus, dua perwira yang ditahan, sebelumnya bahkan di markas Kodam Iskandar Muda di Banda Aceh.
Ketika saya tanyakan secara khusus apakah dia, Jendral Sunarko, terlibat dalam beberapa pembunuhan itu, ia menjawab enteng, ”Itu mesti pekerjaan orang gila,” katanya, ”dan saya belum gila.”
Ketika saya tanyakan tentang komandan Kodim Biereun Letkol Suharto, ia bilang kenal dengan Suharto. Namun saat saya tanyakan apakah Letkol Suharto yang melakukan pembunuhan terhadap Abu Karim. “Saya tidak tahu,” jawab Jendral Sunarko, “jika itu terjadi, saya pasti tahu,” tandasnya.
Sebelum saya sampai kepada masalah pembunuhan, Jendral Sunarko juga mengatakan bahwa dia mendukung rencana Presiden Barack Obama untuk segera melatih Kopassus dan TNI pada umumnya.
Sunarko mengatakan bahwa AS dan TNI telah lama memiliki hubungan yang sangat dekat dan Amerika telah “meningkatkan kapasitas TNI.” Pemulihan bantuan oleh Obama akan bikin “persahabatan makin akrab.”
Jendral ini juga bilang dia sendiri adalah kawan dan pengagum tentara AS, setelah menerima berbagai macam latihan dari AS di berbagai tempat di Indonesia sejak tahun 1980.
Sunarko menyebut beberapa nama kursus, dalam bahasa Inggris, serta kesatuan militer AS yang memberikannya. Ia bilang pelatih militer Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) dari Pusat Komando di Pasifik (PACOM, di Hawaii) melatihnya dalam “Jungle Warfare” dan “Logistics.” Ia bilang pelatihannya di Amerika meliputi pelatihan khusus pada tahun 1994 dan 1998, dan kawan-kawannya satu pelatihan berasal dari Kopassus dan Kostrad. Jendral Sunarko mengatakan bahwa latihan terakhirnya dengan AS terjadi pada 2006, ketika dia menjadi Kepala Staf Kostrad, sebelum menjadi komandan Kopassus.
Sunarko juga menyatakan bahwa pelatihan itu baik untuk Amerika juga karena memungkinkan TNI dan militer AS untuk “saling belajar satu sama lain” dan membuat AS “mendapatkan apa yang diperlukan” dari TNI.
Hari ini, Presiden Obama sedianya berangkat ke Indonesia, namun kunjungan ditunda. Sebuah paket bantuan besar untuk TNI masih dikaji dan dirundingkan dalam beberapa bulan ke depan. Sebuah titik yang akan memperbaharui bantuan terbuka untuk Kopassus.
Sekalipun setiap unit TNI, dan juga POLRI, pernah dinyatakan terlibat dalam pembunuhan massal, Kopassus adalah unit yang paling dipuji bersama Letnan Jendral Prabowo Subianto, bekas komandan Kopassus, yang didikan AS. Kopassus secara historis paling dekat dengan Washington. Karenanya, wajar bila hal yang paling menjengkelkan buat TNI adalah ketika para aktivis Amerika --termasuk saya-- berhasil menekan Konggres untuk memutuskan bantuan AS kepada Kopassus pada 1990an.
Obama berencana memberikan training itu kembali kepada Kopassus dan sekarang merupakan saat yang paling ditunggu-tunggu TNI sebagai pembenaran terhadap teror yang mereka lakukan. Bagi mereka yang selamat dari teror TNI, pembukaan kembali bantuan militer bisa diartikan sebagai lampu hijau bagi TNI untuk melakukan lebih banyak teror.
Akan tetapi, sebagaimana halnya dengan pembunuhan-pembunuhan lain yang dilakukan oleh TNI, program pembunuhan terencana yang saya ungkap ini melibatkan berbagai macam komponen TNI di luar Kopassus: BAIS dan jaringan komando lokal seperti KODAM, KOREM, KODIM, dan semua jajaran ini memberi laporan kepada komandan TNI di tingkat nasional dan “para petinggi di Jakarta” lainnya.
Dan mereka tak peduli apakah AS akan memberikan kembali bantuan kepada Kopassus, TNI secara keseluruhan telah mendapatkan lampu hijau.
Menurut Departemen Pertahanan Indonesia, sekarang ada 2.800 anggota TNI sedang dilatih di Amerika Serikat dan Pentagon di bawah Presiden Obama mendorong penjualan senjata dan peralatan militer, serta pemberian pinjaman, yang secara keseluruhan akan memperkuat kembali TNI [lihat laporan Olivia Rondonuwu dan Ed Davies berjudul “Interview --Indonesia Seees U.S. Lifting Military Training Ban” dimuat di Reuters 4 Maret 2010].
Namun, Kopassus, tentu saja, kesatuan yang paling penting dan memiliki simbol pemulihan hubungan penuh AS-Indonesia.
Dalam perundingan pemberian bantuan antara Presiden Obama dan TNI, selama 10 hari bulan ini, komandan Kopassus Mayor Jendral Lodewijk F. Paulus datang ke Washington dan disambut oleh tim Obama. Di Indonesia, selama pembicaraan Washington berlangsung, seorang anggota Kopassus, dengan rasa sangat percaya diri berusaha naik pesawat komersial dari Banda Aceh, sambil membawa sepucuk pistol dengan peredam suara --senjata pembunuh yang klasik. Ini menarik perhatian seorang pejabat Indonesia, yang menceritakan kejadian itu kepada saya, karena satu korban di Aceh tampaknya telah dieksekusi dengan mempergunakan pistol berperedam suara. Pembunuhan dilakukan malam hari dan teman sekamar korban tidak terbangun.
Seorang petugas keamanan airport, anggota Angkatan Udara, menyita pistol anggota Kopassus tersebut, namun serombongan Kopassus mendatangi dan memaksanya mengembalikan pistol itu.
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Tuesday, March 23, 2010
A Challenge to the Indonesian Armed Forces, and to the US Government. Statement of Allan Nairn in Response to Arrest Threat from TNI.
In response to my report revealing their assassinations of political activists (see posting of March 21, 2010), the US-backed Indonesian armed forces (TNI) are threatening to have me arrested, presumably on criminal defamation charges. (See Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Nurdin Hasan , Jakarta Globe, "Indonesian Military Threatens Legal Action Over Aceh Party Killings Claims.")
I welcome this threat from TNI, a force which has murdered many hundreds of thousands, and challenge them to arrest me so that we can face-off in open court.
I will be glad to stand in court before the Indonesian public and detail TNI's role in numerous tortures, disappearances, massacres and assassinations.
I would welcome the opportunity to enter a formal, public legal proceeding which would afford the opportunity to question TNI Generals under oath.
If given such a chance I would also attempt to call US personnel as witnesses, and question US military, CIA, State Department, and White House officials about their support for TNI. I would ask these Americans why they have given weapons, training and money to TNI, even as they have seen that force repeatedly kill civilians.
The Indonesian justice authorities are famously afraid of the TNI. They have not fulfilled their responsibility to protect society by enforcing the murder laws impartially.
But if they want to arrest me instead of arresting TNI officers, fine.
That will give us a chance to publicly discuss the crimes of the Indonesian -- and US -- governments.
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Sunday, March 21, 2010
Breaking News: Indonesian Army, Kopassus, Implicated in New Assassinations. Forces Chosen By Obama for Renewed US Aid Ran '09 Activist Murders.
By Allan Nairn
The killings were part of a secret government program, authorized from Jakarta, and were coordinated in part by an active-duty, US-trained Kopassus special forces General who has just acknowledged on the record that his TNI men had a role in the killings.
A senior Indonesian official who meets frequently with top commanders and with the President of Indonesia says that the assassinations were authorized by "higher ups in Jakarta." He provided detailed accounts of certain aspects of the program, including the names of victims, the methods, and the names of some perpetrators.
The details cited in this piece were verified by other officials, including senior members of POLRI, the Indonesian national police. Some were also verified by the Kopassus General who helped run the killings.
The senior official spoke because he said he disagreed with the assassinations. He declined to be quoted by name out of fear for his position and personal safety.
Another PA activist, Dedi Novandi, age 33, known as Abu Karim, was sitting in his car outside his house with the drivers' side window cracked open when a plainclothes man strolled up with a pistol and put two bullets in his head.
A POLRI official with detailed knowledge of the crime called it a professional killing, employing lookouts and advance surveillance of the movements of Abu Karim.
As it happened, hours earlier, Karim had sat down with a member of a World Bank - sponsored delegation and expressed his worry about the pre-election killings of PA people as well as a skein of arson and grenade attacks on PA offices.
Soon after, the BBC came to the scene of the Abu Karim murder. Their correspondent, Lucy Williamson quoted one of the neighbors as saying that she "thinks it strange the police have not found the people who killed [Abu Karim]. 'Maybe it's because there were no witnesses,' she said. 'And I think it’s weird that there were no witnesses but what can I say? Everyone said they didn’t see anything.' "
"Inside the house," Williamson continued, "Abu Karim’s wife, Cut Dede, watches nervously over her four-year-old son. Like many people here she is in no doubt this was a political killing."
In fact, according to the senior official and the others who confirmed him, the Tumijan and Abu Karim murders were part of the TNI assassination program coordinated on the provincial level at that time by General Sunarko, the PANGDAM Aceh (chief of TNI forces in the region).
Sunarko had recently been sent to Aceh by the President, Gen. Susilo, after having been the nationwide commander of Kopassus, the TNI Special Forces. Prior to that, Gen. Sunarko had been the chief of staff of Kostrad, the TNI army's huge Strategic Reserve Command that operates across the archipelago and is headquartered in Jakarta near the presidential palace.
Sunarko had been elevated to these key posts after overseeing militias in occupied Timor. He was a Kopassus intelligence chief there during the 1999 TNI terror, an operation that included mass arson and assassinations and was launched while the East Timorese were preparing to -- and ultimately did -- vote for independence.
The '09 PA killings occurred across Aceh. The Abu Karim murder, in Bireuen, was said by the officials to have been managed for Gen. Sunarko by Lt. Col. R. Suharto, the local TNI army commander, using troops aided by civilians from the old military-sponsored FORKAB and PETA militias.
Lt. Col. Suharto has long worked with the TNI's BAIS intelligence unit, which played an integral role in these assassinations and others nationwide, and is famous for its killings and torture in formerly occupied Timor and, currently, in de facto occupied Papua.
When I asked knowledgeable POLRI officials about Lt. Col. Suharto and the killing of Abu Karim, they became as nervous as the neighbors cited in the BBC report.
They reluctantly discussed his role, but privately. We then went on the record and I asked whether Lt. Col. Suharto had in fact run the Abu Karim and other assassinations, and further asked whether he was among those still running "black operations." The key POLRI official did not deny anything but instead said "I cannot comment on that," and then insisted that his name not be attached to even that remark.
On Friday, around 10:30 pm Western Indonesia Time, I called Lt. Col. Suharto's cell phone.
There was no answer so I sent a text message and he replied by text asking who it was. I told him and we began a text message exchange that lasted until after midnight. In the midst of the texts I tried to call him five times, but each time he merely let the phone ring.
By text, Lt. Col Suharto asked me where I was, and then, how I'd gotten his number. He asked me why I wanted to speak to him. I replied, to discuss the PA assassinations, including that of Abu Karim. Suharto wrote back that that was a police matter. I asked him if TNI did the killings. Lt. Col. Suharto replied no, so then I asked by text "So, does that mean you know who the killers are?" He said no to that too, so then I asked him "So how can you know TNI wasn't involved?"
At that point, Lt. Col. Suharto disconnected his cell phone. I tried to call but got a phone company recording. I then sent a text message asking whether he, Lt. Col. Suharto, was "involved in the murder of Abu Karim, or the murders of other PA activists." Phone company signaling indicates that that message was delivered, but as of now, more than 51 hours later, Lt. Col. Suharto has not replied.
Militia members have said that Lt. Col Suharto's men also burnt and threw grenades at the PA offices.
But all this was apparently only one small part of the operation.
In Nagan Raya, in another part of Aceh, the snatching and assassination of Tumijan was carried out by another TNI team, also working under Gen. Sunarko. This is according to numerous officials, including some from POLRI, and, in part, according to Gen. Sunarko himself.
In the Tumijan murder the evidence includes not just statements by inside officials, but also a complex series of actions including the unpublicized detention of some of the low-level hit men who were subordinates of Gen.Sunarko.
The senior Indonesian official who first spoke of the assassination program said that Tumijan had been taken and finished by a group of young Kopassus and other soldiers who, as in the Abu Karim case, also used civilians from TNI's old militias.
He gave the names of some of them, the soldiers Capt. Wahyu and Oktavianus, and the civilian TNI-run militia followers Muhyari, Supardi, Kadir, Herwan, M. Yasin, Suprayogi, Tahmid, and Suparno.
He then made the remarkable claim that though no outsider yet knew it, these lower-ranking killers of Tumijan had been secretly detained and held for many months as part of a sensitive political deal involving POLRI, TNI, and officials who had unexpectedly gotten wind of certain aspects of the still-secret TNI assassination program.
POLRI, he, said, agreed to take the militiamen, the military police handled two of the soldiers, and the officials who had stumbled upon the operation agreed to not discuss it publicly, as did the POLRI which never announced the detentions or attempted to charge the men.
Most importantly, the detentions were confined to street operatives in just one of the murders. The more senior officers were left untouched to continue the operation.
POLRI officials I spoke to confirmed the senior official's account. But they did so with evident reluctance, even fear. They made it clear that they had no intention of going after the "higher ups in Jakarta," or Gen. Sunarko, -- or even Lt. Col. Suharto, who is a mere local commander.
POLRI also kills and tortures civilians, and mounts joint task forces with TNI, but they are fierce institutional rivals, wrestling for money, power, and extortion turf, and though POLRI has recently ascended somewhat, TNI still has more guns and cash, and they lack POLRI's political burden of having to claim that they're enforcing the murder laws.
On Friday, I reached Gen. Sunarko on his cell phone and asked him about the assassinations, and Sunarko acknowledged that his TNI men had a role in the killings.
But he said that assassinations by TNI officers and men should not necessarily be classified as being official acts of TNI "as an institution." Gen. Sunarko was remarkably calm.
Though it was not yet public, he knew about the detention of his subordinates for the Tumijan murder (Gen. Sunarko raised the matter before I mentioned it), but the General indicated that he was not worried about any follow-up action by POLRI or other authorities.
Gen. Sunarko seemed familiar with the Tumijan killing, and said that Capt. Wahyu and Oktavianus, two of those detained, had worked for his, Sunarko's, then-headquarters in Aceh, the Iskandar Muda regional KODAM (the command covering all of Aceh).
When I asked specifically if he, Gen. Sunarko, was involved in the assassinations, he responded lightheartedly: "That would be the work of a crazy person," he said, "and I am not yet crazy."
When I asked Gen. Sunarko about his subordinate, Lt. Col. Suharto, he said that he knew him well, but when I asked him if Lt. Col. Suharto had run the killing of Abu Karim, Gen. Sunarko replied "I don't know," but then added: "If that had happened, I'd know.”
General Sunarko also said, before I broached the matter of the assassinations, that he was an enthusiastic supporter of President Obama's plan to boost aid to Kopassus and to TNI generally.
Sunarko said that the US and TNI had had a long, close partnership that had "raised the capacity of TNI," and that Obama's restoration of aid would make for "a still more intimate ("akrab") collaboration."
The general said that he was himself was a longtime colleague and admirer of US forces, having received US training at various sites in Indonesia "many times" since the 1980s.
Using the English-language names of some of the courses and of the US units that gave them, he said that US Army instructors in Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) from the Pentagon's Pacific Command (PACOM, in Hawaii) had trained him in “Jungle Warfare” and “Logistics” as well as in other subjects that he did not name. He said that his US training included special exercises in 1994 and 1998, and that his fellow TNI trainees included other Kopassus and Kostrad men. Gen. Sunarko said his most recent US training was in 2006, when he was the chief of staff of Kostrad, soon to become the Kopassus commander.
The general also suggested that the training was good for the Americans too, since it enabled TNI and the US military to “learn lessons from each other,” and best situated the US to "get what it needs" from TNI.
President Obama had been due to leave for Indonesia today, but the visit has been postponed.
Though most every unit of TNI (and POLRI) has been implicated in mass atrocities, those of Kopassus are the most celebrated, and, as their former commander, the US-trained Gen. Prabowo, once told me, they have historically been the unit most closely identified with Washington. It was thus especially galling to TNI when US activists -- myself included -- were able to successfully press Congress to interrupt US aid to Kopassus in the 1990s .
Obama's planned give-back of aid to Kopassus is now awaited by TNI as sweet vindication, and by many of the survivors of TNI terror as America's green light for more.
But, as with most of the other atrocities by TNI, the assassination program reported in this piece involves multiple TNI components beyond Kopassus: Kopassus, but also BAIS intelligence and the mainline regional and local commands, KODAM, KOREM, and KODIM, all of them, most importantly, reporting ultimately to the national TNI commanders and other "higher ups in Jakarta."
And regardless of whether the US restores the aid for Kopassus, TNI as a whole already has the green light.
2,800 TNI men are now reportedly being trained in the US (this according to Indonesia's Defense Minister; see Olivia Rondonuwu and Ed Davies, "Interview -- Indonesia Sees U.S.Lifting Military Training Ban ", Reuters, March 4, 2010) and Obama's Pentagon is pushing weapons and equipment sales and US loans that would further empower TNI overall.
That being said, Kopassus does indeed have a special swagger and symbolic potency.
During the recent Obama - TNI aid negotiations in anticipation of his trip, the Kopassus commanding general came to Washington and was welcomed by the Obama team. Back in Indonesia, also during the talks, a Kopassus man felt confident enough to attempt to board a commercial flight out of Aceh while carrying a pistol fitted with a silencer -- a classic assassination weapon. This was of interest to the Indonesian official who described the incident, because one victim in Aceh had apparently been executed with a silenced pistol, at night (The victim's roommate didn't awaken).
An airport security man affiliated with the air force took the Kopassus man's pistol away.
But later, a Kopassus delegation arrived and made him give it back.
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Wednesday, July 8, 2009
A Normal, Minimal-Choice Election
The International Herald Tribune headlined it "A Proudly Normal Election" in Indonesia, and it was -- a minimal-choice election, as normally happens in most countries (Jacob Ramsay, "A Proudly Normal Election, " International Herald Tribune, July 8, 2009).
This election was a de facto choice among three mass-killing Suharto generals -- each of them old US proteges -- one of whom actually embodied the specter of something like fascist dictatorship, and people voted for the smoothest, least frightening general, the incumbent, Gen. Susilo.
But it was impossible on the ballot to vote for the poor or to vote against killing civilians, because none of the candidates, pre-screened by the establishment, stood for anything like that: these were candidates of the rich, and of murder.
Gen. Susilo had most of the army and most of the rich people behind him, so he had most of the media propaganda and also most of the campaign money.
In Indonesia a lot of poor people like the election season because they get direct cash bribes. Party messengers come to their homes and give each family several dollars, and this time everyone I met said Gen. Susilo's footmen gave the most money.
Beyond that, his two rivals were repulsive to many people. They selected as their running mates the two most hated generals in the country. One, Gen. Prabowo, has a neo-fascist style and made his name as a hands-on torturer and as Suharto's son-in-law, and the other, Gen. Wiranto, saved the army in 1998 when he threatened a Tienanmen-style massacre of demonstrators if they challenged the army after toppling Suharto.
So compared to those two, Gen. Susilo seemed less bloodthirsty, even though he's been high in the chain of command for some of the country's most famous massacres, including Jakarta '96, occupied East Timor '99, Aceh in the early 2000s, and as President he's backed nationwide police torture and army torture and murder in sealed-off Papua, and has a practice of arresting people who insult him or who hoist local independence flags. Economically, Gen. Susilo broke the law and canceled severance pay for workers, and hunger and diarrhea have been increasing nationwide, especially in Nusatenggara in eastern Indonesia.
But he's done all that smoothly. He's seen as smart, and he gets lots of foreign money. The US and investors like him because he does the necessary killing and holds down wages discreetly -- without bragging about it -- and he lets them take minerals and forests and labor while demanding smaller bribes than Suharto.
And at the same time he's made life better for city elites, lots of condos and spectacular malls. If you have money, life in Jakarta can be Valhalla. That gets him good press coverage.
But if you're poor, police thugs will come and bulldoze your home to put up those fancy condos, and your chances of working, eating, or putting your kid through primary school are the same or worse than before Susilo.
So the Herald Tribune is right, this was a normal election. There was voting but there wasn't much choice.
Link to view this posting in Arabic translation.
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Monday, February 2, 2009
Common Sense. Empty Talk. What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?
In Indonesia, the government-funded Muslim Ulema's Council (MUI) has recently issued two remarkable fatwas that, first, prohibit smoking by pregnant women, children, or people in public spaces, and that second, forbid potential voters from abstaining -- or from voting for candidates who aren't "credible" --, since these voting choices could be seen as being "dangerous for the state" (Ali Mustafa Yaqud, Deputy Chief of the Fatwa Commission, Metro TV, February 3, 2009, Western Indonesia Time).
The edicts are refreshing for those who want to breathe well, and for those who seek political insight into the fact that "the state" -- even when it's a strongarm state -- usually wants and needs some legitimacy, and often seeks it through voting, but voting on its terms, sans thoughts, options or people that are not "credible."
In the late 1960s, surveys of US business leaders showed -- amazingly, to today's mentalities -- that they actually feared revolution in the United States. Today hardly anyone even imagines it.
Today you have Marxists for Obama, and former Marxists who worked for Bush (the neo-cons) . In today's America, as in most of the world, revolution is no longer credible.
But, then again, looser talkers are now saying the same about what's called capitalism, or at least about Wall Street investment banking, which was about as solid and credible as you could get, until those weeks last September, when, as they say, it suddenly vanished into air, taking potentially lifesaving billions of imagined dollars with it (potentially lifesaving, that is, if those dollars had been used for things like food, instead of finance fun)(On the concepts of rich people's imagined and/or cybered money vs. poor people's earthbound earnings, see News and Comment postings of June 3, 2008 ["Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry. Burma, Food Crisis, Wall Street, and the World Economy"] and Nov. 21, 2007 ["Bangladesh and Wall Street After the Flood: Two Different Kinds of Property."]).
It's said that sensitivity to ground shifts tends to depend on an organism's constitution. Some claim that horses feel earthquakes before we do. And even among people, it does seem to be true that some are slower on the uptake than others.
I once sat in a Sumatra eating hall wondering why screaming people all around me were stampeding, until I looked up and noticed that the hanging light bulb was swaying back-and-forth as the earth quaked.
The MUI -- originally created by the dictator, Suharto, is showing some deep political insight. You want people on board. You want people signed-on. As their spokesman put it: "We must have a credible president."
But if people get off, refuse to affix their X's or signatures, run politically amok (an Indonesian word) -- what then?
What do presidents do, even if their boys have guns? That depends, in part, on how many guns.
But the point is this: sometimes rulers win, and -- also -- sometimes they don't win.
With conditions right, the mountains really do tremble.
And politics is not geology.
In politics, the rocks can think. They can meet and say 'Let's have an earthquake.'
People tried it in Central America and got smashed. Red huipiles ran moist with grief tears.
But people are now trying it in South America -- and from places like Bolivia, there are tremors.
When a person gets tremors, which -- for a person -- is bad, they may find, bizarrely, that nicotine helps.
But when a state gets the shakes, suppression can get messy, so preemption is clearly preferable. Thus, the minimal-choice election. Thus, the demagogue who stirs hope, but not food pots.
In the Indonesian language, to say something is 'empty talk' ('omong kosong') is to say something harshly insulting. It's worse than, in English or Spanish, crying 'bullshit!' or 'mierda!,' which makes sense, since bad as feces can be, empty talk can be even more damaging socially, especially, say, if it's on the ballot, and if the sum total of your political choice in life is voting either for package of empty talk A or package of empty talk B.
In such situations, common sense works, and it translates into any language:
It doesn't matter what they say. It matters what they do. And if they don't do it, get up and make them do it.
You could call that 'Do it yourself.' You could call it 'Revolution.'
But as the old US borscht-belt joke says, "You can call me anything you want. Just don't call me late for dinner."
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Saturday, January 31, 2009
'Enemy of the Prevailing Order.' Democracy, and Saying 'Enough!'
In urban areas with street crime the idealized figure of the honest cop has long been deeply popular, especially among children.
Asked what he wants to be, a young boy in a poor household cries out, eagerly, "Polisi!," and, on getting his ear twisted by an angry mother, amends, "Allright, I'll be a doctor!"
Actually, his chances of rising to doctorhood are slim -- no spare money, no free education -- but they may be greater than those of his becoming an honest cop, since that's a species that, in this community, only seems to exist on cartoon TV.
The police almost never enter the alley (which happens to be in Indonesia) except via proxy cop-protected drug hoodlums, but poor adults with real, off-screen, experience know that to see a police officer is to tense up and then brace for a shakedown (or beating), even if you're feeling idealistic and furious enough to walk into a station to report a crime. (The practice of demanding a bribe from someone trying to report a crime sets up an infinity paradox, since the demand is itself a crime, and to report that one you'd have to pay again...)
At one of the main traffic roundabouts there's an enormous full-color poster of three top uniformed commanders, in medals, posing sternly under the slogan "Honesty"! It commemorates World Anti-Corruption Day and is directly across the street from a huge new bright-blue brothel that's advertised, in part, as a hotel, but if you walk in and ask about a hotel room, they laugh, and can't stop laughing.
This facility is on the former turf of the legendary crime lord, Olo, who went down in a power struggle with the old district police chief, Sutanto, who later became the national police commander under the president, Gen. Susilo, who ran for and won office on a platform of anti-corruption.
The other big posters are for April elections, the largest of them being for two mass-murdering, US-protege generals (Prabowo and Wiranto, Adm. Dennis Blair's old associate [See News and Comment postings of Jan. 6, 9, and 22, 2009, as well as Dec. 7, 2007]), and -- perhaps with the male electorate in mind -- for several parliamentary candidates who also happen to be beautiful women.
Elections would be one thing if you could vote consequentially against official murder, against withholding food from the starving, and against things like police-as-criminals. But elections become something else if you can't cast such big choice votes. In such typical cases, elections become diversions of popular hope and energy that end up legitimating and reinforcing unjust orders rather than reforming them.
But even if you get a rare chance to vote on basics, or on sensitive power issues, watch out if you're invadable, since if you vote wrong, there could be trouble.
Condoleeza Rice pushed for the '06 Gaza / West Bank election that Hamas surprised her by winning, and which was acknowledged by President Bush as valid, before he OK'd punishment (see footnote).
On Bloomberg TV this week, from Davos, George Soros, when asked about plunging oil prices, said that the drop was unfortunate in that it's, for example, hurting Dubai property, but on the other hand "however it's not all bad news because the main oil producing countries have been the enemies of the prevailing world order" and the price drop is now hurting them, specifically Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, where, Soros said "It's not so easy to finance a Bolivarian revolution with $40 oil."
Soros, anticipating further good news regarding Hugo Chavez, said "probably his days are numbered" -- and estimated that Chavez would last less than a year, which means that according to the world's top "democracy-promotion" funder, Venezuela's freely elected president (whose legal term is due to last 4 more years) should perhaps start looking out his window, looking not for voters, but tanks ("For the Record," Bloomberg TV, aired Jan. 30, 2009).
More fundamentallly, one might wish to hope that a major US left-liberal like Soros might also want to consider himself to be an " enem[y] of the prevailing world order," a world order in which, as a text scroll from Davos noted: "More than 24,000 people die of hunger every day" (CNN International, January 30, '09, during an interview with the Oxfam executive director). But that would be a poorly informed hope, at least regarding billionaires (who could each personally feed those 24,000 people, instead of choosing not to), and also regarding most anyone in the current top US leadership and funding strata.
But, given free will, it is indeed possible for them, and especially, less-rich people, to say 'Enough!'
If something kills innocent people en masse, it deserves to have enemies.
If a rich-world figure says they're pro-democracy, start off by asking them this: How would they feel about running the UN Security Council based on direct world popular vote, instead of nuclear weapons (vetoes are now held by the Permanent Five, the immediate-post-WWII nuclear powers), and the same with the world distribution of wealth and key questions of murder law enforcement?
That's not to suggest democracy as cure-all. Rule by the people is largely myth. Except possibly in small (non-family) groups, strong people will tend to dominate -- the questions are under what constraints; don't pretend everyone's in charge.
But the point here is merely that when today's rich leaders talk democracy, or just talk elections, they usually don't mean it if that raises the specter of a world with less-insanely-skewed wealth or power, or of a world where honest cops run around in life -- and not just on cartoon TV, arresting any evildoer who has wrongly caused, or permitted, people's deaths.
---
Footnote:
Bush said, for what it's worth as testament to pre-punishment homage to democracy:
"[T]he Palestinians had an election yesterday, the results of which remind me about the power of democracy. You see, when you give people the vote, you give people a chance to express themselves at the polls, they -- and if they're unhappy with the status quo, they'll let you know. That's the great thing about democracy: It provides a look into society. And yesterday, the turnout was significant, as I understand it. And there was a peaceful process as people went to the polls. And that's positive. What was also positive is that it's a wakeup call to the leadership. Obviously, [Palestinian] people were not happy with the status quo. The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find health care. And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories. I like the competition of ideas. I like people that have to go out and say, 'Vote for me and here's what I'm going to do.' There's something healthy about a system that does that. And so the elections yesterday were very interesting" ("President Bush Holds a White House Press Conference," transcript, The Washington Post, January 26, 2006).
Link to view this posting in Russian translation.
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Thursday, January 29, 2009
A Shift Toward Worker Power? The Time is Ripe to Tip the System, Now
In bad situations, people lower their standards for what it is that constitutes good news.
There's a very sick man with a withered arm, but it hasn't been amputated, contrary to what a garbled, and panic-inducing, report had indicated.
Similarly, a boy has been coughing for three months, but a TB test says it isn't TB.
Saying this, the parent, on a cell phone from the Burma border can be heard shivering in the rare cold, even though the family has just invested in a blanket -- their second, which is now handy, since for three nights they've been sleeping in the forest to dodge police who (in a case of bad good news) aren't seeking bribes, but are instead seeking to catch people and -- word has it -- ship them to Naypyidaw (the capital) for one year's bondage labor.
The question always is, bad compared to what? One person's dump is another's home hearth.
And that can be said literally, since, not far from that coughing family, there is a garbage dump where others live in slime, but they live there not as bottom-dwellers but as, relatively speaking, rich aunts and uncles -- economic migrants -- who periodically transfer money back home, since by picking (and living) trash they make more cash than do their relatives on, or off, the farm in Burma.
There are dump cities around the world.
In Guatemala, they feature vultures (the bird kind). In the Philippines there are frequent dump-slides, killing people.
And in Cambodia, the New York Times just visited a dump city, and used the existence of this particular hell to argue against labor standards on the grounds that if people would only work more cheaply that would create more jobs for, say, dump dwellers, on the neoliberal assumption that capitalists don't currently have enough desperate, oppressed, potential workers to choose from (See Nicholas D. Kristof, "Where Sweatshops Are a Dream," The New York Times, January 14, 2009).
Very poor people can indeed be delighted when what we call a sweatshop comes to town (see News and Comment posting of Nov. 8, 2007, "Duduk - Duduk, Ngobrol - Ngobrol. Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia."), but what the Times misses is that they would be even more delighted if it paid them better wages, didn't rape and fondle the female workers, didn't spray them with toxics, etc.
Whether or not that happens and whether or not enough jobs get created depends crucially on the balance of power.
When workers are weak, it is indeed true that cutting labor standards can get more factories built, but by that Times/Davos/Burma-junta logic of job creation you should also abolish the minimum wage, permit prostitution, even permit human bondage/ slavery, since each of those steps would indeed -- under weak-worker conditions -- induce the creation of new jobs (Inconsistently, the Times editorially does support the minimum wage, and that Times writer, has, as it happens, crusaded against poor-country prostitution).
A better job-creation solution is to change the power balance and make workers strong, in which case capital is the one that has to take bad news as good, adjust their expectations downward, and realize that if they want to put their capital to work they'll have to pay people enough to, say, eat well.
Its true that, depending on what kind of historical moment one is in, such a job solution may not always be pragmatic.
If say, for example, interest rates were high, capital could say: 'Screw these workers, who needs a factory? For now, we'll just put our money in Citibank!'
Or if capital were riding higher than usual in political leverage it could just say to a government bent on imposing laws to strengthen workers: 'Screw you, government. What do we businesses need from you? What are you going to do, bribe us?'
But of course, those are not the conditions that exist today.
Today, in what's called the financial crisis (though for those hungry, life has always been "crisis," even when rich people were calling it "prosperity"), interest rates are very low and business needs a lot from government.
Workers (or unemployed) are, of course, today still more vulnerable than bosses, but the key changeable variable now is government: it has leverage, perhaps unprecedented leverage, as businesses pant for government's bailout trillions.
And vis-a-vis worker-staffed production, businesses need to get that revivified, since stashing cash in banks is not now hugely rewarding.
Which is to say, this could be a moment for a power shift -- from workers being weak to being strong -- but only if people force government to kick in on the workers' side, to, for one thing, use its leverage and condition bailouts on deep, thoroughgoing reforms that hugely elevate labor standards, not cut them, and that alter how capital is owned and controlled so that the crisis-induced power shift stays permanent and maybe even opens the door to a more rational, less-killing, system that, at the least, does not starve people.
That's not current rich-world government policy and angry workers aren't currently mobilized.
But they could be, if some see without illusion that this strange moment could be their opening.
It could be, if they make it so, without waiting for team Obama.
Sad but true, but US economic policy is now shaped by the man, Prof. Lawrence Summers, who wrote the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics entry on "Unemployment" and observed -- to the great pleasure of Bush Jr.'s advisers -- that "If unemployment insurance were eliminated, the unemployment rate would drop ... Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization ..." (Lawrence H. Summers, "Unemployment," The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008).
These Summers quotations were highlighted on the blog of Bush's old economics chief, Gregory Mankiw, of Harvard, who told neoliberals not to worry too much about the orientation of Obama Democrats.
Mankiw wrote: "What would you call a group of economists who are skeptical of regulating mortgage markets, who think unemployment insurance and unions increase unemployment, who say that tax hikes retard economic growth, and who believe that the recovery from the Great Depression was a monetary phenomenon rather than the result of New Deal fiscal policy? No, it is not a right-wing cabal. It's Team Obama ..." ("The Next Team," Greg Mankiw's Blog, www.gregmankiw.blogspot.com , Nov. 30, 2008. Mankiw followed with extensive quotations from Summers and other Obama economists).
Again, such neoliberal thinking only works in a political weak-worker environment.
But that doesn't have to be the environment now -- and for the future, unless workers decide, by inaction, to politically amputate their own arms.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Breaking News: SE Asia Groups Claim to Plan Retaliation for Gaza Killings. Said to Target Israeli Government, Intel in Bangkok, Manila, Singapore.
By Allan Nairn
In response to Israeli terror attacks on Gaza that killed hundreds of civilians, Southeast Asia Islamist terror groups are now said to be planning retaliation against Israeli government offices, including Mossad intelligence, in Bangkok, Manila, and Singapore.
This account comes from Southeast Asia civilian sources who speak directly to some group leaders and who have in the past provided accurate information on their activities.
Such groups have frequently murdered civilians en masse, as in the Bali nightclub bombings, but are now claiming that they want to answer the Israeli mass murders of civilians in Gaza by targeting the closest thing to Israeli combatants in the Southeast Asia region, the offices housing Israeli intelligence and military sales and training operations.
They further claim, according to these sources, that they are not currently targeting Americans due to a supposed belief that new President Obama may change US policy.
The sources for this report, themselves religious Muslims, say they condemn the groups' tactics but share their anger at Israeli forces' repeated killings of civilians.
It is not clear if the planning talk is just bravado, or if it's true they'll just target combatants, since -- like their Israeli and US counterparts -- these groups have repeatedly shown their willingness to kill many civilians to make a point. (Islamist terror leaders like Bin Laden and Abu Bakar Baasyir frequently state this openly; for a rare, frank statement of near-identical Western pro-terror thinking see Thomas L. Friedman, who writes approvingly that in Gaza, Israel was "trying to 'educate' Hamas" by attacking not just Hamas combatants but also by "inflicting" "heavy pain on the Gaza population," just as in Israel's attack on Lebanon '06 "the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians..." Thomas L. Friedman, "Israel's Goals in Gaza?," New York Times, January 13, 2009. Also see News and Comment posting of Nov. 28, 2007, "Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers. Cold-Blooded Celebrity").
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Monday, January 26, 2009
A "Swiss cheese," "Bantustan" Palestine. A Recidivist America.
President Obama has just given an interview to Al - Arabiya Saudi/UAE TV which is being celebrated as "a sign that [he] is extending th[e] hand of friendship to the Arab world" (CNN International anchor, Jan. 26, 2009, US eastern time).
He said "I can't respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians, and we will hunt them down" -- hunt them down and give them money, weapons, and training, if his actions so far are any guide, since Obama appears to be continuing the US practice of backing organizations that kill innocent civilians (ie., commit terrorism), eg., the Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi, and Israeli armed and security forces, and the compliant elements of the Palestinian Authority's various armed wings .
But perhaps more remarkable than this repetition of an old sound-good work-bad US formula was his implication that he was prepared to flaunt the law more defiantly than Bush did.
Though the World Court has ruled that all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal, Bush, like Clinton, had maintained the fiction that most of the settlements are OK but that there is a small fraction of them -- some newer outposts -- that are "illegal" and have to go.
But when asked about settlements, Obama did not even stand by this Bush nano-concession to legality, instead stating merely that a Palestinian state would have to be "contiguous," ie., that the pieces would have to be attached, a formula consistent with what Bush once called a "Swiss cheese" Palestine (which Bush said would be bad), or, in more precise terms, what Ariel Sharon once called a Palestine of Apartheid-style "Bantustans" (which Sharon said would be good). (See Khaled Abu Toameh, "'Palestine can't be Swiss cheese'," Jerusalem Post [Israel], Jan. 10, 2008 for a report of Bush's press conference; Akiva Eldar, "People and Politics/ Sharon's Bantustans Are Far From Copenhagen's Hope," Haaretz [Israel], May 13, 2003 for a report of prime minister Sharon's Bantustan discussion with former Italian prime minister Massimo D'Alema).
It's unclear whether the US bureaucracy will stand by this apparent small escalation of Bush's law-defiance (Washington's dictatorial Arab clients already have enough trouble from their oppressed publics), but it is what Obama said, and he's a lawyer who often speaks carefully.
It just indicates that, as on other big matters, the US government tends to be recidivist, feeling that it can pick and choose whether to respect or break the law.
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Sunday, January 25, 2009
Hero Journalist J. A. Belo Being Persecuted, Needs Support.
Many cultures have equivalents of the English-language saying "No good deed goes unpunished," maybe because there's sometimes something about decent people that can make them look like easy targets.
When East Timor was in its heroic phase, enduring tribulations that made the Bible look placid, one of the heroes was a young aspiring journalist named Jose Antonio Belo.
When, amidst liberation, Belo took me on a tour of the place where he had been tortured, he pointed to a spot where a message had been scrawled in blood by a co-detainee who hadn't made it.
(Belo and colleagues were hung from the rafters by SGI, a special Indonesian Intel unit incorporating BIA and Kopassus Group 4, both with special US intel liaison. The Indonesian armed forces illegally occupying East Timor were, as a whole, US-backed, but these commando /intel outfits that electroshocked Belo and others got special US funding, training and encouragement, all this in the Clinton years; see my "Indonesia's 'Disappeared'," The Nation [US] June 8, 1998 at http://www.etan.org/news/news2/disapprd.htm, "Indonesia's Killers," The Nation [US], March 30, 1998 at http://www.etan.org/news/news2/killers.htm, and my September 30, 1999 testimony to the US House International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations "Hearing on the Humanitarian Crisis in East Timor" at http://www.etan.org/legislation/999bhear.htm ).
Today East Timor is independent, thanks to people like J.A. Belo, and, as a result, East Timorese now live more normal-scale injustice, instead of epic daily massacre.
One of the remarkable things about Jose Belo was that, even as his homeland was burning, he still stayed devoted to the ideal of accurate handling of facts.
But now that devotion has gotten him in trouble once again since he's reported facts about a high official that that official -- Timor Leste's Justice Minister, Lucia Lobato, doesn't like, and so she's trying to jail and/or heavily fine him based on Timor's criminal defamation law which, incredibly, has been lifted wholesale from the laws of their old oppressor/occupier, Indonesia, and under which, as one official told Belo, it doesn't matter if the facts are accurate.
The newspaper which Belo now edits, Tempo Semanal, includes material in Tetum, Portuguese, and English and can be seen online and contacted at:
www.temposemanaltimor.blogspot.com
Email: tempo.semanal@gmail.com and/e/ka Taraleu@hotmail.com
Mobile/Telemovél: +670 723 4852
The International Federation of Journalists (www.ifj.org) and the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (www.etan.org) have expressed support for Belo, but he needs resources and allies to defend himself and continue speaking as a free man.
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