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U.S. Policy Options on Indonesia
Testimony Before the United States Commission on
International Religious Freedom
February 13, 2001
Sidney Jones
Asia Director, Human Rights Watch
Thank you for inviting me to testify on US policy options for Indonesia. I don't think I need
to emphasize how important Indonesia's political and economic health is to the United
States. The question is how to support Indonesia's fragile democratization process in the
face of a complete absence of political leadership in Jakarta; how to address serious
internal security issues without inadvertently contributing to the strengthening of a military
that continues in many places to operate largely above or outside the law; and how to
protect human rights and strengthen civil society without contributing to a nationalist
backlash.
I think Indonesia is in serious danger on a number of fronts. Elite political conflict in Jakarta is so intense that no one at the top is really governing. If President Abdurrahman Wahid stays, inattention to crises like Aceh, the Moluccas, West Timor, and Papua, not to mention the economy, is virtually assured. There is no indication he has any intention of stepping down. If moves to force him out are stepped up, we may see more of what we've seen in the last week, street violence by his supporters. If he does resign and Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri takes over, she is likely to bring in a highly nationalist administration, heavily influenced by the military, with possibly disastrous consequences for areas already wracked by armed insurgencies. The good news is that even with these depressing scenarios, there seems to be a deep commitment among much of the Indonesian public to ensuring that the democratization process goes forward.
How Indonesia handles the Moluccan conflict in this context should be of deep interest to the U.S. More than the rebellions in Aceh or Papua, it has the capacity to utterly destroy the social fabric of the country. It is not the only example of a complex conflict that has become increasingly polarized along Christian-Muslim lines, but it is defining the terms of conflicts elsewhere. As each side in Maluku develops a selective historical memory and sees itself more and more as the exclusive victim and the other side as the exclusive perpetrator, other outbreaks of violence in Indonesia feed those perceptions. Each multiple killing of Muslims in the Moluccas, and there have been many, adds to the sense of politicized Muslim activists across Indonesia that Islam is under threat from an international conspiracy that is out to crush the faithful in Chechnya and Afghanistan as well as at home. When killings occur elsewhere in Indonesia, as in Poso, central Sulawesi in May 2000 when close to 300 Muslims were hacked to death by Christian mobs, it feeds back into the sense of siege, thus allowing groups like Laskar Jihad to maintain that the only defense is attack.
Thanks to the Moluccas, even conflicts that have no religious elements at all, like the clashes between Madurese immigrants and indigenous Malays and Dayaks in West Kalimantan become interpreted in religious terms, and the fact that 30,000 Madurese remain homeless more than two years after violence erupted is seen as yet another example of the world and the Indonesian government failing to come to the aid of Muslim victims.
On the other side, the unwillingness of the government to remove Laskar Jihad from the Moluccas and stop forced conversions is convincing many Christians that the government in Jakarta has become hostage to political Islam, however small a percentage of the population the Laskar Jihad supporters may represent. (Several hundred Christians were forcibly converted, with forcible circumcision, by Laskar Jihad forces on the islands of Teor and Kesui in January 2001; the military commander, for Maluku, I Made Yasa, arranged for the evacuation of many of these people to islands further east, but the damage was already done. It's worth noting that forced conversions have taken place on both sides, with some Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity during the attack on Tobelo and Galela in North Maluku late December 1999.)
The failure of both the civilian government at a central and provincial level, and the security forces, including both military and police, to prevent wholesale destruction of Christian communities in the Moluccas by what is essentially a large private militia, means that other private groups, may be equally emboldened to go after minorities, knowing that Jakarta will be unwilling or unable to act. The deadly Christmas Eve bombing campaign, that Indonesian police believe was masterminded by people close to the Soeharto family, only reinforced that fear.1
That said, there is a critical difference in the way the two communities address their perception of threat. By and large, it is non-Moluccan Muslims who are the most vocal about the need to defend Islam in Maluku, and their appeal is to their co-religionists in Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi. On the Christian side, it has been Moluccan Christians appealing not so much to other Christians in Indonesia but to an international audience, fueling some Muslims' suspicions of a conspiracy.
None of this addresses the critical issue of provocation and the degree to which the flames of communal conflict in the Moluccas (and elsewhere) are being deliberately fanned. Many Indonesia watchers in the international press and the diplomatic community, as well as among the Jakarta political elite, believe that elements of the army are involved in a deliberate destabilization campaign to bring down the Wahid government and replace it with one more sympathetic to army interests. The outbreaks of communal violence, and of bombings of the Jakarta Stock Exchange, the Philippine ambassador's residence in Jakarta, and the well-coordinated chain of church bombings on December 24, have certainly strengthened the notion abroad, including in policy circles in this country, that only the military are capable of restoring stability to Indonesia, but that may well have been exactly the impression that those behind the violence wished to convey.
This brings me to the issue of policy options for the U.S. government. The administration can only address the question of the Moluccan conflict, or communal violence more generally, in the context of its overall policy toward Indonesia. It cannot, for example, push for removal of the Laskar Jihad forces from the Moluccas unless it also addresses the shortcomings of both the military and the police. At a minimum, therefore, a policy should include the following elements:
1. Continued pressure for military accountability. The Indonesian army is plagued by years of politicization under Soeharto, deeply ingrained corruption, and growing criminalization of the lower ranks. All of these elements have been on display in its behavior in the Moluccas. There is no question that the army needs reform and reformists within the military need support, but that support can only be forthcoming if there is clear evidence of a willingness to hold officers responsible for past and ongoing abuses. The fact that a military investigation team has been sent to Ambon in the last week to look into an incident in which Marines and Mobile Police Brigade (Brimob) troops fired on each other does not alter the fact that for the most part, military behavior has escaped any serious investigation from Jakarta. Soldiers have not only taken sides in the Moluccas with little fear of punishment, providing cover for attacks and sometimes weapons, but they have actively benefited from the conflict by, for example, charging exorbitant fees for safe passage from one part of Ambon to another.
The U.S. must join other countries to press for military accountability more generally, continuing to provide technical assistance where possible, and public criticism when necessary, so that the obstacles to investigation and prosecution are clearly identified and overcome. Whether we are talking about the Moluccas, Aceh, West Timor, Papua or central Sulawesi, unless it is clear that members of the military can and will be held accountable for crimes against civilians, political and religious violence will continue.
A recent statement by the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council called on the Bush administration to lift the ban on providing military equipment and training while re-establishing contacts with the Indonesian military. I have no problem with contacts, but it would be premature to renew assistance with equipment and training until clear steps are taken to end military impunity.
2. A renewed effort on the part of all of Indonesia's donors, including the U.S., to assist in the clean-up of the justice system. The fact that courts do not function any longer in some of the areas in Indonesia worst hit by violence, including Maluku, encourages revenge attacks and vigilante justice. The Indonesian government has shown no hesitation to arrest political activists who publicly support separation from Indonesia. But for the most part, the organizers and implementers of murderous attacks on both sides have gone free. The donor community should work with respected human rights lawyers and academics to fashion an emergency program for restoring formal justice in the Moluccas or designating an alternative, neutral site for trials so that those responsible for serious crimes can be prosecuted and justice can be seen to be done.
3. A carefully monitored program of police training that has some involvement of or monitoring by Indonesian NGOs. Until April 1999, the police were a branch of the armed forces, but the least prestigious, worst trained, and, some would say, most corrupt. Under Soeharto, the army had always taken care of serious internal disturbances, with often disastrous results. After his resignation and the effort to separate the police from the military, the police were increasingly given that role but were rarely up to the task. Police weapons have found their way into the hands of militia members and armed groups from one end of Indonesia to the other. To the extent that the U.S. is committed to seeing continued democratization in Indonesia, it must find a way of strengthening police capacity, particularly in non-lethal methods of crowd control, and fiscal and administrative management, including control over police equipment.
4. Assistance to the Indonesian government to work out a security plan for the Moluccas that will have the confidence of both sides of the conflict and that involves the removal of the Laskar Jihad. Given the utter lack of trust on all sides of the Indonesian military, that security plan might have to involve international monitors. The legacy of East Timor is such, however, that any thought of monitors from Western countries, let alone the U.N., is almost certainly a non-starter. Countries within ASEAN that are neither predominantly Christian or Muslim might be able to play a role, but any hint of an international presence is going to be an extremely sensitive issue.
5. Sustained pressure on the president, whether Abdurrahman Wahid or his successor, to pay serious attention to the causes and dynamics of the violence occurring across the country. Wahid has shown no understanding of the seriousness of the conflict in the Moluccas, just as he has shown no appreciation of how much the situations in Aceh and Papua have deteriorated in the last six months. Megawati Soekarnoputri is little better, even though she was given responsibility for the Moluccas including, in late 1999, a three-person team to advise her on policy there. With a leadership vacuum in Jakarta, the military has been left to take charge. The European Union has helped focus attention on the Moluccas by sending a high-level delegation there in October, and a second visit is scheduled to take place this week. In addition to encouraging (and providing funding for) regular visits to the Moluccas and other violence-wracked areas by members of the embassy staff in Jakarta, the Bush administration could usefully send a high-profile delegation that would be able to meet with the President and Vice-President and senior security officers upon its return, as way of signaling U.S. concern. That delegation should NOT be composed of religious leaders, however, or people with a high profile on religious issues. The more the Moluccas is treated as a simple religious conflict, the more it will exacerbate the polarization on the ground.
6. Assistance to the displaced. The enormously high number of people displaced by the Moluccan conflict, with most estimates well over 300,000 and some as high as half a million, has created major humanitarian needs. It is also sowing the seeds of future conflict, as people are forced out of their villages and effectively cantoned with other members of their faith, or as they become the targets of radical elements in refugee camps. The U.S. should work closely with the Indonesian government to ensure that international NGOs have both the funds and the access to reach all displaced communities, and that particular emphasis is placed on ensuring that displaced children have access to non-sectarian education.
7. Caution about efforts to redraw subdistrict, district, and provincial boundary lines. As political power shifts take place in Indonesia and as policy-makers sit in Jakarta thinking of how to deal with conflict, a solution that increasingly seems to be on the table is the creation of new subdistricts or districts. Thus we had a failed effort to divide Irian Jaya into three provinces in 1999, the successful effort the same year to divide Maluku into two, the division of North Sulawesi province into two, and the suggestion of carving up Aceh into three provinces or the district of Aceh Besar into two. Each time a division takes place, there is potentially a struggle for control over local resources and appointments that, in the current climate, carries the danger of exacerbating communal or ethnic tensions. Every time a new administrative unit is created, the creation of a new territorial military unit follows. The U.S. embassy should stay informed of all plans for redrawing boundaries and offer assistance in doing social impact assessments, so that possible conflict might be averted.
Note that many of these recommendations involve a combination of assistance and
pressure. I think the level of economic assistance to Indonesia should be substantially
increased. An increased aid program would signal the U.S. government's commitment to
the country and concern for the welfare of its people. It would also give the administration
marginally more leverage in exerting the kind of pressure that can support the efforts of
those Indonesians determined to make democratization succeed.
1 John McBeth, "Bombs, the Army, and Suharto," Far Eastern Economic Review,
February 1, 2001.
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