The Jakarta Post, July 26, 2004
Swedish court's acquittal of Hassan, and accountability for
abuses in Aceh
Shane Joshua Barter, Bangkok
Swedish courts recently decided that Hasan Tiro, the figurehead of the Free Aceh
Movement (GAM), is innocent of coordinating human rights abuses in Aceh from
Sweden. The expected responses from organizations and academics who had
opposed the proceedings in the first place will be enlightening.
No doubt, they will applaud the Swedish courts and support Tiro, demand that other
GAM leaders' trials end and entirely miss the point of why these trials are so
important. What these courts offer is a fair criticism of GAM according to Swedish
law; the proceedings are indeed specific because context does not change whether or
not specific laws were breached.
These trials, along with any other assessments of GAM in terms of human rights
violations, have been met with hostility from otherwise gifted writers and activists.
These people assert that the trials are a result of political pressure from Indonesia;
obviously they are, but this does not change the guilt or innocence of the accused,
nor does it change the fact that this trial is a nonviolent path to fighting GAM, which
human rights defenders should encourage.
For the vocal minority of activists, any negative assessment of GAM, the supposed
lamb, is resisted with great emotion and little clarity. This result is no mere legal or
academic debate, but is representative of a fundamental issue for armed conflicts
around the world.
A recent article by Prof. Kirsten Schulze documents the human rights abuses
committed by GAM in light of the ongoing trials in Sweden. She notes that GAM is
guilty of burning schools, kidnappings, assassinations and racial violence against
Javanese migrants. She concludes that the importance of the trials is not the politics
involved, but instead the victims of GAM violence.
But her article, like the Swedish courts, defied the unwritten rule in civil society to
judge the worth of the lamb solely by the actions of the wolf, and the responses to the
article can teach us a great deal about the Aceh conflict.
One response was from Prof. Damien Kingsbury, who evoked images of Stalin in his
personal attack on Schulze. Kingsbury did not offer any specific points of contention,
instead insisting that Schulze leaves out, neglects and forgets actions by the
Indonesian Military (TNI). The most troubling part of his response is that he justifies
the abuse of the Javanese on the grounds that GAM has support from the majority of
people in Aceh.
Other responses have been no better; an article from the Aceh Center in the United
States evoked images of Hitler in Poland and made the horrendous claim that it is not
hostage-taking if no ransom is demanded. Again, the responses to criticism of GAM
are not actually disagreements regarding the guilt of GAM, as it would be difficult to
prove their innocence, but instead demands that descriptions of GAM must be in
strict proportion to those of the TNI.
The responses to Schulze's article shed light on the responses to the trial of the GAM
leaders as well as the continuation of the conflict as a whole. Criticizing GAM is not
an act of allegiance to their enemy; for a human rights advocate or academic
protecting human lives or conducting balanced research, there is nothing wrong with
being anti-GAM, and nothing inconsistent with being anti-GAM as well as anti-TNI.
In fact, the two militaries have several similar tendencies when it comes to how they
deal with opposition groups. The trials in Sweden deserve our full attention because
they are impartial and may provide justice for GAM's victims. To condemn the trials
without specific reasons demonstrates a political bias and is contrary to human
rights, supporting an imagined lamb that does not deserve our protection.
Defending GAM from criticism helps perpetuate the conflict. Unless the actions of
GAM are judged according to the same standards used for other actors, there will be
little motivation for GAM to improve itself or for the creation of new political spaces in
Aceh.
A nonviolent political space must be based on civil society, groups that are already
strong and have a vast deal of expertise in Islamic human rights, rehabilitation,
environmental activism, anticorruption, microfinance, student solidarity and women's
rights.
As a critic of the TNI, I welcome any possible contribution to unmasking GAM human
rights violations in Aceh. Any human rights advocate or academic who rejects
enquiries into GAM human rights abuses has simply taken sides in this conflict, and
in so doing helps perpetuate the violence by seeking to reward this violent lamb with
its own state.
A more balanced approach rejects violence and terrorism, which means no less than
rejecting the TNI and GAM, two wolves, and seeks to empower all nonviolent
segments of civil society in order to create a just peace.
* The writer is the author of Neither Wolf, Nor Lamb: Embracing Civil Society in the
Aceh Conflict, released on July 24 in Bangkok at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of
Thailand.
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