From: hrcoord@igc.org (Human Rights Coordinator)
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human
Subject: The Acehnese Disappeared
Date: 24 Jul 92 00:40:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1476700256:000:3152
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!hrcoord    Jul 23 17:40:00 1992


From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: The Acehnese Disappeared

/* Written  4:47 pm  Jul 22, 1992 by apakabar in cdp:reg.indonesia */

   UPI, Jakarta, July 22 - Asia Watch, in a highly critical
assessment of the government's human rights record, called Wednesday for
an accounting of the dead and missing in East Timor and in the largely
Muslim province of Aceh.
   The U.S.-based human rights group, in a letter addressed to Secretary
of State James Baker and made available to reporters in Jakarta, asked
Baker to raise the issues during a meeting of Asian leaders next week in
Manila.
   Asia Watch said it welcomed the Indonesian government's appointment
of a commission to investigate the Nov. 12 massacre of unarmed civilians
by government troops in the East Timor capital Dili and its stated
willingness to prosecute soldiers.
   But Asia Watch criticized the discrepancy between the lenient
sentences given to members of the military and the heavy jail terms
handed down to dissidents accused of leading anti-government protests.
   "More than six months after the massacre in Dili on Nov. 12, the
questions about who fired the shots and who disposed of the bodies
remain unanswered," Asia Watch said in the letter to Baker.
   Asia Watch urged Baker to raise several key Asian human rights issues
including those involving Indonesia at the meeting next week in Manila
of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
   The group said the sentences given those accused of planning the
demonstration in Dili upon which the troops fired can only be described
as savage, with one man, who committed no violence, sentenced to life in
prison.
   "By contrast, the highest sentence given to a soldier who
deliberately used lethal force against an unarmed crowd was 18 months,"
Asia Watch said.
   The Indonesian military announced last week that an estimated 66
people still remained missing in the aftermath of the Dili shootings,
which left at least 50 people dead.
   The military said the search for the missing people was continuing.
   Asia Watch also cited the Indonesian government for its failure to
resolve the disappearance of men taken into custody during the 1989-91
counterinsurgency campaign in Aceh.
   It urged Baker to raise in particular the case of Mahdi Yusuf, deputy
secretary of the local branch of the Muslim-backed United Development
Party, who along with four other men remained missing and were feared
dead after reportedly being taken from their jail cells in early March
1991.
   The group called on the Indonesian government to conduct a full
impartial investigation of Mahdi's case, as well as many other cases of
alleged disappearances and extrajudicial executions in Aceh.
   It also demanded Indonesia be encouraged to invite a team from the 
U.N. Working Group on Disappearances to visit Aceh.
   Asia Watch, along with the London-based human rights monitoring group
Amnesty International, last year accused Indonesian troops of resorting
to summary executions, torture and arbitrary arrests in their drive to
crush the Free Aceh Movement rebels.
   Indonesian authorities have denied the allegations.