The Foreign Service Journal, May 2005

tary’s invasion of East Timor in 1975, an estimated 200,000 East Timorese, one-quarter of the population, died as a consequence of living conditions in TNI-organized relocation camps or as direct victims of Indonesian violence. In remote West Papua, it is estimated that over 100,000 Papuans died in the years following the forced annexation of West Papua under a fraudulent “Act of Free Choice” perpetrated by the Suharto regime in 1969. An April 2004 study by the Allard K. Lowen- stein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School concluded that the atrocities in West Papua con- stituted “crimes against humanity” and may have constituted genocide. Yet throughout this period, extend- ing from 1965 to the early 1990s, the U.S. military maintained a close rela- tionship with the TNI, providing it with IMET training and arms. Those arms were employed not against for- eign foes but against their own people: during the 1970s and 1980s, the TNI frequently bombed villages in East Timor and in West Papua with U.S.- provided OV-10 Broncos. Military offensives, conceived and directed by IMET-trained officers against usually miniscule resistance, caused thousands of additional civilian deaths. Even with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. embrace of the dictator Suharto and his military continued for a time as if U.S. policy were on autopi- lot. The relationship endured largely unquestioned until 1991, when the Indonesian military was caught on film by U.S. journalists slaughtering peace- ful East Timorese demonstrators. The murder of over 270 East Timorese youth by soldiers bearing U.S.-provid- ed M-16s so shocked the U.S. Con- gress that it imposed tight restrictions on further military-to-military aid and training. Ever since Congress cut off such assistance, successive U.S. adminis- trations, with the support of non- governmental organizations that re- ceived strong financial support from U.S. corporations with major interests in Indonesia, have sought to restore military-to-military ties. Those efforts were accompanied by contentions that the Indonesian military had reformed or was on a reform course. But such claims of Indonesian military reform were refuted in 1999, when, following an overwhelming vote by East Timorese for independence from Indonesia, the TNI and its militia proxies devastated the tiny half-island. United Nations and other international observers were unable to prevent the killing of over 1,000 East Timorese, the forced relocation of over 250,000 more, and the destruction of over 70 percent of East Timor’s infrastructure. Six years later, the Indonesian justice system has failed to hold a single military, police or civil official responsible for the mayhem. That failure to render justice demonstrates that, even when con- fronted by unanimous international condemnation, the Indonesian mili- tary remains unaccountable either to civilian authorities or to world opinion. Moreover, TNI human rights abuses continue to this day. Since mid-2004, it has been conducting military opera- tions inWest Papua, forcing thousands of villagers into the forests, where many are dying for lack of food and medicine. A ban on travel to the region by journalists and even West Papuan senior church leaders has lim- ited international awareness of this tragedy and prevented provision of humanitarian relief. The recent devastating Indian Ocean tsunami turned international attention to another remote arena where the TNI has conducted a bru- tal campaign for over 20 years. In Aceh, over 12,000 civilians have fallen victim to these military operations. The State Department’s most recent Human Rights Report, like previous editions, notes that most of those civil- ians died at the hands of the TNI. What Has Changed? Sadly, the latest trends recall the worst features of the Suharto period (1965–1998), when critics and dis- senters were seldom tolerated, at best, and often met harsher fates. Despite the genuine democratic progress made since Suharto’s fall in 1999, critics of the military and any- one else the TNI regards as enemies remain in grave jeopardy. Reflecting the power of the TNI in “democratic” Indonesia, those critics who meet untimely ends are often the most prominent. In 2001, Theys Eluay, the leading Papuan proponent of Papuan self-determination, was assassinated. In a rare trial for such crimes, his military killers received sentences ranging up to just three- and-one-half years. Army Chief of Staff Ryamazad Ryacudu publicly described the murderers as “heroes.” Last year, the country’s leading human rights advocate, Munir, a prominent critic of the TNI, died of arsenic poisoning. (Like many In- donesians, he only used one name.) In 2000, Jafar Siddiq, a U.S. green- card holder who was in Aceh demanding justice for Achenese suf- fering TNI abuses, was tortured and murdered. Since 2000, 14 prominent human rights advocates have been murdered, and no perpetrators have been prosecuted. 16 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 5 S P E A K I N G O U T State’s own human rights reports document the TNI’s human rights abuses and corruption.