By James Balowski
Scores of people in the northern province of Aceh have been killed and wounded in what appears to be an unprovoked attack by the Indonesian military on a peaceful crowd. According to a preliminary report by the chair of the Iskandar Muda Legal Aid Institute, Mohammed Yacob Hamzah, 53 were killed, 97 are missing and 150 were wounded.
The attack occurred at around 1am on February 4, when several thousand people were returning home from a meeting in the village of Matang Ulim, Idi Cut, in the Nurussalam subdistrict of eastern Aceh.
There have been conflicting reports on the purpose of the meeting. Some sources say it was a religious service and others that it was concerned with the Free Aceh independence movement.
According to a chronology by the Indonesian daily Serambi, local people were preparing a platform for the speakers, when at 5pm soldiers entered the village, destroyed the stage and beat up a number of local people, including a three-year-old child. Despite this, they decided to go ahead with the meeting.
The meeting apparently finished without incident. Around midnight, people started making their way home, some on foot and others in vehicles. As they passed a military post, troops hurled stones at them and then opened fire into the crowd.
A February 5 report in the British Guardian quoted a witness who said, "As they went past the local army base the soldiers started throwing stones. No-one responded because they were too afraid to do anything."
"The soldiers then opened fire at the street lights, plunging everything into darkness. They then turned on the crowd. It all lasted about 10 minutes", he told the Guardian. He also said that soldiers had raped several women in the aftermath of the shooting.
The Guardian said that the local army commander, Colonel Johnny Wahab, has dismissed the reports, saying that the death toll was "two, possibly three" and that the 5000 people who had attended the meeting were supporters of the Aceh independence movement.
Although he admitted that troops opened fire, it was "... only after the people had thrown stones at the police station. The police were provoked and thought they were going to be attacked by thousands of separatists."
Hamzah and the coordinator of the Forum of Aceh NGOs, Maimal Fidar, say that some of those arrested were driven to a bridge 20 kilometres away and thrown into a river.
"People there have told me that about half an hour after they news reached them of the incident at Idi Cut they heard lots of screaming", Fidar said. "They went outside and saw several army trucks on the bridge. They were unable to get close because soldiers blocked their way."
Yacob said that a number of eyewitnesses had seen a truckload of bodies that had been shot dead being driven to Arakundo bridge, from which they were thrown into the river. Bloodstains were still evident on the bridge the following day.
This is the latest in a string of incidents which began on December 29, when seven off-duty soldiers were tortured and killed by local residents in the Lhok Nibong village in the Simpang Lim district.
The military immediately blamed the incident on "separatist militants". Hundreds of troops were rushed to the province to hunt for the missing men and the perpetrators.
On January 3, as many as 17 people were killed, 23 seriously injured and 123 arrested when troops fired on "separatists" after a crowd attacked a government building in Kandang, near the industrial centre of Lhokseumawe.
Violence again broke out on January 5, when troops opened fire to disperse a crowd during a raid on the house of the alleged leader of the Free Aceh movement, Ahmad Kandang.
On January 9, troops again raided a village near Lhokseumawe suspected of harbouring Kandang and arrested 40 residents.
Later in the day, around 50 soldiers from a local battalion forced their way into the detention centre where the arrested were being held. They beat and tortured the suspects, resulting in four deaths and 26 others seriously injured. A fifth man died in hospital on January 17.
Last year Aceh's status as a "military operational zone" was lifted and armed forces chief General Wiranto issued a public apology for past abuses by the military.