BY VANNESSA HEARMAN
The United States and Australia are moving closer to restoring full military cooperation with Indonesia, including with the discredited Kopassus special operations unit of the Indonesian armed forces (TNI).
In July, the administration of US President George Bush was reported to have been close to releasing US$400,000 for the TNI as part of the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. However, after an outcry by US human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage announced to the Australian Financial Review on August 7 that the funds would not be released after all.
A US Senate committee voted to withhold funds until criminal prosecutions are undertaken against those responsible for killing US citizens last August in West Papua. Two Americans and an Indonesian were killed in an ambush near the US-owned Freeport mine. Investigations by Indonesian police indicated that the TNI was involved.
Military cooperation programs were suspended by the US and Australia following the destruction of East Timor by TNI-linked gangs in 1999. While senior TNI officers were indicted by the United Nations Serious Crimes Unit in East Timor to stand trial for crimes against humanity, Indonesia has refused to cooperate and no country has raised a protest against this.
One of those indicted, General Wiranto, who was armed forces chief in September 1999 during the sacking of East Timor, will seek preselection as the Golkar party's presidential candidate in Indonesia's 2004 presidential elections.
On August 5, Major General Adam Damiri, former regional commander for East Timor in 1999, was sentenced by an Indonesian tribunal for his role in 1999 to three years' jail; Damiri is likely to lodge an appeal. Damiri was permitted on several occasions to be absent from court in order to take part in prosecuting the TNI's war in Aceh, which began on May 20.
The tribunal has acquitted 12 of the 18 defendants and given light sentences to those convicted — all of whom are appealing.
The Bush administration is keen to resume full military ties with Indonesia. Deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a former US ambassador to Indonesia, has been pushing for "engagement" with the TNI and personally escorted Indonesian defence minister Matori Abdul Djalil as he lobbied Congress members. The July 22 Christian Science Monitor reported that in June, Wolfowitz argued: "I believe exposure of Indonesian officers to [the] US has been a way to promote reform efforts in the military, not to set them back."
However, former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans told the July 24 International Herald Tribune that years of training and support from Australia and the US for the TNI has "helped only to produce more professional human rights abusers".
Evans, while foreign minister, also sought "constructive engagement" with Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. At that time, he supported the Wolfowitz view that such a policy helped undermine authoritarianism.
Just as the Bush administration presses for a restoration of relations with the TNI as part of its bogus "war on terrorism", so too has Prime Minister John Howard's government. Canberra seized upon the opportunity provided by the Bali terrorist bombing in October as justification for greater links with the TNI.
Defence minister Robert Hill was quick to promote ties with Kopassus after the bombing, arguing that Indonesia's terrorist-fighting capacity was located inside Kopassus. Hill ignored evidence of Kopassus' links with terror gangs, such as East Timor's anti-independence militias and the Laskar Jihad group, as well as its role in the kidnapping and disappearance of Indonesian activists during the pro-democracy movement in 1998.
Former Australian ambassador Ric Smith stated four days before the Bali bombings, at an Indonesia-Australia Business Council luncheon on October 8, that "the defence relationship was never turned off completely, even after East Timor, and we are now re-building it, quietly, step-by-step".
On July 31, Australian Chief of Army Lieutenant-General Peter Leahy met with Indonesian defence minister Matori Abdul Djalil. A spokesperson for Djalil said that both sides were interested in undertaking joint military exercises to fight "people smuggling" and "terrorism".
The August 5 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta will be used to further this agenda by the Indonesian and Australian governments. Indonesian foreign affairs spokesperson Marty Natalegawa told ABC's Lateline on August 6 that "preemptive" measures against terrorism would be taken which might result in "inconveniences in [Indonesians'] daily lives".
On August 7, Australian solidarity group Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific (ASAP) issued a statement which argued that militaristic solutions, backed by Australia in the guise of fighting terrorism, would fail to solve "the complex range of issues currently facing the peoples of Indonesia".
In Melbourne, ASAP is holding a protest on the 58th anniversary of Indonesian independence on August 17. It will demand the cessation of Australian military ties with Jakarta.
[Visit the ASAP web site at < http://www.asia-pacific-A HREF="mailto:action.org"><action.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
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