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|
email the perth indmedia mob...
This newswire is for stories from the oceania region..
Indonesian military continues to attack Acehnese victims and deny aid |
| by repost of list emails |
2005-01-02 9:23 PM +0800 |
| Disturbing update by Max Lane, chair of Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific, of how the Indonesian solidarity efforts in Aceh are being hampered by the TNI. |
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 7:51 pm
Subject: Latest report from SEGERA posko in Banda Aceh and Medan
From SEGERA (Solidarity with the Acehnese Peoples Movement) and FPDRA (Acehnese Peoples Democratic Struggle Front)
January, 2 7.30PM Australian Eastern Standard Time
Latest report from our posko in Medan and Banda Aceh
tens of thousands of tonnes of materials are piling up at Polonia airport (Medan) and Sultan Iskandar Muda airport banda Aceh. Activists from the humanitarian posko in Medan, took the initiave to hire transport so that some goods good be taken out from Polonia to help distribution, but the TNI officials at the airport refused. They gave various excuses, including that there was no guarantee that the goods would reach victims. The activists suggested that some official accompany the goods to check on this, but they still refused.???
Acticists from our posko in Banda Aceh airport have had the smae ecxperience. Officials demand letters of authority from those who despatc hed the goods from Jakarta. How are they supposed to send such letters at the moment - by pigeon carrier!?! And what are the practivalities in sorting throuigh tens of thousands of tonnes of goods according to which group in Jakarta has sent them.
Is this the government's so-called emergency program???????????
Thamrin Ananda - FPDRA - SEGERA
Additional info received by SMS:
+ The price of fuel in Tapaktuan (near Meulaboh) has reached 50 thousand to 150 thousand rupiah (usually 1500 rp)
+ In the region of Meulaboh, there have been reports of TNI soldiers selling food to refugees.
+ TNI not helping with evacuations, concentrating on setting up distribution centers only.
+ volunteers travelling from medan to west Aceh stopped regularly by TNI checkpoints where there I.D. papers are being checked.
+++
From Reuters article by Jerry Norton, January 2.
"As for the military, a spokesman in Aceh, Lieutenant Colonel Edi Sulistiadi, told Reuters "there is no cease fire. The policy is, half of our troops in Aceh will be concentrated on the humanitarian operation, and the rest are still focused on security, in a 'defensive-active' mode." |
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SEGERA activists need continuing support |
| by repost of another update |
2005-01-02 9:26 PM +0800 |
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 7:59 pm
Subject: SEGERA activists need continuing support
The SEGERA activists in Aceh still need support. Thanks to those who have donated so far. Some have now set up base in Medan and Banda Aceh. Two are working their way across from Medan on the east coast of North Sumatra to Meulabhoh, one of the most devastated larger towns. One of these activists is equipped with a stellite phone and is making short reprts in. Hopefully he will get into Meulaboh proper soon. By the end of the week 12 SEGERA activists - all Acehnese - who were based in Jakarta will be in Aceh and linking up with their surviving Aceh based fellow activists.
If you are outside Australia, please make donations straight to the Jakarta account below. But please let me know how much you have sent and when.
The SEGERA activists in Aceh need financial assistance to keep their activities going at the different POSKO crisis centres and just to get around.
Donations can be sent to:
BANK INTERNASIONAL INDONESIA
NAMA: YULIANA RONAULI
MMP.BSA/SWIFT CODE: 281013
ACCOUNT NO: 1-121-162097.
(Please note new Bank Account Address.)
If you are inside Australia please email me at this email address. When banks open on Tuesday we finalise the best way to get money up to SEGERA and I will let you know by email direct as well as post an announcement.
Max Lane (max_lane@bigpond.com)
Link here
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'Serambi' back on newsstands again |
| by anonymous |
2005-01-02 9:29 PM +0800 |
The Jakarta Post
Sunday, January 2, 2005
'Serambi' back on newsstands again
After six days of absence due to the destruction of its office and disappearance of most of its employees, Aceh's only daily Serambi Indonesia hit the streets again on Sunday.
This time Serambi greets its readers not from its usual base in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, badly damaged from Sunday's tsunami, but from a new base in Lhokseumawe, North Aceh.
Serambi's office and printing house in downtown Banda Aceh were leveled to the ground, with nothing left intact, and many of its journalists are still missing, feared dead.
The daily, this time, is only 8 pages, half its normal size of 16 pages, due to shortages of manpower.
According to Serambi's Lhokseumawe branch head Ismail M. Syam, the eight-page newspaper is currently being run by 10 people, comprising six journalists and four production staff.
The 10 people are not all Serambi's employees from Lhokseumawe but rather employees from Kompas's Persda network, sent from other parts of the country, including from Makassar, Batam and Jakarta. Serambi is owned by the Kompas Gramedia Group.
"Now, the status of editors and reporters is the same. Everyone has to get into the field and file stories. Otherwise, we will not be able to fill the paper with local news," Ismail told The Jakarta Post here.
He explained that 60 percent of Serambi's 225 employees -- including journalists -- are still unaccounted for.
Serambi is not alone, though. Since Sunday, media companies outside Aceh were also frantically trying to locate their reporters and staff based in the province.
Serambi was established in the early 1990s by several senior Kompas journalists, including its editor-in-chief Syamsul Kahar, who survived the tragedy.
Following the disaster, a number of Serambi people, backed by its parent publication, prepared printing of the paper from a new base, Lhokseumawe.
Lhokseumawe was chosen because the newspaper has a five-unit printing house in the city.
The publisher, PT Aceh Media Grafika, said it is printing 10,000 copies per day -- compared to 100,000 before the disaster. All copies are being distributed free of charge, and it will remain free for the next week or so.
Link here
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Military continues attacks on Aceh rebels |
| by anonymous |
2005-01-02 9:45 PM +0800 |
Military continues attacks on Aceh rebels
2004/12/31
The Indonesian military said on Friday it was still launching raids against separatist rebels in tsunami-devastated Aceh, despite having earlier called a ceasefire to help aid efforts.
"Our security operations continue, the only difference is that it may be less in scale and intensity," Lieutenant Colonel Nachrowi, of the military headquarters' general information department, said.
"The principle is that all our forces in Aceh are basically continuing their duty under the security operation. But they also have to accord a large portion of their time for the humanitarian relief efforts.
"We continue to launch raids into suspected GAM [Free Aceh Movement] areas and our vigilance remains high."
Colonel Nachrowi's comments come despite Indonesian military chief General Endriartono Sutarto calling for an unprecedented temporary ceasefire on Monday with the rebels to help rebuild the remote province.
"All my soldiers will be used to help overcome this natural disaster and I hope that GAM will also do the same, not using the opportunity for something else because this is really something to do with humanitarian problems," he said.
Much of the western coast of Aceh, including the capital of Banda Aceh, was demolished in Sunday's massive tsunamis that were triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake in the ocean 150km from the province.
The Indonesian death toll from the tsunamis is nearly 80,000 people, with most of the fatalities in Aceh, and the figure is expected to climb further as rescue workers reach remote towns and villages.
The inability to quickly rebuild infrastructure in Aceh is being partly attributed to the decades-old insurgency that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people.
The Free Aceh Movement has been fighting for independence since 1976 and the government stepped up its military suppression efforts with a massive operation that began in May 2003.
Amid the apparent calls for ceasefire, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono urged GAM rebels yesterday to lay down their weapons and join efforts to rebuild Aceh.
"I call on those who are still raising arms, to come out ... let us use this historic momentum to join and be united again," Mr Yudhoyono told a press conference.
"I call on them all, let us together build an Aceh in line with the special autonomy and according to what we can do together."
This story was found at: http://www.afr.com/articles/2004/12/31/1104344976339.html
Link here
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AP Report: Rebels Say Indonesian Military Stepping Up Offensive |
| by repost |
2005-01-03 2:03 PM +0800 |
JAKARTA, Jan. 2 (AP)--The Indonesian military is using the recent earthquake and tsunami as an excuse to ratchet up its campaign against separatist rebels and is denying aid to anyone it suspects of sympathizing with their cause, a
spokesman for the Free Aceh Movement said Sunday.
Meanwhile, a prominent student group in Aceh urged authorities Sunday to lift a state of emergency in the region and abandon the military offensive against separatist rebels.
"The government of Indonesia has to end the military approach to resolve the conflict that creates the suffering of the Acehnese," said a statement by SIRA, a student organization campaigning for an independence referendum in the province of 4 million people.
The Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, a rebel group which has been fighting for independence since 1976, announced a unilateral truce in its war with Indonesian forces because of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami that killed 80,000 people in the province.
Government troops, however, have continued anti-insurgency actions in the province on the northern tip of Sumatra island. Troops killed three rebels and detained five others Saturday in northern Aceh and accused them of trying to attack a relief convoy, according to the state-run Antara news agency.
Bakhtiar Abdullah, a GAM spokesman based in Sweden, denied that rebels attacked any convoy.
He said the military had poured troops into the region since the disaster in an effort to wipe out the rebels. He also said that rebel sympathizers in refugee camps were harassed and tortured.
"The reports we received is that they are moving in more troops under the guise of relief operations," Abdullah said.
"We know that they are trying to track down GAM fighters in the area," he said. "We have given strict orders to maintain a cease-fire and hope that the Indonesian military would respect that cease-fire and refrain from any military action."
A military spokesman, Col. Ahmad Yani Basuki, acknowledged that operations against the rebels were continuing and that more troops have been sent to Aceh. But he said the government had reassigned two-thirds of all the troops to
disaster relief.
"We have to maintain security operations to prevent the rebels from attacking vital installations and relief operations," he said.
After the quake and tsunami hit the province last week, the government in Jakarta allowed foreign relief workers and journalists into the province for the first time since May 2003, when its forces abandoned a six-month truce and
launched a massive offensive against the guerrillas that has left thousands dead.
But Jakarta has so far refused to lift the state of "civil emergency," which effectively allows the military and police to carry out unimpeded operations in the oil- and gas-rich region.
"The government of Indonesia has to end the military approach to resolve the conflict that creates suffering for the Acehnese," the SIRA statement said. "Indonesia must remove the state of civil emergency and keep up the dialogue (with) the Free Aceh Movement."
SIRA is advocating an internationally supervised referendum on possible independence for Aceh. Jakarta has refused this, fearing a repeat of the secession of East Timor, which broke away in 1999 after four-fifths of the electorate opted for independence in a U.N.-organized plebiscite.
SIRA's leader, Muhammad Nazar, was imprisoned following the May 2002 crackdown and sentenced to five years in jail for appealing to foreign governments to
help organize a plebiscite.
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Link here
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