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'The
colonial powers in the 19th century had fixed the official
boundaries of these territorial possessions without regard
for history and tradition. With decolonization, these
boundaries became sacrosanct for the new ruling elites both
in Africa and Asia.'
'..
in actual fact there is no "Indonesia" in history
any more than there is a "Nigeria" in history.'
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 IL-GAS-RICH
ACHEH, with a small but
highly durable population of 4 million people, is located on
the northern tip of Sumatra, an island province of
Indonesia. Centuries ago it was a victim of Dutch
colonialism, as it is now a victim of Javanese colonialism.
The huge Indonesian army has been engaged in what at times
appeared to be a genocidal war against the Achenese rebels.
One of the iniquities of
Western colonizers was that before surrendering their rule
at the end of World War II, they coerced into so-called
nation-states different peoples who at best were suspicious
of each other and who at worst hated each other either
because of clashing religions, cultures, histories,
languages, castes or even skin color or appearance.
The colonial powers in the
19th century had fixed the official boundaries of these
territorial possessions without regard for history and
tradition. With decolonization, these boundaries became
sacrosanct for the new ruling elites both in Africa and
Asia.
In 1949, thanks to an
unthinking Dutch government, the Dutch East Indies became
"Indonesia," an archipelago whose 13,000 islands
stretch the equivalent distance of London to Teheran. But in
actual fact there is no "Indonesia" in history any
more than there is a "Nigeria" in history. British
blindness to African history led to the Biafran civil war
between Yorubas and Ibos in the late 1960s, a war that took
a million lives. Belgian blindness to history led to the
long and brutal civil war in what had been the Belgian
Congo.
In Indonesia, many islanders
resent what they call "Javanese imperialism,"
since the Javanese elites dominate the government and civil
institutions.
The central government in
Jakarta has imposed on Acheh, whose people are devout
Muslims, what Prince Hasan has called a reign of terror and
what the Indonesian government calls a counterinsurgency
campaign. The prince, who founded the Free Acheh (GAM)
movement in 1976, is the formal president of the
Acheh/Sumatra National Liberation Front, which claims to
have a 100,000-strong guerrilla army.
The world knows about the
near-genocidal massacre of the people of East Timor, about
600,000 killed since 1975 when Indonesia invaded and annexed
the former Portuguese colony.
What is little
known in the West are the mass killings of the people of
Acheh. Since 1976, when the campaign for independence began,
about 50,000 Achenese have been killed and more than 100,000
wounded by Indonesian troops, and the killings are still
going on. Mass graves lie scattered all over Acheh, says
Prince Hasan. It is obviously impossible to confirm this
estimate independently.
Prince Hasan was in Washington
last week pleading Acheh´s cause before sympathetic members
of Congress, who have indicated their displeasure that the
United States is supplying military equipment to the
Indonesian government.
What is little known is that
Acheh became an issue in the administration of President
Ulysses S. Grant back in 1873 when the Dutch declared war
against the Kingdom of Acheh, a war they lost. Asked by the
Dutch government to endorse the Dutch aggression, Grant
declined. In a message to Congress, he said he had ordered
U.S. officials in the area "to observe an impartial
neutrality."
In an era where human rights
have become an integral part of U.S. foreign policy and
where a special human rights section has been set up in the
National Security Council (it will be headed by Elliott
Abrams, former assistant secretary of state for human rights
in the Reagan administration), the case of Achenese
independence cries for justice.
Arnold Beichman, a research
fellow at the Hoover Institution, is columnist for The
Washington Times. |
