| 'For having been carrying out so courageously our call to observe the general strike for the second day, which has been as highly successful.'
'Indonesian officials are running out of ideas and sane thinking in their attempts to force the people to stop the strike.'
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 undreds of thousands of the sons and daughters of Acheh have been so cruelly lost to the colonial oppressions, in the past as well as in this modern time.
The Central Military Command of ASNLF/GAM wishes to thank all the peopleof Acheh, once again, for having been carrying out so courageously our call to observe the general strike for the second day, which has been as highly successful as that of the first day, despite the increasing atrocities perpetrated by the Indonesian military.
The Central Military Command of ASNLF/GAM deplores the attitude of the TVRI station in Kutaraja (Banda Acheh) that has been too one sided in its reporting. In its Regional News bulletin broadcasted in the afternoon of January 17, 2002, this station
deliberately manipulated the situation of the TOTAL
STRIKE of the Achenese People, by airing an old
videoclip showing the traffic situation in the the
capital of Acheh, claiming the "normal" condition it
presented as that of the second day of the strike. We
regret very much such an unacceptable cheating of the public as performed by theTVRI, that is unprofessional in its one-sided posture and acting as a propaganda machine for the Indonesian government.
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Viewed from their actions in the field, it is very clear that Indonesian officials are running out of ideas and sane thinking in their attempts to force the people to stop the strike. They forced the drivers of the public transport vehicles to sign an attendance list at designated places and they forced shopkeepers to open for business under the threat of having their premises burnt down, proving that there isn't a single person among the Indonesian officials who is capable of rational thinking. Such officials should be dismissed immediately even though they might have been appointed only recently to their respective posts.
It is the same on the military side; the Indonesian security forces have been exerting pressures on the mass media in order not to accept for publication ASNLF's statements or those from NGOs that are not in line with the Indonesian government policies, an action that is of course against the principles of the freedom of the press, if such pressures were exerted deliberately with full understanding of the said principles, or showing the lack of knowledge on the part of the Indonesian military officers on those principles, if their actions were carried out unwittingly.
Teungku Sofyan Dawod is an ASNLF Military Spokesman/Tiro Central Command. |
