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Military links stay, despite the atrocities
By GERVASE GREENE (The Age)
The Federal Government will maintain its close links with Indonesian military forces despite evidence that the military has committed atrocities throughout Indonesia during the past nine years.
The continuing contact will include the controversial practice of joint exercises and training exchanges with Kopassus, the Indonesian elite special forces most heavily implicated in the atrocities.
About 250 Indonesian officers from middle to senior ranks are involved in training with - and often directed by - Australian Defence Force officers.
Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights this week reported that the Indonesian armed forces (ABRI) had been responsible for the deaths of at least 781 people in the separatist north-western province of Aceh and in the disappearance of 163 others.
One mass grave has been found and widespread rape and torture during nine years of repression is being investigated.
Reports across Indonesia have identified many similar military campaigns, on the main island of Java as well as the more publicised dissident areas of Irian Jaya, East Timor and northern Sumatra.
A Foreign Affairs Department spokesman said Australia's policy would continue. ``We've got to remember that ABRI is one of the few truly national organisations in Indonesia,'' he said. ``Secondly, the ABRI leadership recognises that its role has to change, that it has to look more to the political aspect of its operations ... and move with the times.''
He said the relationship would continue despite the sidelining of some of Australia's closest friends in the Indonesian military elite, including the former presidential aspirant and head of Kopassus, Lieutenant-General Prabowo Subianto, sacked for his role in the torture and killing of political dissidents.
Human rights organisations believe more acts of repression on a similar scale to that of Aceh will be revealed later this year as the backlash against the Soeharto years continues.
Up to 300 people are believed to have been killed in Jakarta's Tanjung Priok harbor area in 1984 in a crackdown on Muslim agitation, directed by the then Defence Minister, General Benni Moerdani.
Publisher of Inside Indonesia, Mr Gerry Van Klinken, said that this episode and other killings were well documented. ``There are mass graves all over the archipelago, from one end to the other,'' he said.
Australia's defence attache in Jakarta, Brigadier Jim Molan, has been one of the strongest advocates of the policy.
But in an unpublished paper for the ANU's Centre for Strategic and Defence Studies earlier this year, he reportedly conceded that the Foreign Affairs Department had warned against the risks of dealing too closely with Kopassus.
However, some observers believe the policy has been successful enough to ensure Australia is not isolated for supporting now-discredited ABRI leaders.
``The current ABRI leadership is by and large well disposed towards Australia, and it's important to remember that our contacts go far wider than just Kopassus,'' said Mr Alan Dupont, a fellow of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.
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