Word: aceh
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...supporter for three hours; banners and chants are extra.) The question is whether Megawati can maintain a semblance of order. She has stronger backing than Wahid in parliament. And the military likes her: they share a common abhorrence of the separatist fever sweeping through Aceh and Papua (the former Irian Jaya) provinces. Her dynastic birthright helps too. Megawati is the daughter of Sukarno, the country's founding President...
...insouciance is charming. But if it makes the military think it can push the new President around, the charm will wear off. Megawati owes a great deal to the generals, but their support comes at a price. They will insist that the new President allow them to deal with Aceh and Papua in the only way they know how--with guns blazing...
...past few months, as Wahid bickered with parliament, the military took the offensive. Security forces moved three more battalions into the oil- and gas-rich province of Aceh; there are now 40,000 troops and police there. The army has burned villages and kidnapped suspected collaborators of the Free Aceh Movement. Often these missing Acehnese turn up on the side of the road, shot to death after being tortured. "The military is using brute force to eliminate everything in its path--including civilians," says a Western diplomat in Jakarta. For all Wahid's flaws, he tried to improve the military...
...precipitated the overthrow of Suharto, much less from the resulting political turmoil that has produced three presidents in three years. Hanging over all is the fear that the entire country might descend into a violent disintegration similar to the bloodbath that accompanied East Timor's independence. Separatist rebellions in Aceh and Irian Jaya and inter-communal violence in the Moluccas and elsewhere show that the patchwork of ethnic enclaves that became a nation-state only by dint of their common colonization by the Dutch is now threatening to fall apart...
...restraining the army from going in to the breakaway provinces and and committing the sorts of human rights abuses we saw last year in East Timor. I think Megawati is going to give the army a free rein to go in and crush the separatist uprisings in Aceh and Irian Jaya...