The Fifth Season (33 page)

The four Garuda subsidiary and affiliated companies which, until the year before controlled the domestic skies, had either sold or returned their remaining aircraft, to repay part of their massive debts before going into receivership. It appeared that the former First Family also had substantial interests in the airline industry, but when the crunch arrived, they simply bailed out, leaving the industry to follow the same path so many of their other investments had taken. Many of these aircraft now flew as unscheduled charters, tourism having never recovered to a level which could make airline services economically viable. As she sat contemplating the events which had brought her this far, Mary Jo revisited the months following Suhapto's fall, and the uncertainty which prevailed.

By the time the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank had commenced effecting payments to stave off a total collapse, one which threatened to spark a further round of currency failures, the country had passed the point of no return. Confidence in the new Indonesian leadership continued to wane as, one by one, familiar faces belonging to the former President's clique reappeared, their renewed cloaks of respectability unable to disguise the country's failure to reform.

Then too, as swift retribution came to selected scapegoats held responsible for the nation's demise, many
ABRI
officers vanished altogether, while others slunk away quietly, to lick their wounded prides in anonymity, angered by the injustice that those really responsible, would go unpunished.

It was a time when new alliances were forged, when deals were struck and loyalties sworn. But it was also a time of deceit and empty promises, as the ambitious jockeyed for power, their eyes fixed on the forthcoming elections. And when these finally arrived, the will of the people was again ignored, the seeds of discontent finding fertile ground when it became obvious to all, that nothing had really changed.

Then, the country erupted.

At first it appeared that the students' previous occupation of Parliament had been merely a rehearsal, for when the election results became known, both Houses were all but destroyed in the ensuing attack. This time the students came prepared. When a phalanx of government troops attempted to remove students for the second time in eighteen months, the soldiers met with armed resistance and retaliated. The first volley fired accounted for more than thirty students, all shot dead inside the Parliament's chambers.

Inflamed by this action, the youngsters reacted unexpectedly.

Refusing to be intimidated by the superior fire-power, they hurled home-made petrol bombs at the troops, determined to remain where they were. The air cracked again with another barrage of bullets, then the soldiers charged with thrusting bayonets, cutting and stabbing into the throng. In less than fifteen minutes, more than two hundred students lay dead, inflaming their tens of thousands into suicidal attack, their numbers so great, the soldiers broke ranks and were overrun. Armed with their enemies' weapons, the students retained possession of the buildings, their hate fueled by the number of dead comrades. Unable to control the contagious violence, the military's assault had released a powerful frustration, and the students completely destroyed both Houses of Parliament.

Flames licked the city's late-evening skies carrying their promise of events to come while the city exploded with hate, the fragile layer separating the wealthy from the underprivileged suddenly shattered, exposed to the fierce and relentless heat.

The following days witnessed the bloodiest street rioting in the country's history as troops and students clashed repeatedly, the military crushing the demonstrators in one final pitched battle at the University of Indonesia, leaving more than two thousand killed in that one horrific week. President Hababli declared a state of emergency, unwisely imposing a nation-wide curfew as he suspended Parliament and imposed direct military rule citing not only the continuing violence, but also the destruction of the national Parliament as justification for these measures.

This further incensed the people, more so those who lived in isolated areas far from the civil unrest as their very existence depended on their freedom to farm and distribute their harvest to markets. Road blocks appeared in the most unlikely places, manned by well-armed soldiers demanding tolls.

Many peasants were shot out of hand, their deaths never reported as the military moved through the villages, raping and pillaging their own.

During this period of rapid destabilization, Mary Jo had practiced caution when traveling through the provinces. Once, she had been threatened at gun-point and, on that occasion, genuinely believed she would be shot.

Another time, her vehicle had skidded off the road into a tree, knocking both Mary Jo and her driver unconscious. A thin, red scar above her temple remained as a reminder of how close she had been to death.

And then, whilst covering the Free Aceh Movement's mobilization of cadres in North Sumatra, her assistant Anne had been badly beaten and hospitalized for days when freedom fighters mistook her for a Javanese informer. They had flown into the area immediately after reports arrived concerning the separatists' most recent uprising. Mary Jo had anticipated that fighting would erupt again when Aceh attempted to break away from the Republic. The minority group of four million had fought against Javanese domination for decades, dating back to the Eighth Century when Islam had been first introduced into Indonesia through the vibrant ports and culture of North Sumatra.

As a major foreign exchange earner, conflict between the Acehnese and their militant colonizers had boiled over into bloody, full-scale war when Jakarta had refused to consider the North Sumatran people's case. Mobil Oil's gas production and the gas-fed petrochemical industry continued to cause extensive environmental damage in the area.

Activists had continued attacks against the Arun Gas Fields, demanding that at least some of the fifteen billion dollars generated each year by this operation be reinvested in local development. Villagers, who had been forced into resettlement programs as their native lands had been appropriated, appealed to their absentee landlords for compensation. But the Javanese ignored these pleas, sending the callous
Kopassus
troops in to deal with the subversives. Mary Jo and Anne had documented the brutal clashes which had come perilously close to costing Anne her life.

Memories of the prematurely aged woman came flooding back as she remembered the interview, just hours after she had been released from the infamous Rancong detention centre. When Mary Jo first sighted the emaciated small-framed woman, she was reminded of scenes reminiscent of another era and asked Anne to postpone the interview. But, the woman had insisted, only too pleased to be given the opportunity to reveal the inhuman treatment detainees suffered inside their prison.

‘Ibu,'
Mary Jo had offered, unsure if the interview should continue,
‘we
can do this tomorrow, if you wish?'

‘No,'
she replied, her face reflecting the strength of character which had kept her alive during the brutal incarceration.
‘Please do it now. Tomorrow
will be another challenge. And who knows, they might come and take me away
again.'

‘Did they hurt you, Ibu?'
Anne had asked, holding the woman's hand.

‘No,'
she lied, leaning painfully to one side. Her back had been beaten so many times, she could not remember. She pulled at the new cloth Anne had given her, running the material between her fingers. Suddenly, the realization that she was free and alive, caused heavy fearful tears to spill down her cheeks. Fifty-five year old Jumilah had been detained for four weeks inside the prison, never expecting to survive the ordeal.

Mary Jo had done her homework before visiting Aceh. She had learned that Free Aceh Movement was founded by Hasan di Tiro, a descendant of one of Aceh's leading noble families. He unilaterally declared independence in 1976, the year Indonesia officially annexed East Timor, and initiated an armed struggle against the central government. Although, at first, there were some successes, after several years the separatists' struggle was effectively quelled, breaking out thirteen years later, in 1989. With far wider support from the local population, the separatists had forced
ABRI
onto the defensive. Concerned that the educated elite had openly sided with the insurgents, many academics were put on trial and given harsh sentences.

Aceh was declared a war zone by Jakarta, and the following year General Praboyo's
Kopassus
Special Forces were sent to the area to hunt down Free Aceh Forces, with orders to kill anyone even suspected of being a Free Aceh supporter. In the ensuing melee,
Kopassus
troops slaughtered thousands without trial, summarily executing North Sumatrans where they stood.

In one incident two members of a local football team had been hanged from the goal posts while parents were forced to witness the execution.

Then, they too were murdered, their bodies decapitated, their heads taken back to the village and placed on poles for all to see.

Upon hearing these stories, Mary Jo had insisted that Anne arrange for them to visit the notorious Rancong detention centre in the town of Lhok-seumawe. With President Suhapto gone and General Praboyo's
Kopassus
finally recalled, bereaved women started to come forward, recounting the horrors of the Javanese occupation. Vivid stories of husbands and children disappearing or being brutally beaten to death, tales of public humiliation, of women being publicly raped by the soldiers; accounts of prisoners being held in barbed-wire cells while dogs were unleashed to kill; these and a host of other incidents, were all recorded by Mary Jo and revealed to her international readers.

She reached out, and touched the strong-willed woman before her.

‘Ibu Jumilah, please tell us about conditions inside,'
Anne asked, surreptitiously bringing the tape recorder closer to the broken-spirited woman's mouth. For a moment, her eyes glazed over as recollections flooded her brain. Then, in the presence of freedom, the air sweetened by the knowledge that she had survived, Jumilah spoke.

‘I was threatened before they released me,'
she said, slowly at first, then the words spilled out in a torrent, Mary Jo's reassuring presence sufficient to trigger the truth.
‘They didn't beat me today. But they beat me every other day,'

she said, not at all embarrassed to lift her
sarong,
revealing the deep, purple and black bruising which extended from her shins, high above her knee-line.
‘They said that if I told anyone anything bad, I would be re-arrested.'
She looked up into Mary Jo's eyes.
‘You are a foreigner; they would be scared of you
and what you might say. Will you promise to watch after me if I tell you what
really happened inside?'
she pleaded, turning her head to look back over her shoulder in the general direction of her recent prison.

‘Yes, we'll take care of you,'
Anne had promised, prepared to do so even if Mary Jo could not.
‘Ibu,'
she then asked, her voice filled with obvious admiration for the woman,
‘please tell us about what it was like inside.'
Jumilah did not hesitate, comforted by the guarantee she had solicited.

‘Every waking hour, when we were not being punished by the soldiers, we
could hear the screams of others out the back of the detention center. At any time
during the day, our guards would strut past, selecting the women they would
use, then drag these from the filth we lived in, forced those they had chosen to
bathe, then service all the soldiers. One girl, I think she was eleven, was only
there for two weeks. She was raped five, sometimes ten times each day. Finally,
the Kopassus guards strangled her. They left her body for us to see. We were terrified after that.'

Mary Jo learned that Jumilah's story was not unusual. The Javanese soldiers often moved around the streets at night, arresting wives and daughters at random, throwing these women into prison for the benefit of the visiting soldiers. In Jumilah's case, Mary Jo learned that she had been arrested simply because the
Kopassus
troops had decided that the area in which she lived might have housed Free Aceh Separatists. In the one night, more than one hundred women were arrested and detained in the filthy conditions. Some were old, others barely into their teens.

‘They used electricity here,'
Jumilah said, placing her hands on her breasts and ears,
‘and here,'
she trembled, her hand falling to her lap.
‘All the young
women were raped. Others, because they were too old or too frightened, were
beaten. Some, until they died.'

Mary Jo had offered Jumilah money; had it not been for Anne's insistence, she would have refused. As the proud Acehnese grandmother was taken away, there were tears in the eyes of all present, and for Mary Jo, her memory of the strong-willed uneducated but gracious woman, evidence that the North Sumatrans resilience was perhaps more than the Javanese had reckoned with.

Following this incident, Mary Jo had flown to Indonesian Borneo and covered the mounting unrest across Kalimantan's provinces. There the traditional land owners waged war against the Javanese settlers who had been transported under a government programme called
transmigrasi,
a scheme to populate the vast, underdeveloped island. The Dayak's propensity to slaughtering strangers had not waned over the centuries, their long-houses'

interiors decorated with the heads of those who had strayed too far inland.

These indigenous people considered the Javanese migrants as interlop-ers, and part of the central government's long-term plan to displace the original inhabitants as they had in other provinces such as Bali.