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Special Report
Aceh - The True Story.
The truth is far different form what is carried in the Western Press and the Christian dominated media
By Mahmudul Aziz
The special territory of Aceh in the island of Sumatra, which is the third largest island
of Indonesia and the fifth largest in the world, is very much in the news these days.
Divergent reports keep coming in, mostly from Western news agencies, showing that there
is a complete breakdown of law and order in Aceh and a freedom movement seeking independence
from Indonesia is sweeping through the area.
Photographs of volunteers of the Free Aceh
Movement, brandishing guns, are also displayed by the Western media in the same way as
the Fretelin of East Timor were praised to the skies by this same Western media. However,
the truth is far different from what is carried in the Western press and the Christian
dominated media.
Historical background
The problem of Aceh is the creation of Western colonialism that sucked the blood of
the great Indonesian nation for more than three hundred years.
Aceh, due to its strategic
location, was the first port of call by the Western colonial naval powers in their search
for colonies and domination in Asian waters.
It was at Aceh that the first Muslim kingdom
was founded in the area. As early as the 13th century river-based Islamic kingdoms dominated
the land on both sides of the Straits of Malacca with Aceh as the central point right up to
the 19th century.
The Sultanate of Aceh in the 16th century held sway over most of the
port areas in the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra far down even to Java. Being strategically
located at the northern most tip of the island of Sumatra, Aceh controlled the straits
of Malacca just as Sultanate of Oman and Iran today tower over the Straits of Hormuz,
though they may not control it due to the binding nature of present international maritime
conventions and treaties.
However, in the days of the early colonial push by the Western
nations of Europe, whose dirty game was fully understood by the Acehnese Muslims, the
strongest resistance to the colonial powers built up in the area of Aceh and this continued
till about the beginning of the 20th century, when the people of then East Indies and present
day Indonesia launched their modern democratic struggle leading to the founding of the
Indonesian Republic on August 17, 1945.
It was the Muslims of Aceh, who through their heroism
and sacrifice contributed to the freedom struggle which succeeded in the year 1945.
The Sultanate of Aceh enjoyed its glorious period in the 17th century when the most famous
of its rulers, Sultan Sikander Muda, ushered in the golden age of the Sultanate of Aceh.
Sultan Sikander obtained the fiefdom of over thirty smaller port-city states located on
both sides of the Malacca straits and ruled over territories that encompassed most of Sumatra
and parts of the Malayan peninsula. He fought battles on land and in the sea consecutively
against the Western colonialists and gave them crushing defeats.
The Portuguese,
the British and the Dutch one after the other tried to attack Banda Aceh, the capital
of Aceh Sultanate but were repulsed with huge losses. The Sultanate of Aceh controlled
the maritime route for the spice trade of the East Indies and China that flowed out to Europe.
The colonialists were therefore forced to pay homage to the Sultan of Aceh and the transit
taxes as levied by the Sultan’s officers on the high seas and on land in the river ports where
the colonialists called.
The Sultanate of Aceh was the main bastion of Muslim resistance in the
East Indies against Western colonial domination. During the rule of Sultan Sikander Muda which
lasted between 1604 to 1637 the Sultanate of Aceh flourished to its zenith and defeated all its
rivals including the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English on land and sea.
Dutch occupation
After the death of Sultan Sikander, his successors did not prove as competent and strong
with the result that gradually the size of the Sultanate of Aceh shrank and finally the
Dutch besieged the capital Banda Aceh with the largest army ever marshalled by the colonialists
in the East Indies.
Various accounts place the force at 30,000 men and more than six hundred
ships with guns. The Achenese forces fought the Dutch onslaught but were finally defeated.
Most of the Achenese fled into the mountains, the Bukittingi mountain range providing them
natural protection while the Dutch were content with the seizure of the capital city which
they later linked by railroad with the Southern city of Medan in the 19th century. However,
the Dutch control of Banda Aceh did not mean easy going for the colonialists.
The Dutch lived
in the cities in stockades and a regular army stood guard over the cities in the Aceh area
till the Japanese invasion. Insurrections kept breaking out in the Aceh area against the Dutch,
the most successful was the one waged by Muslim leader Tenku Umar, who continued the rebellion
and guerrilla war against the Dutch from 1873 to 1903 and at one time was near victory against
the Dutch, had the treacherous British not helped the Dutch along with the nearby Dutch vassal
states.
Tenku Umar is one of the national heroes of Indonesia in respect of the long history of
Indonesian war of independence against the colonial powers. The British had their ‘dirty
contribution’ to colonialism in Aceh when they took over the Dutch possessions in 1814
following the Napoleonic wars in Europe when Holland was under French control.
The British stayed in Banda Aceh till 1925 when they withdrew following the peace agreement
in Europe, with the downfall of Napoleon and under which agreement the Dutch reclaimed the
East Indies from the British.
Freedom movement
The Muslim freedom movement in Indonesia kept receiving support from the Achenese Muslims
and Banda Aceh became an important centre of Muslim revolutionaries during the long struggle
against the Dutch colonialists. The freedom urge of the Indonesian people could not be
suppressed by the Dutch and their death-knell was sounded in the East Indies when the Japanese
overran the Dutch territories in East Indies and were forced to respect the Indonesian freedom
movement, having a very strong base in Aceh.
When the Second World War ended and Indonesia was
born on August 17, 1945, Aceh was part of the Indonesian republic and continues to be so.
However, giving due consideration to the important role of Achenese in the freedom struggle
just as Jakarta and Jogjakarta the territory of Aceh was given special status called ‘Daera
Istamewa’.
The special territory of Aceh covers an area of 55,392 square kilometres. It has a population
variously estimated at five to seven million, though many dispute it and say that it is four
and a half million. But everyone agrees that the population of Aceh special territory is
overwhelmingly Muslim, almost 98 per cent.
The biggest mosque in Banda Aceh is a fine example
of architecture with Achenese tenor. There are more than six thousand schools, nine higher
learning institutes and three universities. The literacy rate is above 90 per cent and Madaris
are an important apart of the education system which keeps the Islamic image of Aceh resplendent.
It has huge deposits of natural gas and oil while the agricultural resources include rubber,
palm oil, cloves, nutmegs, sugarcane, cashew nuts, coffee and coconut. The staple food is rice,
corn and sweet potatoes.
Aceh is rich in agriculture and mineral resources while its marine resources are also very
rich and varied. The industrialisation of the area has promoted plywood, rubber and coconut
oil and also building material industries. The animal wealth includes horses, cows, buffaloes,
goats and sheep. This makes Aceh special territory economically rich and per capita income is
high. As a result the Achenese population has been demanding greater participation in Indonesian
national political scene.
Demands for autonomy
The people of the special administrative province of Aceh are currently undergoing a
qualitative change following the ushering in of multi-party democratic practice in Indonesia.
As a result currents and cross currents are at work there causing the rise of demands for
autonomy combined with a Free Aceh movement.
However, the government of Indonesia led by
President Abdulrahman Wahid is seeking a negotiated settlement of the unrest in the area and
should succeed in its efforts where others failed in the past. This is because the previous
regime of president Soeharto kept the Aceh area under strict control with a high military
presence. Many riots took place in the thirty two years that Soeharto ruled over Indonesia
and the Achenese suffered. Soeharto was convinced that solution to the unrest in Aceh lay in
strict military control of the area. When Soeharto stepped down and Habibie became the interim
President, relaxation of military control over Aceh followed. The various excesses committed by
the military in Aceh were not only acknowledged but regretted. However, the unrest continued in
Aceh. The June, 1999 general elections in Indonesia and the emergence of a coalition government
headed by a revered Muslim leader such as Abdulrahman Wahid has brought new hope to the residents
of Aceh that they would get a fair deal now within the framework of ‘unity in diversity’, the
original plank of the unity of the Republic of Indonesia, as declared by the founding fathers in 1945.
However, the detractors of Indonesia have been at work too. First the detractors raised issue
over East Timor but were thwarted in their designs when the Indonesian leadership, including
the military, agreed to let East Timor go its way. The detractors of Indonesia are now busy
raising the bogey of an independent Aceh, forgetting the fact that the Achenese are
overwhelmingly Muslims and Indonesia is the largest Islamic country in the world.
A better handling of the political situation in Aceh would remove the seeds of discontent and
strengthen the unity of the Republic of Indonesia. President Abdurrahman Wahid has already
started that process. He has wisely sought the assistance of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed
of Malaysia in the effort to bring about pacification in Aceh and the assimilation of the
Achenese in the mainstream of Indonesian politics. More autonomy is one of the options.
The people of Aceh speak the Bahasa Indonesia which is spoken in all other parts of Indonesia
as also in Malaysia. Therefore, the efforts of the detractors to create a religious or ethnic
divide inside Aceh would not succeed. In fact, an Aceh with more autonomy would be a source of
strength to the mainstream of Indonesian politics and directed towards nation building Aceh
could certainly achieve a high level of economic prosperity thus countering the extremists who
are basically the product of the special suppressive laws enforced in Aceh during the three
decades of Soeharto rule.
The Indonesian Republic has faced divisive movements in several of
its provinces in the past and overcome the same with wisdom and foresight. The same process
is now underway in Aceh and holds the promise of a satisfactory solution which would bring
new hope to the Indonesian nation and defeat the designs of Indonesia’s detractors. The new
millennium augurs well for such a settlement in Aceh and for Indonesia.
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