Exposing U.S.-backed Indonesian Military Assassinations Leads to Arrest Threats and Censorship for Journalist

From  Institute for Public Accuracy
980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org

 Investigative reporter Allan Nairn recently broke a story of 
assassinations by the Indonesian military: "According to senior 
Indonesian officials and police and details from government files, the 
U.S.-backed Indonesian armed forces (TNI), now due for fresh American 
aid, assassinated a series of civilian activists during 2009. The 
killings were part of a secret government program, authorized from 
Jakarta, and were coordinated in part by an active-duty, U.S.-trained 
general in the special forces unit called Kopassus who has just 
acknowledged on the record that his TNI men had a role in the killings.

     "The news comes as President Barack Obama is reportedly due to 
announce that he is reversing longstanding U.S. policy -- imposed by 
Congress in response to grassroots pressure -- of restricting categories 
of U.S. assistance to TNI, a force that, during its years of U.S. 
training, has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians." See in The 
Nation magazine: "Washington's Indonesian Bully Boys" 
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100405/nairn

     Following these revelations, the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday reported 
that the Indonesian military is considering legal action against Nairn. 
On Wednesday, Nairn reports he was on METRO TV, an Indonesian news 
channel, and was censored a few minutes after the interview began.

     Obama was scheduled to be in Indonesia this week, but delayed his 
trip. In a recent interview with RCTI, an Indonesian TV network, Obama 
remarked that there were human rights abuses "in the past" but that with 
the "advent of democracy," the Indonesian military has been "focusing on 
external security issues."

     Nairn responded this morning: "These assassinations that I'm just 
reporting happened while Obama was president. While he was presiding 
over the training of, according to the Indonesian defense ministry, 
thousands of Indonesian military people. While he was shipping weapons 
and equipment to the Indonesian military. ...

     "Secondly, when he refers to external security issues that the 
Indonesian armed forces are focusing on, I would challenge the president 
to name one. There is absolutely no external security threat to 
Indonesia. Singapore is not about to invade. Australia is not about to 
invade. What the Indonesian armed forces are focusing on is what they've 
always focused on: the internal repression of the population. And now 
it's most intensive in the eastern part of the country, in Papua, which 
is under de facto occupation. But also, they were doing these -- they've 
been doing these political assassinations in Aceh. So what Obama says is 
just false." See Democracy Now story 

     Nairn has also questioned the authenticity of Indonesian democracy 
under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a U.S. military-trained former 
general. Said Nairn: "The army vetted all the candidates, as did the 
oligarchs." See this Democracy Now story as well.