Tsunami Program

Marsen Sinaga

What are presented here about important and relevant developments in the last 4 months are based on observation, informal talks and reading various news and reports.

I. Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of post-tsunami Aceh

A recurrent issue and problem on the area of Aceh’s reconstruction and rehabilitation after tsunami is the fact that the poorest of the poor in Aceh are not benefited much from the windfalls of tsunami and peace related funds while there are many criticism about corruption and a newly formed economic elite.

An unpublished paper by George Yunus Adicondro titled “Profiting from Peace: The Political Economy of Aceh’s post-Helsinki Reconstruction”, concluded 2 important things.

First, some groups with money, power and gun have accumulated capital in a corrupt way. Of those forms of corrupt capital accumulation, the most harmful form of corruption is the systemic corruption of Aceh and Nias’s Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Body (BRR). The systemic corruption in BRR took the form of a highly irrational salary of its staff and its affiliation and connection to business groups. There have been lately many accusation and protests about the corrupt practices of BRR. Even Irwandi Yusuf, the Governor of Aceh, filed a complaint against BRR with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Second, much of the reconstruction aid is not enjoyed by village people in Aceh. He observed that as indicated by budget figures, at least sixty percent of rehabilitation and reconstruction funds allocated for Aceh has left the province each year. This flow of fund is caused by four factors. First, it is mostly outside contractors that won the project tenders; second, the construction work is often further subcontracted to firms from outside Aceh; third, most of the project workers come from outside Aceh; and fourth, most building material comes from outside Aceh.

A stronger conclusion about the injustice of the reconstruction in Aceh was presented by George Aditjondro in his other unpublished paper titled “Reconstruction without Social Transformation: Observations from Aceh’s eastern coast”. He found out that only those with power, money and guns could accumulate capital and benefit much from the peace and control resources. He observed that the reconstruction process so far has not changed the social structure and bureaucratic culture. Those in the bottom of the social ladder, including those in the bottom of the guerilla movement, have mostly stayed on the bottom, while those on the top of the ladder, including those on top of the independent movement (GAM/KPA), have enjoyed and moved nicely into the national, regional and international arena.

II. Peace Process after the MoU Helsinki

Edward Aspinall working for Center for Humanitarian Dialogue just released his report titled “Peace Without Justice? The Helsinki Peace Process in Aceh”. Using a question mark in the title represents his finding about the implementation of the peace agreement in Aceh. He do admitted that the MoU contributed tremendously to the situation in Aceh by stopping the violence and halted most of the gross and egregious abuses which are part of daily life during the conflict years. But he critically proved that since the signing of the MoU, the issues of human rights and justice are least successfully implemented. He pointed three reasons for this.

First is the limited ability of international actors, mainly during the involvement of the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AMM) that de facto had a quite strong leverage but chose not to get into the sensitive political issues too deep.

Second is the fact that GAM itself was not as concerned with human rights agenda as their campaign might have suggested. That was also the case with the Indonesian government as another party to the agreement. During the negotiation sessions, GAM was more preoccupied with other issues especially on political power and reintegration fund.

Third is that the national institutional and political frameworks was not supportive to the installment of 2 institutions related to human rights in Aceh, that is Human Rights Court and Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The findings and conclusion of Edward Aspinall was almost similar with an older report written by Leena Avonius titled “Aceh Peace Process: Perspective of Human Rights Organizations”. While admitting that Human Rights Court and Truth and Reconciliation Commission are measures needed to keep the peace process on track, he also saw the weak legal and institutional frameworks in the national level to support the measures to be realized. What he proposed as a truly important process in institutionalizing justice in Aceh was a wide consensus on what is understood by “justice”. All must be based on a commonly shared principle among acehnese. We need to understand what a just society is according to Acehnese. Two sources that can be tapped to understand the shared meaning of justice among Acehnese are religion and culture that are quite strong in Aceh.

Aceh Conflict Monitoring Update released every month by Conflict and Development observed almost the same concern regarding the peace process for the last 4 months. Conflicts are in the rise and violence remains high. There have been various killings and kidnappings. Another concern raised in the Update is the increasing divide between GAM/KPA elite and the rank-and-file who did not benefit as much from the economic windfalls of peace.