INDONESIAN TROOPS KILL 16 ACEH SEPARATISTS, INCLUDING TWO WOMEN

November 15, 2003 – (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) Indonesian troops killed 16 separatist rebels, including two women, in war-torn Aceh province where a six-month-old military offensive has already claimed more than 1,000 dead, military sources said on Saturday.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ahmad Yani Basuki said that at least 16 members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) were killed in various firefights Friday throughout the province, situated about 1,700 kilometres northwest of Jakarta.

Basuki said two of the fresh victims were women, reported the state-run Antara news agency. He acknowledged that only four of the dead had been
identified.

Indonesia placed Aceh under martial law on May 19, after a five- month-old ceasefire between the government and the GAM fell apart.

Over the past six months the military, which has dispatched 40,000 troops to wipe out an estimated 5,000 GAM, has killed about 1,000 rebels and captured another 1,000.

Human rights groups, however, claim that many of the so-called rebels were in fact civilians.

The Indonesian government recently decided to keep the province under martial law for another six months, and has intensifed a military campaign to wipe out the GAM, a separatist movement that has been fightinmg to establish an independent Aceh state since 1976.

Aceh has a long history of resistence against oppression. It was the first province to take up arms against Portuguese traders, the first Westerners to
pioneer to Indonesian archipelago.

Aceh was also the last province to be conquered by the Dutch colonialists in 1903.

The province openly rebelled against Indonesia's newly established post-independence government when it declared itself a separate Islamic Republic in September, 1953 until 1959.

GAM, motivated by what they deemed unfair economic exploitation of Aceh's rich resources by the central government, in Jakarta, launched its struggle for independence in December, 1976.

Over the past 27 years of fighting more than 12,000 people have fallen victim to the conflict, most of them civilians.