Obama's Bad Prescription for Indonesia

President Barack Obama dedicated the
signing of health care legislation to a number of people, including his
mother, S. Ann Dunham Soetoro, who, he said, "argued with insurance
companies even as she battled cancer in her final days." The health care
legislative process and its frenetic endgame prompted the president to
postpone a trip to the country where his mother raised him for several
years of his childhood: Indonesia. While his health care bill is
considered by many a huge step forward, Obama is simultaneously, and
with far less scrutiny, potentially taking a huge step backward with
Indonesia.

News is breaking in Indonesia about the
role of the Indonesian military in the murder of political activists in
the province of Aceh last year, in the lead-up to elections.

This is happening while the White House is
engaged in fierce behind-the-scenes negotiations with Congress on
whether to restore aid to the Indonesian military, including one of its
most notorious elements, the special-forces command known as Kopassus.
Military aid to Indonesia was suspended in 1999 after its military, the
TNI, unleashed a campaign of terror on the people of East Timor. In
2005, the Bush administration partially restored military aid, but
conspicuously denied aid and training to the Kopassus, thanks largely to
the efforts of grass-roots activists and the intervention of Sen.
Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

My colleague Allan Nairn, reporting from
Indonesia, broke the story this past week on "Democracy Now!," the news
hour I host, and on his blog, allannairn.com. He reported that the TNI
"assassinated a series of civilian activists during 2009 ... as part of a
secret government program, authorized from Jakarta, coordinated in part
by an active-duty, U.S.-trained Kopassus special-forces general who has
just acknowledged on the record that his TNI men had a role in the
killings." Aceh is a resource-rich province at the western tip of
Indonesia. After the devastation Aceh suffered in the tsunami of 2004,
the government reached a political settlement with the Free Aceh
Movement. The elections in 2009 were a result of that. Nairn details two
of the eight assassinations of members of the pro-independence Partai
Aceh, citing numerous sources, most of whom, fearing for their safety,
remain unnamed.

Allan and I are no strangers to the
Indonesian military. In 1991, we survived a massacre in East Timor. East
Timor was invaded by Indonesia in 1975, with the full support of
President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In the
next quarter-century, the Indonesian military killed more than 200,000
Timorese, a third of the population. Allan and I went there to report on
the situation and ended up covering a march to a cemetery in Timor's
capital city, Dili. As the mass of unarmed civilians was hemmed in by
the cemetery walls, Indonesian soldiers marched in formation, their
U.S.-supplied M-16s at the ready, and without warning, without
provocation, opened fire on the crowd. Allan and I were beaten to the
ground. Swinging their M-16s like baseball bats, the soldiers fractured
Allan's skull. We survived, but more than 270 Timorese were killed that
day. We managed to escape, and to report on the massacre. While I was
denied entry in 1999, Allan sneaked in to Timor and reported on the TNI
atrocities there, as they burned much of East Timor to the ground. They
arrested Allan, but he continued reporting from prison, giving new
meaning to "cell phone."

Since Allan broke the news this past week, the Indonesian press has been
buzzing with the allegations. Air Vice Marshal Sagom Tamboen, a
spokesman for the TNI, told the Jakarta Globe that the military is
considering legal action against Nairn. Nairn told me, "I welcome this
threat from TNI, a force which has murdered many hundreds of thousands,
and challenge them to arrest me so that we can face off in open court."

Human Rights Watch recently wrote a letter
to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates, outlining serious concerns about possible re-engagement with
Kopassus. ETAN, the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network, has
launched a petition campaign at etan.org to block the funding.

Much of the political class in the United
States is now chattering and twittering about the health care bill's
passage into law, and the potential political consequences. They should
spend time focusing on Obama's plans for Indonesia, and the possibility
that he may restore funding and training for one of the world's most
notorious, human-rights-abusing military forces, the Indonesian
Kopassus.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to
this column.