ACHEH-SUMATRA NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT (ASNLF )
ACHEH NATIONAL ARMED FORCES ( TNA )
CENTRAL MILITARY COMMAND

PRESS RELEASE
Okt. 24. 2003

1. In the name and on behalf of the TNA Commander-in-chief, Muzakkir Manaf, we wish the people of Acheh Happy and Safe performance of the holy duty of Ramadhan, and to urge them to increase their religious activities and prayers, and to ask Allah for His Blessings and to give us all patience in this very trying time of our national struggle. God willing the national struggle of the people of Acheh will be successful. The enemies of the people of Acheh no longer know how to perpetrate their propagandas of falsehood, as nobody in the world believe them anymore except for those who are as tyrannical as themselves. Indonesia does no longer have a future as a nation because it is experiencing the destruction of its economy, with debts continuously accumulating, and international confidence in it is at its lowest ever. Internally, its political life is in chaos, the moral of its self-serving leaders who do not care at all for the welfare of their people everywhere, including for those in Java, has reached the bottom of the pit. These all are signs of collapse of a nation.

 2. On the matter of the ceasefire during the month of Ramadhan, as proposed by a large grouping of Achehnese as well as Indonesian civil society organizations, we are all for it, but the Indonesian military has flatly rejected the idea. When the TNA declared a unilateral ceasefire last year, the Indonesian military took the opportunity to attack our stronghold at Cot Trieng and surrounded the area that we had successfully vacated, raining the swamp for the whole month with almost daily mortar and aerial bombardments; they also reinforced their strength by bringing more troops to Acheh. Consequently for this year, the TNA plans to only minimize the use of our weapons and to call on the Indonesian military to do the same.

 3. Indonesia has repeated again denigrating itself. They have deployed tens of thousands of soldiers, spent trillions of rupiah in the vain attempt to subdue the people of Acheh. In panic, the Indonesian military are now resorting to all sorts of cowardly measures:

 a) the use of women and children as human shields in every operation they are carrying out against our forces. It is most shameful when the soldiers are wearing bulletproof vests while the civilians are forced to walk in front of them.

 b) Villagers are being forced at gunpoint to gather and make declarations demanding the extension of the Martial Law. This old farce will not improve their image in the eyes of the world community, because the whole world knows already that the declarations are stage-managed.

 c) Pitting components of the Achenese community against each other by forcing a very small number of religious leaders to go to Jakarta in order to request the extension of the Martial Law, with the intention of showing as though these religious leaders are no longer siding with the popular struggle. This divide and rule trick will also fail, because we, the people of Acheh will always love and respect our religious leaders. Nevertheless it is necessary to remind those ulamas who have let themselves be used by the Indonesian military, to return to their true calling and to listen to the plight and suffering of the people of Acheh under the oppressive rule of the Negara Kolonialis RI (NKRI).

 d) Indonesia is again using the law left over by the Dutch colonial government to arrest and detain Achehnese peace negotiators and to put them on farcical trials. This betrayal of civilized international norms clearly shows that Indonesian leaders have completely abandoned values of humanity and common decency. How is it possible to jail peace negotiators for sentences running up to 15 years?

 4. We call on the international community to intervene immediately in order to stop this humanity crisis in Acheh. We urge the international humanitarian agencies and NGOs, to send humanitarian aids immediately and directly to Acheh, and not channeling such aids through the corrupt Indonesian colonial government agencies that have been proven again and again to be one of the most corrupt in the world. Government officers in Jakarta are behaving like common thieves and have rendered the Achehnese into abject poverty.

 Central Military Command,

For and on behalf of the TNA Commander-in-Chief,

 Sofjan Dawood

Military Spokesman.