Friday, Jul 4, 2008
An activist who drowned in her prison cell during last month's tsunami represented Aceh's struggle for independence.
Jan 31, 2005 | Cut Nur Asyikin was in her jail cell when the earthquake shook Indonesia's Sumatra island. She had just hung up the cellphone, reassuring her daughter that she was safe. Less than 10 minutes later, the dark, churning waves rolled in, flattening the prison and burying it in mud. Her body hasn't been found.
One of about 228,000 people who perished when the tsunami devastated Aceh, the northernmost province on Sumatra, last December, Cut Nur (pronounced "Choot Noor") was a heroine for the many Acehnese who hope for peace in the war-torn province. Known as the "Lion of Aceh," Cut Nur was a charismatic and fearless pro-independence leader. Now, amid a staggering death toll and humanitarian chaos, survivors are only just realizing that Cut Nur is among the lost.
Aceh has a history of strong women, but as a contemporary example, Cut Nur was a woman of great contradictions. She was born into privilege but in a province consumed by a brutal conflict. She was well connected among Indonesia's political elite, yet she delighted in bringing foreign journalists to meet with rebel commanders in the jungle. As both a political figure and a pop culture icon, her photo graced the glossy spreads of Indonesian women's magazines as well as the front pages of newspapers.
By siding with Aceh's bid for independence, Cut Nur took a gamble; her social stature, family, marriage, friends and ultimately her freedom were at stake. Eventually, she was arrested for treason and sentenced to 11 years in prison for her pro-independence activities. Despite her sentence, she remained relatively unfazed. Going to jail was the fate of a fighter, she told a friend. But Cut Nur wasn't your typical political prisoner, either. In one recent photo from jail, taken by friends, she wears a striking and expensive-looking green dress, her neck heavily draped with gold chains; she looks as if she is hosting a high tea rather than serving time in jail.
Cut Nur's death is a harrowing reminder of the tragedy that defined Aceh before the tsunami. Conflict has ravaged the province since the Free Aceh Movement, known by the Indonesian acronym GAM, launched its bid for independence in 1976. Citing Jakarta's mismanagement of Aceh, such as siphoning off its considerable natural-resource revenues while reinvesting little in return, rebel leaders have sought to establish an independent state. In 1989, the military sent thousands of troops into Aceh, mounting an intensive counterinsurgency campaign. Over the course of a decade, high civilian casualties and widespread atrocities such as torture, rape and massacres by state security authorities only fueled Acehnese resentment against the central government.
Since the civil war began nearly three decades ago, an estimated 12,000 have died. Although the troubled province was hardest hit by the tsunami, a new hope has sprung from the crisis: Negotiations between government officials and exiled rebel leaders have been revived for the first time since 2003. It's a development Cut Nur would have been heartened to see. The last snapshot of Cut Nur I received by e-mail shows her posed by the metal bars of her prison door. She holds up two fingers for "peace" and wears the smile of a woman laughing at her own joke.
I first met Cut Nur far from the "Porch of Mecca," as Aceh is known. It was at a trendy Dupont Circle cafe in Washington in the fall of 2000. I was on a journalism fellowship and preparing to embark for Indonesia. She was lobbying on Capitol Hill, meeting with State Department officials and human rights organizations. Surrounded by Washington's powerful intellectual institutions, we sat amid the urban student set and staffers from various think tanks. Even in the cultural diversity of Washington, the woman draped in the traditional and conservative busana muslimah and wearing a prim scarf tied at her chin stood out. She didn't speak a word of English, and she'd never been to a Western country, yet she'd come with an astute translator and was ready to take on the nation's capital.
Cut Nur had traveled halfway across the globe to prod the memories and consciences of U.S. foreign-policy makers. She didn't want them to forget what Indonesia's ex-dictator, Suharto, and his generals had done in Aceh. Human rights groups found that Indonesia's military, infamous for widespread human rights abuses, was using the same tactics in Aceh as it had in East Timor: arson, collective punishment against civilians, forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions of suspected rebels. The only difference, Cut Nur said, was that the world had forgotten Aceh.
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