Journalist Allan Nairn Facing Possible Arrest in Indonesia for Exposing US-Backed Forces Assassinate

[Jefferson23]

In Indonesia, investigative journalist Allan Nairn is facing possible arrest for exposing that US-backed Indonesian armed forces assassinated a series of civilian activists last year. Since Allan Nairn broke the news of the assassination program on Democracy Now! on Friday, the Indonesian press has been buzzing with the allegations. A military spokesman told the Jakarta Globe that the military is considering legal action against Nairn. Earlier today, Nairn issued a public challenge to the Indonesian military to arrest him so that he could face off with the military in open court.

Guests:

Allan Nairn, investigative journalist and activist.

Damien Kingsbury, professor at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of several books on Indonesia, including Power Politics and the Indonesian Military.


snip* Since Allan Nairn broke the news of the assassination program here on Democracy Now! last Friday, the Indonesian press has been buzzing with the allegations. A military spokesman told the Jakarta Globe that the military is considering legal action against Allan Nairn. Earlier today, Allan issued a public threat—a public challenge to the Indonesian military to arrest him so that he could face off with the military in open court.


Allan Nairn is no stranger to the Indonesian military. In 1991, Allan and I survived a massacre in East Timor, when more than 270 Timorese were killed by US-backed Indonesian soldiers. In 1999, Allan sneaked back into East Timor and reported on the Indonesian military atrocities there as the Indonesian soldiers burned much of East Timor to the ground. They arrested Allan, but he continued reporting from prison.


Well, last night we reached Allan in Indonesia to discuss the latest developments.


ALLAN NAIRN: In the article, I described how the Indonesian armed forces, which are armed and trained by the United States, have been running a program of assassinating political activists, and I described in detail their assassinations in Aceh in 2009 in the run-up to the local elections there, where at least eight activists for the pro-independence PA, Partai Aceh, were assassinated. And I quote senior Indonesian officials saying that these assassinations were coordinated on the regional level by a general named Sunarko, a Kopassus general. I reached Sunarko on the phone, and he acknowledged to me that his men were involved in these assassinations. But he said, “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that this was a project of the military as an institution.”


He also, this general who ran the assassination program, told me that he was an enthusiastic supporter of President Obama’s plan to restore full aid to the Indonesian armed forces, and he then went on to describe in detail his own training by the United States. He says they’ve been training him since the 1980s. He regards them as close partners, and he loves Obama’s plan because he says it will make the partnership still more intimate, in his words. General Sunarko, the Kopassus general who in Timor in 1999 helped run the militias that burned 80 percent of the buildings in Timor, that conducted church massacres, etc., and who now has been running this assassinations program in Aceh, he said that he was trained by the US military, the US Pacific Command, mobile training teams in jungle warfare, logistics and many other subjects, and he said that he was most recently trained by the US in 2006. So he’s a very enthusiastic backer of Obama’s plan to restore aid for the US military, and specifically for Kopassus, the special forces, the most notorious unit of that military.

In full: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/24/exclusivejournalist_allan_nairn_facing_possible_arrest