Slayings, Disappearances Mark Unrest in Indonesia : Revolt: Aceh province has seen a brutal struggle between separatists and an overwhelming army force.

When Indonesian troops took them last month, the two men had each attained a minor prominence in this dusty, isolated town: One was the prayer leader of the local mosque, the other was the soccer team’s popular goalie.

In a clearing between the palm tree plantations on the outskirts of town, the men were executed with a pistol shot in the back of the head, according to eyewitness accounts reported to human rights groups. When the soldiers then could not find the keys to their manacles, the hands of the victims were neatly chopped off.

The gruesome scene forms part of an unfolding tapestry of violence in Aceh, a province on the northern tip of Indonesia’s island of Sumatra. For 14 months, Aceh has witnessed a brutal struggle between a tiny liberation movement trying to gain independence for the province, long known as the “veranda of Islam,” and the army’s efforts to crush separatist sentiment with an overwhelming show of force.

Foreign human rights investigators and Western diplomats in Jakarta now estimate that up to 5,000 people have been killed or have “disappeared” in the province, which has a population of 3 million.

Although killing has taken place on both sides, human rights activists say the preponderance of violence appears to originate with the Indonesian army, part of a broad government campaign to wipe out the insurgency before parliamentary elections are held throughout Indonesia next year.

Vice President Dan Quayle reportedly raised the problem of the killings privately with Indonesian officials during his visit to Jakarta last month.

But for the most part, Western nations, which raised an outcry over killing of students in China and Myanmar in recent years, have remained mute about the situation in Aceh (pronounced a-CHAY).

“There is a large number of cases of summary executions, certainly in the hundreds,” said Sidney R. Jones, executive director of Asia Watch, the New York-based human rights organization. He recently visited Aceh. “There are hundreds of disappearances in which nobody knows if someone is alive or dead. The practice of arbitrary arrest is widespread.”

In Aceh’s towns and villages, the discovery of bodies along the side of the road has become commonplace. A taxi driver explained to one recent visitor that he is regularly approached near the border with Medan province by villagers begging for money to bury the bodies of strangers left during the night.

“Everyone in Aceh is afraid,” said one resident, who requested anonymity. “Every family has had a victim. Emotionally, everyone is involved.”

So far, 20 people have been brought to trial on charges of subversion against the government. All have been convicted--most had confessed a link to the insurgency--and have been sentenced to between 14 and 20 years in prison. Many of those tried were university professors or intellectuals.

The government had long contended that terrorist actions in the province, which have ranged from school burnings to assassination of government officials, were the work of nonpolitical “security disturbers” known by the initials in Indonesian, GPK. The government alleged that the GPK was little more than a cartel of marijuana dealers and army deserters.

But during the trials, which began in March, prosecutors acknowledged openly for the first time that the accused had formed links with the separatist group known as Aceh Merdaka, which means “Free Aceh” in the local language. Defendants even openly acknowledge that up to 200 Aceh Merdaka supporters had been sent to Libya for military training.

Aceh Merdaka was formed in 1976 by an Aceh expatriate named Hasan Tiro, who worked for a time at the Indonesian Consulate in Los Angeles and is now a U.S. citizen.

The group was active for about a year in the late 1970s and was neutralized by mass arrests by security forces. Aceh Merdaka appears to have gone into hibernation until a series of bomb attacks in April, 1990, signaled the reawakening of Aceh nationalism.

Aceh has a long and colorful history, much of it violent. The Sultan of Aceh signed a trade treaty with Elizabeth I of Britain in the 16th Century, and the province became known as “the veranda of Islam” because it was the staging point for the pilgrimage to Mecca for all of Muslim Asia.

Alcohol and dancing are forbidden in Aceh and its residents adhere to a more fundamentalist brand of Islam than their brethren in the rest of secular Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Under Dutch colonial rule, the people of Aceh fought a vicious war of independence in the 19th Century that lasted for 35 years before collapsing. After World War II, Aceh was incorporated into free Indonesia, which was made up of dozens of ethnic groups but dominated by the Javanese, the biggest ethnic group in the country.

Aceh Merdaka and its supporters argue that the Javanese have become neocolonialists, exploiting Aceh’s mineral and petrochemical wealth--it is home to a vast natural gas project--but returning little in the way of benefits.

In the 1950s, a separatist group called Darul Islam rebelled against Jakarta when the central government tried to merge Aceh with another province. In the end, the Indonesian government capitulated and gave Aceh the status of a “special region.”

According to diplomats, Aceh Merdaka is still nominally controlled by Tiro from his exile home in Sweden, but day-to-day operations are directed by supporters in Kuala Lumpur and Penang in Malaysia, just across the Malacca Strait from Aceh.

Malaysia’s involvement with Aceh blossomed into an international incident earlier this year when 109 Aceh “boat people” crossed to Malaysia and requested political asylum to escape the clashes between the rebels and the army. Indonesia indignantly demanded that the people be returned, but Malaysia has dithered, in part because it prides itself on taking a strong stand on Islamic issues.

Western diplomats in Jakarta believe that the government’s crackdown has at least partially succeeded in crushing Aceh Merdaka. Estimates of remaining full-time guerrilla fighters in the province range from a high of 200 to a low of just 20. Many of them undoubtedly are, as the government says, army deserters or drug dealers who have conveniently latched on to the banner of independence.

“We had the smell of conflict and that’s why we had to act quickly, bringing the troops in before it snowballed and got bigger and bigger,” Aceh’s governor, Ibrahim Hasan, said in a recently published interview. “Their numbers may have been small, but they had training abroad.”

The army troops deployed in the province were primarily the so-called Kopassus, an elite unit better known as the Red Berets. One Kopassus commander told villagers that his unit was considered the pembersih umat, or people sweepers.

While the army has succeeded in reducing if not eliminating Aceh Merdaka activity, it is more difficult to assess how many sympathizers have been created by the government’s heavy-handed policies.

“The campaign probably has increased resentment against the central government several hundredfold,” said Jones of Asia Watch.

Among the latest methods the army uses, according to human rights investigators, are vigilante committees set up in towns and villages to stalk Aceh Merdaka supporters in the jungle. They are threatened with death if they return empty-handed.

The region’s military commander, Gen. H. R. Pramono, told the newsmagazine Tempo last November: “I’ve told the people, the important thing is, if you see a GPK, kill him. There’s no need for investigating.”

One Aceh resident described to a visiting journalist the way the army intimidates an entire town: An army officer fires a single shot in the air, at which point all young males must run to a central square before the soldier fires a second shot. Then, anyone arriving late--or not leaving his home--is shot on the spot.

So many young men have been shot, said an Indonesian intellectual, that charity groups are considering setting up a special agency to benefit recent widows.

“There is no possible justification under international or Indonesian law for the execution, torture and disappearances committed by government troops or for killings of suspected guerrillas by villagers at the instigation of the army when the victims have been captured or laid down their arms,” Asia Watch said in a report on Aceh.

A number of Aceh’s towns and villages along the northern coast, the Aceh Merdaka’s strongholds, are under night curfews. One Aceh intellectual said it is a shootingoffense not to have a light shining in the window of your house.

Banners strung along the roadside carry anti-separatist slogans such as “Muslim leaders, government officials and the armed forces urge the people to obliterate the GPK.”

Jones said another chilling aspect of the government campaign is the use of fitnah, the Indonesian word for “to denounce.” It is now commonplace for a business rival to tell the army that someone is an Aceh Merdaka supporter, with the result that the rival disappears.

Perhaps sensing that an armed forces crackdown alone was not succeeding, the government has also dramatically increased development assistance to the province. Development aid in 1991 grew to $265 million from $181 million last year, including a program to build new roads and bridges and a flood and irrigation plan.

But, in addition to complaining about Jakarta’s stinginess, Aceh people charge that Javanese workers are given unfair advantage in many of the province’s new factories. In part this stems from a lack of educational facilities in Aceh, which has left the province at a technical disadvantage. Paradoxically, rebel targets include a large number of government schools.

The central government in the late 1970s embarked on an ambitious program called “transmigration,” designed to move people from overpopulated Java to less populous areas like Aceh. The transmigration areas have become a particular target for Aceh Merdaka because they are seen as displacing Aceh people who could develop the land themselves, if they were given the same assistance.