September 1999

I was reading the book “Among Orangutans: Red Apes and the Rise of Human Culture” written by Carel van Schaik, a good friend of my boss, when I found the story about two ‘my brothers’ and what happened to them in Aceh.

In September 1999, he was accompanying two consultants who wanted to visit several of the coastal peat swamps. They were interested in carbon sequestration by thick layers of peat, which alter all is undecayed wood and litter. Although the consultants had clear instructions not to travel at night and not to cross an imagery line on the map, they did both, probably to check a swamp where the three of us had been only about a month before, when it was still safe to go there.

Fate had it that a day before their visit there had been another shooting in a village south of Tapaktuan. The police had arrested some alleged ringleaders, and the enraged villagers had move en masse to the district capital, Tapaktuan, to protest their capture.

The demonstration at the police station turned nasty when the embattled police opened fire on the demonstrators, injuring several of them. Locals, afraid to help them, ignored their pleas for help. The villagers made it back home but vowed to take revenge.

The next evening, they stopped cars coming from direction of Tapaktuan and dragged out anyone who was Javanese or member of the Indonesian armed forces. The car with Yus happened to pass by that night. The consultants and the driver happened to be Javanese. They were taken to the beach. Yus, being a local Acehnese, was told to leave, but he characteristically insisted on staying with his charges. He thought this all a huge misunderstanding that he could clear up. The whole group of captives-some army personnel, some Javanese ladies selling cosmetics, and the LDP team-were taken to a shed. Later that night, all captives were marched to the beach, hands tied behind their backs, and the captors began systemically slitting their throats. The driver made a desperate dash to escape and jump into the sea. Miraculously, he made it to a station of the conservation service, some 20 kilometers to the south, past the mouth of the Kluet River, and raised the alarm. By then, however, it was too late. Two years later, the bodies were found in a shallow grave near the beach (van Schaik 2004 p210-211).

I pray for them May God rest their souls in eternal peace.. Amin…!!