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Indonesian Tsunami Survivors Given The Lash…….

Here is an article that gives a disturbing report on the “successful” achievement of Former Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari’s Crisis Management Initiative in the Indonesian autonomous province of Aceh. Seems that the Indonesian government is culling favour from the Islamists to dampen the Aceh’s drive to full democracy and freedom.

“Disaster donations help Islamic vigilante force impose punishments on women WHEN people around the world sent millions of pounds to help the stricken Indonesian province of Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, few could have imagined that their money would end up subsidising the lashing of women in public. But militant Islamists have since imposed sharia law in Aceh and have cornered Indonesian government funds to organise a moral vigilante force that harasses women and stages frequent displays of humiliation and state-sanctioned violence.

International aid workers and Indonesian women’s organisations are now expressing dismay that the flow of foreign cash for reconstruction has allowed the government to spend scarce money on a new bureaucracy and religious police to enforce puritan laws, such as the compulsory wearing of headscarves. Some say there are more “sharia police” than regular police on the local government payroll and that many of them are aggressive young men.”

This all brings into question as to whether or not our Western statesmen, such as Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari, (if this report does indeed hold water) understand the significance of “sharia law” and what it means to the long term development of a stable and just democracy?

The example of Aceh has attracted fundamentalists from elsewhere in Indonesia, who see it as a blueprint for their own localities. The irony is that sharia was first introduced into Aceh as part of a package of measures that ultimately succeeded in making peace in the long-running guerrilla war between the conservative, independence-minded Acehnese and the Indonesian state.

It is also the highly destructive policy of the Indonesian government in Jakarta, for aiding and abetting Islamists in Aceh that will prove to be detrimental not just to the people in Aceh, but to the whole of Indonesia itself. The article continues:

“For some women, that era is already here. Fatimah, a human rights worker, was arrested after a seminar at a hotel in Banda Aceh when sharia police burst in to find her without a proper headscarf while chatting in the corridor to a male colleague. Accused of “khalwat”, a vague term that covers proximity between unmarried men and women, she was dragged off to a police station, where she was detained, deprived of sleep and questioned for three days before being released without charge. “It was a nightmare that I will not be able to forget for the rest of my life,” she said. For international donors, who gave generously to end the nightmare of the tsunami, the next few months will pose hard choices. “Nobody intended our aid to subsidise this,” said one United Nations official.”

This is something that should be followed closely to see whether Islamists are given a free hand to impose their Islamist utopia built upon “sharia” and the blood of their people. It will be interesting to see whether this situation in Aceh will be reported on at all, in the home country of Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari. Read more here. KGS

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