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View all search results20 years on, Aceh and Jakarta continue managing peace
Building peace is one thing, but keeping it is another thing altogether, as a boundary dispute over four small islands off Aceh showed earlier this year.
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North Sumatra Governor Bobby Nasution (left) and Aceh Governor Muzakir Manaf (center) approach House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad on June 17, 2025, during a joint press conference at the State Palace in Central Jakarta to announce that the islands of Mangkir Gadang, Mangkir Ketek, Lipan and Panjang indisputably belong to Aceh. (Antara/Galih Pradipta)
“If you run, you are shot. If you don’t, you are beaten,” a 20-year-old Acehnese man said about life in the region, as reported by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 2003, two years after president Megawati Sukarnoputri declared martial law to maintain order in the province following years of failed peace negotiations.
For over five decades, states of emergency that involved domestic military deployment were unfortunately the norm rather than the exception for the people of Aceh.
Of the eight Indonesian presidents since 1945, three declared a state of emergency in the country’s westernmost province, including two in response to the armed struggle for independence with the formation of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in 1976.
The first emergency in Aceh, which lasted nine years, was declared by first president Sukarno in 1953 as part of his efforts to suppress the Darul Islam rebellion, an insurgency group that aimed to establish an Islamic state in the region.
International reports during this time told of rampant abuses by the military in counterinsurgency operations, which disrupted daily life and raising tensions among the Acehnese population.
A second emergency was declared in the 1970s, when the central government moved to suppress local grievances following the discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in the province's north. Massive extractive operations funneled wealth to Jakarta while the average Acehnese lived in relative poverty, further fueling local resentment against the government and leading to GAM’s founding by Hasan di Tiro.
Read also: Aceh marches on with lingering grief 20 years after tsunami
