Precedence: bulk
NINE ACEHNESE BROKE INTO THE DUTCH EMBASSY COMPOUND
JAKARTA, Aug 4 (AFP) - Nine Acehnese, including a woman, broke
into the Dutch embassy grounds here during a protest Wednesday and
said they would camp there until their demands for help to win
independence were met.
"We'll stay here until our demands are met," the leader of the
group, Faisal Putra, told reporters from behind the fence as night
fell.
"The embassy officials have asked us to hold talks, but we have
done enough talking," he said.
Putra told an AFP reporter they entered the embassy grounds at
around 11:00 a.m., during a protest outside the mission by some 50
Acehnese.
"It's sort of in between," embassy press and cultural affairs
counsellor Geeskelien Wolters told AFP when asked if the area where
the nine were camped, between two security gates near the entrance,
was Dutch property.
"We have asked them to go. We have forwarded their demand to the
authorities in the Netherlands," Wolters said, but added she did not
know when there would be a reply.
An embassy security guard said the group, most of them well
dressed and middle aged, dashed in through a high gate when it was
opened to let in an embassy car.
One of the protestors was allowed into the embassy building to
meet embassy officials while the eight others remained trapped in
the space between the double gates of the mission.
The Acehnese were protesting outside the mission to demand that
The Hague lobby the United Nations over "restoring the sovereign
status of Aceh."
An AFP reporter outside the embassy said the nine were sitting
on the paving stones in the area between the gates and showed no
signs of moving.
He said the nine, who belonged to a group calling themselves
"The United Peoples of Aceh" based in the Lhokseumawe, North Aceh,
said their evening Moslem prayers on the ground.
They were equipped with soft drinks, and later well-wishers
brought them food and rattan mats to sleep on.
"We came here on the will of Aceh people in order to provide a
solution of the problems in Aceh," the lone woman in the group, Tjut
Syamsurniati, 33, told AFP from behind the bars.
She said embassy officials saw one of the group in the embassy
early in the afternoon, but declined to say what had transpired in
the meeting.
But another group leader, T. Kamaruzzaman, said: "The embassy is
still unable to answer our demands but they said they would discuss
them with the Dutch government.
"They demand that we leave in good manner otherwise they will
use force by calling in the police."
An officer at the Jakarta Police headquarters, who declined to
be named, said the embassy had asked them to evacuate the
protestors.
But he said the head of the Jakarta police and the head of the
Jakarta police operational division were still discussing what to
do.
He did not elaborate.
The occupation of the embassy grounds coincided with the start
of a general strike which paralyzed several major Acehnese cities
Wednesday to demand the end of military violence in Aceh and the
pullout of Indonesian troops from the separatist troubled province.
On Wednesday afternoon Indonesian police chief Rusmanhadi
announced police had launched a six-month long operation to combat
the resurgence of separatism in Aceh.
Rusmanhadi also said he had issued shoot on sight orders for any
suspicious people carrying arms in the province.
In the earlier protest at the embassy, the demonstrators had
shouted "Independence is the right of the Aceh Nation."
They also said they did not recognize Indonesia's sovereignty
and urged the Netherlands, the old colonial masters of Indonesia, to
revoke a March 26, 1873 declaration of war against the then
sultanate of Aceh.
tn-bs/kw/jd
AFP 041241 GMT AUG 99
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