印尼的一個省Aceh，本來因為反抗軍要求獨立，一直處於戰亂中，經過二十年的動亂後，因為海嘯大災難，讓反抗軍和政府攜手救災，最後於去年八月在瑞典與政府簽訂和平協定，反抗軍放下武器。印尼政府日前訂定法律，確保該省的自治，但是該省的獨立份子仍表示不能滿意。
Aceh says Indonesia law falls far short on autonomy
By Jane Perlez The New York Times
Published: July 11, 2006
The Indonesian Parliament passed a law today that under the terms of a peace accord with former separatists in Aceh is intended to give the province greater autonomy.
But the Free Aceh Movement, which fought for independence for nearly three decades and signed a peace agreement last year, said the new law fell short of its demands, and of the provisions in the accord.
"The authority for the government in Aceh is not clear - it says in the bill that the law in Aceh has to follow Indonesian law," said a spokesman for the movement, Bahtiar Abdullah.
On a range of critical issues, from fiscal matters to the powers of the Indonesian army stationed in the province, the bill was far weaker than the former rebels had agreed to last year, Mr. Abdullah said. "If everything has to be in with the Indonesian standard, where’s the new law?" Mr. Abdullah asked.
The peace agreement between the central government and the rebels was signed in Aug. 2005 in Helsinki, 7 months after the province was devastated by the tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004. Despite huge amounts of foreign aid, reconstruction in the province, particularly for houses, has been much slower than expected. More than 126,000 people died in Aceh Province, with tens of thousands more listed as missing. More than 400,000 people were left without homes.
A key to last year’s settlement, negotiated between the two sides by a former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, was an understanding by the rebels that a new provincial government in Aceh would have far wider authority than in the past.
Politicians who were not part of the Free Aceh Movement were more tempered in their views, saying the new law was realistic, particularly given the strong tradition of central power in Indonesia.
An Acehnese member of the national Parliament in Jakarta, Farhan Hamid, said in an interview the provisions were "optimal for this time," less than a year after the Helsinki accord.
One positive result, he said, allowed the province to get back a greater share of the revenues than it sent to the national treasury.
It was not feasible, Mr. Hamid said, for the province to be given total control of the revenues from Aceh’s oil and gas reserves. They would be managed "with equal power" between Jakarta and the province, he added.
The passage of the law, four months later than stipulated in the peace accord, paves the way for elections to be held later in the year.
Former members of the Free Aceh Movement will be able to stand as independent candidates. The movement will not be permitted to field candidates as a political party until 2009.
"We are discussing the formation of a political party," said Irwandi Yusuf, a former rebel who is now the movement’s senior representative to a European Union monitoring mission in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. "If we can prove ourselves as a major political player we will form one. At the moment it is very fragile." he added.
The rebel group said it was preparing a dissent with the new law to be presented to the monitoring mission later this week. The mission was named in the peace accord as the body that would arbitrate differences between the two sides.
One of the most troubling aspects of the law was the role of the Indonesian military against which the rebels fought a guerrilla war, Mr. Yusuf said.
The peace accord in Helsinki stipulated that the Indonesian military would be stationed in the province only for national defense and would not participate in provincial affairs, he said. But the law gave the army, which traditionally plays a domestic role in the rest of Indonesia, powers within the province, Mr. Yusuf said.
The new law says that Aceh, considered one of the most devout areas of overwhelmingly Muslim Indonesia, would continue to implement Islamic sharia law. It is the only province to have the strict law based on the teachings of the Koran.
The Free Aceh Movement did not object to the provisions on the sharia law "because it was bad politics to criticize it," Mr. Yusuf said.
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