Arms to Indonesia

CAAT-TAPOL Factsheet, December 2005

Introduction

In the last ten years, most of Indonesia's military equipment has come from the UK. From 1994 to the end of 1990s Indonesia bought over half its military equipment from the UK. During the first three years of the Labour Government 83% of Indonesia's arms imports were from the UK. Since Labour came to power, the UK has delivered over £393 million worth of military equipment to Indonesia (see table below). In 2001 and 2002, the UK issued over three-quarters of all EU arms export licences for Indonesia, with the value of these export licences responsible for over half the total financial value of EU arms deals to Indonesia. In 2002 two-thirds of arms deliveries from the EU to Indonesia came from the UK.

UK-made 'Saracen' armoured car in use in Aceh in November 2003

History

In October 1965, an internal Indonesian Army dispute resulted in a botched coup against Indonesian President Sukarno, which General Suharto quickly suppressed. Falsely claiming the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was behind it, Suharto initiated a six-month orgy of killing described by Amnesty as ranking “among the most massive violations of human rights since the Second World War”. The killings took the lives of at least half a million Indonesians (a conservative estimate) in six months. Suharto then set up a military dictatorship, ruling Indonesia until 1998; no other living (ex-)dictator on the planet has killed more people.

The UK and US welcomed the Suharto take-over and gave him considerable support throughout his thirty-two years in power. Despite full knowledge of Suharto’s mass murder of 1965-66 the UK moved quickly to cancel its arms embargo against Indonesia [more]. In 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor and occupied it until 1999, at the cost of over 200,000 lives. Despite this in the following years, the UK sold Indonesia Hawk ground-attack aircraft, in 1978, 1981, 1982, and 1983.

Despite the Indonesian Army’s massacre of over 400 civilians at a peaceful demonstration in Dili, East Timor, in 1991, under John Major the Conservative Government concluded major arms deals with Indonesia. In 1993 and 1996 Indonesia placed major orders for more Hawk aircraft from British Aerospace, and in 1995 and 1996 for Scorpion tanks and Stormer armoured vehicles from Alvis.

New Labour's record

The tables below shows how many licences the Labour government has issued for military exports to Indonesia since it came to power, and the types of equipment exported.

Table 1: Licences issued for military exports to Indonesia under Labour

This table covers both military and “dual use” items as the Government reports these together when calculating the value of licences issued.
SIELs refer to Standard Individual Export Licences. These cover specific quantities of specific equipment to a specific destination. Open Individual Export Licences (OIELs) allow any amount of specific equipment (up to a specified limit) to be exported to a specific destination.

Table 2: UK Arms Exports to Indonesia, 1 May 1997 to 31 December 2004

1. The equipment here is that which is included in the UK's entry to the UN Arms Register: Conventional Arms Transfers. The type of equipment included is from seven agreed categories of major conventional weapons, covering battle tanks, armoured vehicles, large calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships and missile/missile launchers.
2. These figures are compiled from the Government's Strategic Export Controls Annual Reports 1997-2004. It should be noted that this is certainly an underestimate of the true amount of arms exports, as it only includes the value of equipment identified by Customs. In 2004 the value of equipment identified by Customs was only 25% of the true total of all UK arms exports.

UK equipment Indonesia currently has at its disposal includes Hawk aircraft, Scorpion light tanks, Stormer armoured personnel carriers, Tactica police vehicles, all sold to Indonesia in the 1990s, and Saracen armoured personnel carriers, Saladin and Ferret armoured cars, all sold to Indonesia in the 1960s. The Government continues to licence for export many items which could be used for internal repression including components for the above equipment.

The Indonesian Military's record

The Indonesian military has a human rights record that few others in the world can match. It instigated and participated in the killing of up to a million people in a few months after the Suharto takeover in 1965, and went on to invade East Timor, where it was responsible for the deaths of around 200,000 people in the late 1970s. It also has a terrible human rights record in its operations in West Papua since 1963.

In the 1990s, the military killed thousands of civilians in Aceh and West Papua. In East Timor, before, during and after the independence referendum in August 1999, the army orchestrated a campaign of violence against the civilian population, which involved crimes against humanity and the killing of hundreds of independence supporters. Indonesia's largest military operation since the invasion of East Timor has recently been prosecuted in the province of Aceh. According to the country's National Commission on Human Rights, the martial law offensive, which began in May 2003 and ended in 2004, resulted in gross violations of human rights, including arbitrary arrests, torture, kidnapping, sexual abuse and extra-judicial killings. At least 2,000 people, the majority civilians, were killed. Hawk aircraft, Scorpion tanks, and Stormer and Saracen APCs were used during the offensive in breach (despite denials by the UK Government) of end-use "assurances" given by Indonesia. Currently UK-supplied Tactica vehicles are being used in West Papua, where serious human rights abuses are occurring.

"Assurances" about Indonesian use of UK-supplied equipment

Indonesia has for some years assured the UK Government that UK equipment will not be used "offensively" or in violation of human rights. This is a key FCO justification for supplying arms to Indonesia despite its human rights record.

In August 2002, the Government, at Indonesia's request, allowed the military to use UK-supplied equipment in Aceh, where, as the FCO's own human rights reports showed, the human rights situation was terrible. Senior Indonesian Army officers have since made it clear they are not bound by assurances given to the UK Government.

The House of Commons Quadripartite Select Committee recently reported that there was no evidence the Government took any action aside from asking the Indonesian Army to check on the use UK equipment was being put to by the Indonesian military. It concluded that "without more legal or political backbone, end-use assurances are not worth the paper they are written on". In a Parliamentary answer on 22 November 2005 (Hansard: Column 1902W), the Government admitted that assurances were unenforceable and that it no longer accepted them. This admission vindicates CAAT’s argument that the "assurances" were a cynical device used to disregard the concerns of human rights groups and victims of Indonesian military violence so that arms companies could continue with business as usual.

Some examples of previous Indonesian use of UK equipment

• In 1994 Robin Cook states in Parliament '...that Hawk aircraft have been observed in bombing raids in East Timor in most years since 1984;
• April 1996. UK-supplied armoured personnel carriers used in a violent assault on the campus of the Islamic University of Indonesia (UMI) in Ujung Pandang. Government acknowledges that UK equipment supplied in the 1960s used in this attack and that excessive force was used to repress legitimate protest in breach of the assurances given by the Indonesian Government;
• Throughout 1998, UK-supplied Scorpions, armoured vehicles, and water cannon regularly photographed and filmed on the streets of Indonesian cities putting down peaceful protests against the rule of President Suharto and his successor, President Habibie. UK-equipment was used on 12 May when four students were killed at Trisakti University, Jakarta, and on 13 November when more than a dozen people were killed in Jakarta. Robin Cook acknowledged (14 May) that some of the equipment being used against demonstrators was sold from the UK;
• July and December 2000, UK-supplied Saladins were used in Ambon in clashes between Christians and Muslims;
• In 2003 and 2004 UK-supplied Scorpion tanks were on several occasions filmed attacking separatist positions in Aceh in clear violation of Indonesian assurances.

NB: This is not an exhaustive list - contact CAAT or TAPOL for more information on this or other issues.

UK supports a brutal war in Aceh

In the 1990s, thousands of civilians were killed in the war in Aceh, mostly by the Indonesian Army as it attempted to crush the armed separatist movement GAM. After Suharto’s fall from power, the level of violence increased year-on-year up to the end of 2002, when a tentative peace agreement was reached. However, in May 2003 the agreement broke down and the Indonesian Government declared martial law in Aceh, and launched a major military operation in the province.

Before martial law began, CAAT and TAPOL protested against the planned use of UK Scorpion tanks and Hawk jets in Aceh, though both were subsequently used there. In November 2003 UK-made Saracen armoured cars were photographed being used in Aceh.

On Indonesian election day, 5 April 2004, the Indonesian Army used UK-made Stormer armoured personnel carriers to patrol the streets. The UK Government confirmed this when a photo of one on the main road near Ganda Pura in Bireun district in Aceh was presented to them. According to TAPOL “during what should have been a period of election campaigning, there was widespread intimidation to force people to register as voters. In many places people who refused to register were accused of being members or sympathisers of GAM.” Indeed “those who failed to register were visited and terrorised by militia groups” while “those who failed to turn up on election day were forcibly escorted to the polling stations” resulting in a 94% turnout in Aceh, higher than in Indonesia as a whole. The Government has not sought to reinstate its ban on UK equipment being used in Aceh.

Recent issues

Legal challenge to UK arms exports to Indonesia

The EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports, which the UK is signed up to, says arms should not be exported if there is a risk of them being used in “internal repression”, to “provoke or prolong armed conflicts”, or if the country to which they are being exported is in breach of “international humanitarian law applicable to international or non-international armed conflicts”. The Government has consistently ignored these criteria when licensing arms sales to Indonesia. In December 2004 Aguswandi, a human rights defender from Aceh, Indonesia launched a legal challenge to UK Government policy. The case was heard by the High Court but was dismissed, chiefly because the Government kept information crucial to the case’s success secret.[more]

Corruption

Military exports are frequently of very high value financially and always shrouded in secrecy - a combination of factors which renders exporting such equipment liable to corrupt practice. CAAT research has shown that from 1973 the UK Government knew of corrupt practice in UK arms sales to Indonesia, but for decades it has continued to encourage such sales.

In late 2004 the release of the documents of the court case of Chan U Seek vs Alvis Vehicles Ltd led to serious allegations that bribes were paid to Suharto’s daughter to secure the sale of armoured vehicles to Indonesia in 1995 and 1996 (in a deal underwritten by the UK taxpayer). The documents can be read on the Guardian website.

UK arms used for repression in West Papua

The Indonesian Army has committed serious human rights abuses in West Papua ever since Indonesia took over the province in the early 1960s, and carried out a fraudulent "Act of Free Choice" in 1969 which resulted in Indonesia annexing West Papua. Frequent peaceful demonstrations in favour of independence have been crushed violently by the Indonesian Army and Police. In November 2005 the Observer reported that UK Tactica vehicles are being used against demonstrations in West Papua. Evidence is also emerging of the deployment to West Papua of KOSTRAD, the Indonesian Army strategic command, a unit that used UK-supplied vehicles in Aceh.

This factsheet was originally produced by the Campaign Against Arms Trade and TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign, in June 2004, and updated and expanded in December 2005.