Women’s movements and women’s NGOs in Aceh

There has been a continuing debate on the definition of women’s movements within the disciplines of political science, sociology and women’s studies (Beckwith 2005, 2007). To classify a movement as a women’s movements we can define it based on three initial questions (Beckwith 2007, 313).

Three factors facilitate the establishment of a social movement, including the presence of group consciousness, the availability of resources and the sense of efficacy (Chafetz 1990, 167). Apart from this, the structural and historical are two preconditions that help understand the establishment of women’s movements (Ray and Korteg 1999, 52). On the relations of women’s NGOs and women’s movements, Alvarez (1999, 185–186) argues that women’s movements can consist of women’s collectives, women’s groups and women’s NGOs. She defines NGOs as forms of organizations that have a specialized agenda, are run by professional staff and have collaborative networks with foreign and national agencies to develop reports or projects.

Some Acehnese women have become increasingly aware of their rights as a result of seeing the suffering of many Acehnese women at the hands of both the Indonesian military and the Free Aceh Movement. Women worked voluntarily both individually and organized into local women’s NGOs. They relied on limited resources. Later, women’s NGOs in Aceh developed into professional NGOs, and their staff began to receive honoraria. This happened as women’s NGOs begin collaborating with foreign NGOs, international donors and national-based NGOs. However, in 2000 the Indonesian government increased pressure on both local and foreign NGOs by, for example, breaking into NGO offices or intimidating NGO activists (Schulze 2006, 253–254). In 2003, the Indonesian government passed a Presidential Decree No. 43/2003 to regulate the activities of foreigners, NGOs and journalists in Aceh.

The next section aims to discuss the emergence and development of women’s movements in Aceh along with the social and political circumstances of each period. In general, it is argued that the development of women’s movements in Aceh has been shaped by decades of military conflict, the authoritarian and centralist New Order administration and patriarchal interpretations of religious doctrines. As argued earlier in this chapter, many people that I spoke with contend that subordination or discrimination against women is not something that is inherently embedded in Acehnese society and culture. Rather, they see it as a product of more recent socio-political development of Aceh, including Dutch colonization and Indonesia’s nation-building project (see for example, Siapno 2002; Aspinall 2006; Noerdin 2007).

To understand local women’s NGOs and women’s movements in Aceh, the sections below examine two different political environments that have shaped the character of local women’s NGOs and women’s movements in Aceh: the military conflict and the signing of the peace agreement in 2005.

Military conflict

Three political conflicts have emerged between the Indonesian government and Acehnese since Indonesia’s independence in 1945 (Sukma 2004). The first emerged in the early 1950s, when a group of Acehnese joined the Darul Islam struggle to change Indonesia into an Islamic state. It was finally curbed when Aceh was granted ‘special status’, as discussed in Chapter 2. The second resurgence emerged in the 1970s, after a group of Acehnese, this time led by Teuku Hasan di Tiro, demanded a complete separation of Aceh from Indonesia. With the support of small groups of Acehnese, who were mostly peasants, Teuku Hasan di Tiro declared Aceh’s independence and established ‘Acheh Merdeka’ or ‘Independent Acheh’ in 1976 (Siegel 2000, 336). The nineteenth-century English spelling of ‘Acheh’ was intended by Hasan di Tiro to show his rejection of any association with Indonesia, including the Indonesian language (Siegel 2000, 336). The third and the last struggle of the Acehnese against the Indonesian government emerged in 1989 and, according to Sukma (2004), was more of a continuation of the 1970s uprising, as it also sought an Aceh separate from Indonesia.

Scholars have argued that these two latest insurgencies were driven by massive economic exploitation, centralistic administration, unjust industrialization and development projects, and military repression (Robinson 1998; Kamaruzzaman 2006; Kell 1995; Sukma 2004; Schulze 2006). Robinson (1998, 135) made a point that the resentments of Acehnese towards the central government were largely driven by the economic activities of the Indonesian government and foreign companies including Mobil Oil in extracting Aceh’s rich natural resources, such as oil, gas and pulp, found in the northern part of Aceh.

It was these resentments that fuelled Acehnese attacks on Indonesian police and military compounds posted around big oil company installations, such as those on Exxon Mobil Oil in the northern part of Aceh (Amnesty International 1993; ICTJ 2008).⁷ Given the intensity of the continuing attacks, the Indonesia military launched the Red Net operation or Operasi Jaring Merah and declared Aceh a Military Operation Zone (Daerah Operasi Militer or DOM) in 1989 (Kamaruzzaman 2006; Robinson 1998; Sukma 2004; Schulze 2006).

Women were targeted by both the Indonesian military and by GAM (Kamaruzzaman 2006, 261). Women often had to deal with the military who came to their houses, searching for men they suspected of being GAM followers. At the same time, women also had to deal with GAM personnel who came to their houses to extract money. As the conflict intensified, many Acehnese women and children decided to flee their houses and villages, and became displaced. The regular fights between GAM and the military, and burning of houses and schools also forced villagers to leave their houses and property for safety reasons. According to Kamaruzzaman, women who became internally displaced experienced both physical and psychological impacts, while their children missed schooling, as families left their villages. During displacement, women felt unwanted and lost the space they had in their own houses. They found they were forced to ‘leave the kitchen’, because in the shelters, cooking became a public task and they were not needed (Kamaruzzaman 2006, 263).

Women were not only displaced, but many became objects of violence. Various reports indicate, for example, that women were killed, tortured, sexually harassed and raped by the Indonesian military (Kamaruzzaman 1999, 61–63). From the period of 1989 to 1998 about 600 women were raped by the military (Eye on Aceh 2004). Overall, the Operasi Jaring Merah or the Red Net Operations from 1989 to 1998 had caused 625 cases of rape and torture against women (Schulze 2007, 85). Other sources reveal that from 1989 to 1998 about 16,375 children became orphaned and 3,000 women became widowed (Sulistiyanto 2001, 442).

Neither the local or national authorities protected women who were casualties of the conflict (Kamaruzzaman 2006). This may be because women, including women’s right activists, were reluctant to report incidents to the authorities, fearing that reporting the case could trigger new problems. Other troubling effects of the conflict include how it limited women’s access to education. With many schools burned down⁹ and a widespread absence of security, many Acehnese parents chose not to send their children (especially young girls) to school. Parents also prohibited their daughters from going to the mosque to learn reading the Qur’an in the evenings for safety reasons. As a result, Aceh’s educational level is low compared to other provinces in Indonesia. A report from Poverty Assessment in 2008, for example, revealed that the graduation rate of elementary school students in 2004/2005 was only 96.8 per cent, which is below the national rate of 99.6 per cent. The pass rate of high school students in Aceh was also lower than that at the national level: only 89.5 per cent, compared to 98 per cent nationally. The impact of conflict on Aceh’s education is also currently reflected in the small number of Acehnese who are able to recite the Qur’an, despite the claim that Acehnese are ‘pious Muslims’.¹⁰ As one civil society activist has said, the conflict has indeed cost Aceh one of its generations (Fajran Zein, interview, Banda Aceh, 3 February 2008). This fact later served as background for Islamists to make it compulsory for Acehnese women and men to be able to read the Qur’an.

Women not only had to suffer from physical and physiological violence (as already elaborated above), but they also became victims in the economic sphere. Kamaruzzaman (1999), for example, narrates a story in which women in one area around Pidie district, in North Aceh, had to give up their small business activities of producing sleeping mats made from green pandan leaves. Before the conflict, these women were able to get the raw materials they needed from their own villages, for free. When the military came in, they began destroying the plantation. For women, this meant that they had to find the raw materials from other villages, and had to pay for it. As a result, the cost of producing their pandan mats increased. In addition to the increased production cost, women also had to spend more time travelling to neighbouring villages, when it was also not safe for them to do so. All these circumstances caused many women to give up their business, as it no longer offered economic benefits for their families.

One male activist, Fajran Zein, told me of another consequence of the military operations for Acehnese women (interview, Banda Aceh, 11 February 2008). He described how during the military operations many among the Indonesian military developed friendships with Acehnese female teenagers, which in most cases included sexual relations. These relationships were usually short-lived, because military personnel have to move from one place to another. According to him, in many cases these relationships ended with the female teenagers becoming pregnant, by which time their military partners had already moved on. According to him, the parents were aware that their daughters’ friendships with the military men could have negative consequences, but, at the same time they were scared to ask the military men to end their friendships with their daughters. According to this activist, what the military soldiers did to Acehnese women normalized sexual relationships outside marriage. It also explains, he says, why now there are many cases of Acehnese women and men having sexual relations outside marriage. In a seminar organized by Aceh Institute on 13 December 2007 in Banda Aceh, Ita F. Nadia, a woman activist from Jakarta, argued that what the soldiers had done to Acehnese women was part of the systematic approach of the Indonesian military to ‘destroy the wombs of Acehnese women’, with the aim of destroying the whole Acehnese population.

It was these contextual figures that triggered Acehnese women to form solidarity movements to offer protection to other Acehnese women. Under military suppression women have the necessary basis to organize into women’s movements, because women cannot participate in formal political parties, typically considered a male sphere by authoritarian regimes (Waylen 1993^f, 573). Kumar (2001, 8) observes that a military conflict could have an impact on women and gender relations because it changes the demographic composition and social relations of the society. Acehnese women were moved by not only the suffering of their fellow Acehnese women but also because little attention has been given by either national or international human rights organizations to the need to address the horrendous suffering of Acehnese women during the conflict (Kamaruzzaman 1999, 57). In regards to this, Basu (2000, 76) made an interesting analysis saying that transnational women’s groups in fact would be enthusiastic in supporting campaigns against sexual violence where the state is repressive. However, the Indonesian military government’s policy of closing Aceh to international or foreign links had prevented local women activists from getting the support. Acehnese women did not stop there and they in fact initiated the establishment of women’s organizations in Aceh. The latter development of local women’s NGOs in Aceh was then, to an extent, influenced by the emergence of women’s activism at the national level, as I will now seek to show.¹¹

The first women’s organization that emerged in Aceh was Flower Aceh, which was established in 1989 by Soraya Kamaruzzaman,¹² a student of the Faculty of Chemistry at Syiah Kuala University. Kamaruzzaman chose the name Flower Aceh (FA) because she and her colleagues believed that picking a foreign word such as ‘Flower’ would minimize suspicion by the Indonesian military. Siapno (2000, 281) argued that the decision to use the word ‘flower’, a very ‘feminine’, unthreatening name, was to disguise the organization’s real political objectives. In its early days, Flower Aceh focused its activities on helping women who became victims of violence perpetrated both by GAM and the Indonesian military. During the military operation from 1989 to 1998, Flower Aceh actively tried to raise people’s awareness of the sufferings of Acehnese women. They campaigned both at national and international levels. Kamaruzzaman spoke relentlessly about the gross human rights violations, which caused the suffering of women who became the target of torture, mass rape, disappearances and killings (Kamaruzzaman 1999, 54). She resented the fact that almost no attention was paid to women’s suffering during the conflict. She argued that academics, politicians and legal practitioners in Aceh, as well as those at the national level, were just not interested in the plight of Acehnese women and their need for justice (Kamaruzzaman 1999).

The other women’s organization established during this period was Yayasan Pengembangan Wanita (YPW, or Women’s Development Organization). This NGO focused its activities on providing economic assistance to women at the village level. Women who lived in conflict-prone areas were among the primary targets of this organization. Given the widespread nature of the conflict, YPW concentrated its work in Aceh Tengah (Central Aceh) and still operates only in Takengon. Samsidar is the founder of this organization.¹³ In an interview I had with her on 1 January 2008, she explained that the idea to establish YPW came after she and her friends carried out their undergraduate fieldwork research (or Kuliah Kerja Nyata/KKN) in the area under the Plant Protection Project of the Agriculture Department at Syiah Kuala University. During this fieldwork, she discovered how women in the villages were discriminated against and how their lives had been badly affected under the Military Operation Status (DOM). Many women were left alone with their children, while their husbands escaped to the mountains to avoid becoming the target of either the military or GAM. As a result, women had to assume the jobs of their husbands in order to maintain their children’s health, welfare and education. However, it was not easy for the women to do this, since they had limited access to the economy by reason of continuous attacks from both GAM and the military.

YPW therefore initiated a programme to empower women in the village so that they could have better access to the economy. In Samsidar’s view, improving the economic capacity of women was crucial not only for them to be able to support their children, but also to empower them to escape from future discrimination. She added that the other reason why her organization decided to work on economic issues was because it was the only possible topic that would not invite potential suspicion from both of the warring parties. She said that the situation in Aceh at that time did not allow them to use the same language as women activists used in Jakarta, such as demanding ‘rights’ or ‘justice’.

YPW initiated a programme to help women generate income from agricultural activities. They taught women, for example, how to grow good quality coffee. However, it was through the training on agricultural matters that she conducted in villages that she delivered the message on the need for daughters to get education and for parents to treat their children equally, regardless of their sex. She also tried to make these village women understand their citizen rights, and that they have equal rights with men. She said that at that point she just wanted to develop awareness among the village women of their rights, both in the family and in the public sphere. In running the programme, YPW conducted its work on a voluntary basis and never received any funding from outside sources. YPW has continued to grow and by 2008 it had about 1,125 women members in the Aceh Tengah district.

Apart from Flower Aceh and YPW, there were also individual women activists who tried to assist their fellow Acehnese women during this period. One such activist is Farida, who lives in Pidie district. She worked to uncover the various forms of violence that Acehnese women experienced in her surrounding district. In carrying out her mission, she worked through a network of women’s Qur’anic reading groups that existed in the village. More recently, she set up a women’s organization named PASKA to continue her work in helping the victims of conflict.¹⁴ These activist movements, both at the organizational and individual level, were the foundation for modern women’s movements in Aceh.

Reform era

The political democratization that began in Indonesia in 1998 following the end of Suharto’s authoritarianism paved the way for a new beginning in the history of women’s movements in Aceh. Important political developments took place in Aceh when, on 7 August 1998, General Wiranto publicly apologized to the Acehnese on behalf of the Indonesian government for the brutal war that it had waged with the Free Aceh Movement during the Military Operation Status from 1989 to 1998. This historic event ended the Military Operation Status in Aceh (Sulistiyanto 2001, 444).¹⁵ One of the biggest developments following this political transformation was the development of freedom of the press, which prompted the media and Acehnese to report stories of violence they witnessed and endured (Reid 2003).¹⁶ As human rights abuses perpetrated by the Indonesian military were revealed, the Acehnese demanded the trial of human rights violators and asked the government to provide justice to all the victims. Along with this movement, a number of civil society organizations also began to emerge, including women’s organizations. Acehnese began to witness a proliferation of NGOs working on gender during this political transformation (Siapno 2001, 279–280).

More importantly, this political reform prompted the two parties to resort to peace talks that resulted in the Humanitarian Pause in 2000 and Cessation of Hostilities in 2002 (Aspinall 2003; Schulze 2006; Sulistiyanto 2001). A Swiss-based international organization, the Henry Dunant Center, mediated the peace talks. Despite the peace agreements, however, tension between the Indonesian military and GAM continued, resulting in the breakdown of the accords. The attack by GAM on the Exxon Mobil Oil production facilities and pipelines in North Aceh in March 2001 forced the Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid to pass Presidential Decree No. 4/2001 on Security Recovery Operations (Schulze 2006, 234). However, this failed to stop the regular counter-insurgency and guerrilla war perpetrated by GAM. The intensifying military conflict reignited new military action with Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri declaring Aceh under military emergency and martial law was again imposed on 19 May 2003.

The result of these ongoing military contacts was that thousands of Acehnese women became internally displaced.¹⁷ Many were stranded in mosques or other temporary shelters as their houses were burned down. This development prompted some Acehnese women to form new women’s NGOs, including RPUK (Relawan Perempuan Untuk Kemanusiaan or Women’s Volunteers for Humanity), MISPI (Mitra Sejati Perempuan Indonesia or True Partner of Indonesian Women), KKTGA (Kelompok Kerja Transformasi Gender Aceh or the Working Group for Gender Transformation in Aceh), Yayasan Pulih, and Duek Pakat Inong Aceh or Aceh Women’s Congress, LBH Apik, and ORPAD (Organisasi Perempuan Aceh Demokratik or Aceh Women’s Democratic Organization).

RPUK was established in 1999. RPUK focused its activities on providing basic needs for women such as clothing, medicine and foods.¹⁸ Khairani, the current leader of RPUK, said that many women were trapped in shelters and mosques across the province with no public facilities. These women who were displaced could not go out to get food for themselves and for their children. Many became ill, as there was no sanitation or access to health services. Khairani said RPUK’s women activists collected sanitation materials to be distributed to women in the shelters, because RPUK did not yet have any donors (interview, Banda Aceh, 22 February 2008).

In 2000, an All-Acehnese Women’s Congress (Duek Pakat Inong Aceh or DPIA) was established, and held its first regional meeting in Banda Aceh from 20–22 February 2000. Many women activists remember this event as the beginning of a new era for Aceh’s women’s movements. More than 400 women from different parts of Aceh attended. The congress can be seen as a benchmark, because women attending declared their first political position in regards to the ongoing conflict, demanding that all parties involved end the conflict (Djohar 2003). They also demanded the withdrawal of troops and requested that women be guaranteed 30 per cent of seats in the parliament. They signed a 22-point resolution, and put peace and justice as their main demands. With Islamic law in place, the congress acknowledged Islamic law as the governing legal basis of Aceh. Yet, these activists insisted that the sources of sharia need to be reinterpreted so that Islamic law in Aceh would treat men and women fairly. They also called for the creation of Qanun Ureung Inong Aceh (Aceh’s Women’s Legal Forum) to focus on discovering egalitarian Islamic interpretations to enhance women’s position in public life. They also called for women to have equal rights in adat (traditional customary law), and demanded greater inclusion of women in economic life (Bianpoen 2000, 364).

Duek Pakat Inong met again just few months after the devastating tsunami. This time the congress, which was attended by at least 400 women from about 21 districts around the province, recommended that women must be included in the process of reconstruction in Aceh. They expressed resentment that women have been excluded from the reconstruction process and called for both the Indonesian government and GAM to give women access to participate in the peace process through non-violent and democratic means (UNIFEM 2005; Crisis Management Initiative 2006).

Another local women’s NGO established was Yayasan Putroe Kandee. It was established in 1990. The name of Putroe Kandee literally means ‘women as the illumining light’. Roosmawardani, a respected woman judge at the Mahkamah Syari’at or sharia courts, currently leads this NGO. During my interview with her on 14 January 2008, she said that the idea of establishing this NGO came from her concern about the suffering of women and children forced to stay in refugee camps. Her organization aims to promote justice for women and their families, based on the rule of law and sharia, because the current situation still discriminates against women and other vulnerable groups.

In its response to the implementation of Islamic law, Putroe Kandee designed programs to empower judges of the Islamic courts. In 2006, with support received from the Asia Foundation, Putroe Kandee conducted a programme to improve gender sensitivity for judges and officers at the Office of Religious Courts (KUA) and the Sharia Courts (Salim et al. 2009, xxi). The programme was designed to disseminate ideas of gender sensitivity to judges at the sharia courts on issues such as marriage, divorce, domestic violence, mut’ah or alimony, provision of marital property, inheritance and polygamy. Judges were also introduced to a new methodology for reading and reinterpreting Islamic texts from a gender perspective (Salim et al. 2009, 16). According to one activist from RPUK who often deals with legal cases at the sharia court, these programmes have been successful, because judges of the sharia courts are now more gender-sensitive, by comparison with judges of the (secular) district court or Provincial High Court (interview, Banda Aceh, 9 June 2009).

As demonstrated above, the work of women’s NGOs in this period focused more on searching for justice for women victims of conflict. However, despite activism to protect women in conflict areas, women’s NGOs and activists were still excluded from the peace negotiation process.

Post-tsunami and post-MOU Helsinki

A report released by Gender Working Group (GWG) in 2007 identified a number of challenges confronting Acehnese women in post-tsunami and post-conflict Aceh. They include problems arising from women’s limited access to economy, housing, cases of inheritance and land ownership,¹⁹ child custody, women’s health, education and the reintegration of women ex-combatants into society (GWG unpublished report 2007). In regards to violation against women, the National Commission of Women’s Rights reported that there were at least 191 violations of women’s rights during the period of October 2005 to 2006. These include 38 cases of discrimination, seven cases of eviction and 146 cases of physical and sexual violence (Almubarok 2006).

Various reports on the impact of the tsunami suggest that the number of women killed by the tsunami was higher than men (UNFPA 2006; Oxfam Briefing Note 2005; Fitzpatrick 2008).²⁰ Some Acehnese used this to argue that the tsunami was God’s will, His way of punishing Acehnese women who had betrayed Islamic values and local adat. A report released by Oxfam (2005, 2) and UNFPA (2005, 8) argued that more women were killed compared to men because the tsunami happened on a Sunday morning, when most Acehnese women were home with their children. Women were also less likely to be able to swim or climb to higher places, such as trees, when the tsunami struck. In coastal areas, such as in the northern part of Aceh, men were already at sea fishing, so they were able to survive.

Women survivors who stayed in temporary shelters also became prone to violence due to a lack of security and absence of privacy. Women became the targets of sexual harassment, including rape, and other forms of intimidation while in shelters (UNIFEM 2005). This is in part due to the fact that most of the temporary shelters were not equipped with proper infrastructure, such as separate toilets for men and women. Women activists criticized both the government and the international agencies for failing to consider gender interests in building temporary shelters.

The tsunami worsened Aceh’s economy, at first, at least, and it badly hit women. The World Bank (2008, 12) reported that the poverty levels in post-tsunami Aceh increased to 32.6 per cent from 28.4 per cent in 2004. In fact, in 2004 Aceh’s poverty level was already higher than the national poverty level of 16.7 per cent. While women have to support their families as many of their husbands were killed, women’s participation in the public economic sector remains difficult. Data released in 2005 by the Statistical Bureau of Banda Aceh as cited by Vianen (2006, 4–5) reveals a low participation rate of women in the labour force. According to Vianen (2006, 1), women’s low participation in labour is due to several factors, including: discriminatory employment practices, low access to information, lack of skills, low access to finance and social discourse (that women must take care of their families, for example) that continues to discourage women from participating in productive work. In addition, statistics also showed that of a total population of Aceh in 2005, of 4,031,589 there were about 2,025,826 women compared to 2,005,763 men. This showed that although more women should participate in building Aceh’s economy, their lack of access and skills impede them from contributing.

Another significant development to Acehnese women in post-tsunami Aceh is the increasing number of divorces. In an interview with the head of Women and Children Agency of Banda Aceh, Raihan Putri revealed that many women are now seeking to divorce to their husbands (Banda Aceh, 7 June 2009). Although her office did not yet have the exact data on what lies behind this trend, she predicts that the economic difficulties that Acehnese families are facing have contributed to the increase in divorce rates. On activist from KKTGA says divorce in post-tsunami Aceh occurs because many couple got married only to replace their lost husband and wife immediately after the tsunami, without knowing each other first (interview, Banda Aceh, 9 June 2009).

KKTGA, a local women’s NGO that focuses its work on providing legal advocacy for women, reveals that there has been a significant increase in the number of women seeking legal assistance to file for divorce. In the period of March 2008 to March 2009, KKTGA received a total of 107 legal cases, with about 81 per cent of them being divorce cases. Women were filing for divorce for different reasons. Many had experienced various forms of domestic violence. Others wanted a divorce because their husband had taken a second wife. In the Aceh Besar district, the sharia court dealt with 154 divorce cases from 2008 to October 2009 (The Globe Journal 2009). Of this number, 112 cases were filed by the wives. Similarly, Serambi Indonesia (18 January 2010) also reported that in 2009, the divorce rate reached 1,678 cases throughout Aceh. One official at the sharia court in Aceh Besar district as cited in The Globe Journal (2009) claimed that most of the divorce cases were driven by economic reasons. The director of KKTGA argues, however, that this increase in the number of women filing for divorce is largely because Acehnese women are become increasingly aware of their rights so, for example, they no longer accept their husband taking a second wife or physically assaulting them.²¹ She found that only a small number of women who filed for divorce did so purely for economic reasons.