About 100 protestors from Aceh rallied outside the United Nations office here Thursday calling for UN intervention to end what they called Jakarta's "brutality" in the troubled Indonesian province.
The protestors, calling themselves the All Acehnese People Overseas (RAS), chanted "Merdeka (Freedom)" and waved banners denouncing military actions in Aceh.
"Atrocities are being committed by the Indonesian armed forces by burning civilian houses, kidnapping and arbitrary killings of innocent people," the group said in a letter addressed to the UN.
The letter charged that Jakarta had sent troop reinforcements to the province last week and put Aceh "under siege" despite being a signatory to a truce in the province.
"We have learned many important lessons from Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, East Timor, Rwanda and Burundi and many other tragedies in the world," the letter said.
"Innocent blood will be spilled in the land of Aceh unless the UN and the international community intervene immediately in this conflict," it said.
"The UN and the international community have always been late in acting and reacting to prevent the bloodshed from happening ... usually after tens of thousands are dead and hundreds of thousands displaced," it said.
Aceh, a resource-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra island, has been rocked by violence mostly involving government troops and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), which has waged a guerrilla war since 1976 for an independent Islamic state in Aceh.
Military brutality and the perceived exploitation of Aceh's rich resources including oil and gas by Jakarta has fed separatist sentiment in the province.
Hundreds have been killed this year in the violence -- JAKARTA (AFP)
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