Almost 400,000 people converged here Friday calling for independence for Indonesia's Aceh province, after President Abdurrahman Wahid urged troops to let a rally go ahead following the deaths of 26 people.
By late afternoon some 10,000 had assembled at the Baiturrahman grand mosque in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, the focal point of the two-day rally marking the first anniversary of a popular call for a vote on self-rule for the region.
The crowd, checked through a tight security cordon to enter the mosque square, rallied despite the deaths of at least 26 people in violence during the three-day run up to the rally.
They shouted "Freedom" as a woman, whose husband was killed by Indonesian soldiers, gave a fiery speech at the start of the rally.
"It is time that Aceh got its independence. Our suffering is almost unbearable," Nurmasitah Ali told the crowd.
But the mood was tense and low key, an AFP reporter said, with no placards or separatist flags and hardly any banners, as organizers had pledged.
Many were apparently waiting until Saturday, encouraged by the president's message.
Aceh police spokesman Senior Superintendent Kusbini Imbar said an estimated 388,000 people had converged on Banda Aceh and surrounding areas.
But the figure was a far cry from last year's demonstration attended by nearly a million people.
Organizers blamed the low turnout on security forces' violent attempts to stop residents joining the rally, dubbed the Acehnese Popular Assembly for Peace.
The toll rose from 16 killed on Tuesday and Wednesday after 10 more civilians were killed or found dead in separate incidents Thursday, some dying when security forces opened fire to bar people traveling to Banda Aceh, residents and witnesses said.
In one incident a 14-year-old boy was killed when soldiers fired at a packed mosque in East Aceh on Thursday, said one witness, declining to be identified.
Scores of others were wounded in the shooting, the witness said, adding troops had stepped on Muslim holy books during the operation.
In another incident in East Aceh on Thursday, security forces shot dead two people trying to reach the rally, a local journalist said, adding two bodies with gunshot wounds were also found in a separate area.
In Bireun district, four people were killed and dozens injured by troops in a similar incident, and in Banda Aceh a body was found near the Baiturrahman mosque, residents said.
Residents in North Aceh and Pidie districts unable to reach Banda Aceh Friday converged on mosques and squares reciting prayers and Koranic verses.
Hundreds of people have been killed this year in violence involving separatist rebels and government forces in the staunchly Muslim resource-rich region on the northern tip of Sumatra island.
Military brutality and the perceived exploitation of Aceh's oil and gas reserves by Jakarta has fed separatist sentiment.
Wahid late Thursday warned security forces against using violence in Aceh and threatened any officers responsible with dismissal.
Any violence could ruin a truce between the government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM), which took effect in June and has been extended until January, he said.
Chief rally organizer, Muhammad Nazar, has assured authorities the two-day gathering will be peaceful, and criticized security forces for trying to block people from attending, saying he feared the "public will put up resistance."
Wahid's government, which negotiated the truce, has ruled out independence for Aceh offering instead wide-ranging autonomy, which was promised by the previous administration but never given.
In the Indonesian capital of Jakarta meanwhile some 300 Acehnese, some brandishing separatist flags, rallied outside the Dutch embassy to press demands for UN intervention to end the violence in Aceh -- BANDA ACEH (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
