Backgrounder on ExxonMobil Activities Aceh

International Forum for Aceh
June 2001

ExxonMobil is "morally, politically and legally responsible for crimes against humanity in Aceh"

(1); "Exxon Mobil's less-than-arm's length detachment from the military must be judged a short-term gain and a long-term miscalculation"
(2); "Rather than cut and run from trouble spots, we will work to change them."
- ExxonMobil Op-ed

WHEN ARTICLES IN THE Winter of 1998, in BusinessWeek and The Boston Globe, reported that Acehnese non-governmental organizations had accused ExxonMobil Corporation (then Mobil Oil) of "human rights abuses" in Aceh, Mobil Indonesia executive vice president, Neil Duffin, responded: "I can frankly say that we have no knowledge of that happening".

A former ExxonMobil employee debunked ExxonMobil's claim: "There wasn't a single person in Aceh who didn't know that massacres were taking place", says H. Sayed Mudhahar, a former public relations manager for P.T. Arun. Faisal Putra, an attorney in Lhokseumawe who intends to sue Mobil on behalf of victims, agrees: "The crimes occurred over a long period of time. Mobil Oil cannot utter the words, 'We didn't know'."

This backgrounder and the documentation cited in appendix A below illustrates the degree to which ExxonMobil can not use the defense of professed ignorance to avoid responsibility for the predictable impacts of its current security arrangements with the Indonesian military and police in North Aceh, Indonesia.

The accusations, which surfaced in 1998, allege that ExxonMobil's wholly owned subsidiary, Mobil Oil Indonesia (MOI), "provided crucial logistic support to the army", that buildings and facilities for Post A13 and Rancong, provided by MOI, were used (by the military) for interrogating and torturing local people, that the company's excavators were used to dig mass graves for military victims in the Sentang and Tengkorak hills, and that its roads were used to bring victims to the mass graves. So far 14 mass graves have been identified. One is on Pertamina-owned land less than four kilometers from a Mobil gas-drilling site. Pertamina is ExxonMobil's production sharing partner in the PT Arun gas operations, in North Aceh district of the Indonesian province of Aceh.

Evidence indicates that ExxonMobil can not credibly pretend it does not know that security operations undertaken in response to its "security concerns" will continue and even increase such violations. This evidence may be found in documents prepared by U.S. government sources, well-respected international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and in reports of Special Rapporteurs from the office of the UN High Commission for Human Rights provided below.

This backgrounder documents that the Indonesian army and police, in North Aceh, continue to commit systematic human rights violations for which they were notorious under the dictator Suharto. In fact, human rights violations throughout Aceh seem to have increased since the informal end of the eight-year military operations (DOM) in August 1998. The armed forces of Indonesia might appear to outside observers as a caricature of terror and brutality; but their impacts on the local populations are deadly.

The documentation below also helps us to understand the root causes of extreme violence in Aceh. On March 12, 2001, the government of Abdurrahman Wahid, under pressure from the military, gave the go-ahead to the Indonesian Armed Forces, the TNI, to launch a 'limited security operation' in Aceh. Three days before, ExxonMobil, which oversees the operations at the massive Arun gas fields in Aceh, had announced that it was suspending operations because of the security situation. The deployment of thousands of additional troops in Aceh justified on the pretext of providing security for ExxonMobil means that thousands more troops are competing to supplement inadequate salaries by taking on non-military work - some of it legal and some of it illegal. The official 2000 defense-and-security budget was "according to the Minister of Defense, only sufficient to cover about 25 per cent of minimal operating costs."

Any objective analysis of the reports referred to below must conclude that the worsening situation is due to an increase in armed operations against insurgents - the Free Aceh Movement or GAM, which the military claim to be launching to guarantee the territorial integrity of Indonesia. However, the increase in offensive operations are in significant measure likely the result of an ongoing violent rivalry between the military and police for access to lucrative opportunities in legal and illegal business. These opportunities in Aceh - especially around the highly profitable gas operations of ExxonMobil, provide ample incentive to the military and police to avoid withdrawing inorganic forces from the province. As evidenced by previous calls for security officers to be held responsible for human rights abuses in Aceh, made following a 1998 withdrawal, such a withdrawal would also likely result in demands for accountability for atrocities committed in Aceh. Accountability is something that has yet to effect the military forces responsible for atrocities in Aceh or East Timor.

The military and police businesses in Aceh, include providing protection, extortion, drug-running, illegal timber harvesting, illegal fishing, illegal mining, and prostitution, are in competition with each other. As a result of this competition, the military and police, often in collusion with civilian government officials, have generated violent disturbances to justify military or police "solutions" to non-existent threats. The International Crisis Group reported in September 2000, that "(i)t is often claimed that military units exploit the opportunities available in disturbed regions, to supplement their incomes, especially by offering protection services." The report found that these claims can not be dismissed out of hand and the documentation of a "rivalry" between the police and military below supports the theory that the security problems for ExxonMobil are due in large part to causes other than insurgency threats. The shutting down of operations in Aceh has serious repercussions for the Indonesian economy. ExxonMobil has shown that it has the power to place conditions on the Indonesian government and armed forces before it is willing to resume operations. Munir, a well-respected human rights lawyer, observed the effect of the shutdown, stating " (t)his stopping of production gives the government the perfect excuse to bring in the military". Why doesn't ExxonMobil insist on an end to human rights abuses by the Indonesian armed forces around its facilities as a condition of resuming operations? The security operations have already had predictable lethal results for the local population. A report dated December 13, 2000, found that villagers from five villages around Point A of ExxonMobil's operations had complained to ExxonMobil that violent incidents had increased since the company hired 100 Indonesian soldiers to guard the point. On May 15, 2001, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that "troops bashed two Indonesian journalists in front of a mosque&in North Aceh." The story went on to detail a recent attack by soldiers who had "killed a four-month old baby by pouring boiling water over him, attacked other villagers and looted everything of value." The United States Agency for International Development cited a report that one week prior to this incident, "the office of the Aceh chapter of the national human rights commission in Banda Aceh was shot at by a group of police on patrol." The same week, The Jakarta Post reported that Diswanda Wahyu, a fifteen year old boy, who had been taken into police custody on Friday, was found dead with (a) gunshot wound on Saturday". On April 18th, the Associated Press reported that government forces killed a five-year old girl and her father, when, according to a witness, paramilitary policemen "fired blindly".

ExxonMobil: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?

The following documentation raises serious questions about ExxonMobil's culpability for widespread human rights abuses, committed in the past. Specifically, this backgrounder seeks to outline the history of human rights violations in Aceh, in and around the main areas of ExxonMobil's business activities. As a result, we hope to have illustrated the need for it to review its security arrangements and to put the corporation on notice for future abuses.

The documentation referred to in appendices below, all available to ExxonMobil's executives and their spokespersons, indicates that ExxonMobil has had clear and compelling evidence available to it, at least since 1992, that serious and widespread human rights violations by Indonesian security forces were occurring in Aceh. Furthermore, the sources cited below offer a clear indictment of ExxonMobil for its "complicity of silence" about the primary cause of human rights abuses: namely, the Indonesian security forces, a large contingent of which are hired to provide security to ExxonMobil's operations in the district of North Aceh. Having silently accepted the pretext for more military to come to Aceh to provide "security" for its business activities, ExxonMobil is liable. Because ExxonMobil continues to pay Indonesian military and police to provide security for its operations, it is doubly liable.

The documents indicate that justified grievances by locals against ExxonMobil are probably underreported. The corruption of the Indonesian justice system is well known. In the United States, where the court system is generally acceptable, the corporation entered into a costly litigation battle, which resulted in ExxonMobil being found guilty of "trying to cheat the state out of oil royalties". Jurors levied punitive fines of $3.4 billion dollars against the corporation based on internal corporate documents that "indicated Exxon was aware it was shortchanging the state but thought it had enough muscle to get away with it". The documents revealed that the company had "subject(ed) the issue of whether (to) obey the law to dispassionate cost-benefit analysis". Similar calculations and use of "muscle" in Aceh are resulting in atrocities. Under such conditions, Acehnese villagers face one of the most brutal militaries as well as the world's largest corporation and scofflaw.