Reconciliation agreements and grand ceremonies between warlords have not sealed the peace, as too many have found in post-conflict societies.
Victims and affected societies are more often left to themselves to figure out how to overcome remaining tensions. AJAR and its partners in the Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Aceh in Indonesia and Thailand, have engaged with hundreds of young and old survivors apart from activists. The organizations have encouraged them to share feelings and experiences, analyze the root causes of violence, and raise recommendations and demands of their rights to the respective governments.
“You may say the conflict is over”, one woman told the chairperson of the Solomon Islands Trauma Healing Association (SITHA), Pauline Fruisia. “But here we still have conflicts like those over land and fishing grounds,” said Pauline, quoting the island resident living far from the capital. Raising the voices and hopes of victims and survivors is the first step in truth-seeking and healing of individuals and communities. This approach contrasts the top-down policies of governments which tend to rush conflict resolution.
The CSOs continue to monitor the implementation of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions such as that of Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands.
The report of the Solomon Islands’ TRC was submitted to the government in 2012, after peace was restored from the “ethnic tensions” of around 1999-2003.
With AJAR, SITHA held Participatory Action Research (PAR) workshops with survivors who were among over 35,000 people forced to flee their homes. Some 200 were killed. Several organizations grouped in SITHA managed to push the government’s formal commitment to the TRC recommendations, such as support for urgently required trauma healing for citizens.
“Domestic violence because of unprocessed trauma is a mountain we need to climb in the Solomon Islands,” Pauline said.
During the implementation of the program, AJAR and its partners have used and improved tools to enable victims and conflict-affected societies to articulate what are often long-suppressed feelings and fears. Group activities, like drawing the “River of Life” and “Body Mapping” are creatively combined with their communities’ needs like trauma-healing, or investigating the root causes of violence.
“I feel free”, some participants of SITHA sessions said, when they found they had trauma that could be healed, instead of being dismissed as victims of “witchcraft”.
Victims and activists alike could better describe and analyze their conflict situations, by drawing and discussing the “Tree of Conflict” and “House of Peace,” among others. Their voices are documented in the report titled “Voices of Survivors and Peacebuilders in the Solomon Islands.”
In central Aceh, Indonesia, years after the 2005 peace agreement between the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), frictions endured in the aftermath of a major clash in 2001, involving villagers of rival ethnicities. The rivalry was between the “Jawa”, descendants of Javanese brought from Java to work on the Gayo highland plantations, and the Acehnese and Gayonese who were considered GAM supporters. As the government hunted the GAM from the mid-1970s to 2005, the Javanese families were branded government collaborators and spies. The Indonesian Military (TNI) had little difficulty recruiting those of Javanese descent to train them as militia, who sought to defend their families.
KontraS Aceh approached the formerly hostile villagers and gathered consenting residents of two villages into 15 workshops covering 8 PAR methods, hosted in turn by each village (owing to technical reasons one workshop was canceled). Fuadi Mardhatillah of KontraS Aceh said participants “admitted they were involved” as victims and perpetrators of hostility and violence. Local leaders and residents wished “to prevent their children and grandchildren from engaging in revenge,” Fuadi said. Through tools including the House of Peace and Village Map, workshop participants learned how the “horizontal” ethnic conflict was easily fueled by other factors beyond the village situation during the war between GAM and the Indonesian government. Elders had narrated how grudges were inherited from the nationwide communist witch hunt around 1965, in which the “Javanese” were branded as many of the killers of innocent Acehnese, and earlier, the Darul Islam movement around 1948.
Participants became increasingly aware of the past situation “trapping them into a cycle of conflict and killing” Fuadi said.
Finally, the villagers and their leaders agreed to a reconciliation ceremony, attended by hundreds of villagers. To help sustain the peace, the villagers have decided to continue cooperation through coffee businesses. The former village head had requested PAR activities for the youth, to understand the conflict and avoid repetition of violence, said Fuadi.
Educating the young generation across Aceh about the conflict in general is also crucial. Although most lived in Aceh all their lives, many say they understand little about the three decades or war as their parents are reluctant to talk about it . KontraS has therefore held several events for the youth, such as on the annual commemorations of International Human Rights Day, International Youth Day, Aceh Peace Day, the day of the Helsinki peace agreement. Various materials are conveyed across social media platforms and in popular forms like drama. Victims and survivors are invited to share their experiences which are not in history books. “The victims’ openness and the youth’s interest in learning the history serve as a bridge between the old and young generation, to build a better life” in Aceh, Fuadi said.
Students even produced a short film, “8:45” (LINK), featuring the testimony of a victim of arbitrary arrest and detention. An event called “Tunnel of Memories” features an exhibition of items and photographs of the war in Aceh and its victims. The “Human Rights Walk” took young participants around the capital, Banda Aceh. Memorial sites include the assassination spots of two university rectors and the location of a former prison where several GAM figures were detained. Almost all drowned in the tsunami of 26 December 2004.
Some participants of these events have said they would like to continue to focus on human rights work.
In Thailand, AJAR’s partner, the Cross-Cultural Foundation (CrCF) has held PAR workshops involving student activists, survivors and families of victims of torture and forced disappearance.
Nattamon Supornvate from CrCF said it was revealing how participants could open up and share personal stories, and amplify voices to restore democracy, which stalled since the 2014 military coup.
The CrCF used the PAR methods for the research workshops, art events and memorialization, such as the commemorations of those who had disappeared involving their family members. “People power” helped pass the anti-torture law; while campaigns are ongoing to pass an amnesty bill that would free thousands of people from charges of insult and defamation against the monarchy and government. Behind closed doors the CrCF managed to bring together diverse stakeholders to push these policies. Much of the information for the people’s recommendations were based on participants’ sharing and analysis in the PAR workshops. They showed how security was not only a daily problem in the “deep south”, but also in the cities where anyone could be arrested if suspected of being critical against the military or monarchy (link, “I just want to live in peace”, 2024). The CrCF has also filed a lawsuit with the court using the new anti-torture law for the family of a military member who died of torture by the Royal Army.
The AJAR partners have thus used PAR and its methods for all the aspects of Transitional Justice, in striving for prosecution, truth-seeking, repairs and rehabilitation, and reform to prevent the recurrence of violence.
In Timor Leste AJAR partners are the ACbit (Asosiasaun Chega Ba Ita) and AJAR Timor Leste. AcBit and survivors of sexual violence who had joined a PAR workshop set up Pirilampu, the Fireflies, which also include their children born out of rape.
ACbit and AJAR TL showed contrasting conflict resolution policies of the government. Manuela Pereira of AcBit and Liliana Amaral of UN Women Timor Leste described how cooperation between government and civil society succeeded in better recognition and commitment for survivors of sexual violence, through the National Action Plan 1325 for 2024-2028. It is based on the UN Resolution 1325 which highlights the effects of conflict situations on women and girls, and their role in peacebuilding and prevention of violence (link, “Pirilampu, UNSCR 1325 Advocacy Booklet”, 2024). The Pirilampu and AcBit continue to reach out to more victims and survivors who are silenced by fear and stigma from their societies.
“Women were deeply involved during the occupation, but afterwards many became victims again, faced stigma or had to return to domestic roles,” Manuela said.
In contrast, the ban on martial arts and ritual arts groups, said Jose Luis de Oliveira of AJAR TL, was issued “without diagnosing the root of violence.” The groups have been blamed for public disturbances, with the support of the public who are still traumatized by violence before and after independence from Indonesia.
The members of both martial arts and ritual arts groups had joined PAR workshops of AJAR TL. Their discussions and analysis, such as through the “House of Peace” method, confirmed that lack of job opportunities, quality education, and mobilization by competing political parties were among the main causes of violent clashes involving the group members. AJAR TL is working with the relevant government bodies for better policies for the youth.
Since 2013 the AJAR regional organization has also been working with the governments of Indonesia and Timor Leste, their human rights commissions and other CSOs, to seek thousands of “stolen children”, now in their 40s and 50s.
“As neighbors, we have no choice but to work together,” said Atnike N. Sigiro, the chief of Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM). Since 2013, 203 survivors have been found, of which 130 have been reunited. The collaboration involving organizations in Timor Leste and Indonesia led to the working group of Labarik Lakon (missing children, in Tetun).
A survivor, Hakim Afonso, had shared his story at the seminar, of being separated from his family as a child — just one of many types of human rights violations against Timorese under Indonesian occupation.
Hakim was grateful that he could reunite with his biological family. However thousands of other families do not know their children’s whereabouts, and whether they are dead or alive; the CAVR had cited testimonies of children being taken to Indonesia by Indonesian soldiers and various “foundations”. Identifying, finding them, and reuniting the children, now adults, with their families, is a neglected obligation of the governments of Indonesia and Timor Leste, as recommended by both the CAVR (Timor Leste’s TRC) and the Timor Leste-Indonesia Truth and Friendship Commission
Atnike said Komnas HAM assures the government support for necessary documentation such as birth certificates and passports; this was only follow-up of the recommendations for Indonesia and Timor Leste by the truth commissions.
However, as survivors are aging and while thousands remain unknown, “the governments need to think about a better approach,” Galuh Wandita, Executive Director of AJAR said. The crime itself, a practice of war, needs clear government recognition, she said. In 2023 AJAR and the Australian National University collaborated on a research project on the separation and reunification experiences of the stolen children, involving five men and three women in the 40s and 50s. Through the “Body Mapping” method the participants described their childhood and recollections of separation from their families; and their life in Indonesia until reunification. (link, “A Constant Longing”, 2024).
The study revealed their relief and joy upon the reunions, but also feelings of being torn between families in Timor Leste and their families and lives in Indonesia. The Labarik Lakon working group has insisted on government recognition of the crime, commitment to search all the other stolen children, facilitation for reunions and necessary identity documents for the victims, and other required support for the survivors who are still trying to “live in peace,” as Hakim said.