Human Rights and State Security: Indonesia and the Philippines 9780812204926

Table of contents :
Contents
1. Human Rights and State Security in International Relations
2. International Norms and Their Contestation in Human Rights Dialogues
3. Indonesia’s New Order 1965–1978: Transnational Advocacy and State Security under Military-Led Modernization
4. The Philippine New Society 1972–1986: Transnational Advocacy and Human Rights Change
5. Indonesia’s New Order 1986–1998: Transnational Advocacy and Human Rights Change
6. Subcontracted Violence in the Philippines 1986–1992: Excusing Violations
7. Excuses and Paramilitary Violence in East Timor and Indonesia 1999–2005
8. The Philippines 1999–2008: Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Violations
9. Contested Norms and Human Rights Change
Notes
Abbreviations
References
Index
Acknowledgments

Citation preview

Human Rights and State Security

PENNSYLVANIA STUDIES IN HUMAN RIGHTS Bert B. Lockwood, Jr., Series Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

Human Rights and State Security Indonesia and the Philippines

Anja Jetschke

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS PHILADELPHIA

•

OXFORD

Copyright ©  University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper           Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jetschke, Anja. Human rights and state security : Indonesia and the Philippines / Anja Jetschke. p. cm. — (Pennsylvania studies in human rights) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN ---- (hardcover : alk. paper) . Human rights—Indonesia. . Human rights—Philippines. . Human rights advocacy—Indonesia. . Human rights advocacy—Philippines. . International and municipal law—Indonesia. . International and municipal law—Philippines. I. Title. II. Series: Pennsylvania studies in human rights JC.IJ  .—dc 

For Quirin and Jan

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Contents

. Human Rights and State Security in International Relations



. International Norms and Their Contestation in Human Rights Dialogues



. Indonesia’s New Order –: Transnational Advocacy and State Security under Military-Led Modernization



. The Philippine New Society –: Transnational Advocacy and Human Rights Change



. Indonesia’s New Order –: Transnational Advocacy and Human Rights Change



. Subcontracted Violence in the Philippines –: Excusing Violations



. Excuses and Paramilitary Violence in East Timor and Indonesia –



. The Philippines –: Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Violations



. Contested Norms and Human Rights Change



Notes



Abbreviations



References



viii

Contents

Index



Acknowledgments



1 Human Rights and State Security in International Relations

Why do governments routinely violate human rights, and what makes them decide to change that practice? Do international human rights norms, in fact, influence state behavior? If so, can non-governmental human rights organizations influence a state’s human rights practice in a positive way, and under what conditions? Why is the mobilization of external actors different, even when they are responding to similar types of violations? And under what conditions can governments evade public pressures to change their practices? In addition to those general questions, what happens when we focus on specific nations—in this case, Indonesia and the Philippines? Do international norms have any significant impact on these nations’ human rights practices, and under what conditions? And what about the activities of international human rights organizations like Amnesty International, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights or Human Rights Watch? How do the public discourses that routinely develop between governments and these organizations influence the governments’ decisions on human rights policies? And how does the impact of a mobilization vary with the type of regime? That is, does it make a difference that the Philippines and Indonesia were authoritarian at one point and in a transition to democracy at another point when they were targeted by human rights campaigns? Finally, have human rights campaigns helped these two states to continually improve their human rights practices? In addressing these questions, I attempt to establish three major claims. First, I show that international human rights organizations, like Amnesty

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International, exert a much greater influence on the human rights practices of these two countries than analysts of their behavior usually assume. These organizations pursued international campaigns on the Philippines and Indonesia that influenced their state policies in human rights even during the Cold War, when both nations were key military allies of the United States in Southeast Asia. In both countries, they mobilized public opinion about human rights practices; they also influenced other nations to change their foreign policies toward these governments. These campaigns shaped the decisions of Indonesia’s Suharto government, and the Philippines’ Marcos government, in areas such as mass releases of political prisoners that these governments saw as threats to their state’s national security. But they did more than that. In the Philippines in , human rights organizations affected Marcos’s choice to liberalize the authoritarian political system. In Indonesia, they influenced Suharto’s decision to grant human rights monitors access to East Timor in ; it had been annexed by Indonesia in , and the monitors suspected gross and systematic human rights violations. This action would open the floodgates for a more systematic criticism of the Indonesian military. In both countries, these campaigns influenced governments to relax the enforcement of laws that effectively restrained people’s right to associate freely and to express political opinions; the campaigns also got them to denounce the practice of torture. In Indonesia in , a controversial state security agency was dissolved because its practice of arbitrary detentions was criticized by human rights organizations. In both cases, human rights concerns contributed to the unraveling of the authoritarian Marcos and Suharto governments, in  and  respectively. These influences occurred with some regularity and were not just isolated incidents. But at the same time that we observe these organizations having a surprising amount of influence on these two governments, we also observe that their influence varied considerably over time and place. In the s Amnesty had conducted similar campaigns on political prisoners in both Indonesia and the Philippines. But while these campaigns initially achieved similar results—both governments released great numbers of political prisoners— the political reforms went much further in the Philippines than in Indonesia. Why? The Philippines were strategically more important to the US government because they hosted the two largest military installations outside US territory (Kessler ). And objectively, Indonesia was a greater violator of norms because it annexed East Timor in . Both these observations make the political reforms counterintuitive. In any case, in  the international

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mobilization in Indonesia ended suddenly: apparently the Indonesian government could deflect human rights pressures, but the Philippine government was unable to do so. And why were the same groups that proved so instrumental in bringing down the Marcos government in  not able to provide more effective constraints on gross and systematic human rights violations in the Philippines under a democratic government between  and ? Why was the Indonesian government equally able to repress human rights concerns in its provinces of Aceh and Irian Jaya under democratic governments, when political terror in these two provinces had previously rallied considerable international indignation under the Suharto government? All these questions illustrate how these campaigns, and their effects, can vary. My second claim in this book is that international human rights campaigns have far less impact when governments can pitch the issue of state security against those human rights norms. State security concerns a state’s perception that it is in a fundamental way challenged from inside or outside. To secure the state, international law has developed a number of norms that are embedded in the concept of state sovereignty, including a state’s right to territorial integrity, its right to a monopoly on violence, and the secular character of the state (Hinsley ; Barkin and Cronin ; Krasner ). These norms, in combination, ensure that states develop as the organizational units in the international system that are most capable of securing human rights. If rulers have to make a decision between their citizens’ human rights and state security, they have to make hard choices. At its starkest, the choice presents itself as: How far must states go, in order to protect themselves against adversaries from within and outside? This choice is a profound one, because there is a tradeoff between state security and liberty (Ullman : ). Political struggles over human rights seek an answer to precisely this question. And the existence of international norms related to state security provides a choice for governments that are accused of human rights violations: They can frame their domestic situations differently from the way human rights organizations do. This means that, in order to explain why the outcomes of human rights pressures vary, we have to look at how the Indonesian and Philippine governments utilize these norms and how they are creative in deflecting the normatively generated human rights pressures. My claim here is that the human rights campaigns that organizations like Amnesty International carried out against the Indonesian and Philippine governments are best understood as public dialogues, or discourses, over human rights practices. A human rights campaign is a strategic attempt by

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such organizations to draw international and domestic attention to a state government’s human rights practice; these groups try to elicit responses from the target state by mobilizing, most importantly, other states, international organizations, and public opinion. This mechanism is called social sanctioning: Key actors primarily rely on the reactions and moral condemnation of other actors (Johnston ). But governments are not helpless recipients of pressures based on norms. They themselves can influence audiences, most importantly by providing persuasive accounts about why human rights violations occur. They can justify their practices by invoking state security and by connecting this to internationally accepted community standards, and they can excuse violations by shifting responsibility for them. Whether or not governments get away with their violations thus depends on how persuasively and effectively they package or frame their action, and how acceptable that makes it to the relevant audiences, both domestic and international. If states can muster good arguments to defend their practices, they can deflect pressures. Overall, then, this means that human rights campaigns are situations in which transnational human rights organizations and the targeted governments compete in front of an international and domestic public to get support for their specific definition of the situation (Risse and Ropp : ). Both sides have an intrinsic motivation to move the issues to a transnational platform: Advocacy groups know that doing so will give them access to enforcement power or at least increase their political leverage. Likewise, governments know that if they succeed in persuading audiences and seek international legitimacy for their actions, they can pursue their preferences legitimately. They activate a transnational public, which becomes increasingly implicated in judging the exchange as their exchanges grow and public attention increases. This places audiences in the position of acting as judges about the persuasiveness of arguments. And their approval or disapproval can help reduce the indeterminacy of norms; that is, they help make a decision whether state security or human rights is at stake. In arguing for my second claim, I show that what happens if rulers and human rights organizations argue over the human rights practices of a state is a form of public rule-making through discourse. They publicly negotiate the meaning of their endeavors: for example, what the nature of the threat to the state is, and whether the state is really as insecure as power-holders claim it to be or whether rulers might be using this as a convenient mask to stay in power. I then analyze the underlying process dynamics of this kind of public

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rule-making; I show how it is a path-dependent process. The general idea of path dependency is that the historical process, rather than initial conditions, is what determines outcomes. Whether or not human rights or norms related to state security govern a particular situation can only be explained in relation to a particular sequence of intermediate arguments and events that take place between the initial conditions and the endpoint. Discourses about norm compliance will develop continuously, and one norm will emerge as dominant, but they will do so along pathways traced by the initial frames, justifications, and excuses that governments introduce to counter human rights norms. At the beginning, a range of choices for a particular behavior are available, but through one or several “critical junctures” one choice gains an advantage, which is then reinforced through positive feedback (Mahoney ; Pierson ). My third argument is that conventional theories of international relations tend to neglect the fact that these normative issues are at stake when governments and human rights organizations haggle over human rights norms and the right course of action. That is, they neglect the fact that human rights campaigns pitch human rights norms against state security norms. As a result, they cannot sufficiently explain the observed variety of outcomes: At some points in time, these campaigns have significant influences on human rights practices, and at other times we see no changes in practices—or even increases in repression. Realist approaches to international relations are not surprised to observe that Indonesia and the Philippines have regularly violated even the most basic human rights, and that when human rights pressures did emerge, those pressures had no systematic impact on state governments. For realists, the distribution of military capabilities in the international system provides the starting point for substantial theorizing in international relations (IR). Their assumption is that because of their material power, states are the key actors in the international system and that they seek security and preservation of their autonomy. States are thus interested in upholding their unconditional sovereignty. Realists do not grant human rights organizations much influence in international relations, for the simple fact that these organizations have no material power resources. So if they unexpectedly influence human rights decisions in other countries, it is because their interests overlap with those of hegemonic states, who promote human rights primarily out of self-interest; human rights might further the state’s other material interests (Krasner ). That is, if human rights pressures emerge,

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they are secondary to more fundamental phenomena driving international processes—most importantly, military security. Powerful states might use human rights as a tool to reduce the legitimacy that other governments have in the eyes of relevant audiences, but human rights organizations certainly are not fundamental forces themselves, able to influence state behavior in a predictable way. Realists are puzzled, however, when they observe that human rights pressures upon Indonesia and the Philippines emerged during the Cold War, and when they see how the two nations responded to them. Both nations were of strategic military importance at that time, but the US government supported human rights concerns in both countries, even if it confined its pressures to a diplomatic level. Rationalist institutional approaches expect human rights norms to have an effect when international legal regimes and their concomitant mechanisms are strong. When human rights law makes precise prescriptions, for example, about what extra-judicial execution or torture is, and if there is effective monitoring, then even in the absence of an international enforcement authority, human rights–violating states can be induced to comply if states have committed themselves to these treaties. International legal regimes do this by imposing specific costs on violations, most importantly in the form of the loss of reputation (Slaughter Burley ; Helfer and Slaughter ). But in contrast to the European Convention on Human Rights () or the American Convention on Human Rights (), international human rights conventions for a long time lacked these features. And to this day, Asia does not have its own regional human rights mechanism. Moreover, neither the Philippines nor Indonesia was party to any legally binding human rights convention when international human rights organizations first campaigned for human rights in the s. Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Indonesia and the Philippines are members, plan to set up an ASEAN human right mechanism and did set up a working group in . The influence of these campaigns on human rights is therefore surprising. On the other hand, when the governments of these two states eventually signed and ratified some of these conventions after regime change, monitors reported human rights violations that were as bad as under authoritarian governments. Why these disparate effects? Constructivists take a different perspective. This approach places at the center of its analysis a belief in norms as intersubjective understandings about appropriate behavior. These standards not only externally constrain state behavior but are constitutive of state identity. With their enactment,

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states express their belonging to an international community and will orient their behavior toward these norms. Constructivists are not all surprised when they observe that states submit to human rights pressures. They argue that the international system has changed fundamentally since the middle of the twentieth century, offering considerably more support for human rights. Most importantly, human rights law has been institutionalized at an international level. Starting with the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights of , international human rights law has developed significantly: from a relatively nonbinding set of prescriptions about how states should behave, to a sophisticated and legally binding treaty law that has acquired the status of constraining law (ius cogens) in international relations. Basic human rights—such as the right to life and the right to freedom from torture or degrading treatment—must always be respected, and international human rights law has established that the most basic rights are protected under any circumstances. Some human rights instruments, such as the Convention against Torture () or the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (), make clear that these acts cannot be justified under any circumstance, including war, international political instability, or any other public emergency (Simmons : ). Thus, to constructivists, respecting human rights is not just a moral imperative for the Philippine and Indonesian governments, but also a legal one, as states have agreed to abide by basic human rights guarantees. These theorists predict that if specific mechanisms are in place—most importantly, networks of human rights advocates that link domestic and international human rights organizations—and if these networks mobilize other states and international organizations, then no government can afford not to introduce human rights reforms or respond to pressures even in the absence of centralized enforcement (Keck and Sikkink ). Moreover, doing so will set them on a slippery path toward more reforms (Thomas ; Risse, Ropp, et al. ). Thus, given the right prerequisites, constructivists believe that human rights norms can be expected to have a systematic influence on state behavior. Just like realists, however, constructivists fail to explain the overall outcome observed in these cases: the variations in the challenge that transnational advocacy networks present over time and place. The impact of human rights campaigns has varied in both Indonesia and the Philippines under authoritarian government and in otherwise quite similar international conditions.

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Why is it that these approaches fail to explain these cases? The key is that they—for different reasons—pay little attention to the fact that governments can effectively justify their practices. Realists fail to explain those outcomes in which a human rights mobilization obviously had an impact on a state, because they generally believe that norms do not affect state behavior in international relations. For this group, my argument poses a double normative challenge: I argue that international norms can override or reconstitute materially defined interests. And I argue that state security is itself embedded in normative understandings about what a state is. Thus, state security does matter in encounters with human rights groups. But governments do not escape pressures because no law or more powerful state can stop them, but because they can refer effectively to another set of international norms related to state security. When they do so, they weaken and undermine some of the most effective safeguards against human rights violations: human rights organizations, the media, and an attentive public as key providers of information on abuses. Although my argument is constructivist, I go beyond this approach in extending its analysis and method to state security norms; thus, my argument equally poses both a normative challenge and a challenge of indeterminacy. Constructivist analysis implicitly argues that human rights promotion is an issue that places either universal norms against domestic norms or collective norms against the self-interests of states (Thomas ; Cortell and Davis ; Acharya ; Cardenas : ). Human rights norms have power, and under specific conditions they will outweigh the power interests of rulers. Alternatively, they outweigh domestic norms because they have a universal claim and are generally more accepted. Thus rulers face a dichotomous situation: They must either honor the norms or act in their own interest; or they must make a decision between two sets of norms, the one international, and the other domestic. The constructivist framework that I establish here avoids both extremes and effectively explains the social and political change taking place on the ground in these countries. I argue that this conception is misleading and that this becomes apparent if we look at the justifications that governments offer in their dialogue with international critics. If governments can justify their practices effectively, then the issue becomes one of international norms versus international norms. If that is true, then international norms are ubiquitous and indeterminate; that is, they are to be found everywhere and do not have the power to determine outcomes. Hence, I argue, one cannot predict courses of action without looking at an intervening process

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that explains how one norm becomes dominant. This process is a discourse in which norms are pitched against each other, as governments offer justifications and excuses in response to the claims of human rights groups. In addition to addressing the limitations in the existing literature, the approach I take here has wider implications for the ways we conceive of international human rights norms and law and of state sovereignty more generally. On a practical level, it has implications for human rights advocacy and human rights campaigns. In adopting a perspective that focuses on political contestation, I approach norms as a skeptic. I assume that international norms are ubiquitous, that they are contradictory and therefore indeterminate. Instead of thinking of internationally institutionalized norms as accomplished social facts or as moral imperatives, I argue that they must be thought of, on the one hand, as authoritatively articulated goals of public policy and, on the other, as political resources in the hands of those who want to alter the course of public policy and effect change (Scheingold ). At times, these norms gain in status because they become intersubjectively shared, that is, agreed upon by a large audience; thus they should govern a specific situation. But whether they gain that status depends on whether the actors can persuade a large audience that their claims are right and appropriate. Thus this approach takes into account the contingent character of norms in the international and domestic realms. I do not argue that the ubiquity and indeterminate nature of norms makes it impossible to comply with them (Krasner ). Instead, I argue that whether or not a given behavior is perceived as a norm violation depends on the outcome of this struggle to develop an authoritative account of the situation. And depending on this process, compliance can take on different forms and occur to varying degrees. More importantly, however, it can also take on completely different meanings, so that what is regarded a norm violation in one case can be seen as appropriate behavior in another one. This approach sheds light on the debate on the waning of state sovereignty. To international human rights lawyers and international relations scholars, the fact that the sovereignty norm has been effectively undermined is a significant advance in human rights law. For example, Richard Falk argues that human rights have reconstituted sovereignty. As international institutions have developed to oversee the enforcement of human rights, they have legitimized international concern about the internal relations between states and their societies, “an undertaking” he sees as being “at variance with Westphalian pretensions of unconditional sovereignty” (Falk : ). Kathryn

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Sikkink argues that human rights policies contribute to a “gradual, significant, and probably irreversible transformation of sovereignty in the modern world,” a shift significantly inspired by transnational actors (Sikkink : ). And Ann-Marie Slaughter speaks of the “piercing of state sovereignty” by networks of actors consisting of lawyers, non-profit organizations, or governmental agencies (Slaughter ). However, sovereignty is a multidimensional concept, and the legalization of human rights norms has not managed to equally undermine all norms constituting sovereignty. Some principles continue to conflict with human rights. The doctrine of sovereignty not only states that rulers have the right to non-interference; it also defines a range of legitimate state functions. These include political stability, the promotion of citizens’ individual welfare, and the state’s responsibility to secure the well-being of its citizens against internal and international threats. Historically the sovereign state, as a legalrational bureaucratic organization with a legitimate monopoly on organized violence, has emerged as the entity that secures these collective goods (Tilly ; Meyer ; Mann ). From these state functions, it is possible to derive several persuasive arguments as to why it might be legitimate to constrain specific human rights guarantees at some points. When and how these accounts matter has seldom been explored, primarily because the majority of qualitative comparative studies of human rights has looked at successful campaigns (Kowert and Legro ). On a theoretical level, scholars are interested in the general impact that international law and norms have on state behavior. This research connects to the larger questions in social science about the relative weight of actors and structures in international relations and the dominant logics of actions. Is state behavior predominantly shaped by material forces or norms and ideas, or do actors act relatively unconstrained by international norms and institutions? And if institutions matter, do they develop a life of their own, or are actors in control of them? In the area of human rights, this engagement has concentrated on the key questions of whether the increasing growth, internationally, of institutions that enforce human rights has also improved the level of compliance with these norms. Rationalist (that is, material rationalist) and constructivist approaches to human rights vary in their methodology and in the ways they study the influence of norms. They are also interested in different processes and mechanisms of change: whether this is a micro-process in which state governments are primarily concerned about rewards and punishments or whether state

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elites can be socialized into new identities, which then influence how rulers treat their citizens (Checkel ; Risse ). Over the last decade, a group of new studies on human rights has approached human rights from a quantitative perspective and explored the effects of international human rights conventions on state behavior (Davenport and Armstrong ; Haftner-Burton and Tsutsui ; Hathaway ; Neumayer ; Powell and Staton ; Simmons ). Many of these statistical analyses provide us with a skeptical picture of human rights institutions; currently a significant debate revolves around the actual impact that international human rights law has on state practice. While optimists provide evidence about the influence of human rights norms in changing human rights practices in carefully selected case studies, skeptics draw on cross-sectional evidence to argue that the changes that the qualitative analysts observe are minor deviations from a general pattern in which human rights institutions generally have little causal influence on behavior (Hafner-Burton ). But despite their different perspectives on the motivations and mechanisms of human rights change, rationalist and constructivist approaches to international norms do converge: Both are interested primarily in the question of state responses to international norms. In adopting this perspective, both see norms as something objectively given. In their analysis, norms constitute a social fact or an objective entity whose effects on states or domestic constituents can be determined. A common strategy, then, is to look at individual human rights norms selectively, to match actual behavior with the norm being considered, to make a reasonable statement about the state’s behavior (compliant or noncompliant) and then analyze the mechanics and scope conditions of how the behavior could (or could not) be changed over time, through coercion, cost-benefit calculations, persuasion, or moral shaming. In statistical analyses, an isolated observation of normative effects helps identify those variables that might promote or block compliance. These approaches explain the gap between the legal prescriptions and the actual state behavior by pointing to lack of enforcement or weaknesses in monitoring domestic conditions, or to the salience and resilience of domestic cultural norms. My assumption is that states and human rights organizations struggle, first and foremost, over the right definition of a situation: Whether the phenomena that actors observe are, in fact, human rights violations or whether they are something different. These are processes in which actors discuss constitutive issues: What kind of situation is this? Which norm should govern this particular situation, human rights or state

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security? My key focus is how and through which processes governments and human rights organizations come to shared definitions of a situation, under what conditions a state security argument persuades audiences, what a good state security argument is, and how this process is influenced by the very audiences that they seek to mobilize—other states, international organizations, and public opinion. If we trace the process, the justifications that these governments provide in a public discourse with their critics will lead us to a set of international normative understandings that are embedded in a world cultural polity and that shape state action (Meyer and Rowan ; March and Olsen ). On a practical level, the increased attention to human rights over the past few decades has also spurred efforts to strengthen human rights concerns in the external relations of states, and to promote international human rights groups and networks that seek to transnationalize specific issues in order to pressure governments “from above and below” (Brysk ; Gready : f). One central finding of the burgeoning literature on human rights is that some issues resonate more strongly with international norms than others— most importantly, issues related to “bodily harm to vulnerable individuals,” such as torture or legal equality of opportunity (Keck and Sikkink : , ; but see Carpenter ). Hence, many of the suggestions about how to promote human rights internationally focus on the strategies of non-governmental human rights organizations and the ways they frame their demands. Moreover, activists are learning a considerable amount because the most successful human rights campaigns have attracted substantial media publicity. Actors can thus draw lessons from successful campaigns and consciously adapt their strategies and campaigns to ensure that their demands also fit with international audiences. But human rights campaigners need to understand how states are countering their accusations, and they need to recognize the importance of both the rhetoric and the content and framing of accusations and counter-accusations as well as path dependency. More important still, they have to recognize the limitations on what they can learn from other campaigns and acknowledge that transplanting strategies at the wrong time will harm their overall effectiveness. In this book, then, I focus on internationally codified norms of personal (or physical) integrity and security. These norms refer to a special subset of civil rights, recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights () and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (), which addresses issues of physical harm or intimidation. They include rights to be

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free from unlawful execution, arbitrary arrest, torture, and forced exile, as well as positive rights to basic protection. International law confers two obligations upon states: They must desist from violating these rights, and they must guarantee these rights to their citizens. These international norms enjoy strong legal and normative standing. Consequently, a wide range of actors—including states, international organizations (governmental and non-governmental), and domestic non-state groups—apply pressure on their behalf. To provide documentary evidence on human rights pressures and changes in state compliance, I employ a wide range of primary materials. I rely extensively on the records of intergovernmental organizations, including official state responses to the United Nations, and the reports of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). I also examine publications by the Indonesian and Philippine governments, including foreign ministry documents, as well as Indonesian and Philippine newspaper accounts. Additionally, I use recently declassified US government documents on the authoritarian governments in both Indonesia and the Philippines. I also draw on the extensive and reliable secondary materials for both cases, including newspaper and magazine articles and articles in academic journals. Roadmap of the Book In Chapter , I develop my argument about normative contestation and a theory about how state governments use arguments related to state security in their framing strategies, in order to justify and excuse their violations. I start with an outline of existing approaches to the influence of human rights norms on state behavior and discuss their limitations in explaining the cases of the Philippines and Indonesia. I continue by arguing that in order to understand and explain the divergent outcomes of human rights campaigns, we first need to understand what a state is and how the very concept of the state is embedded in international norms relating to human rights, self-determination, territorial integrity, and legal-rational organization. Proceeding from the fact that international norms are contradictory, I develop a concept of public rule-making through discourse, in which justifications and excuses, as well as confirmatory events, play a key role. This framework provides a structure for the case studies. Justifications and excuses interrupt the mobilization pathway at different points, and my case studies will be discussed along these two ideal-typical accounts of human rights violations. Each case

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study begins by providing an alternative explanation for the observed outcomes, and my argument for the case studies. Then, in the rest of the book, I trace the influence and dynamics of human rights pressures in case studies that have different outcomes in terms of human rights change. I look at transnational mobilization for human rights in Indonesia and the Philippines between  and . Despite significant cultural differences between Indonesia and the Philippines, these two Southeast Asian countries have, over an extended period, shared surprisingly similar domestic structures and political situations. To show how differently states can respond to allegations of human rights violations, and to tease out the respective logics and causal processes involved in public debates on human rights violations, I have organized my case studies around different themes that can serve as exemplary cases for state justifications and excuses. Chapters  and  look at transnational mobilization for human rights in the cases of Indonesia and the Philippines in the s. Here it is possible to show that despite quite similar political structures in the Philippines and Indonesia, human rights pressures achieved different results. This allows me to explore the role of discourse in order to account for these differences. Together with Chapter , these chapters are designed to test two hypotheses: First, that human rights norms and transnational advocacy had an impact on the Philippines and Indonesia and contributed to the demise of authoritarian rule; and second, that justifications related to state security can deflect human rights pressures. Indonesia and the Philippines experimented with a development model called military-led modernization. This model was promoted by Western intellectuals and governments as a viable path to Westernization and the development of rational, secular state bureaucracies. It was the most comprehensive and influential attempt so far to establish sovereign states modeled after Western states, and involved a substantial reorganization of the domestic structures of the two political systems. Military-led modernization epitomized the world polity concept of what a legitimate state is. Because of it, Indonesia in the late s and then the Philippines in the early s accorded the military an outstanding role not only in external defense, but also in the country’s economic and political development. In consonance with state corporatism—another political science fad of the late s—they rebuilt their political systems into corporatist state structures and restricted the venues that would allow people to express legitimate political opposition, including political parties and professional organizations (see, e.g.,

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Shonfield ; Wiarda ). In both cases, military-backed governments were involved in gross and systematic human rights violations, including torture, disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and extrajudicial killings. In response, international human rights organizations mobilized against what they saw as authoritarian governments because of their human rights practices. Despite similar initial conditions, the outcomes of transnational advocacy were quite different, providing the first crucial test for my argument. What roles did human rights discourses and state justifications play in the interaction? Under the moral pressure of agents promoting human rights, the Marcos government in the Philippines first freed political prisoners and from  even liberalized the political system. Indonesia’s Suharto government also released political prisoners but stopped short of liberalization, although that had been on the transnational agenda. I show how the campaign on Indonesia—like that on the Philippines— initially undermined the political legitimacy of human rights practices. I then argue that at the same time as these pressures created domestic political space for the domestic opposition, these developments were virtually blocked by political struggles among contending groups on the domestic level, which the Suharto government could use as justification in its international discourse. The Suharto government argued that radical Islamic organizations were threatening the stability of the Indonesian state, its secular character, and even its military-led modernization program. This argument was convincing to an international audience that was acutely concerned about any potential replication of the Iranian revolution; it also fit with the overall military modernization paradigm of the time. As a result, human rights pressures ceased abruptly in Indonesia, despite its seizure of East Timor, whereas they continued in the Philippines. Here, mobilization eventually led to the ouster of Marcos in . This chapter shows that the secular organization of state bureaucracy that underwrote the military-led modernization paradigm constituted an effective counter-norm to human rights in reaction to religious challenges posed by Islamic groups. Chapter  demonstrates how the Indonesian government’s justification for a military-backed government to secure the secular state and continue the modernization process gradually lost its persuasiveness as transnational human rights organizations began mobilizing in the mid-s. From a research design perspective, this case study can be read as a within-case study on Indonesia controlling for case-specific variables: It investigates the influence of transnational human rights advocacy on Indonesia at different

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points in time (Ragin ), showing how discourse influences the outcome. At the same time, it is a comparative study with the Philippines, showing that in the absence of an argument that sticks with world polity norms, the political developments leading to the challenge of legitimacy are the same as in the Philippines in the earlier episode (Chapter ). Here, I show how the Indonesian democracy movement drew lessons from the fall of Marcos in February  and changed its strategies to challenge the political legitimacy of the Suharto government. A transnational East Timor network converged with an Indonesian human rights and democratization movement to challenge military-backed rule in Indonesia from the early s onward. Chapters  and  take up a different theme related to human rights pressures and state accounts: the use of excuses to defer responsibility for human rights violations. These two case studies are not necessarily independent of the first case studies, as the governments already had substantial experience with human rights advocates and had already learned a good deal about deflecting their arguments. These cases are of more general interest, as they involve human rights violations in states undergoing the transition to democracy. The main argument in these two chapters is that the very fact that state governments already had experience with human rights advocacy led them to resort to a different strategy to deflect criticism: excuses. Excuses generally draw on the notion that a government cannot be held accountable to international normative prescriptions if it does not control norm-violating groups that are supposed to be under its authority. Here, too, the major aim is to achieve an explicit understanding about the nature of the situation: If the government is not sovereign, then the norms that are associated with sovereign states do not apply. In particular, if the government is not responsible, there is little utility in applying sanctions, which are unlikely to materialize. In these cases, public dialogues aim at establishing responsibility. In these two chapters I compare the Philippines after the change of power from Marcos to Aquino in  with Indonesia after . In the Philippines immediately after the transition from an authoritarian government to a democratic one under the leadership of Corazon Aquino, a paramilitary movement emerged, of so-called vigilantes, drawing on the well-known themes of the People Power revolution of , such as spontaneous voluntarism and grassroots mobilization. These paramilitary organizations were deliberately set against a still-powerful communist movement and were encouraged by official statements and policy. The delegation of power to largely untrained paramilitary units that were barely accountable to the government resulted

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in human rights violations. After Corazon Aquino, a staunch and credible defender of human rights, became president, the international human rights network disintegrated quickly. Both Aquino’s credibility and the absence of transnational advocacy left indigenous human rights organizations vulnerable to charges that they were undermined by communists. According to the reports of international human rights organizations, many human rights defenders became targets of “salvaging”—a euphemism for forced disappearances. But when the organizations mobilized again, the transnational networks found it almost impossible to affect violations on the ground, as the government quite successfully denied that it was in control of the paramilitary units. In Chapter , I look at a similar episode of paramilitary activity in East Timor in : militia violence in the course of East Timor’s preparation for a referendum on self-determination. Here, I explain the developments on the ground to answer one of my key questions: Why do actors see the same activities quite differently, and why do these activities consequently elicit different responses? More to the point, I explore why there was international support for East Timor’s self-determination because of its history of human rights violations, when there was no mobilization for human rights in the case of Aceh and Irian Jaya, the two other human rights hot spots in Indonesia. Thus, outcomes varied even in Indonesia, despite similar strategies of human rights organizations. These within-unit comparisons allow me to further tease out the logic of path dependency and sequencing. I show how East Timor’s unforeseen and overwhelming vote for self-determination affected discourses over human rights violations elsewhere, and effectively provided the Indonesian government with a state security-related justification to suppress human rights concerns in these two countries. Finally, in Chapter , I look at the influence of human rights norms in the international war on terror in the Philippines from  onward. Since then, the Philippine government has engaged in military operations against Islamic and communist groups that it considers to be terrorist. The chapter is thus set against the perceived decline of international human rights norms in the face of a global war against terror, and provides an exemplary case for the instrumental use of international norms in this war. Th is chapter shows how, early on, the Estrada administration committed itself to a US-led war on terror and quickly gained access to important military equipment to enhance its struggle against terrorist organizations. But the military soon expanded this move to what were then legal organizations, such

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as the Muslim self-determination movement in the southern Philippines and legal left-oriented political parties. As I argue in this chapter, once a global anti-terrorism government had emerged, the Philippine government partly took advantage of, and was partly pressured into appropriating, antiterrorism norms. Excuses significantly shaped the argumentative process, leading to a controversial US engagement: The government credibly argued that its own armed forces were not well equipped to address the challenge of terrorism. Here, I show how several interrelated processes played out. The Philippine government skillfully appropriated a new norm context to combat a tiny extremist group, but the very success of military operations led it to expand two tasks: First, from counter-terrorism against an extremist group to the struggle against Muslim self-determination; second, from counter-terrorism against a self-determination movement to counter-terrorism against a longstanding communist insurgency and its legal political affiliates. By tracing the process, I show how these two moves are the outcomes of a path-dependent process, in which several norms were pitched against each other. Again, this chapter provides points of comparison: With the efforts by transnational advocacy networks to mobilize against human rights violations (described in Chapters –) and with Indonesia’s struggle against selfdetermination movements from  onward and its own reaction to the global war on terror. In the concluding Chapter  I explore both the empirical findings and their theoretical implications. Empirically, there are several consistent findings. First, international human rights organizations constitute an important moral force in international relations. Through their knowledge and expertise, they assume the character of international authorities in the human rights realm. Not only do they monitor state practices and provide information, they frequently define what counts as appropriate behavior. They define roles for state actors and non-state actors alike. Second, state accounts are an important mechanism for dealing with human rights pressures. They provide the starting points for developments that lead states to adopt both pro-human rights and pro-violation policies. However, the fact that states can learn new approaches makes the whole business of rights advocacy more reflexive and less predictable for actors. These findings raise the question of how we can evaluate struggles for rights and what consequences these findings have for the study of international human rights norms and their promotion. Here, I put the findings into

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the larger context of international law. One strong thread running through the literature is that as long as international human rights norms do not become more legalized and enforceable, their effects will be limited. On the other hand, the findings of this book suggest that the increasing number and authority of non-governmental organizations, and the greater legalization of international relations in general, create more possibilities for norm conflicts. These conflicts might be solved not through autonomous mediating agencies such as international courts but through the joint attempts of state governments, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations to find appropriate solutions to problems in a new category of law called “transnational law.”

2 International Norms and Their Contestation in Human Rights Dialogues

When states are accused of human rights violations by international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or the governments of other states, they engage in continuous, and often bitter and divisive, debates about their practice. They also debate the norms that should regulate how they are being treated in an international community and how those norms express shared identities in the international realm. What human rights organizations describe as “violations” are highly sensitive security matters for some of these governments. When a government’s behavior becomes the target of an international human rights campaign to change its practice and this campaign triggers an extensive discussion about what norms should apply, I call it a public dialogue or discourse. At times since the early s, actions by the Philippine and Indonesian governments toward their citizens have caused ardent debates between representatives of those states and human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights (now Human Rights First), and Human Rights Watch. These dialogues about how a state should deal with its citizens and what are the acceptable limits frequently pulled in other actors, including representatives of domestic human rights organizations, members of the political opposition, other state governments and representatives of international organizations who made decisions based on the information they received from governments, and NGOs. These actors commented on domestic issues, such as the violent dispersion of peaceful demonstrations, the unlawful detention of opposition figures, the torture of suspected members of Communist or separatist organizations, or the

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disappearance of students. Thus, they blurred the boundaries between domestic and international and challenged the most central norm in international relations, a state’s claim to sovereignty in the sense that it could unconditionally determine how to treat its citizens. Local human rights organizations that channeled information to international organizations had an immediate interest in drawing international attention to situations where they believed human rights were at stake. Sometimes, they operated under extra constraints because their government had blocked domestic conduits for influencing governmental politics or information about sensitive issues (Keck and Sikkink ). But the Southeast Asian rulers themselves also had reason to engage in dialogues with their critics and register their opinions. They leaned heavily on international norms of sovereignty to legitimate their rule and justify their actions. They wanted these norms to be honored. They wanted the approval and symbolic capital that comes from being identified by their societies and other state governments as rulers in good standing who care for their state and its citizens. Thus, their justifications were not only about their right to deal with these domestic situations without interference from other governments or international organizations. They also sought to make other states understand their specific situations as states that were seeking security (see Figure .). This chapter provides the theoretical framework I later use to analyze these dialogues and the influence of human rights norms. My main argument in this book is that, to understand the varying impact of human rights norms, one must first understand the arguments over those norms. To understand and explain why human rights pressures sometimes lead governments to change their practices drastically and why they are sometimes able to deflect these pressures, we have to look at the way actors strategically manipulate international norms and how they are creative in constructing

International Norms Transnational Advocacy

Path dependent discourse (“critical junctures”; “external confirmation”) Validity of norm

Varying success of transnational human rights advocacy

Figure 2.1 International Norms, Path-dependency, and Outcomes of Transnational Advocacy

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persuasive accounts. We must also consider the substantial content of the human rights debates between human rights organizations and state governments. This chapter provides the theoretical tool for thinking about these issues, normative contestation, the process I described above. I begin by considering existing approaches to the influence that international human rights norms have on states. Spurred by the end of the Cold War, international relations scholars have taken a keen interest in international norms and legal obligations as codified in international law. What these scholars try to grasp and explain is why and under what conditions states comply with international obligations. And in line with the major strands of social science, three perspectives can be identified: One perspective casts the terms of debate in terms of power (realism). The second casts it in terms of purposeful choice and self-interest (rational choice). And the third casts it in terms of social obligation (constructivism). The first two groups are actorcentered. They put actors at the center of analysis and analyze their behavior. The third group is conventionally referred to as structure-centered, because it starts from the analysis of social structures in which action is embedded. But despite their different ways of conceptualizing the influence of human rights norms on states, rational institutionalism and constructivism share many assumptions about how norms influence the interests and preferences of governments and groups within the state. Both pay little attention to how state governments themselves use international norms to their advantage. In the second and third sections of this chapter, I present a dialogical approach to international norms, starting from the simple observation that international law is a conglomerate of contradicting norms making up an international social structure. I start with a historical examination of the development of international human rights law, contrasting the success of efforts to codify this law with the development of international norms that establish the state as the organizational form primarily responsible for securing human rights. I do this to show that compliance with international norms is closely related to state sovereignty. To fully understand this connection, it is necessary to embed the state in a phenomenology of what state sovereignty means. Then, in the third section, I proceed by providing the analytical framework for the empirical chapters. If international norms are contradictory, this gives choice to actors. They can now refer to alternative norm sets to describe phenomena, justify their action, and try to influence normative understandings about what the situation is that they argue about, a case for human rights or for state security. This conflict over norms is then solved in a discourse

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in which actors compete for the “right” course of action. Discourses about compliance are interactions in which governments and human rights organizations try to persuade audiences of their claims. As their exchanges grow and public attention increases, this audience becomes increasingly activated and implicated in judging the exchange. Audience reactions, mediated by the media, help determine which norm should govern. This process is pathdependent, that is, whether or not public contestation leads to the legitimation of human rights norms is dependent on intermediate events in the process, like the sequencing of arguments and whether or not critical junctures provide leverage for human rights arguments. As I will show in more detail, it is essential to understand when the accounts that governments use will have effects on their audiences and shape their reactions to violations. Because human rights law, like other international law, lacks strong and autonomous enforcement mechanisms, the reactions of other states become crucial because they can generate pressures on governments to comply with human rights. This process is called “decentralized enforcement.” To explain why governments can sometimes escape human rights pressures, even if some mobilization for human rights has already occurred, and why governments have to give in to these pressures at other times, we have to understand why norms other than human rights sometimes convince audiences. Power, Interests, and Norms: Theoretical Approaches to Human Rights Change Existing scholarship seeking to explain why governments submit to human rights pressures focuses basically on two modes of interaction between state governments and NGOs: the manipulation of utility calculations and normative persuasion. Respectively, these two overall approaches define distinct “rationalist” and “constructivist” explanations for why governments would change their human rights practices, although the line between these two approaches is far from absolute. Moreover, many of the empirical findings and predictions of these two main explanations converge. They often yield similar, or at least complementary, accounts of international life (Fearon and Wendt : ). Rationalist Approaches: Power Makes and Unmakes Rules

The first approach, which I call the “rationalist” or “interest-based approach,” argues that actors create and comply with international law only when there is

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some clear objective reward for doing so. States follow a consequentialist reasoning, or what has been termed the “logic of consequences.” This generally means that behavior will be willful, it fills subjective desires, and it is driven by preferences and expectations about the consequences of actions (March and Olsen : –). One main assumption of this actor-centered perspective is that actors have fixed preferences. They will not change during interactions with other actors. Actors might be compelled to pursue a lower preference in their hierarchy of preferences, but this occurs only as a reaction to changing external constraints. One prominent rationalist approach in international relation is realism. It views states as unitary actors seeking to ensure their security against potential competitors within an international system that lacks effective central authority and in which outcomes are determined by the distribution of coercive power. According to realists, human rights agreements only exist and will only be enforced if doing so serves the interests of the most powerful states. Law, in this view, is nothing more than one of a variety of tools used by states to enhance their own power. Thus, human rights–violating governments change their behavior because they are forced to do so by more powerful states that consider it in their own interest to enforce human rights standards. International norms do not affect a state’s behavior independently of the interests of powerful states. They converge (Krasner ; Mearsheimer –; Waltz ). In effect, this means it is unlikely that pressures to change human rights practices emerge. Human rights would only have currency when they can be utilized strategically to manipulate a situation to weaken another state in the global competition for hegemony, as the United States and the Soviet Union did when they supported different sets of human rights during the Cold War. Here, the Philippines and Indonesia would be cases in point. Given their strategic-military importance to the United States, realists would simply not expect that the United States would support human rights. And this is, up until today, the conventional wisdom. As Mark Beeson puts it, “The Philippines’ strategic significance protected the Marcos regime from external criticism for many years” (Beeson : ). The classical work on international norms from a realist perspective is Stephen Krasner’s  book Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, which draws on historical research to provide the field of international relations with a theory of the emergence of international treaties and states’ noncompliance with them. Empirically, Krasner focuses on the question of how conflicts between Westphalian and legal sovereignty, and competing norms, are being solved.

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Krasner argues that even such widely acknowledged international norms as that of sovereignty are frequently being violated. Rulers face multiple pressures to comply with competing norms, leading to a practice in which “Talk and action do not coincide” (Krasner : ). Rulers face not only conflicting international norms—such as nonintervention, as opposed to protection for human rights—but also a multiplicity of domestic roles, such as head of state, diplomatic representative, government leader, and religious prophet, that equally imply conflicting rules for action. The main problem for rulers, therefore, is to determine which norm or rule is applicable. Unfortunately, the international system is of little help in this regard, as it lacks an authoritative decision-making center that enables rulers to make a choice. Thus, “for rulers making choices in an anarchic environment in which there are many demands, multiple norms, power asymmetries, and no authoritative decision-making structures” (Krasner : ), not only is it impossible to adhere to particular norms all of the time, rulers will break the rules if they find it in their interest. And if they comply against their interests, it is because they have been pressured by more powerful states. Consequently, realists do not regard state accounts’ moral and causal weight. These just mask more important underlying material and self-interests, and they are offered to publics primarily to make the state appear in good light (Goldsmith and Posner ). Rhetoric is not consequential; it is mere cheap talk. The rational institutionalist perspective places less emphasis on power and more on self-interests. It assumes that, under specific conditions, states can be motivated to cooperate or comply with international conventions because they have an interest in doing so. What deters them from doing so is the potentially noncooperative behavior of others, who free-ride or cheat. Actors create international institutions in anticipation of the functions that these institutions perform (Keohane ). They provide states with information on the cooperative behavior of others, as well as rules and procedures to regulate conflicts. Analogously, states establish human rights regimes because they have an interest in human rights (Cardenas : ). From this perspective, it is thus not so puzzling that governments sign and ratify human rights conventions in the first place, even if they know they will have a significant impact on their state sovereignty. However, the rational institutionalist perspective faces the problem that its assumptions do not neatly fit the human rights area: Complex interdependencies that form the necessary condition for establishing institutions do not exist in the human rights area

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(Donnelly ). And human rights treaties entail sovereignty costs, as they demand costly domestic changes from states. A way out of this dilemma is Andrew Moravcsik’s liberal theory explaining the establishment of human rights regimes. He shows, for example, that democratizing states develop an intrinsic preference to sign international human rights treaties. These allow rulers to lock their new democratic system into international structures that secure democracy (Moravcsik ; see also Simmons ). A second puzzle for interest-based approaches is the persistent gap between treaty ratification and compliance. Because the assumption is that states enter into international agreements voluntarily, it is not clear why many states ratify human rights agreement and then fail to comply. Here, a number of studies try to explain this phenomenon. For example, Oona Hathaway argues that the wave of treaty ratifications has also provided state governments with the information that their violations are unlikely to face sanctions. The incentives for ratifying human rights regimes and then conforming to their rules and procedures are unbalanced. They are high for ratifying and low for compliance. Because state governments are aware of these diverging incentive structures, rational governments are likely to exploit the regime by simultaneously ratifying conventions and increasing their noncompliance (Hathaway : f). A third human rights puzzle for rationalist institutionalism is its assumption that actors only react to external constraints. Generally, institutions are expected to exert compliance pulls if they have the ability to supply or withhold material or social resources. Because most human rights agreements do not foresee these mechanisms and do not provide for reciprocal compliance, some scholars assume that a crucial link is the interdependence between the reputation that state governments acquire by adhering to human rights and the effects on this reputation on other issue-areas. Reputation is fungible and translates into material benefits, such as bilateral trade commitments or credit from multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. A poor reputation might affect bilateral assistance, as when other states make development aid dependent on improving human rights practices. In all these cases, we would expect governments to comply, but only as soon other governments or institutions threaten to withdraw aid (Lumsdaine ; Stohl, Carleton, and Johnson ). For our purposes, it is important to consider through which mechanisms international normative prescriptions would affect a state’s behavior. Beth

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Simmons’ groundbreaking study Mobilizing for Human Rights () provides perhaps the best exploration of these mechanisms, even if she conditions them for a subset of states: democratizing states with unstable domestic institutions and independent judiciaries. She argues and shows statistically that among three groups of states—authoritarian, democratizing, and democratic—the democratizing group has the greatest incentive to commit to and comply with international human rights treaties. But international law does not constrain states. It rather works through domestic interest groups that utilize international treaties in their own interests. For rationalists, three mechanisms are crucial to translate international norms into practices: agenda-setting, mobilization, and litigation. In essence, all these mechanisms assume that a shift in the distribution of power is the pathway through which human rights norms gain influence and have an impact on a state’s practice. The anticipation of these power-shifts makes and unmakes norms. International human rights treaties can change the domestic political agenda. The mere existence of international treaties presents governments with opportunities to take advantage of them. A government can use international treaties to increase its power vis-à-vis the legislative power. Actors are differently inclined to use their agenda-setting power, but in principle, international treaties are opportunities to take advantage of agenda-setting. The second rationalist mechanism is the mobilization of domestic constituencies. Legal treaties have redistributive effects on domestic political power, insofar as “they strengthen the bargaining power of those actors that pursue preferences in line” with the norms. Beth Simmons assumes that “treaties are causally meaningful to the extent that they empower individuals, groups, or parts of the state with different rights preferences that were not empowered to the same extent in the absence of the treaties” (Simmons : ). Likewise, it will stigmatize those actors who pursue interests that violate the norms (Schimmelfennig, Engert, and Knobel : ; Simmons : ). Once a government commits to human rights, whether rhetorically or legally, it creates domestic stakeholders that demand that state action follow the rhetoric (Hawkins ). International commitment thus provides domestic actors with opportunities to shape the domestic human rights agenda. In the third mechanism, litigation, norms become embedded in domestic structures through the interaction between international and domestic judiciaries and their interaction with citizens. Many scholars assume this to be a primary mechanism through which international norms are being domestically enforced. Individuals and groups use the courts and explicit treaty

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commitments to leverage their rights and hold their governments accountable. This mechanism crucially relies on the independence of the judiciary (Simmons : ). On a transnational level, international judges might interact with domestic judges and seek opinions from them, helping to develop shared opinions about legal facts and norms. National courts engage in transnational dialogues about how to best implement these norms and thus provide venues for international law that are detached from daily politics (Goodman and Jinks ; Koh ). This increases the likelihood that these norms will be implemented domestically. Justifications and moral rhetoric have acquired a greater role in rational accounts of states’ noncompliance with international human rights norms. These justifications are central and form an important starting point for the so-called managerial school on compliance, represented by Antonia and Abram Chayes (Chayes and Chayes ). This school assumes that the justifications that states provide for audiences are not merely “cheap talk” but convey important information about compliance problems. Justifications, in the Chayes’ view, essentially indicate a government’s willingness but inability to comply. Capacity building and rule specification, rather than sanctioning, are the primary means to prevent violations of international rules. As with the enforcement approaches, international institutions are crucial in ensuring compliance. Instead of providing monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms, they organize financial and technical assistance for states having weak implementation capacities. Problem-oriented discourse allows actors to develop capacities that they would not acquire without the respective procedures. “The fundamental instrument for maintaining compliance with treaties at an acceptable level is an iterative process of discourse among the parties, the treaty organization, and the wider public” (Chayes and Chayes : ). However, this perspective has not particularly resonated among human rights scholars, who assume that human rights violations occur because cold-blooded governments want to stay in power. Constructivist Approaches: Persuasion and Socialization Generate New Domestic Norms and Actors

Constructivist scholarship on human rights takes as its point of departure that the environment of states and other actors is cultural and institutional rather than just material. These cultural structures are not epiphenomenal to international politics. They constitute an important motivating force that cannot be deduced from utilitarian calculations about the interests of various actors.

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In this view, interest-based scholars are wrong to assume that states engage only in consequentialist pursuit of objective self-interest. Rather, states internalize norms and act in accordance with them because they understand them to be correct and appropriate. More specifically, international law confers legitimacy (Franck ). Therefore, actors’ interests and preferences cannot be taken for granted (Checkel ; Fearon and Wendt : ). International structures can change what states want. Constructivists usually start their analysis with these social structures and look at how these impact on states as social facts, that is, how they shape conceptions of statehood or what it means to be good state in the international system and how this orients state behavior (Finnemore and Sikkink : ). In this perspective, the international social structure is essentially a world institutional order, a set of taken-for-granted rules and conventions that constitute the institutional environment of international discourse and nation-state development. Here, institutions are cultural accounts. They have a double meaning. They are “descriptions of reality,” “explanations of what is and what is not,” and “what can be and what cannot” (Meyer, Boli, and Thomas : ). They make it possible to find order in a world that is disorderly. Because there is a correspondence between these external structures and the identities of actors, those actors, whether individuals, groups, or states, are astonishingly similar and change in unexpected and similar ways (Boli and Thomas ; Finnemore ; Meyer et al. : ). Thus, the environment of states is social. It contains rules of the game that restrict and guide what play is considered acceptable. Action will always reflect what is normatively expected and considered acceptable. Understanding these structures is hence a central goal of constructivist analysis, as the rules and norms embedded in these structures account for a considerable amount of regularity in the behavior of states. Constructivism has considerably broadened the spectrum of actors in international relations, to include international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) (Finnemore and Sikkink ; Price ; Boli and George ). Freed from the constraining assumption that utility maximization and materially defined interests drive behavior, constructivism explores the power of norms and ideas. From this perspective, even governments that violate human rights belong to, or desire to be regarded as respected members of, an international state community. Their very identity as states is intricately linked to these international rules, norms, and scripts. This provides specific activists with potential leverage to take advantage of the social vulnerability

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of governments. Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have argued that transnational advocacy networks, that is, networks of activists that are bound together by shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information and services (Keck and Sikkink : ) are the necessary variables to explain policy changes. These actors strategically utilize the international normative environment to make states accept new norms. By exposing states’ behavior as violations, such transnational advocacy networks brand and shame the states into complying. The activities of networks succeed as most states define themselves as members of an international community that values human rights. Within this group, the spiral model of human rights change, developed by Thomas Risse, Kathryn Sikkink, and Stephen Ropp, presents the most ambitious attempt so far to provide a causal mechanism connecting norms at an international level to local practices (Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink ). The general assumption is that human rights violations occur because states have not fully internalized the newly created international human rights norms. It is then up to transnational activists, international organizations, and liberal state governments to socialize repressive states into these new understandings. This activity is triggered by a misfit between the state’s practices and the prescriptions of international norms (Checkel ; Risse, Cowles Green, and Caporaso ). The process that the spiral model lays out proceeds from repression to internalization. Once a government faces international pressures, it will deny that human rights are at stake and invoke state sovereignty. But continuing pressures can lead to tactical concessions by the government—at this stage, based upon strategic considerations. These tactical concessions create new opportunities for civil society within the target state. The government is compelled to make more concessions, which set it on a path to compliance, unless it wants to lose power. Slowly, international norms become incorporated into the domestic legal structure, where they now become enforceable. The model assumes distinct phases called “repression,” “denial,” “tactical concessions,” “prescriptive status,” and “ruleconsistent behavior” (Risse and Sikkink ). Unlike most other theories of international relations, constructivists believe that dialogues, persuasion and arguing, causally affect behavior by changing beliefs about what is good and appropriate. With regard to causal mechanisms, constructivists identify two. The first is persuasion. The persuasive efforts of norm entrepreneurs do important construction work, as they create new understandings about how people and states should behave. And

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even if these efforts do not necessarily persuade state actors themselves, as proponents that look at processes of rational argumentation claim (Checkel ; Deitelhoff ; Müller ; Risse ), they persuade other state governments or domestic groups in the state. “Transnational society frames issues, helps set agendas, and mobilizes publics” (Finnemore and Sikkink : ). The constructivist tenet can thus be summarized as “persuasion creates new rules.” The second important mechanism, as is also true for the rationalist framework, is mobilization. Persuasive communication creates new understandings and increases the numbers of people who support the norm. Their rhetorical and material support mobilizes and creates new actors on a domestic level, like human rights organizations, as new rules of the game are introduced, and increases the political leverage of their concerns. Mobilization thus changes the international and domestic balance of power by creating coalitions of actors that campaign for and support human rights demands and effectively put human rights on international and domestic agendas (Hawkins ; Powell ; Price ; Thomas ). Constructivists expect the following major sources of variation to explain outcomes: • The existence, strength, and density of networks that promote human rights (Risse and Sikkink : ) • The social and material vulnerability of target states (Risse and Sikkink : ) • The salience of domestic norms that facilitate or impede an international norm’s fit with domestic ones (normative match) (Checkel ; Cortell and Davis ) • Issue characteristics. For example, Keck and Sikkink argue that “issues involving bodily harm to vulnerable or innocent individuals appear particularly compelling” (Keck and Sikkink : ). Interestingly, constructivists looking at human rights have tended to neglect the arguments of power holders and have too often conceived of the influences of NGOs as one-way persuasion (Krebs and Jackson ; Laffey and Weldes ; Payne ). Although rational argumentation is defined as a principally open process of mutual persuasion, in many analyses, the arguments of norm-violating governments do not receive the same attention

Table 2.1. Changes of Human Rights Practices: Theories, Causal Mechanisms, and Expected Variation Actor-centered Approaches Power

Interests Rationalism

Motivations

Realism: Centrality of hegemonic states; relative distribution of material power among states determines outcomes

Coercive power: Selfinterested great powers employ coercion to unilaterally enforce human rights Human rights as a tool to delegitimize competitors in power struggle

Rationalist institutionalism: Centrality of governments’ utility calculations

Structure-centered Approaches Social Obligation Constructivism Normative contestation: International social structure (“world polity”) constitutes state International social structure identities, roles, and preferences as contradictory structure State sovereignty (state security) versus human rights

Human rights institutions as external constraints on behavior Governments change human rights practices when violations become too costly (financial or military sanctions; conditionality; reputation)

Competitive norms provide actors with normative choice International norms provide new standards of behavior for states and change national concepts about what is appropriate behavior for a state toward its citizens

Constitutive function of norms for definition of situation: State security versus human rights Normative contest (for audiences’ approval)

Norm entrepreneurs socialize states by educating them about appropriate practices

(Continued)

Table 2.1. (Continued) Actor-centered Approaches Power

Interests Rationalism

Hegemonic power creates new rules

Coercion

Social Obligation Constructivism

configurations (mobilization; litigation)

Domestic actors enact international norms out of belief in appropriateness and rightness

Institutions redistribute power

Persuasion and socialization create new domestic rules

Logic of consequences Mechanisms of change

Structure-centered Approaches

Domestic actors take advantage of international institutions in anticipation of redistributive effects on power configurations

Discourses determine rules

Logic of appropriateness Norms change domestic power configurations: Strengthening of pro-human rights groups toward their government; pathdependency (human rights course costly to reverse)

Political struggle for authoritative definition of situation; path-dependency (justifications and excuses; confirming events and reactions determine path)

Norms legitimize domestic actors General expected variation

Realism: Great power military-strategic interests determine level of support for human rights; relative state power

Rational institutionalism: Parties to human rights conventions comply better; change dependent on regime type

Existence and strength of transnational networks; material and moral vulnerability; normative fit

Outcome of debate legitimizes specific practices, actors, institutions; strengthening of competing domestic groups cancel each other out Existence and strength of transnational networks, normative fit; media presence

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as the ones of human rights advocates as representatives of civil society (Risse and Ropp : ). At least in the human rights area, constructivists tend to look at good norms and investigate mainly successful cases. And the normative alternatives that governments offer do not develop persuasive power themselves (for notable differences, see Ron ; Schwarz ; Shor ). By the focus of their inquiry, the half-life of these justifications tend to be short, and their normative content disappears from the analysis altogether (Crawford : –, ). When a justification is mentioned, it is the Westphalian norm of state sovereignty that only indicates that governments “are not interested in engaging in a serious dialogue with their critics” (Risse and Ropp : ). Thus conceptualized, constructivist scholarship loses important information on what governments exactly say to justify their human rights practices. Also, it deprives the logic of persuasion of both its dialogical character and its content. Thus, it misses those international norms that may serve as appealing competitors to the given norm. In concluding this section and as summarized in Table ., constructivist and rationalist approaches to international norms start from very different assumptions about how norms influence behavior, but they share important assumptions and evaluations about these norms’ effects. In the empirical analysis, rationalist approaches assume that it is usually undisputed to which class of event human rights norms apply (for a similar point, see Wiener ). Rationalists treat norms as rules for objectively defined situations. These rules are designed for “classes of events to which they apply in an allor-nothing fashion as long as the empirical circumstances for which the rule was designed prevail” (Kratochwil : ). What exactly the “empirical circumstances” are, is assumed to be shared. If they are not, then norms are indeterminate, and determining which norm applies requires explicit agreement through reaching an understanding. Constructivists explicitly theorize normative contestation but, in their empirical analysis, hold their norm of interest stable—and the content of contestation is not the focus of their analysis. Thus, both approaches tend to miss governments’ ability to influence intersubjective understandings about which norm should govern in a specific situation. A Synthesis: Discourses Determine Rules This section seeks to integrate many of the insights described above. I draw on similar dialogical approaches to international relations (Barnett ; Lynch ; Schimmelfennig , ). My point of departure is the following.

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First, if governments provide accounts of their behavior in the face of international pessures, then these accounts usually draw on a background of accepted, taken-for-granted rules that all actors must understand (Kratochwil ; Deitelhoff and Müller ; Deitelhoff ). This essentially constitutes a conflict over norms: Actors fundamentally disagree about what the nature of the situation is that they are observing. This conflict, second, creates the demand for some form of arbitration and dialogue. Because the international system lacks a central enforcement agency, there is thus no centralized authority that decides what kind of situation this is. Actors have to create a consensus or collective understanding about this situation. This raises the question how such an understanding will come into place and what its consequences are. Third, human rights and state sovereignty are intricately connected. Historically, the sovereign state has emerged in international relations as the single most organizational entity guaranteeing human rights. At the same time, states have emerged as the greatest violators of human rights, given their exclusive monopoly on violence. Empirically, I start from the assumption that the fundamental normative conflict confronting human rights advocacy is that between human rights and state security. To make this assumption as clearly as possible, I start with a brief historical introduction to the norms that have fundamentally shaped international law during the last two centuries: the idea that human beings had certain inalienable rights (human rights) and the idea of states as the key organizational units in the international system, and pillars of international order justifying the primacy of state security. In the following section, I demonstrate how and why the answer to the question of “What kind of situation is this?” and hence of normative change depends critically on agency and on both strategic behavior and normative dialogue. It is important to understand that actors are not simply the bearers of social roles and enactors of social norms. They are skilled and active interpreters of them. They honor these norms and simultaneously manipulate these understandings in line with their interests (Barnett : ). The International Structure as a Contradictory Accounting Structure

As an independent branch of international law, human rights law did not come into existence until after World War II. What was then considered human rights law was a collection of diffuse or unrelated legal principles and institutional arrangements designed to protect certain categories or groups

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of human beings, most importantly minority groups in states or individuals under colonial rule. After that war, however, international human rights law experienced a dramatic growth and expansion. Its most distinguishing characteristic and overarching rule became that it embraces all individual human beings without regard to their nationality or other status (Buergenthal : ). And even as its initial momentum was obstructed by the rise of the Cold War in the s, the notion of universal human rights has blossomed since the s and especially after  when a new wave of democratization ushered in a new interest in human rights. Human rights gained wide public attention with the United Nations (UN) Charter of  and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights three years later. Meanwhile, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, established in , identifies nine core human rights agreements with monitoring bodies, for a total of approximately two dozen international human rights treaties that are open for states to sign and ratify. Since , international human rights law has increased its scope, precision, and obligation. Today, every state is a member of at least one core human rights treaty. As Beth Simmons shows in detail, this development goes hand in hand with democratization, the expansion and multiplication of NGOs and international civil society, and the establishment of institutions of accountability, most recently the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) (Simmons : chap. ). On a global level, the most significant human rights declarations are the Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on Social, Cultural, and Economic Rights of . Both became effective in . Although the level of protection is low, if compared to most national constitutions, the significant overall achievement of UN mechanisms for human rights has been to lay the “normative foundation of the contemporary international human rights revolution” (Buergenthal : ). This global human rights revolution has been matched by a smaller regional revolution in which several human rights regimes developed. The European Convention on Human Rights, established in November , constitutes perhaps the most sophisticated system of protection worldwide with compulsory jurisdiction for states that have ratified it. It drew on the precedent of the Universal Declaration to establish, for the first time in world history, a catalogue of principles for protecting individuals against arbitrary state actions such as torture and slavery and the denial of rights like liberty and freedom of thought. The convention aimed to secure “the universal and effective recognition and observance of

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human rights” and established a court to ensure that member states comply with the convention. These developments are highly significant. Meanwhile, the basic idea of human rights protection has diffused to all other areas in international law (Hobe : ). But just as human rights norms were being institutionalized at the international level, competing norms were equally being strengthened. Richard Falk notes, for example, that World War II gave rise to two opposing imperatives. A strong ethical imperative was to project a future world order in which oppressive regimes would not be free to hide “behind the walls of sovereignty.” However, a parallel and overriding structural imperative was to establish order on the basis of sovereign states treated as black boxes not to be opened (Falk : ). These efforts resulted in equally important efforts to embed the development of the sovereign nation-state in a wide-ranging web of interconnected international regimes that secure the territorial integrity and stability of the nation-state as an organizational unit. These regimes have been strengthened considerably with the aim of establishing order and securing the stability and functionality of those actors that were most capable of securing human rights—states (Boli ). Since the s, in international law, a state has been defined by a trinity of elements. First, it has exclusive control over a delimited territorial space. This principle is secured by international norms referring to a state’s right to exclude external actors from its territory and prevent it from interfering in its internal affairs. We refer to this as Westphalian sovereignty because the principles were first spelled out in the Treaty of Westphalia in  (Falk ; Krasner ; Sikkink ). Second, a state has authority over a people, which means that the territorial space that a state’s government claims to rule is populated, but also that the population is permanent. Internationally, this principle is equally secured by a state’s right to territorial integrity and norms prohibiting the forceful redrawing of territorial boundaries. Third, a state is defined by the exercise of effective control and jurisdiction over its population and territory. It has effective authority. Westphalian sovereignty gives states rights. That logic of conflicting norms can be illustrated by looking at the development of a few international norms that connect to human rights and state security. For example, the principle of self-determination can be either utilized to claim human rights protection or to secure the state. Self-determination first appeared forcefully on an international agenda after the American and French Revolutions of  and . Since then, ever-expanding circles

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of citizens have used this principle as a weapon against undemocratic or repressive regimes in the name of self-government. On an international level, the first European colonies developed and used self-determination at the end of the eighteenth century to free themselves from highly unequal colonial relationships. For colonized states, self-determination became a vehicle for challenging international hegemony—that of the small circle of civilized nations, the Eurocentric, homogenous club of great powers—to compel them to admit new members into the international legal community of states (Mayall ; Charvet ; Chowdury ). During World War I, the principle was highly contested, as many people tried to break away from existing states or empires and thereby threatened an emerging state order (Cassese : ). These developments imposed conflicting demands on international law. On the one hand, in an age of mass democracies, international law was supposed to integrate and develop a doctrine of self-determination that reflected the democratic right of people to choose the kind of entity where they wanted to live. On the other hand, people expected it to further the security and territorial integrity of states as important pillars of international order. This tension between democratic self-determination and a state’s claim to a permanent population and a clearly demarcated territory was first exposed in a key development of the mid-nineteenth century, the strengthening of the norm that force should not be used to alter interstate boundaries. Until around , it was a common and established principle of international law that states had the right to legitimate conquest. In the course of such a conquest, territory would be exchanged. Subjugation was a legal “mode of acquiring territory” (Zacher : ). But from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, the current of opinion changed. Influenced by a growing belief in democratic self-determination, the practice of acquiring territory and redrawing boundaries without the consent of the people became controversial. This was itself a revolutionary change in the moral climate in the sense that state rulers acknowledged that inhabitants of affected states should be considered in territorial changes (Korman : ). But the conflict could not be adequately solved, and the normative push to secure territorial integrity continued to clash with the aspirations of peoples. So it was only after World War II that territorial integrity was accepted as the dominant principle guiding relations between states. This conflict plays out in the Declaration on Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, adopted by the United Nations General

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Assembly in . This declaration declares that the “subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights.” At the same time, it accords existing colonies— rather than ethnic groups—the right to independence. Like human rights norms, the principle of territorial integrity has become deeply embedded in the treaties of regional organizations, such as: • The Charter of the Organization of American States in  • The Organization of African Unity • The Bangkok Declaration of , the founding document of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations • The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in the mid-s. Also, there was a normative drive to limit self-determination to mean domestic self-determination within democratic governance. The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of , the same document that also propelled the international human rights movement, and, later, the more influential Declaration on Friendly Relations () defined self-determination as a standard for states’ internal decision-making processes (Tomuschat ). Now self-determination came to embody the totality of rights referring to freedom of expression and association and citizens’ right to partake in the state’s conduct of public affairs. But as this happened, the right was limited to domestic self-determination. That is, it ended when it threatened the territorial integrity of states, thus securing the state (Cassese : ). The basic normative claim behind this rule is expressed by international lawyer Christian Tomuschat, “If the very existence of a State is called into question, such challenge is normally not confined to words. As a rule, advocacy to break loose from a given State breeds, or is accompanied by, disorder and violence” (Tomuschat : ). However, and this has become evident in the resurgence of selfdetermination movements after the end of the Cold War, the idea of self-determination continues to inspire and motivate people, just as human rights do (Rosecrance and Stein ). The many existing movements for self-determination frequently justify demands for self-determination by pointing to the human rights violations they suffer as a people. They find themselves on a collision course with a deeply ingrained right to territorial integrity that is an integral part of state sovereignty and has strong backing

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among both nationalist audiences and state communities (Barkin and Cronin ). This is why international legal scholar Antonio Cassese describes it as both “radical, progressive, alluring and, at the same time, subversive and threatening” (Cassese : ; Hannum ). That is, self-determination can be used by groups to demand human rights and by governments to suppress human rights guarantees, if they refer to national security concerns. But international norms do not only constitute state sovereignty in terms of the three elements described above. International norms also define the organizational setup of the state. As John Meyer and his colleagues have demonstrated in several studies (Meyer, Boli, and Thomas ; Meyer and Rowan ), the notion of state sovereignty is embedded in a highly institutionalized world polity, which confers support and legitimacy upon the nation-state system worldwide (Meyer : ). International rules define the nation-state as the most highly legitimated form of corporate social authority, and they define the purposes to which this organizational form is to be devoted. Rationality and progress are central to the organization of societies within states, and states themselves have become tied exclusively to a rational-legal organization, which is simultaneously defined as a bureaucratic and secular state apparatus replacing alternative forms of political organization. “The state, above all, is to be a modern rational organization, not a primordial entity” (Meyer, Boli, and Thomas : ). According to this line of thought, described vividly in the works of Max Weber, the modern, rational, institutional state (Anstaltsstaat) is the epitome of political domination in international relations. Its key characteristics are its bureaucracy, a professional civil service, and rational law. These make it the embodiment of transparency, predictability, and meritocracy (Meyer et al. : ; Schlichte : f). It is not just any state, but the “rational territorial state” that has become the structure around which human society is to be understood and organized. The purpose of the state is to protect its citizens, to contribute to their welfare, and to organize governance in a rationalized and efficient manner. This rational bureaucratic state organization serves as a model for the internal structures of states and becomes visible in many activities of both state and non-state actors. Especially from the early s onwards and aided by the process of decolonization, Western development programs aimed to strengthen state organizations, especially in developing countries, a topic that will be taken up in Chapters  and . A leading scientific paradigm of that time, modernization theory, assumed that, given enough time and

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economic resources, the fragile post-colonial states would develop capacities that allowed them to exert their domestic sovereignty effectively. Economic modernization would lead to the social stratification of developing societies and, with it, a rationalization process. Group ties relying on tribal or religious affinity would disappear and give way to the modern rational-legal state (Lipset ; Meyer ; Riggs ). World polity norms also defined what kind of actors would be supported externally. Those groups of actors conforming better with world polity norms could and would be legitimately supported; others who did not so conform, like ethnic and religious or armed groups that challenged the authority of states, would not be supported (Meyer, Boli, and Thomas : ). In the next section, I consider in theoretical terms the implications for human rights of the fact that the international social structure can make these competing norms applicable for specific situations. The norms just sketched will emerge in the next chapters to test the claim that, as Richard Falk has put it, the “Westphalian box can still be tightly closed in a variety of circumstances, and even a generally mobilized civil society cannot pry it open” (Falk : ). Public Dialogues over Human Rights

The idea is simple. If the international accounting structure is contradictory, then international norms are indeterminate. This means that actors have agency to select the norm that best fits their interest. If two actors do this, we see a conflict over norms. And if people are uncertain about which norm applies or how a norm might govern a particular situation, they may demand some form of arbitration or dispute resolution. Now, the question I pose in this book is why governments routinely violate even the most basic human rights and why they sometimes get away with human rights violations even if they initially face substantial pressure to change their practice. I assume that public discourses assume an important role in this process. As part of a public process, they connect to communitywide aspirations and are withdrawn from the domain of private calculations and choice. Hence, publicity increases the pressure on actors to justify their actions with good arguments. If governments that are violating human rights counter an allegation with an account, a dialogical exchange of arguments begins. Human rights organizations and governments exchange arguments over the interpretation of events, their behavior, and their motives. The longer this public dialogue

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continues and the more public it is, the more external actors will be drawn into this process (see also Schimmelfennig : ). As a result, all actors will develop shared understandings about specific events that may or may not be interpreted as human rights violations, along with appropriate forms of actions to remedy specific situations that some perceive as problematic. Thus, dialogues over human rights are always a public and collective social endeavor. The question is, “What is the process through which one account gains acceptance? And how are dialogues structured?” Moreover, how precisely do the violating governments justify their violations and under which conditions will their accounts be persuasive? I assume that actors—be they governments or their human rights contenders—will potentially be persuasive as long as they stick to the rules of the game concerning public dialogues. Because discourses are public, they are organized around so-called display rules. They specify who can show what kind of motivation to whom and when and what kind of behavior will be accepted. They are essential for constructing the credibility of an actor. As James Bohman () has shown convincingly, the fact that actors speak in public imposes constraints on how they can articulate their demands. Groups that become successful public actors must be able to employ and appeal to norms of publicity, such as being reasonable and general, in their efforts to convince a larger public (Bohman ). An important organizing rule is that actors tell the truth, do not purposefully deceive audiences, and be consistent. Elsewhere, Jon Elster has referred to this as “organized hypocrisy.” The key here is not that actors tell the truth all the time or they sincerely respect their opponents. What matters is that behavior will be strategically organized around such display rules (Elster ). And as long as actors respect these rules, their arguments will be persuasive. Thus, some actors might also offer accounts for purely instrumental reasons, precisely to deceive audiences and to further their own interests. This is what Frank Schimmelfennig calls “rhetorical action” (Schimmelfennig , ). Accordingly, actors may downplay community values, reinterpret them to their advantage, or question their relevance in a given context. There are limits to strategic manipulation, however. Actors need to be concerned about their consistency, as they will lose credibility if their rhetoric introduces arguments randomly or there is a consistent mismatch between words and deeds. The implication is that actors can become entrapped in their arguments and obliged to behave as if they had taken them seriously (Risse, Ropp and Sikkink : –; Schimmelfennig : ).

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My second assumption is that discourses can be both incremental and path-dependent. This not only determines what kind of arguments actors can legitimately introduce at any given moment during the discourse. It also provides a direction for the discourse. The general idea of path dependency is that prior decisions constrain (or expand) the range of choices that actors find to be feasible later on. That is, what happened at an earlier point in time will affect the possible outcomes of a sequence of events occurring at a later point in time. We can define a choice set as a set of actions that a given agent could take. Alternatively, we can think about path dependency as a network of paths through time, from past to future. Decisions to branch at an earlier point on the chosen path may affect the destinations that one can reach from a later point on the path. The longer the path, the more costly it is to change the direction. Switching to some previously plausible path becomes less likely (Goldstone ; Mahoney ; Pierson ). Someone using pure rhetoric may well utilize arguments without much concern for what has been said before and whether or not specific arguments have already dropped out of the discourse. Because such an actor violates the public rule of consistency, he or she will appear contradictory and lose persuasiveness. But if all actors have to argue consistently to be credible, this will move the discourse in a path-dependent direction. The Structuring of Dialogues: Frames To bring some structure into the discursive process, I introduce the concept of frames, devices that people use to perceive and represent segments of reality and to mobilize actors. Frames define and control representations and images and affect whether a person sees an issue at stake and thinks a particular argument applies to the case (Crawford : ). Frames convey much more than the norms themselves. They “are used to make demands, rally support, justify action, ascribe responsibility, and assess the praiseworthy or blameworthy character of an action” (Kratochwil : ). By facilitating decisions on the question of “What kind of situation is this?” and “Which norm counts?” frames give norms some power to determine behaviors and thus help to legitimize them. Frames have three key characteristics that are particularly relevant for our purposes. First, actors compete to frame events and phenomena because how these social facts are understood has important consequences for mobilizing action and furthering actors’ interests. Therefore, the competition is a

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strategic framing process. To mobilize action, political actors have to draw on cultural symbols that they choose selectively from a cultural tool kit and transform creatively into frames for action. Human rights organizations usually draw on international human rights norms to describe events and create political demands. Governments, for the same purpose of appealing to wider audiences, will frame the same events in terms of state security. Both act strategically in the sense that they want to galvanize domestic and international support for their position. By referring to legitimate but competing community norms, both groups try to rally support, not by linking action to possible material gains, but by emphasizing the moral-altruistic aspects of doing something. Human rights organizations want to protect other individuals from torture or disappearance. Political elites want to secure the state and its citizens from external or internal threats. Which norm is chosen? The process depends, critically, on both strategic behavior and the use of good arguments. Second, during the framing process, actors implicate themselves and wider audiences in these narratives. By framing phenomena and their actions and political demands, they also define each other in various ways. They delineate what is permissible and comprehensible. They create a map of possible roles and possible worlds in which action and self-definition are permissible or desirable. The Philippine and Indonesian governments frequently defined themselves as states seeking security from: • Self-determination movements that threatened their territorial integrity • Armed rebels who wanted to overthrow them • Islamist movements that wanted to replace secular state ideologies. Other governments define themselves as threatened by terrorist networks. Human rights organizations define their role as promoters of universal human rights principles and as speakers for those citizens of states who are threatened by repressive actions. By doing so, actors accord each other specific roles to which they can then be held accountable. Finally, frames have a particular structure, one that helps us to understand why the outcomes of human rights campaigns vary. The key is that these campaigns elicit dialogues over human rights. The dialogues vary, but, because they develop along the structures provided by frames, they produce outcomes that vary in a specific, systematic, path-dependent way. A frame

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usually consists of two key parts. The diagnostic part involves identifying a problem and attributing “blame or causality.” The prognostic part suggests solutions to the problem, but also identifies strategies, tactics, and targets. Responses to strategic framing usually address distinct parts of the frame. But even the best frame can be pierced, that is, rejected and redefined. Consider the following fictional statement: We have acquired evidence that security services engage in extrajudicial killings. This is a violation of international norms. If the government does not stop condoning this practice, more innocent people will die. No government has the right to treat its citizens in such an arbitrary way. The frame identifies the problem (the extralegal killing of individuals) and then claims that state security services are responsible for it (diagnostic). It categorizes the practice in a pejorative way by describing it as contravening international law. The prognosis is that, if the government stops condoning violations, these violations will end. In this hypothetical statement, the legitimacy of the government is linked to ending the practice. As it interacts with human rights organizations, a government can make four principal choices. It can accept the organization’s diagnosis of the situation, or it can reject it. And it can accept the implications of the diagnosis or reject them (Krebs and Jackson ). If the government rejects the frame’s diagnosis and reframes the phenomenon, I call this response “justification.” If a government justifies its action, in principle, it accepts responsibility for the act in question, but denies the pejorative quality associated with it (Cohen : ; Scott and Lyman : ). It says: Yes, the killing has taken place, but the victims were not innocent. They were separatists seeking self-determination for their region. It was right to kill them. The government portrays the situation as a governmental struggle to suppress a separatist movement operating in a particular part of the territory. Action against members of the movement is legitimate because, otherwise, the country will disintegrate. The government would lose its legitimacy if it did not protect the state’s territorial integrity and its very functioning as a state. Persuasive justifications that resonate among audiences draw on

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culturally accepted background knowledge that is embedded in taken-forgranted norms related to state security and legitimate state functions embedded in a world polity. Whenever a government accepts the frame’s diagnosis but tries to shift the blame, I call this type of response an “excuse.” Excuses are socially approved vocabularies for mitigating or relieving responsibility when a behavior is questioned (Cohen : ). Governments deny they have control over the situation and are therefore responsible for it. Yes, human rights violations have occurred, but the state’s security services are not responsible for them. Here, an actor admits the act in question is bad, wrong, or inappropriate, but it denies its responsibility. Excuses draw on an accepted vocabulary that deny governmental responsibility. Here, accounts referring to the de facto effectiveness of state authority are likely to be important. Governments rely on norms prescribing and assuming the state has effective control over its territory and population. Thus, excuses are often the inverse of international normative prescriptions because governments claim they do not have what international law supposes them to have. This raises an important consideration. From a legal perspective, violations of basic human rights cannot be justified. Human rights law establishes that human rights are inalienable and violations of these rights are inacceptable. “They cannot be transferred, waived, forfeited, usurped, or lost through failure to exercise or assert them.” They impose duties on states to “respect, protect, and ensure rights” (Powell : ). But as Martti Koskenniemi points out, just like any rights, human rights are legally granted and codified (Koskenniemi ). As rights, they have the same status as any other rights and hence can also be contested. Disputes over norms always involve a “struggle for competence to decide” (Koskenniemi : ). In the area of human rights, these disputes do not lead to the comprehensive denial that human rights are at stake and their derogation. They lead to a balancing act, essentially a weighting of human rights norms against other goals of public policy, most importantly, state security. Thus, even countries that normally eschew torture under normal circumstances can find justifications for its use when the nation is at war. In this context, it is important to note that practically every study on human rights notes that they deteriorate during wartime. Civil wars, coups, and sectarian or class violence have disrupting consequences on a country’s human rights record (see, for example, Poe and Tate ; Haas : ).

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Moreover, multiple studies, especially on securitization, point to the fact that human rights can be securitized under specific conditions. Securitization is the process through which any issue achieves the status of security. The process consists of three steps: . An actor designates an existential threat, which can also be called the “securitizing move.” . The actor claims that this threat requires emergency action or special measures. . A significant audience accepts that designation (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde : ). An increasing body of qualitative research on securitization establishes that by using this type of threat-related grammar, actors can free themselves of the normative constraints that are usually accepted as part of normal politics (Lipschutz ; Waever ; Williams ). That is, it becomes legitimate to use extraordinary measures to cope with that issue. Resources are allocated to this collective goal, and actors free themselves of the procedures or rules that would otherwise bind them (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde : ). While actors have considerable control over the diagnostic parts of a frame (they choose the initial frame and strategically develop responses to those parts), this is less true for a frame’s prognostic part. And it is here that independent norm dynamics can set in that render the effects of framing strategies unpredictable for actors. The process through which a norm gains validity for a specific context is at least partly shaped by occurrences that are crucial to path-dependent processes, events. These confirm or disconfirm particular arguments and give them greater leverage in the public debate. Thus these events become critical junctures. Moreover, when important external actors, such as respected international organizations, authorize a frame early in the process, they can make the frame more socially acceptable. Finally, media networks can gain independent information about the motivation of actors and thus play a decisive role in shaping the direction of discourses. This phenomenon is worth exploring in more depth. As Jeffrey Legro has pointed out, confirming or disconfirming events influence how acceptable an account becomes. Persuasive argumentation evolves reasoning about present-time political conditions and the laying out of futures, alternative futures, and counterfactuals. Actors sketch what kind of reality might develop

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if actors followed a different norm, had a different worldview, or behaved differently. These normative arguments create societal expectations about how things will develop if one follows a different norm. If events confirm an argument, these events also substantiate an actor’s norm-based predictions about future developments. An argument might still remain persuasive if new events provide ambivalent evidence for the power of the argument, but it is likely to lose its persuasiveness if a series of events disconfirm these expectations (Legro : f). During public dialogues, external authorities with undisputed authority can assume a crucial role (Waever ). International organizations constitute one type of actor that can provide legitimacy to actors if they support the actor’s account or suggested policy. Such organizations are frequently seen as assuming an independent third standpoint, representing the values of the international community. Organizations produce and reproduce this moral authority through discourses in which they present themselves as neutral, impartial, and objective monitors of state behavior and contrast their universal concerns with the self-serving claims of states (Barnett and Finnemore : –). International organizations, as Alex Thompson points out, “wash the hands of actors.” That is, they have “screening power.” They are informative agents that monitor the motivations of state actions and thereby lend credibility to specific claims (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde ; Thompson ). The quality mass media perform a similar function, although their role is vehemently disputed. Like international organizations, they screen the intentions of actors and remind audiences about the statements of actors and their consistency. They can do this because their self-understanding, legitimacy, and credibility are themselves embedded in institutionalized norms of appropriate behavior for media or standards of journalistic professionalism, most importantly, the norm of objective press reporting. Media reports are supposed to satisfy the criteria of truth, accuracy, and objectivity. Otherwise, they cannot perform the important social functions that are expressed in such terms as fourth estate, watchdog, public opinion tribunal, and system of distrust. Many professional codes emphasize that a journalist’s obligation to report the truth derives from the right of the public to be informed (Hafez : ). But media can also be simple information providers when they offer audiences with additional information, independent of what the human rights networks and governments present as speakers in a public dialogue (Klandermans and Goslinga ).

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For example, if a government claims that twenty people were killed in a massacre, a human rights organization might dispute the figure by claiming the numbers were higher. Both protagonists have manifest interests in seeing their version confirmed because they know that confirmation of their version of an event legitimates their behavior. They will develop an intrinsic interest to get audiences to evaluate their claims, in most cases, represented by journalists. Even if they are not in a position to say whose version is correct, journalists are likely to make a reasoned judgment about which version is more plausible and the substantial truth of each actor’s claim. This gives them power over representations of speakers. If journalists conclude that the human rights organization has exaggerated the extent of violations, the organization’s credibility will be damaged. Media thus supplies an audience with information that can help them to evaluate the actor’s statements and credibility. Audiences, represented by media, thus influence the process of norm selection in important ways that entail some risk for actors, for example, as they rarely have control over what kind of motives are being ascribed to them or what kind of information is provided through other sources. In this perspective, the media can be conceived of as “gossip networks” that might or might not multiply the social pressures connected to norms (Elster : f). One could disparage these media effects as epiphenomenal, secondary to other real effects that cause a phenomenon. But transnational advocacy are groups constantly trying to get media attention, and governments invest many resources in manipulating the press’ negative reporting about them. Moreover, I do not argue that entrapment will always work. To the extent that actors can anticipate such entrapment, they can develop strategies that allow them to escape the moral dilemmas posed by public discourse. This finally raises the question of how discourses over violations can develop such a potent force that they influence actors’ behavior. Here, the underlying mechanism is social influence (Johnston ). Public pressures can compel an actor to conform to standards of appropriateness if actors have, at an earlier point, declared their support of these standards. This is a phenomenon that earlier studies have called validity. Normative validity means that a norm that previously had the status of a subjective perception now becomes intersubjective and objectified. With the concept of validity, its proponents—among them Max Weber—wanted to make clear that, once a norm has become intersubjective, it can exert compliance pulls, irrespective of its private acceptance by individual actors. Even if political legitimacy is

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contested at the individual (state) level, it exists as a valid social order and is binding because it is also embedded in a system of social controls (Zelditsch : ; Wiener : –). Thus, as we have seen here, frames provide the basic matrix along which discourses develop in path-dependent ways. What interests me is how the public discourses over human rights that seek to mobilize actors must be structured to account for the variance that we observe in different cases: • Continual mobilization and pressures for human rights • The breakdown of human rights pressures • No mobilization at all despite evidence of gross and systematic human rights violations. The key elements here are justification, excuses, mobilization, and sanctions, as shown in Figure .. In general, it seems reasonable to assume that justifications centrally affect external actors’ propensity to mobilize against the target state. If the target government can provide good reasons why

Audience accepts

“State Security” No human rights pressures Continuing / increasing violations

Justification Audience rejects Government rejects diagnosis, accepts responsibility

“Human Rights Violation” Human rights pressures Change of human rights practices

Human rights organization alleges human rights violations

Government accepts diagnosis, rejects responsibility

“Involuntary Non-Compliance” No human rights pressures Continuing human rights violations

Audience accepts

Excuse Audience rejects

“Human Rights Violation” Human rights pressures Change of human rights practices

Figure 2.2 Justifications and Excuses: Outcomes of Transnational Advocacy

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repression is necessary, other state governments are unlikely to support human rights concerns because they weigh human rights against states’ other responsibilities and obligations. In contrast, I assume that excuses critically challenge the ability of outside actors to sanction violations. If an actor can credibly convey that he or she has no control over the situation and is therefore unable to change it, punishing that actor would violate legal procedural norms. In this case, a government’s behavior will instead be interpreted as involuntary noncompliance (Chayes and Chayes ). The government might not condone human rights violations, but it might be unable to change the situation. Thus, even with media attention, we would not expect other actors to sanction this government. These interaction results conform with the observation of “same violations, no pressures” or a breakdown of human rights pressures. Only in the situation when governments are unable to justify and excuse human rights violations will we see extended pressures and, consequently, changes in these practices. Two key mechanisms will enable governments to retain their political power even if their behavior violates human rights standards. The first one is the mobilization of competing domestic groups. If human rights pressures mobilize human rights stakeholders and a government manages to mobilize contending domestic groups, such as nationalists, because human rights violations occur in the context of a self-determination movement, the effects of these two sets of international norms are likely to cancel each other out. Both the rationalist and constructivist approaches assume that international norms strengthen pro-human rights constituencies in a linear way, thus increasing their leverage toward their government. If norms are indeterminate and different groups use different rights to make their claims, the direction of mobilization becomes difficult to predict. Second, and related to the first mechanism, counter-mobilization on the basis of state security norms affects the most important bulwarks against human rights violations. These mobilizations tend to delegitimize human rights organizations and other proponents of human rights and disempower them. And they can even affect the publicity on supposedly security-related issues. By achieving this, governments effectively foreclose an active debate on state security matters and increase the chance that human rights violations will remain undetected (Powell ). Thus I do not claim that dialogues over human rights practices will officially legitimize human rights violations. My assumption is that if actors agree on state security norms, violations become more likely, because the bulwarks against them also lose influence.

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Conclusion The basic thrust of the argument I make in this book is that the success of transnational advocacy movements against governments that allegedly violate human rights is highly dependent on persuading a large public that the accused government cannot justify human rights violations against its population. This gives the government two types of accounts to counter claims. It can use either justifications or excuses to counter human rights pressures. Either one can be highly persuasive if they rely, like human rights advocates, on an accepted repertoire of commonplaces embedded in world polity, threats to a state’s territorial integrity or its authority, also referred to as “state security.” To succeed, these accounts depend on the support of international and domestic audiences to legitimately attain their preferences. If international and domestic audiences honor these accounts and accept them, this not only points to the fact that breaches of human rights norms are inherently social, it also implies that the outcomes of transnational advocacy can vary.

3 Indonesia’s New Order 1965–1978: Transnational Advocacy and State Security under Military-Led Modernization

In , the policy planning staff at the United States State Department prepared a study on the role of the military in underdeveloped areas. It argued that American policy had to change. Instead of emphasizing civilian supremacy over the armed forces and an optimistic perspective on the prospects for democratic, parliamentary development, the new focus was military modernization. The planning staff called for a more coherent American doctrine with an emphasis on encouraging patterns of economic development “in which the military see themselves as deeply involved in the process of modernization but in a role as cooperative partnership with civil authorities and instilling a concept of ‘total security’ in which soldiers view themselves as insurance against both external invasion and internal subversion” (Simpson : –). The study reflected ongoing discussion among American policy makers and academics in think tanks and newly created social science departments at American universities. All were reconsidering the general role the military could play in modernization processes in developing countries. The army was one of “the more modernized of the authoritative agencies of government in transitional societies,” and it could act as a “modernizing agent” or a “modernizing force for the whole of society” (Pye : ). The military was antiauthoritarian. Its technical education and its orientation toward standards of efficiency made it a source of stability. A youth would be taken away from his kinship and local community as “individualityinhibiting” forces (Shils : ). In a similar vein, Lucian Pye argued that

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the military represented the most rational organization in transitional countries and it was the only “effectively organized element capable of competing for political power and formulating public policy.” In addition, according the army an outstanding role would add to international stability. He concluded, “The military can make a major contribution to strengthening essentially administrative functions” (Pye : , ). Within the new paradigm of military-led modernization, Indonesia would become a showcase. It would receive program assistance backed by millions of American dollars that aimed to involve the military in national development and counterinsurgency operations. Western political commitment to military-led development went far beyond the mere struggle against Communism in the developing world. As Bradley J. Simpson shows in detail, the military moment linked military aid tightly to comprehensive programs of economic and technical assistance and “framed the boundaries of American and Indonesian thinking about possible paths to the country’s future” (Simpson : ). The commitment extended the American policy, begun in , of condemning and working to annihilate the Communist movement in Indonesia. And it would significantly shape what planners could or could not imagine as alternatives to military-led modernization when transnational networks of human rights organizations questioned the political legitimacy of the Suharto government in an international campaign dedicated to political prisoners and East Timor in the mid-s. In this chapter, I trace the influence that transnational non-governmental activities had in promoting human rights in Indonesia in the s, a process set against these military developments. In examining the emergence, growth, and limitations of an international solidarity movement that both supported political prisoners in Indonesia and opposed the Indonesian military’s invasion of East Timor, I show how international human rights organizations challenged the human rights practices and political authority of Indonesia’s Suharto government. This chapter provides the first crucial test for my argument that these transnational human rights networks and the public dialogue over the rights of political prisoners and the invasion of East Timor affected the government’s position on both issues. At the same time, I show that the content of these public debates matters. Against the backdrop of substantial political challenges to the Suharto government, rulers found an effective justification, political Islam. And as this justification resonated among international audiences and connected to world polity norms, it changed the outcome of the transnational mobilization for

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human rights. Empirically, I focus on two instances of transnational mobilization for human rights that have rarely attracted the attention of human rights scholars: the political prisoner campaign against the Suharto government and the self-determination campaign in East Timor in the s. In both cases, transnational activities met with only limited success. Both campaigns occurred at the same time, and their interaction could have increased international human rights pressures on the Indonesian government. A human rights campaign by Amnesty International and a British human rights organization called Tapol, to release tens of thousands of political prisoners, achieved significant results. As outcome of the campaign on political prisoners • Human rights groups actively reset the standards of appropriateness in the human rights area related to Communist political prisoners, and publicly exposed the Indonesian government as norm-violating actor. • The campaigns mobilized international opinion against Indonesia’s human rights practice. • Western governments mobilized against the Suharto government and threatened to withdraw aid to Indonesia. • The Indonesian government switched from an official denial that political prisoners existed to a release policy, releasing all but  of an estimated , political prisoners. • The Suharto government acknowledged malpractice by dismissing a key figure responsible for the administration of imprisonment. The campaign on East Timor did not achieve remotely similar results. Western governments—most importantly the US government—supported demands for humanitarian assistance intended to provide famine-related relief to the population, but they did not pressure Jakarta to reverse the annexation or to account for human rights violations. In sum, despite significant concessions by the Suharto government, an incipient domestic mobilization that might have ended authoritarian rule early on, and the fact that the Indonesian government was in a state of noncompliance with international norms when it invaded the territory of East Timor in  and annexed it in , international mobilization ended suddenly in . In sum, the campaigns ultimately did not generate the continued mobilization and the changes of domestic structures as in the Philippines about the same time (as we will see in Chapter ) and in Indonesia at a later point in time (Chapter ).

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Realists would find these cases easy to explain. Transnational activities had only limited success because material interests were aligned against them. Because Indonesia had strategic and military importance, the United States did not support human rights concerns in this country and East Timor. The American administration and Pentagon officials made it clear to their allies that any deterioration of relations with Indonesia was not in the security interests of the United States (Taylor : ). And political scientist Timo Kivimäki argues that “the fate of the Timorese was peripheral in comparison to that of the political prisoners . . . because Indonesian policies in East Timor were commonly seen as directly beneficial to US strategic interests” (Kivimäki : ). As we will see in the next section, in the s, the US government actively supported the near complete extinction of the Communist party in Indonesia to ensure that Indonesia would orient itself toward the West. Thus, both campaigns were set against significant strategic interests, most importantly, those of the United States and Indonesia’s military-backed government itself. However, American officials have always emphasized their strategic-military interests in Indonesia and the Philippines, and transnational advocacy was able to make substantial inroads to foreign policy. It is not immediately clear why the United States supported prisoner releases but dragged its feet on human rights in East Timor. Also contradicting this explanation are the statements of American officials who continuously emphasized that the United States did not want to become involved in a conflict in which it had “no national interest,” as a State Department memorandum put it (see below). More importantly, in the case of Indonesia, strategic military interests are an inaccurate proxy for the interests of the United States government, as I will show below. The military moment was not only about the strategic-military interests of Western states in Southeast Asia. If this were the case, the United States and other governments would not have backed—even reluctantly—the release of political prisoners, especially suspected Communists. The military moment was also a program-strengthening nation-state development in the developing world. Set against this understanding, the political prisoner campaign focusing on suspected Communist prisoners was able to redefine what a state government could and could not do if it defined itself as a modernizing state. In particular, it could not arbitrarily imprison tens of thousands of individuals. But had governments pressed Indonesia’s government to democratize by reversing military-led modernization, this might not have had the preferred outcome, a democratic and accountable state. It might well have led to an

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unaccountable (Islamic) state. This belief underpinned Western approaches to Indonesia’s economic and political development and effectively legitimated the predominantly political role of the Indonesian military. Thus, the outcome depended on the campaign’s ability to reframe this setting. So why did the campaigns not lead to greater institutional changes? Why was Suharto able to contain a formidable political challenge to the New Order legitimacy despite international and domestic mobilization against him? My focus on public discourses and the mobilization dynamics emphasizes factors internal to the campaigns. Human rights advocates managed to delegitimize the government’s practice of imprisoning suspected Communists. The Indonesian government’s initial justification that the prisoners posed a threat to state security was quickly invalidated as a result of the Indonesian government’s inconsistencies in accounting for the number of prisoners. Also, just as (liberal) constructivist and rationalist approaches would predict, international attention on human rights practices legitimized the domestic opposition and sustained domestic mobilization against the government. But once it became apparent that domestic mobilization occurred under the banner of Islam, the Suharto government drew effectively on potential Islamist threats to the secular character of the nation-state to justify its continuation of authoritarian state structures. This justification proved to be politically effective. The Iranian revolution provided an unforeseen event and critical juncture, and made the Indonesian government’s claim immediately plausible—state security was at stake. It also resonated with the predominant military-led modernization paradigm of that time and with more general international norms related to the secular character of state organization. Both these phenomena, military-led modernization and the secular character of state organization, connect to norms in the world polity that conceive of rational-legal (bureaucratic) states as legitimate organizational forms in the international realm. Thus, by drawing on these phenomena, the Indonesian government effectively securitized the state and won in its first public dialogue with human rights organizations. In the case of East Timor, the campaign remained limited even though East Timor was eventually able to vote on self-determination in . The international campaign immediately following the invasion did successfully question the legitimacy of the invasion, but it could not reverse it, even though it had recorded claims of gross and systematic human rights violations. I show that the East Timor campaign could not even remotely muster the resources and evidence that the political prisoner campaign had at its

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disposal, which made it relatively easy for governments to avoid the moral traps connected with East Timor’s annexation. The Suharto government was able to contain international challenges right away, primarily through its tight control of access to the territory and its monopoly over information. Through these two strategies, the government effectively deprived independent monitors of control over the resources they needed to construct persuasive arguments. Most importantly, lack of credible information on abusive practices in the territory made the Indonesian government’s strategy of denying responsibility for the death and starvation of thousands of East Timorese politically efficacious. The position that the annexation violated international law did not resonate among state governments that were privately convinced that East Timor’s integration into Indonesia was right. Western governments, especially the Ford administration in the United States, endorsed the invasion in . This also triggered strategies that revealed the American role in this event. The Ford administration was quite aware that, if its involvement became public, it would be hard to stay out of the conflict, it would damage the credibility of the United States and other states, and they would not be able to pursue their interests. Each of these elements created conditions that did not help efforts at persuasion. As they accumulated, they led to the failure of both campaigns. Together, these strategies explain how the New Order regime escaped the formidable foreign policy challenge posed by transnational human rights activism in the s. In this chapter, I make two key arguments with regard to the qualitative literature on the impact that human rights law has on state behavior. First, I argue that this scholarship is too optimistic in two ways. It overestimates the speed of human rights change, and, more importantly, it is too optimistic that human rights discourse will prevail once governments have made concessions. Second, theoretical approaches overestimate the effects on the strengthening of liberal groups in target states. International mobilization for human rights does help mobilize liberal groups, but it also promotes other domestic groups that support human rights. If these groups are perceived to threaten liberal values, this gives governments the opportunity to portray these groups as anti-secular and anti-democratic. Given their resonance with norms about secular state bureaucracies, these arguments can develop persuasive force. I proceed as follows. First, I provide the normative-political context in which Indonesia’s policy—and that of the developing world in general—was embedded from  onward, military-led modernization. The perspective

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of military-led modernization provided the prism through which Western academia and most Western governments viewed developments in the Third World from the s onwards. Thus, to be politically efficacious, ethical arguments had to resonate with this paradigm. In the second and third sections, I focus on the activities of transnational advocacy networks with regard to Indonesian prisoners and East Timor. I describe their arguments, strategies, and interaction with the Indonesian government and explain why both campaigns ultimately failed. The final section summarizes what we can learn from failed advocacy campaigns. The Normative-Political Context: Military-Led Modernization in the 1960s In , Indonesia declared independence from the Dutch. Given its rich resources and strategic importance, any political developments in Indonesia presented great challenges to the foreign policies of Western powers who vied for political influence in the region. The United States tried vigorously to bring Indonesia under its influence, as did the Soviet Union and China. The Indonesian government, under its charismatic first president, Sukarno, proved to be a challenge for Western policy makers. A declared nationalist and charismatic leader, he was eager to free Indonesia from colonial and neocolonial domination, and he was prepared to fight against what he perceived as the vestiges of colonialism in Southeast Asia. He sought to make his point by integrating West Irian, the western half of New Guinea, into Indonesia, resisting the long-term Dutch preference for self-determination. In , Sukarno hosted the famous conference of non-aligned countries in Bandung, thus becoming a role model for non-alignment that aimed at holding the major great powers at some distance (Acharya and Tan ). And, in , he pursued a confrontational political course (konfrontasi), an undeclared war, toward Malaysia by opposing the foundation of the Malaysian Federation. Jakarta vigorously resisted British efforts to bring North Borneo into the Malaysian Federation. Indonesia’s policy toward West Irian complicated its relationship with the United States, which pursued a course of passive neutrality translating into de facto support for continued Dutch rule. Also in , the CIA’s covert support of rebel officers and the religious political party, Masyumi, during a short revolt against the Indonesian government, led to a civil war that made Sukarno and the military loyal to him suspicious of Washington (Simpson : –).

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Especially during the s, Indonesia became the playing field for great powers to disburse aid and engage in covert activities aimed at subverting the Sukarno government. They were motivated by apparent opportunities to influence the power balance in Indonesia by taking advantage of conflicts among Indonesia’s diverse domestic political groupings, most importantly, the Communist party of Indonesia and the military. Thus, the Soviet Union directed its efforts to support the Communist movement in Indonesia, then the largest non-bloc Communist movement in the world, while the United States soon concentrated on supporting the military and affiliated paramilitary units. These ideological struggles culminated in the virtual extinction of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia) in late  and early  after an alleged Communist coup attempt against Sukarno on September , . On the night of September , , several hundred dissident military personnel, as well as members and followers of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and its front groups, staged an abortive coup d’état in Jakarta and a few scattered locations in central and west Java. Largely quelled within seventy-two hours, the coup marked a major turning point in Indonesia’s postwar history. Its failure inaugurated drastic realignments in the country’s domestic and foreign policies and led directly to former President Sukarno’s fall from power and the assumption of the presidency by General Suharto, who had led the campaign against the “Thirty September Movement” (Gerakan Tiga Puluh September [Gestapu]), today the common Indonesian term for the coup (van der Kroef –: ). The persecution and killing of hundreds of thousands of suspected Communists and the liquidation of alleged members of the Communist party of Indonesia within five months was nearly unprecedented in the Third World and has been described as the equivalent of the Rwandan genocide in Indonesia (Simpson : ). The political significance of the event became visible when the slogan “Jakarta, Jakarta” appeared on walls in Santiago de Chile, obviously meant as a warning to members of the Left there. Military regimes in Turkey and Thailand discussed whether it would be a viable strategy to extinguish their radical Left movements, which were comparable to the one in Indonesia (Amnesty International a). The purges occurred with the knowledge and active support of the American and British governments, essentially through covert actions. A key recent study on the implications that the military-led modernization paradigm had for Indonesia is Bradley R. Simpson’s Economists with

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Guns. He argues that, to understand the extent of Western involvement in these purges, it is necessary to contextualize Indonesia’s political and economic developments at that time. They have to be seen in a context where authoritarian regimes were emerging across the Third World. These regimes were pledged to—and derived their legitimacy from—their commitment to programs of military-led modernization (Simpson ). Under this program, developed in large part by newly created social science departments in the United States that became involved in devising American foreign policy toward developing states, American administrations from Kennedy onwards sought to create stability by nurturing those key institutions and domestic groups whose power guaranteed the greatest long-term political stability, the military and technocratic elites. Military-led modernization, combined with the trend toward corporatism, came to be seen as the most influential paradigm for thinking about the modernization, both economic and political, of developing states. In line with the prerogatives of this paradigm, many developing states restructured their domestic political institutions and increased the political role of the military with immense financial assistance from the United States, Western European governments, Japan, and international lending agencies. Military-Led Modernization: The Concept

Discussed in American foreign policy circles from the s onwards, the military modernization discourse resolved around a dichotomy, the rational and irrational government policies of the new states. It was introduced, most importantly, by the RAND Corporation’s Guy Pauker, who occupied the nexus between the American intelligence community and academia. A number of scholars—among them Edward Shils, Lucian Pye, and John J. Johnson—discussed the theory’s implications at a scientific conference in late  and published the results in . The military modernization research program looked broadly at the conditions of economic and political modernization in Third World countries and soon focused on the military as one of the most rational bureaucratic organizations capable of steering underdeveloped nations toward economic development and rational societies. The military attracted the attention of scholars as one of the few types of organization that seemed to exhibit substantial organizational rationality. This rationality might provide the causal mechanism that could lead to modernization. Key to the idea was that armies could help to break down

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local, tribal, religious, and class identities and train soldiers to identify with the nation as a whole, replacing particularistic affiliations with universal ones, and providing both solidarity and a degree of class and social mobility. By embracing innovation, technology, and administrative rationalization, armies could serve as catalysts for the rest of society. Armies were “the most efficient type of organization for combining maximum rates of modernization with maximum levels of stability and control,” as Marion Levy put it (Levy : ). According to Simpson, what American officials and social scientists most admired about armies in the developing world was “precisely their political orientation, in particular, their willingness to repress radical political and social forces in the name of maintaining stability” (Simpson : ; Johnson ). The policy implications of the theory suggested that Washington should side with military-led regimes as a matter of both expediency and principle as developing nations passed through the turbulent middle phases of economic and political development. More and more social scientists adopted the military modernization thesis as a paradigm, and it resonated significantly among bureaucrats in Western governments. The new policy consensus precipitated a commitment to civic action and counterinsurgency throughout the developing world, a commitment that was strengthened as American administrations witnessed the Cuban Revolution, the emergence of Communist movements in Vietnam and Laos, and Nikita Khrushchev’s  speech offering support for “wars of national liberation.” Hence, the incoming Kennedy administration promoted a bureaucratic and doctrinal shift away from conventional military tactics toward unconventional warfare and paramilitary operations directed at internal unrest. The Indonesian military was reoriented to focus on internal security and economic development. Civic action programs involving the military were devised to help build civilian infrastructure, establishing closer links between the military and the rural population and serving as transmission belts for Western ideas while simultaneously bringing suspected insurgent areas under military control. A key component became police training for counterinsurgency operations. This emphasis on the military’s civilian mission dovetailed almost perfectly with ideas among generals in Indonesia, most importantly, General Abdul Harris Nasution’s idea of the military’s dual function, territorial warfare and management (Crouch ; Simpson : –). Western support for the Indonesian military was geared considerably toward containing the Communist party of Indonesia, widely admired for its organizational discipline and rationality. The United States wanted to prevent

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Indonesia from falling under communist control, and it saw essential programs that would isolate the political party and “drive it into positions of open opposition to the Indonesian government, thereby creating grounds for repressive measures politically justifiable in terms of Indonesian national self-interest.” Since the mid-s, the American and Western European governments had observed—with disbelief—the rise of the Communist party in Indonesia. The PKI had continuously won electoral support. In , it emerged as the fourth-largest political party in the parliamentary elections with . percent of the total votes. Between  and , party membership had risen from , to . million members. These developments had raised red flags in Washington and led to counterbalancing policies in the form of political and military support for the Indonesian army. Thus, when the opportunity came to oppose the political party, the American and British governments actively supported the Indonesian military. The attempted coup of September  resulted in a mass killing of de facto and suspected Communists in Indonesia, in fact, hundreds of thousands of people within a few weeks (for detailed accounts, see Heryanto ; Roosa ; Cribb , ). The massacre began in early October on the initiative of local Muslim leaders in the strongly Muslim province of Aceh in northern Sumatra. In most cases, the killings were triggered when anticommunist Special Forces arrived or when local armed forces made it clear that they sanctioned the murder of communists. In some regions, military units themselves took a major role in the killing. More commonly, they used local militias (Simpson : ). Far from urging restraint on the military to stop the most egregious murders of suspected PKI activists, the American and British governments viewed the conflict between the Indonesian military and the PKI as an opportunity to politically—and literally—wipe out the organization that they saw as one of the most serious competitors to the military. The British embassy, still annoyed about Sukarno’s konfrontasi policy toward Malaysia, did not want to miss an opportunity to weaken Sukarno politically and destroy the PKI. On October , , in a telegram to the Foreign Office, the embassy complained that the army might “be letting this opportunity slip through their fingers as Sukarno attempts to exercise restraint.” As Simpson contends, “One can only conclude that the greatest fear of the US and other governments was that the army might refrain from mass violence against the party’s unarmed members and supporters, who by all accounts were unaware of and uninvolved in the movement.” (Simpson : , emphasis in original). Embassy officials called

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for early and carefully planned propaganda and psychological warfare activity to exacerbate internal strife and ensure the army would destroy the PKI. British and American intelligence services supported the mass killings by dispersing anti-PKI propaganda and feeding international newspapers with unattributed information on the alleged background of the coup (Roosa : chap. ). Together, Washington and London made it easier for the Indonesian military to wipe out the PKI. They guaranteed that, if the military diverted combat units from Borneo, the United States and United Kingdom would not exploit the situation. The military, consequently, encouraged anti-Communist and religious groups to move against the PKI. It legitimized the outrageous measures against the party as action against a “mortal alien threat to Indonesian society, a cancer to be cut out of the body politic” (Simpson : f). At the end of October, progress in eliminating the PKI had been substantial. The organization’s back was broken. Local military commanders were taking the initiative to ban the PKI and its affiliates, and weak PKI branches dissolved in a desperate attempt to avoid total destruction. With the PKI broken, Sukarno’s political prestige faded significantly. The subsequent struggle against the PKI in the countryside was aided by American covert aid, which financed tactical communications equipment and other vital assistance for both army headquarters and field units (Simpson : ). White House and Pentagon officials did not attach strings to this aid so it could “assure the Army of our full support of its efforts to crush the PKI” (Simpson : ). Suspected Communists who were not killed were detained, routinely tortured, and executed en masse. Human rights organizations estimated that, between September  and September , about a quarter of a million people were taken into concentration camps by the Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order (Komando Operasi Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban [Kopkamtib]). Accurate figures on the scale of imprisonment were not available, however (van der Kroef –). Ten years after this coup, tens of thousands of prisoners would still be waiting to have charges filed. Constructivist approaches to international relations regularly call for greater attention to context as they explore the influence of international norms. Contextualizing helps explain why normative influences might vary over time (Klotz : ). In considering the events outlined above, what becomes apparent is that Indonesia’s development in the late s into what would be called an authoritarian state was deeply embedded in an interaction with Western state governments that regarded military-led modernization as a viable path toward

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bringing Indonesia in line with Western understandings about what a proper state should look like and as a means to distract Indonesia from Communist influences. Military-led modernization was thus the result of beliefs about which processes would ultimately generate the rational-bureaucratic state. These beliefs also defined who would be the significant players, most importantly, the military. Once the Communist party had been wiped out, the incoming Suharto government consequently moved onwards toward reorganizing the state along a rational-bureaucratic organization with the military assuming an important role at all levels of the state administration (Tanter ). Given international efforts to promote a Westernized state identity in Indonesia, it comes as no surprise that, on a rhetorical level, the government supported international human rights norms. International debates that evolved around the drafting of the two international covenants on human rights in  also had their repercussions in Indonesia. They spurred human rights activities at the levels of both government and civil society. The New Order regime legitimized itself by distancing itself from the human rights violations under Sukarno. It appealed to the aspirations of many Muslims who had been excluded politically under Sukarno, had experienced human rights violations, and had participated in the killings of suspected Communists because they saw action against the Communists as revenge (Boland ). There was an open debate about strengthening human rights guarantees in the  constitution. In , a symposium called for a greater respect for the rule of law and their consistent legal implementation. The first, non-governmental human rights organizations formed. In , H.C.J. Princen, a Dutch-born naturalized Indonesian who had fought in the Indonesian military against the Dutch, founded the Institute for the Study of Universal Human Rights (Lembaga Pembela Hak-Hak Asasi Manusia [LPHAM]). Four years later, the Legal Aid Foundation (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Indonesia [LBH]) was established (Lev ). A law on judicial power reaffirmed the independence of the judiciary in December  (Lubis : –; Mackie and MacIntyre : ). These activities can be interpreted as attempts to conform to models of what good states do in an international polity. The New Order Reorganizes the Political System

Having gotten rid of its largest political competitor, the New Order regime began to implement a military-led, state-corporatist program to comprehensively reorganize state structures. Lacking its own political party, the military-backed government converted the so-called Functional Groups Joint

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Secretariat (Golongan Karya Pusat [Golkar]) into a corporatist-like electoral machine to provide political legitimacy for the government. All other political parties were restructured and depoliticized to ensure a minimum of democratic appearance with maximum control by the government. Some parties were not allowed to reemerge, such as the influential Masyumi party, which had been banned under Sukarno and hoped for rehabilitation. In –, Suharto regrouped the other nine existing parties into two large parties: • The United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan [PPP], uniting the Muslim parties) • The Democratic Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia [PDI], uniting the Christian and Nationalist parties). In an attempt to limit politicization, all parties were banned from engaging in political activities in rural areas except at election time. All this aimed at securing support for the government’s pragmatic, “program-oriented,” modernization-oriented development policy (see also Hefner : ff; Jackson ; Samson ). These actions did not go unchallenged (Bresnan : –; Kingsbury : –; Mackie and MacIntyre : –). Muslim organizations, students, and part of the ruling elite became increasingly outspoken against Suharto. Muslim organizations were disappointed that the change of regime from Sukarno to Suharto had not provided them with more political power, especially as they had been instrumental in bringing him to power through their toleration of or even active participation in the purges against Indonesian Communists (Anderson ). These groups came together on several issues, including corruption among the military, Suharto’s official support of the military, the government’s leaning toward Western development models, and its reliance on Western funds. In the first half of the s, popular discontent exploded in several riots that drew worldwide headlines. In August , issues of corruption, patronage, and the apparent benefits accruing to Indonesia’s Chinese minority led to anti-Chinese riots in Bandung (Crouch ; Kingsbury : ). In January , student protests eventually exploded in the so-called Malari riots during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka to Indonesia. Following these riots, students protested regularly against the Suharto government. As student representatives made clear in press statements, even though they protested against foreign economic colonialism, it was their way “of expressing our criticism of

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the Government” (Schanberg ). The official government appraisal of the Malari riot portrayed it as a plot of Communist and Muslim forces against Suharto. It blamed a wide range of actors for causing political instability, including students, the press (which had allegedly encouraged the students’ action), government critics, a number of intellectuals and former members of the banned Socialist Party of Indonesia (Partai Sosialis Indonesia [PSI]), as well as the Masyumi party (integrated into the PPP) (Bresnan : ). The government arrested professors and other intellectuals, including some of the country’s most independent figures and human rights advocates such as Adnan Buyung Nasution and Mochtar Lubis (Jenkins ). The student opposition was temporarily silenced. The previous sections described the international context of the Indonesian government’s development toward military-led modernization and the Suharto government’s ability to repress domestic opposition against these efforts. The next section describes how the international human rights campaign of the mid-s influenced the Suharto government’s human rights practice and the conditions for domestic mobilization against the government. The Communist Political Prisoner Campaign (1975–1979) Once they learned the extent of the massacres in Indonesia, human rights and church groups, like Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, and the World Council of Churches, as well as journalists and scholars who were appalled for moral reasons, began to collect and spread information about the massacres and their political aftermath (see, for example, Amnesty International ). Representatives of Amnesty International were able to visit Indonesia in  and , but Indonesian officials did not grant entry visas to a third Amnesty International mission, forcing it to cancel. The organization maintained its links to the Legal Aid Bureau in Jakarta, however. In February , Amnesty International submitted a petition to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, asking the Human Rights Commission to intervene on behalf of the prisoners who had not yet been tried. The same year, Amnesty International’s Dutch section issued a comprehensive report on the political prisoner problem. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, Carmel Budiardjo, a former political prisoner and wife of an Indonesian Communist, founded the NGO, British Campaign for the Release of Indonesia’s Political Prisoners.

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Until the mid-s, the Indonesian government’s reaction was contradictory, shifting from verbal denials that the issue of human rights was at stake to releasing small batches of prisoners. It was reacting to international criticism, which becomes apparent in the fact that prisoner releases were first only reported in the foreign press. Its first line of defense was that the alleged Communist prisoners were not political prisoners, but were detained on legal grounds for subversion and rebellion. In October , to emphasize its point, the government attempted to outlaw the use of the word tapol, an Indonesian abbreviation for political prisoner. Those detained in connection with the coup were not political prisoners, but criminals. So, according to the government, the term tapol was misleading (Fealy : ). However, Lieutenant General Sumitro, security chief of the Kopkamtib and deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces, reacted to criticism about prison conditions by improving prisoners’ living situations and easing restrictions on the domestic and foreign press to allow greater coverage of the problem (Fealy : ). Kopkamtib was responsible for detaining suspected Communists and had come under heavy attack by Amnesty International. Later that year, Sumitro was sacked as Kopkamtib chief and forced to resign as deputy head of the army. With his resignation, it might well be that Suharto managed to achieve two things simultaneously: His removal as most visible target of international criticism muted that indignation; at the same time, Suharto could solve a domestic political conflict. Sumitro was simultaneously involved in a domestic power struggle with Ali Murtopo, a chief architect of the New Order and head of the Special Operations organization (Operasi Khusus [OPSUS]) over the military’s expanded role and military-led modernization. And Sumitro had exposed himself domestically when he publicly supported the students in their demands. In June and October , the government informed foreign press agencies that it was releasing political prisoners on the condition that the prisoners gave “assurance of their conversion to the anti-Marxist state ideology known as Pancasila” (Fealy : ). The Indonesian press did not report these statements, and it remained unclear whether the government released any prisoners (Fealy ). Public pressures increased throughout . That year, a coordinated network of Amnesty International sections in West Germany, Austria, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, and Canada and the British Campaign for the Release of Communist Political Prisoners in Indonesia (Tapol) conducted the first international campaign on behalf of the female political prisoners in Indonesia. The campaign culminated in the publication of an Amnesty

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International report, exclusively dedicated to the Communist political prisoners in Indonesia (and translated into Bahasa Indonesia) that pointedly summarized the organization’s arguments. Given the substantial support of Western governments in wiping out the PKI, the report achieved surprising results. It compelled governments to deal with the issue of imprisonment. This progress can only be understood and explained by examining the public dialogue between the Indonesian government and the human rights organization. Because that argument virtually cornered the government, I will describe it at some length. The Amnesty International Report of 1975

Amnesty International’s strategy pursued several aims: • Accurately establish the number of political prisoners whose existence the Indonesian government had continuously denied • Demonstrate that the imprisonment was arbitrary and hence undermine the rationale for it • Categorize the political prisoner policy as a general pattern in the government’s human rights policy and hence undermine its political legitimacy. According to its own records, which were based on Indonesian government statements, Amnesty International estimated that “certainly more than , prisoners [were] held without trial in Indonesia, and the actual number of prisoners held without trial is probably about ,” (Amnesty International a: ). The security institution responsible for the arrests, Kopkamtib, had systematically tortured and mistreated prisoners during interrogations, amounting to “persistent and gross violations of human rights” (Amnesty International a: ). This was not just a passing phenomenon. In , Amnesty International was still receiving reports of torture. The second line of argument relied on the rule of law. In Amnesty International’s view, the Indonesian government’s actions lacked any legal basis and thus violated the most basic standards of justice and rule of law. Political prisoners were denied their right to a fair trial and, often, to any trial. Imprisonment was arbitrary, extra-judicial, and extra-legal. The whole procedure relied on a security agency (Kopkamptib), which drew its power from a single presidential instruction issued in May  that provided the sole basis for administrative action against more than a half-million people. Independent checks on the almost-unlimited powers of individual military officers were nonexistent. Civilian officials, law officers, lawyers, and the judiciary were

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entirely excluded from the process (Amnesty International a: –). In sum, in Amnesty International’s view, the Indonesian political system lacked the essential rule-of-law features that would characterize a legitimate polity. In a key section, the report explained the classification system for political prisoners, which the army leadership had created: • Those in Category A were considered to have been involved directly in the coup attempt. • Those in Category B were indirectly involved. • Those in Category C were merely involved on the basis of indications or their involvement “may be reasonably assumed.” Only those in Category A were to be brought to trial. The authorities did not have sufficient evidence against the others. Government statements about the number of political prisoners varied greatly, especially with Category C prisoners, where government statements varied between , and zero prisoners. Even in the other categories, up to , prisoners remained unaccounted for (Amnesty International a: ). A related problem was the right to a fair trial. Prisoners like those in Category B remained detained, although their presence in the category meant no one had enough evidence to charge them with a crime. They were detained because they had “assumed an attitude” that implied support for the PKI. The trial process for Category A prisoners itself was so slow that most prisoners would not “be tried within their lifetimes.” Finally, none of the trials met the standards for the rule of law. They were show trials in which many were sentenced to death or tried without advance warning and in secrecy. The Indonesian government wanted to “present the world with the illusion that they are trying to solve the problem according to established standards of justice,” Amnesty International argued. Its conclusion was unequivocal: No government has the authority arbitrarily to imprison large numbers of people, unconstitutionally, illegally and contrary to the rule of law. No government should allow political prisoners to be held entirely within a military system of administration which controls all matters concerning political prisoners, and permits local military commanders to exercise complete arbitrary power over political prisoners. (Amnesty International : )

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The Indonesian government responded immediately. It invited correspondents from the New York Times, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and other newspapers to visit the detention centers and paved the way for mass media coverage and an independent evaluation of the allegations. Press reports confirmed that prison conditions in the detention camps were indeed lifethreatening (Jenkins ). On a rhetorical level, the Indonesian government started to justify its prisoner policy. Although it did not publish an official reply to the report, Jusuf Wanandi, the deputy director of the influential Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), engaged in a direct exchange of arguments with Amnesty International’s general secretary, Martin Ennals, orchestrated through the weekly Far Eastern Economic Review. To dispute Amnesty International’s right to intervene in Indonesian affairs, Wanandi referred to state sovereignty as a norm that competed with standards of human rights. To communicate the legitimacy of the government’s policy, he rejected the report’s claims on all levels: the validity of human rights norms for the given situation, the truth content of the information conveyed by Amnesty International, and the credibility of his opponent (Wanandi : ). According to Wanandi, the government had good reasons to curtail human rights. The arguments he offered were a fine selection of legitimate state functions, cloaked in national rhetoric. The coup attempt of  constituted a state of rebellion and posed an immediate threat to the government. The government and the military did not repress political dissent out of self-interest, but because “the nation lays overriding stress on the maintenance of unity and the certainty of law and stability.” This argument repeated that of Indonesia’s UN representative, Chaidir Anwar Sani, who had said in August that the “question of detainees in Indonesia is purely an internal affair, as it is directly related to national security and the country’s stability.” Finally, Wanandi drew on an idea embedded in the military-led modernization paradigm. Civil and political rights were dependent on certain preconditions, especially economic development. “The Government must give priority to increasing and distributing income, expanding employment opportunities, filling basic needs and upgrading education and health facilities for the whole population” (Wanandi : ). Though Wanandi directly challenged the principles Amnesty International advocated, he still discussed in detail the shifting figures of political prisoners. His own account contradicted Amnesty International’s claims that the variation in figures indicated the imprisonment was arbitrary. If the figures on prisoners had been shifting, that was due to bureaucratic problems that began before . Until then, “detainees were still handled

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by various government agencies” that were not coordinated. In short, the numbers on political prisoners did change, but these did not indicate that the government was authoritarian. “The report confuses problems connected with PKI detainees with political questions” (Wanandi : ). Finally, Wanandi linked his defense to a direct attack on the credibility of Amnesty International itself. The organization had links to groups the government considered to be “communist” and thus enemies of the nationstate. If Amnesty International had not had links to Tapol (which some claimed was infiltrated by Communists), then “undoubtedly Jakarta would cooperate with it,” but only “if Amnesty is prepared to reciprocate with trust, openness and understanding—and if it truly wanted to help the PKI” (Letters to the Editor, b). In sum, he claimed that Amnesty International could not understand the situation of developing countries such as Indonesia: Amnesty still suffers from a “moral arrogance” of the West which has been deplored by the Third World at large. I am also afraid, therefore, that all their efforts and objectives will be just counterproductive. If Amnesty does not try to be more balanced and prejudice-free in their assessments of Indonesia, it may soon degrade itself to merely a political organization on a par with others which are only interested in discrediting Indonesia in any way. (Letters to the Editor b: f) The public debate continued in a later issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review. Wanandi did clarify the number of political prisoners in a detailed letter to the editors of the Review in February . Having accounted for numbers released and imprisoned, he came up with a figure that diverged only slightly from a previous official figure. “Kopkamtib is still trying to account for the discrepancy of nine. With this information, I hope the problem of figures is solved” (Letters to the Editor a: ). Wanandi had mainly discussed the political prisoners to refute the argument that the changing figures proved the government was arbitrary and hence not credible. More importantly, however, his clarification made it clear that political prisoners were still in jail without trial. It also confirmed that Category B prisoners were imprisoned despite the government’s lack of evidence that they were implicated in the coup (Letters to the Editor b: ). This, in turn, confirmed Amnesty International’s allegation that the government had violated rule-of-law principles, such as the presumption of innocence.

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There is little point in asking whether the two actors really wanted to persuade each other. But the exchange of arguments proved to be highly effective in mobilizing Western audiences. Here, we can clearly observe a shift in public perceptions concerning the Indonesian government, which came to be viewed very critically. As the international press coverage of the campaign and international reactions to media coverage show, the political prisoner campaign did indeed manage to question the credibility and political legitimacy of the Indonesian government. After all, military-led modernization drew its legitimacy from the idea that it would promote the development of a rational and accountable state bureaucracy. The prisoner issue thus symbolized much more than just figures. It was a public test case for the rationality of the New Order regime. Despite their earlier involvement in the purges, Western states mobilized on behalf of the prisoners. Over the next three years, the political prisoner issue would engage the international public and lead to significant pressures by other state governments and to the eventual release of the prisoners at the end of . Public Pressures on Suharto, 1975–1978

In the United States, the reports alerted members of Congress, who scheduled a hearing on the political prisoner problem. The Department of State expected the issue would be discussed when President Gerald Ford met with President Suharto in Indonesia in December . A memo pointed out, “Political detainees in Indonesia have attracted attention and concern in the United States, thus affecting Congressional and public attitudes toward Indonesia.” With that, in view of congressional human rights restrictions on economic and security assistance, the implementation of aid programs would be more difficult. On December , , the United States Subcommittee on International Relations, which was also responsible for determining financial aid levels to foreign countries, conducted a hearing on the political prisoner situation. Carmel Budiardjo of Tapol testified (United States House of Representatives and Committee on International Relations ). On the Indonesian side, the prospect of cuts in military aid alerted members of the highest policy circles. The Indonesian government dispatched a diplomatic delegation to the United States, headed by Suharto’s advisor, Ali Murtopo, and including Jusuf Wanandi, to persuade Congress that increased aid levels, as requested by the Ford administration, were necessary (Fealy ). As Timo Kivimäki points out, the delegation

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was part of an American strategic scheme to negotiate the release of the prisoners (Kivimäki ; Newsom ). Fearful of a nationalist reaction in Jakarta, the US administration obviously saw Indonesia’s prisoner policy as a dilemma: Given public pressures at home, it would be impossible to disburse aid to the Indonesian government. It was agreed that instead of directly communicating with the Indonesian government, the CSIS delegation should present “its impressions” of US foreign policy dilemmas to Suharto (Kivimäki : ). At the same time, the political prisoner problem began to gain attention in multilateral forums, most importantly, the International Governmental Group on Indonesia (IGGI), established in  to coordinate development assistance to Indonesia. Led by the Netherlands, the European governments and the United States signaled to Indonesia that the political prisoner problem would make it difficult for them to maintain their levels of development aid. The Dutch minister for development assistance, Jan Pronk, stated publicly that, without an “improvement in the situation of the political prisoners in Indonesia,” the Dutch would likely reappraise their aid to Indonesia (Fealy : ). In May , IGGI decided to condition foreign aid upon compliance with human rights principles (Kivimäki : ). In June, the International Labor Organization (ILO) threatened to censure and blacklist Indonesia for an alleged breach of the ILO Convention on forced labor (Fealy : ). And in March , the UN Commission on Human Rights named Indonesia as one country it investigated for human rights violations. In October , Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and took the opportunity to repeat its allegation that the Indonesian government still held , political prisoners. Thus, moral pressures on the Indonesian government, combined with material leverage, brought the government in line with international human rights norms. The threat of Western governments to cut badly needed aid disbursements hit a state government whose vulnerability had risen sharply during the course of . In February that year, Pertamina, the state-owned oil conglomerate, had collapsed, leaving the government with US$. billion in debts. The government’s bailout program doubled Indonesia’s national debt. The Communist victory in Indochina raised fears of increasing Communist activity in Southeast Asia and a resurgence of the PKI in Indonesia. Then the leftist organization Fretilin declared East Timor independent. Afraid that “East Timor might become Indonesia’s Cuba—a sanctuary and bridgehead

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for communist and separatist forces” (Fealy : ), Indonesian military officials invaded the territory in December . To improve its armed forces, the Indonesian government repeatedly asked the United States for more financial aid and military equipment. The Suharto government grew even more concerned when Jimmy Carter was elected president in . The Indonesian leadership now had to fear that both the detention of prisoners and the annexation of East Timor would provide grounds to cut Indonesia’s aid. The American embassy in Jakarta communicated to Suharto that, with the prisoner problem pending, the administration would find it hard to convince Congress to maintain assistance at the same levels. On November , , the State Department informed Indonesian Ambassador Rusmin that the administration had decided to take Indonesia’s request to purchase one squadron of F- aircraft and to co-produce an M- to Congress. Rusmin was told that congressional approval hinged on the Indonesian government demonstrating “good faith and credibility” by releasing the prisoners in accordance with a planned December  surprise announcement (Fealy : f). Embassy officials encouraged Suharto to resolve differences with the International Committee of the Red Cross so the latter could resume its examination of prison conditions. The publicity on Indonesian political prisoners had an effect on the Indonesian government’s rhetoric and behavior and on the situation on the ground. By April , the Indonesian government announced that all but  out of , political prisoners would be released. In the Far Eastern Economic Review, David Jenkins explained the difference that continued publicity had made. In the early s, Sugih Arto, the Indonesian attorney general, could openly admit that the number of prisoners was a floating rate, “like the Japanese yen vis-à-vis the dollar.” But currently, Jenkins said, “Indonesian officials seem to take the issue more seriously, if only because it has attracted so much outside criticism.” Still, “they seem no more able than the former attorney-general to say just how many detainees the government is holding. And obfuscation on the question of numbers is causing increasing concern to Western diplomats who monitor prisoner releases” (Jenkins b: ). The argument that I have made so far is that, over the course of –, the Indonesian government became rhetorically entrapped in a moral discourse over its human rights policy. The arguments that human rights organizations presented convinced Western audiences to apply pressures on the

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Indonesian government to change its policy. But Amnesty International’s claim was not only about prisoner policy. As in the Philippines, its strategy aimed at delegitimizing the New Order. Given international human rights pressures, most theoretical approaches to human rights would predict a rise in domestic mobilization, along with reinforced international pressures and substantial reforms in the human rights area (Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink ). At this point, however, the important observation is that international pressures did not have broader effects. International mobilization stopped suddenly in , even though domestic mobilization had increased. Domestic discontent was so widespread that the Far East Bureau of the United States Department of State reported to Zbigniew Brzezinski, then-national security advisor, in March , “All close observers of the scene now believe that [Suharto’s] chances of completing a five-year term as President have been substantially diminished.” Benedict Anderson, an expert on Indonesia, likewise expected “the last days of Suharto” (Anderson ). Why did human rights pressures not push Suharto down a liberalization pathway? To explain this, we must look at how international mobilization fed into domestic mobilization and eventually offered the Indonesian government an opportunity for a grand justification of military-led modernization. The following section will focus on two key factors: • Domestic opposition to the political prisoner campaign • The strengthening and reframing of Islamic opposition by the Suharto government. Continuing Domestic Mobilization, 1977–1978

In –, the student protests of the – period picked up again briefly, coinciding with the election scheduled for May . Demands for Suharto’s resignation resurfaced. Public dissent eventually began to rally around the Muslim United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan [PPP]), now a major critic of Suharto. The PPP gained in political strength relative to the results of the  elections. Golkar suffered humiliating defeats in Jakarta and in the strongly Muslim province of Aceh, where opponents of the regime supported the PPP. The political demands of the students and the soft liners in the Indonesian military diffused into the parliament, where calls for a greater respect for human rights were regularly aired (Suryadinata : ). The PPP became a consistent critic of the government on human rights issues. Benedict Anderson noted “strong evidence that for the first time in modern Indonesian history, sizeable numbers of ‘statistical

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Muslims,’ and even Protestants and Catholics, had cast their ballots in favor of a Muslim party, evidently holding the view that it was the only credible focus of opposition to the regime” (Anderson : ). However, the Muslim community was completely opposed to prisoner releases. For the international human rights campaign, this alignment of interests and preferences proved to be particularly unfortunate because it made it impossible to connect the issues of democratization and the Communist prisoners as a human rights issue on a discursive level. The Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Parmusi opposed the release. Those political organizations might have profited politically from taking up the political prisoner campaign as a means to criticize the authoritarian nature of the Suharto government and pry open space in the domestic debate, but they opposed it mainly because it involved Communist political prisoners (Hefner : chap. ). In an interview, Lukman Hakim, who had chaired the student union of the Universitas Indonesia between  and , described an explicit agreement among the student organizations not to support the issue of Communist political prisoners. Hakim recounted that the PKI was regarded as the “public enemy” (Interview Lukman Hakim, Jakarta, February , ). Apparently, Muslim organizations were also deeply skeptical of Amnesty International and Tapol, as they had rarely condemned the violations against Muslim activists, according to Adnan Buyung Nasution (Tapol ). International human rights organizations noted the disconnect with puzzlement. A reporter who interviewed Nasution in  remarked that the Indonesians she met had seemed to show very little attention to or concern for the political prisoners who had been stuck in jail for more than ten years. Nasution’s answer is equally telling. “Yes, I know many people who want to make an exception for the Communists, to exclude them from our concern. I tell these people that by making an exception of any group, they are opening the door to their own loss of rights” (Payer ). Second, domestic mobilization under an Islamic banner gave the Suharto government an important new justification for maintaining its authoritarian character, political Islam. In January , the military started justifying harsh measures against the opposition by arguing that radical Muslims had masterminded the student unrest. The Indonesian government alleged that fundamentalist Parmusi activists had started to dominate the PPP and were manipulating the Islamic Students Organization (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam [HMI]), the leading student organization at many universities (Jenkins c:

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). Several leading Muslim politicians were arrested in April  on the grounds they had instigated the student demonstrations, among them: • Mahbub Djunaidi, deputy secretary of the PPP • Ismail Suny, a professor of constitutional law • Sutomo, a journalist and early supporter of the New Order who had participated in the independence struggle against the Dutch. All three had criticized the government because of its corruption and abuse of power. All three were detained for a year without trial (Aspinall : ; Jenkins a). This justification resonated with Western audiences, as international press reports indicate. From early  onwards, press reports shifted their focus from political prisoners to both the threat of political Islam and the secular state orientation, and drew explicit comparisons to the political situation in Iran. Authors took a much less critical attitude toward the military in Indonesia, which portrayed itself as an efficient force and a bulwark against irrational forces. Shortly before the clampdown on students, a Far Eastern Economic Review article explored the chances of a political transition in Indonesia and a retreat of the military from politics. It quoted a political scientist as saying, “You are looking for a civilian who has your trust, who shares your view of the world, who has experience. You don’t want to hand over to a fanatical Muslim or to a follower of kebatinan (mysticism)” (Jenkins d: ). Another article critically described attempts to limit the activities of missionaries in order to pacify Muslim extremists. It concluded that, while the government was convinced it was acting in the name of maintaining stability and order throughout the country, “its troubles are not necessarily over. There are always fanatical and radical Muslims, offspring of the Darul Islam, who are ready to rise against the government to establish an Islamic state” (Toning Down the Voices of Faith : ). Adam Malik, then-Indonesia’s vice president and its former foreign minister, argued that Suharto’s main task was to strengthen national unity against “very strong pressure on this society to create a more Islamic state.” A New York Times report suggested that political concerns about Islamic extremism united the political opposition and supporters of President Suharto and created a bond between Suharto’s critics and his supporters. The same article quoted an unnamed political opponent (described as a well known Indonesian of Chinese descent and Catholic faith). “Only the

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military can keep peace without discrimination.” And while the military regime was not compatible with democracy, the opposition had to support it, given its own interest. Undeniably, corruption and human rights were problems, in particular, the continued detention of political opponents without charges, but Malik assured an international audience that, of the roughly  students who had been arrested,  percent had already been released (Kamm b). A similar article three weeks later explicitly drew the comparison, “Striking similarities to situation in Iran causing concern to Indonesian regime” (Kamm a, b). These public concerns became more persuasive as specific incidents confirmed the Suharto government’s predictions of an Islamic revolution. In , the country had already seen an attempt by a fanatical group striving for an Islamic state, the Commando Jihad, to overthrow the government. In , the radical Darul Islam movement revived briefly in Aceh and renewed its call for an Indonesian Islamic state (Jenkins a). Darul Islam would later be linked to Ali Murtopo, but media reports at that time suspected no covert links between the movement and Indonesian military (Bruinessen : ). In January , domestic mobilization reached a boiling point. The American Embassy in Jakarta reported intensified “student criticism of the government.” Given the personalized attacks on President Suharto and his family, a military clampdown on the protesters was likely. This, in turn, would make “the margin of public safety . . . dangerously thin.” An American intelligence notice questioned “whether moderate forces will have a chance to work in view of pressure for firm measures from hard-line military commanders.” Maybe the government could “avoid a showdown with the students and a breakdown in public order,” but “serious—even violent—disturbances could occur with little warning.” The embassy was seriously concerned about antiChinese riots. The Indonesian government further curtailed freedom of opinion and temporarily closed down the most outspoken newspapers, Kompas and Sinar Harapan (Anderson : ). On January , troops broke up a student boycott at the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and began a nationwide crackdown on student protest. Further stifling political opposition, a policy of campus normalizations forbade students from engaging in any political activity (Jenkins b). A compulsory educational program spelled out ways to properly understand and implement the state ideology Pancasila (the P program) and forbade any other confessional, that is, Islamic interpretation.

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Only a week after the clampdown, the Far East Bureau of the United States Department of State reported to Zbigniew Brzezinski, then-national security advisor, that the “military crackdown has effectively silenced anti-regime elements.” Newspapers could publish again at the beginning of February, but only if they agreed not to publicize the activities of dissident students or prominent critics of the government. At the same time, the government continued its policy of prisoner releases in an effort to “put the problem of political detainees ‘behind us,’” as Indonesian Defense Minister Mohammad Jusuf put it. In early April , Admiral Sudomo, head of the international security agency, and General Benny Murdani, who headed the military intelligence agency, jointly announced that all but  to  of the nearly , political prisoners would be released within a year. They promised the others would be tried in  on charges of having been “clearly and directly involved” in the coup attempt of September  (Kamm a). Their announcement was timely. In May , Vice President Walter Mondale visited Indonesia, where he discussed the political prisoner issue with President Suharto. Mondale’s visit reportedly “left the Indonesians in a jubilant mood,” as they had expected sharp criticism for their illiberal policies. This expectation was well founded. The Carter administration had emphasized human rights in its foreign policy, and Mondale had toured several Southeast Asian countries and denounced human rights violations in the Philippines and Thailand. Yet, the Suharto government appeared to have gotten away with its human rights record. Mondale reportedly gave Suharto the American government’s “stamp of approval on human rights” (Jenkins e). By mid-, the foreign policy challenge that political prisoners had posed appeared over. In May , the Far Eastern Economic Review essentially concluded that the Indonesian government had managed to acquire control over prisoner figures and accepted the Indonesian government’s justification. It portrayed the political prisoner problem as stemming from organizational failure (“human errors”), but not from a systematic policy of violating human rights (Jenkins a, b). The release of the prisoners removed one of the most visible targets of international human rights criticism. International audiences accepted the government’s claim that inconsistent figures on the numbers of prisoners were incidental, a mix of bureaucratic mismanagement by the organizations responsible for handling prisoners and human errors. From a transnational perspective, the chapter on human rights violations in Indonesia was closed in . The rapid demobilization of a Western state

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audience is especially surprising given that the Indonesian government was simultaneously facing international critique for its East Timor policy, especially for illegally invading and annexing the territory in –. James Dunn, the Australian consul in East Timor before the invasion, called the plight of the East Timorese “the most serious case of contravention of human rights facing the world at this time.” So the important question is, “Why the activities of the East Timor network did not help human rights activists to pressurize the Indonesian government further?” The following section, therefore, briefly describes the dynamics that led to the failure of the first campaign on East Timor. The standard explanation is realist. International law will not be enforced if, as in this case, a country is not of major importance for great powers (Simpson : f). “The fate of a post-colonial East Timor paled in comparison to the strategic relationship with the anti-communist Suharto regime” (“East Timor Revisited” ). Accordingly, Western countries, most importantly the United States, did not criticize the Indonesian government because its primary aim was to keep Indonesia in its sphere of influence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. For some human rights activists, the issue ultimately proved that the West was complicit in the Indonesian military’s human rights violations in East Timor. From this perspective, the puzzle of East Timor is why human rights issues and self-determination gained such prominence in the early s when, in the mid-s, most countries had accepted Indonesia’s annexation of the territory as a fait accompli and why there was considerable interest in political prisoners. In short, Western powers interests are not a sufficient explanation for the failure of the campaign in the late s. Two factors emphasized by the transnational advocacy literature shed additional light on this question. First, the campaign’s ability to back up its political claims was severely undermined by Indonesia’s strict information policy on East Timor, which was also reinforced by major Western countries. Second, Fretilin’s campaign did not have a persuasive frame spurring public mobilization. Western states pursued their military and strategic interests, but they could do so largely because they were unconstrained by public pressures. The East Timor network denounced the annexation as illegal. It tried to show that the Indonesian government was responsible for the death and starvation of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese. However, it did not provide impeccable evidence for the second claim; therefore did not challenge Indonesia’s rule and could not change Western governments’ beliefs that Indonesia should govern because an independent East Timor was

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politically not viable. Such a view did not emerge until the early s. As a result, a pragmatic consensus emerged among Western governments that viewed the annexation of East Timor as an established (and irreversible) fact. These two issues will be briefly discussed in the next section.

The East Timor Network and Its Struggle for Self-Determination (1975–1983) Political Developments and East Timor’s Annexation, 1974–1975

East Timor is the successor state of the former Portuguese colony of Portugal Timor on the eastern side of the island of Timor. When a democracy movement with socialist leanings overthrew the authoritarian Portuguese regime of Antonio Salazar on April , , this unraveled Portuguese authority in East Timor and ended the decades-long monopoly of the ruling party ANP (Portuguese National Union). Several parties formed afterwards: • A conservative political party, UDT, drawing its constituency from wealthier landowning families • A socialist-oriented Timorese social democratic party, ASDT, which later became Fretilin • The smallest party, Apodeti, which was unlike the other two parties oriented toward Indonesia. In early , scattered local elections showed a majority of votes for Fretilin, followed by UDT (Robinson : f). These elections would later serve as major justification for Fretilin’s claim to political power. Over , the existing coalition government between Fretilin and UDT unraveled. All party talks over East Timor’s future were boycotted by Fretilin in June . Over the course of August, UDT staged a coup against the East Timorese governor. In the civil war that followed, Fretilin overwhelmed UDT within three weeks, but the dispute left an estimated , people dead (Dunn : ; Taylor : ). Fretilin assumed control over East Timor. On November , , it declared the territory independent and established the Democratic Republic of East Timor. This declaration was matched by a coalition of pro-Indonesian parties who proclaimed the territory to be independent and integrated with Indonesia.

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In the next few months, the Indonesian military overcame President Suharto’s resistance to invading East Timor and conducted a covert operation there, attempting to maintain the public image of a civil war (Dunn : f). On December , Indonesian naval, air, and land forces launched an offensive action against the territory, but faced strong military resistance from Fretilin. Ten days later, the pro-Indonesian parties declared the establishment of a provisional government of East Timor at Dili, the territory’s capital. The UN Security Council condemned the invasion in two resolutions in  and , but it did not consider the case a threat to international peace and order, which would have legitimated the use of military force. During the first half of , the pro-Indonesian parties gradually increased their control over urban areas and organized elections to a regional popular assembly, which then decided on May  to petition Indonesia formally to integrate the territory with that country (United Nations General Assembly ). Public Debate in the United Nations, 1976–1982

From  onwards, the major arena for exchanging arguments about East Timor’s status became the various committees of the UN, most importantly, the General Assembly’s Decolonization Committee. Whereas Fretilin argued that the invasion had violated the right to self-determination of the East Timorese, the Indonesian government argued that the annexation had been an act of self-determination. The East Timorese had requested Indonesia’s support, and they had freely chosen to integrate with Indonesia. Consequently, Indonesian representatives to the UN insisted “the political and constitutional status of East Timor as an integral part of Indonesia was not negotiable and that the discussion of the question by the Committee on Decolonization constituted interference in the internal affairs of Indonesia” (United Nations General Assembly : ). Both parties drew on international norms of self-determination to justify their claims, and they denounced each other as using self-interested rhetoric to deceive the international community over its true motives (United Nations General Assembly ; United Nations Economic and Social Council : ). After , Portugal became an important supporter of demands for self-determination in international forums. UN minutes provide a vivid picture of this dialogue, which did not make much progress. Over large sequences and years of the debate, both parties used precisely the same words to counter each other’s claims. The question here is primarily, “Why we do not see similar

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audience reactions to the one we observed in the case of the political prisoner campaign?” The most important one is that the Indonesian government had almost complete control over the information environment. This had two important consequences. Fretilin could never acquire the information it needed to back up its claims, namely, the Indonesian government was engaging in gross and systematic human rights violations. The Indonesian military sealed off East Timor from international press coverage. It severed contacts between the Falintil, Fretilin’s military wing in East Timor, and Fretilin’s outside representation. After , Falintil had no contact with the Fretilin mission abroad (represented by José Ramos-Horta and Mari Alkatiri), making it impossible to channel information to supporters overseas (Carey : ). Until the end of , few foreigners were allowed in East Timor. Visits were carefully planned, kept short, and accompanied by special security aimed at keeping resistance activities away from foreign eyes, thus creating the impression that resistance was minimal and the Indonesian forces were in control of the situation. The East Timorese were coached on how to participate in welcoming demonstrations, and Indonesian military personnel in civilian clothes ensured that demonstrators remained disciplined (Dunn : –). These excessive controls ensured that those visitors who had access to East Timor did not produce public information contradicting official government statements. This is also true for humanitarian organizations. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) could not communicate its doubts about Indonesia’s handling of East Timor. The ICRC operation was carried out under the auspices of the Indonesian Red Cross with IRCR material and technical support. The Indonesian Red Cross was under the control of the Indonesian military, however, and its staff never grew to more than three persons (Dunn : ). This setting changed briefly in  when relief organizations reported the saddening consequences of Indonesia’s occupation and military campaign to wipe out Fretilin in military strategy called “encirclement and annihilate.” This tactic led to the dislocation of large segments of the population, which tried to escape the military terror of bombings. A report by an Indonesian Catholic church organization, assessing the demographic consequences of the annexation, became the subject of great international controversy. The report calculated that, of a population of about , individuals recorded in , in , only about , people were left. Delegates from the Catholic Relief Services in the United States, invited to conduct surveys of East Timor’s urgent humanitarian needs, were shocked by the human misery

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they encountered (Dunn : ). These reports alerted international audiences because of their humanitarian implications, but they did not provide evidence that the government was responsible for it. The Carter administration persuaded the Indonesian government to allow humanitarian organizations to carry out extensive relief programs. But the humanitarian program denied the relief organizations much direct access to East Timor and hence prevented them from getting accurate information (Robinson : ). Equally challenging to those trying to create a public context critical of Indonesia’s annexation were Western governments’ public policies on East Timor, which converged on the position to take no public position. Individual governments had come to view East Timor’s merger with Indonesia as a reasonable solution to East Timor’s change of status from Portuguese colony even before Indonesia annexed the territory. Some had expressed their consent to East Timor’s integration, assuming the East Timorese population would be consulted within a reasonable period of time. Those who feared an Indonesian Cuba showed considerable understanding of Indonesia’s security concerns about Fretilin establishing a Communist government. In August , the Ford administration had decided it would not comment on an expected Indonesian invasion if a Communist group were to take over the government in Portuguese Timor. Kenneth M. Quinn, a member of Henry Kissinger’s National Security Council staff, recommended avoiding “any statement which could possibly be interpreted as expressing support for any side’s position.” Shortly before the invasion, an American government memorandum indicated that Ford regarded East Timor’s merger with Indonesia, with the assent of the East Timorese, as a “reasonable solution.” Western governments’ partly explicit sanctioning of the invasion constituted the Achilles’ heel for these governments regarding their own public image. Indonesia’s invasion only one day after President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had made a stopover in Jakarta later raised concerns within the American administration that its official sanctioning of the invasion might become public, entangling the United States in a conflict in which it had no important security stake. Once the invasion was underway, Michael Armacost repeatedly voiced his concern that the United States would face a problem if it became known that the Indonesians had used American military equipment during the invasion. According to Armacost, there was “no doubt” that the United States Military Assistance Program’s “equipment was used, and we could be in for part of the blame if the operation is not a quick success.” He believed that “our best course is to take at face value Indonesia’s

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professed desire for orderly self-determination. Indonesia probably would not resent a US vote at the UN for a ceasefire and an observed process of self-determination, but it certainly would resent US support for a return to the status-quo ante.” Similarly, Thomas J. Barnes wrote in a memorandum, “Congressional issue of the use of US arms in the action is surfacing in the press . . . there will be accusations about the murder of innocent civilians during the capture of Dili.” He recommended adopting “the public line that the US has little information about Timor and no national interest in it. While the latter statement is more accurate than the former, neither strays from truthfulness. We should simultaneously hope for an end to hostilities there and endorse self-determination for the Timorese people.” Western governments anticipated a potential moral dilemma once the circumstances of the invasion became public, and, togehter with the Indonesians, developed counter-strategies to prevent that scenario from unfolding. Second, Fretilin’s strategy to blame the Indonesian government for the decimation of the East Timorese population appeared unpersuasive, given the evidence at hand. When the extent of famine became known, Fretilin’s representative at the UN, José Ramos-Horta, escalated his rhetoric in the UN and accused the Indonesian government of genocide in East Timor. These rhetorical attacks eventually turned public opinion against him, and Fretilin was increasingly depicted as lacking credibility. This became evident, for example, in the media discussion of Fretilin’s genocide account. An article in the New York Times in February  discussed the question of responsibility for the famine and specifically discussed the credibility of statements about the situation in East Timor. Reporting on anti-Indonesian protests that occurred in Canberra, Australia, at this time, the journalist stated, “There is substance to these protests, even if, at their most extreme, they degenerate into hyperbole—accusations of ‘genocide’ rather than mass deaths from cruel warfare and the starvation that accompanied it on this historically food short island, of American complicity rather than acquiescence” (Kamm ). The same journalist who referred to Indonesia’s action in East Timor as “onslaught” also called Fretilin “highly partisan” (Kamm ). Similarly, other reports lamented the lack of solid evidence of Fretilin’s claims, but also questioned the Indonesian government’s handling of contradictory population statistics (Rodger : ; Jenkins c). One report regarded “allegations of Indonesian genocide in East Timor” as being “effectively discredited” (Rodger : ). In sum, Indonesia’s information policy, coupled with the determination of Western powers to take no public position, denied Fretilin the resources

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that might have enabled it to construct a more credible public position on East Timor, especially as some information did exist on human rights abuses. This evidence, however, could not be confirmed (Awanohara ). The media invested some energy to provide an objective account of developments in East Timor and to assess speakers critically, but ultimately lacked independent information, a fact they mentioned regularly. As these evaluations show, the network had great difficulties generating a public understanding that the Indonesian government committed gross and systematic violations of human rights. On an international level, the lack of a collective understanding that East Timor’s self-determination was at stake eroded the temporary base of public support that had existed in the general assembly immediately after the invasion. In the General Assembly vote on East Timor, support for East Timor’s self-determination decreased gradually. An increasing number of countries had come to accept the territory’s integration into Indonesia as a fait accompli. This led to a final mobilization of supporters and opponents in the lead-up to the vote in . Most Western countries and ASEAN states reportedly wanted to “knock the item off the agenda once and for all” (Morello : ). Despite intense lobbying efforts, when it came to a vote in the General Assembly, even fewer states supported self-determination. One year later, Norway proposed that the General Assembly postpone the debate on East Timor for a one-year cooling-off period. This move was publicly seen as a strategy to shelve the issue permanently “without a loss of face by any of the protagonists—all of which have claims on the territory” (Morello : ). In , the topic was officially taken off the agenda and referred to the UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar. For international observers, the legality of the action had become largely a historical question. Most states, assuming a pragmatic attitude, were willing to accept that East Timor was part of Indonesia. Conclusion: Public Dialogues over Human Rights and International Norms Overall, then, these paired cases show that human rights organizations can pose formidable challenges to authoritarian governments, but, even if mobilization is already underway, some governments can block transnational human rights advocacy. In the case of the political prisoner campaign, human rights advocates were able to gain substantial concessions from the regime by challenging the Indonesian government’s political legitimacy. Gaining the

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attention of, most importantly, Western media was an important strategic aim of human rights organizations. Once they had this attention, they publicly exposed the Suharto government’s rhetorical inconsistencies and could thus pressure the regime to deal with the issues of political imprisonment and make concessions. The public contest on what kind of situation this was and which norm would apply made a difference in terms of human rights policies, leading to the prisoners’ release. Process-tracing of the developments, and the focus on the discourse and a transnational exchange of arguments that occurred under the watchful eyes of an interested media audience, demonstrate that in the exchange both actors were scrutinized for the truth of their claims and their credibility. International media and other state governments eventually participated in determining whether Indonesia’s human rights violations were justified. Here, human rights organizations managed to successfully reframe an issue of state security into one of universal human rights norms. Communist prisoners became an issue that could test the universal support for human rights by Western states. However, during the campaign, the course of the debate changed in rather unexpected ways. International human rights pressures, and the more remote influence of the Iranian revolution, gave Indonesian democracy activists both political space to organize and an ideological frame to criticize the government. As this occurred under the banner of Islam, the choice situation presented itself differently for Western governments. The government introduced a new justification, that political Islam threatened the secular-oriented government. Now the choice was no longer between securing a potentially authoritarian regime and human rights. These concerns also had to be weighed against the risk of an Indonesian Islamic state. Against this backdrop, the East Timor campaign posed a much smaller challenge, which the Indonesian government managed under even more favorable circumstances. As for the Indonesian government’s ability to cope with the twin challenges of transnational activism, Western governments who supported human rights during the campaigns were able to pursue their strategic military interests, especially regarding East Timor. But their ability to do so depended on certain conditions, for example, on human rights organizations not establishing evidence that Western governments supported the military campaign in Indonesia. Western governments were acutely aware of the power of publicity. They knew that, once their involvement became public, it would be hard for them to stay out of the conflict and pursue their interests.

4 The Philippine New Society 1972–1986: Transnational Advocacy and Human Rights Change

When Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on the evening of September , , it looked like one of Asia’s most developed democracies had come to an end. Officially, Marcos justified this measure by pointing to a political rebellion and the disturbances of public order caused by mass protests and an armed underground movement. Because the constitution allowed the suspension of basic human rights in states of emergency, Marcos henceforth called his government “constitutional authoritarianism.” Shortly after this announcement, hundreds of his enemies and suspected enemies were arrested, including more than a dozen delegates to the constitutional convention, which was to draft a new constitution that would have limited Marcos’ powers. In the days that followed, Marcos gradually dismantled long-established democratic institutions, severely restricting the possibility of democratic control of the government. The government took over all privately owned newspapers, magazines, radio and television facilities, and other communications media. All publications and broadcasts, including foreign dispatches and cables, needed prior clearance from the Ministry of Public Information. Old, established newspapers were closed, and journalists were arrested on charges of “communist subversion” of the media and the need to “dismantle the oligarchic structure of ownership” (Franco : ; Wurfel : f). Mass detentions of suspected subversives followed. In the first three months after the proclamation, the government detained over , individuals,

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denying them the right to habeas corpus (Espiritu : f; International Commission of Jurists ; Wurfel : –). Marcos abolished the legislature and demanded undated letters of resignation from members of the judiciary (Shalom : ). These open attacks on the pillars of a domestic democratic space made meaningful popular participation in public decisionmaking almost impossible. Up until then, Marcos had been restructuring the Philippine political system, making the New Society a virtual copy of Suharto’s New Order. Military modernization provided the key to Philippine economic and political development. The constitution Marcos promulgated in  increased his presidential powers and contained a list of civil and political rights, which were then suspended through emergency laws and presidential decrees. Apart from the liberal opposition, the Philippine state’s attacks focused mostly on alleged members of (or sympathizers with) two groups: • The Communist party of the Philippines, along with its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) • The Muslim underground organization, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which was operating in the Muslim-dominated Southern Philippines, especially Mindanao (Amnesty International ; United States Department of State ) But less than six years later, Marcos would reverse his course for no apparent reason and increase his human rights commitment. The domestic situation had hardly changed. The Marcos government would • Switch from a rhetorical denial that human rights violations such as torture occur in Philippine detention centers, to a public acknowledgement of the practice • Free thousands of political prisoners and order investigations into charges of torture • Increase its commitment by introducing selected human rights reforms, and punish some members of security services accused of human rights violations • Undertake significant changes in the domestic institutional structure by introducing a political liberalization, including parliamentary elections for an interim parliament in April  • Eventually lift martial law, in January . Even if these measures did not substantially reduce the number of human rights violations as recorded by independent human rights monitors, the

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question arises: Why did Marcos introduce these policy reforms? Why did he do so despite growing and armed challenges to his regime? And if human rights pressures play a role in these decisions, why could Marcos not control the challenges? After all, the Suharto government had done so at about the same time (see Chapter ). This chapter traces the influence of international norms and the effects of transnational advocacy on the Philippines between  and  when the authoritarian Marcos government fell. I argue, first, that Marcos’ reforms from  onward cannot be explained without reference to transnational human rights advocacy networks. The international human rights campaigns conducted by these networks had several tangible effects: • They redefined standards of appropriateness for a government acting under a state of emergency. Specifically, human rights organizations insisted that even under a state of emergency, certain human rights standards had to be respected, such as the right to habeas corpus and freedom from torture. • The campaigns mobilized international opinion on the government and compelled other governments—most importantly, that of the United States—to apply some pressure. These pressures increased the costs of repression. • They firmly established human rights on the domestic agenda. • They strengthened domestic human rights groups, in line with the international human rights discourse. • Through these actions, they contributed to the demise of Marcos’ New Society, a comprehensive program, in line with military-led modernization, to restructure politics in the Philippines. This chapter provides a constructivist explanation of human rights reforms under Marcos. I argue, second, that the political reforms under Marcos are connected to the invalidation of two arguments over state security that served as primary justifications for martial law. The first argument was that the Philippine state was threatened by Communist subversion posing an imminent threat to a legitimate government. By , human rights groups had invalidated this argument, inducing the first significant political reforms. Marcos’ second line of defense was an argument deeply embedded in the military-led modernization paradigm of that time—that his government was a reform government,

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aiming to restructure the Philippine political system by dismantling the oligarchic power structure in the country, thus making it a better fit with a modern rational-legal state. This justification for military-led modernization was equally invalidated by the beginning of the s. Human rights organizations and church groups decisively shaped international perceptions of the government’s political legitimacy. They exposed gross and systematic human rights violations down to the village level and publicized the gap that existed between Marcos’ rhetorical commitment to military-led modernization and the actual impact on village communities. The Marcos government did not introduce these reforms because it was persuaded that respecting the human rights is appropriate or right. It reacted mainly to changes in its external environment—most importantly, public opinion, US pressures, and domestic pressures by a revived domestic opposition. Hence, his government strategically adapted its policy to these changes. However, both these transnational pressures and Marcos’ political survival critically hinged on good arguments to appease critics. Before transnational audiences, human rights groups argued their case that the Marcos government was violating human rights and was authoritarian. Marcos continually tried to persuade the same audiences that human rights violations were just aberrations but that the ultimate aim of military-led modernization was right. In this public dialogue, the Marcos government entrapped itself, and audience reactions provided the critical feedback enhancing the power of one frame—that of human rights. Thus, the exchange was a public dialogue and battle over two key questions: “What kind of situation is this?” and “Which norms should apply?” Third, I show how this framing contest and human rights pressures produced very contradictory results that mitigated the mechanism that theoretical approaches to human rights usually connect with human rights pressures: the strengthening of domestic groups in line with international human rights. Here, it is possible to test the implications of the primary causal mechanism that rationalist and constructivist analyses identify, the linear strengthening of groups that support human rights within a state (Moravcsik ). While it did occur in the Philippines, this mechanism produced contradictory results that, at times, cancelled each other out. Not only was Marcos able to take advantage of political conflicts among domestic opposition groups; from a world polity perspective, the radicalization of the domestic opposition and the growth of military insurgency also strengthened his hand. Norms of appropriateness also circumscribe types of legitimate opposition to a

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government and the conditions under which external actors can legitimately support domestic groups. The influences I describe here should particularly puzzle realists in international relations. The Philippines was of major military strategic importance to the United States. It hosted the two largest American military installations outside United States territory (Hawes ; Karnow ; Medianski ; Simbulan ). Realists would not expect the United States to support human rights, nor would they expect transnational advocacy to have a significant impact. States pursue narrowly defined military-strategic interests, and in most cases this does not include pressing for the release of political prisoners, stopping extrajudicial killings, or lifting martial law. Because state governments only react to pressures by more powerful states, realists would not expect human rights concerns to have an influence on the Philippine government. The evidence of the contribution of international human rights norms to the domestic reform agenda in the Philippines disconfirms the realist claim that international norms do not matter. The fact that human rights advocacy mattered, despite the United States’ initial lack of interest in human rights in the Philippines, confirms that norms can have influence even when the most powerful actors initially have no intention of promoting or implementing them. As we will see, the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford (–), Jimmy Carter (–), and Ronald Reagan (–) struggled extensively with human rights concerns aired by several groups in and outside the United States. The Carter administration never publicly condemned the human rights situation in the Philippines, but it exerted significant diplomatic pressures on Marcos to liberalize. It was drawn into the discourse by the network’s early success at branding the Philippine government as engaging in systematic torture and exposing the Carter administration’s human rights policy as hypocritical. Internal documents show that the Carter administration acknowledged that it could not pursue its strategic interests without issue-linking it with human rights. This could be seen as strategic behavior, but the consequences were real for Filipino activists and for democratization. And while the Reagan administration left no doubt that it would support Marcos out of strategic military interests, its diplomats also recommended reforms and later urged Marcos to resign. The Reagan administration did pursue a realist policy toward the Philippines but could not control the outcome. “Cory Aquino,” writes Walden Bello, “emerged despite rather than because of the wishes of influential US policy-making circles” (Bello :

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). In the end, the Reagan administration’s open support of President Marcos came at the cost of a radicalizing the domestic opposition and losing the US’s military bases in the Philippines. Filipinos overwhelmingly voted against retaining the military bases, in a popular referendum on the constitution in —a decision that was upheld by the Philippine Senate in  (Hedman and Sidel : ). The explanation offered here should also come to a surprise to those using rationalist approaches to human rights norms. Principally, they would expect human rights arguments to have a greater influence only after states had ratified international human rights treaties (Hathaway ; Simmons ). In the mid-s, when this advocacy began, the Philippines had signed but not ratified the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. Rationalist approaches rightly predict noncompliance when governments face domestic military challenges to their rule (Cardenas ; Davenport ). According to rationalists, rights-protective reforms are most likely when access to valued goods is linked to compliance with the norms, when other capable actors are committed to enforcing this linkage, and when mechanisms exist to monitor compliance. Under these conditions, human rights–violating governments might make concessions, but they will be minimal. While the Marcos government was clearly motivated by the threat of external enforcement—the withholding of badly needed international financial support by international lending institutions like the Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund—President Marcos certainly did not foresee the domestic effects of his tactical concessions. And rationalist approaches leave unexplained the mobilization pathway through which these institutions change their policies. The structure of this chapter is as follows. As I did for Indonesia in Chapter , I first describe the Marcos government’s turn to a corporatist state in line with the military-led development paradigm of that time, the development of the New Society. Second, I show how internationally wellconnected domestic human rights groups made the Marcos government’s human rights practices into a transnational issue. They engaged him in a public debate about human rights practices and mobilized the Carter administration to pressure Marcos and the military to introduce political reforms. The lack of political legitimacy, coupled with these pressures, prompted Marcos to introduce a normalization process and announce elections in . Third, I describe the influence that international human rights pressures had on the political distribution of power among domestic contenders. Here, I argue that human rights norms predictably legitimized those groups whose

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work was in line with the prevailing human rights discourse, among them Communist political groups. This confirms liberal constructivist approaches to human rights that predict that international norms strengthen groups supportive of these norms. I also show, however, how liberal groups were domestically weakened by their association with the American government, which became increasingly supportive of Marcos under President Ronald Reagan, a development unforeseen by liberal approaches. Here, I describe several crosscutting domestic processes that cancelled out the overall effects spurred by the emergence of human rights concerns. The Communist insurgency grew, drawing legitimacy from its struggle against an authoritarian government. This led the Reagan administration to support Marcos. Finally, this visible external support for Marcos further increased the legitimacy of the Communist insurgency, which capitalized on American support and reframed the focus of its struggle as one against a “US-Marcos dictatorship.” Only after Benigno Aquino was assassinated in August  was this cycle broken. Marcos himself became a threat to state security as he clung to power despite his government’s mismanagement and corruption. In , a united domestic opposition ousted him in a popular People Power revolution. Military-Led Modernization, Martial Law, and Opposition Groups, 1972–1975 International and domestic reactions to Marcos dismantling of democracy in the Philippines show that his action was not as contested as it first appeared. Marcos’ political program, which ultimately justified his authoritarianism, was the promise of economic development. His democratic revolution would ultimately change the oligarchic political structure, restore political order, end corruption, and better distribute land and income among the Philippine people. The New Society would be established from the center and be set against the Communists and the landed oligarchs. His program mirrored military-led modernization and corporatist development, replacing the divisive and destructive dynamics of the Philippine “old society” (Stauffer ). A majority of the Filipino population endorsed the move, which promised to end political violence and reduce criminality, unemployment, corruption, and inequality. At least, people adopted a “wait and see attitude” (Adkins ). This becomes apparent when we look at the church as the single-most important institution and moral authority in a country in which over  percent of the population is Catholic. Initially, the Philippine church did not pursue a

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principled opposition to martial law. In September , the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) called for an acceptance of martial law, but, over the course of the s and early s, it would decisively enhance its opposition to Marcos. Similarly, the Protestant churches initially supported the declaration of martial law, agreeing with Marcos’ analysis of the threat to the Philippine republic posed by the Communists, the Muslim secessionists, and radicalized students and workers (Youngblood ). This was also clearly seen by the Ford administration. A  report to the United States Senate by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield noticed that Marcos had “zeroed in on the areas . . . widely recognized as prime sources of the nation’s difficulties—land tenancy, official corruption, tax evasion, and abuse of oligarchic economic power.” He noted “marked public support for his leadership” and the lack of “tangible alternatives” (as quoted in Tiglao : ). Mansfield concluded, “The strengthening of presidential authority will enable Marcos to introduce needed stability.” These objectives were in American interests, and the military bases were more important than the preservation of democratic institutions, which were “imperfect at best” (United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations ). President Ford was “extremely impressed” by Marcos when he returned from a state visit to the Philippines in . Marcos “did do some things that are not the most democratic but the country is stronger as a result.” Thus, the United States government did not necessarily regard Marcos’ action toward the opposition and the imprisonment of thousands of political prisoners as a flagrant violation of human rights. These measures appeared justified in the larger context. Apparently, the Philippines was coming to better resemble the world polity model of a state as organizational form. On a domestic level, opposition was confined to small and principled opposition groups that rallied around human rights. The most consistent was the domestic network of human rights organizations, among which a few became quite important. In , the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) was founded by the Association of Major Religious Superiors (AMRSP), an umbrella organization of Catholic churches in the Philippines. It focused on care for political detainees and provided a systematic but unobtrusive monitoring of human rights. In the same year, Jose W. Diokno established the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), which concentrated on legal aid for the poor. FLAG, operating under the aegis of the AMRSP, remained a small organization based in Metro Manila. Until , it had only five staff members (Free Legal Assistance Group : ).

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TFDP relied on an extended domestic church network covering almost the entire country and thus facilitating the documentation of individual cases related to human rights (Nemenzo : ). This domestic support network was gradually extended to include international church organizations and church groups in individual countries. As TFDP’s network gathered and distributed information, it soon influenced the public discourses of other states on the human rights practices of the Marcos government. Channeled through the AMRSP, TFDP documented individual cases of torture and political imprisonment. The documentation of the TFDP was so systematic that it served as a model for human rights organizations in other countries that attempted to establish databases on human rights violations. In April , it focused attention on the torture and murder, in military custody, of Liliosa Hilao. Its national survey on political detainees gained wide attention and compelled the government to set up a church-military liaison committee, which was supposed to serve as a channel for complaints on human rights violations. Its publication, Various Reports, which later became the Sign of the Times, went out to church and solidarity organizations worldwide (Association of Major Religion Superiors in the Philippines ). Other Filipino groups connected to groups formed by a huge Filipino exile community in the United States. Among them were: • The Friends of the Filipino People (FFP), established in Philadelphia in  • The Anti-Martial Law Coalition, founded in Chicago in  • The Movement for a Free Philippines (MFP), founded in . The MFP, headed by Raul Manglapus, had its headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Thompson : ). Manglapus had been the Philippine secretary of foreign affairs in  and, from  to , was an opposition senator. He cultivated a network of well-placed American friends and tried to influence American public opinion by writing opinion pieces for the New York Times and other media outlets (Blitz : ). Many of them were staunch nationalists (Rivera and Bello : ). In May , a Congress Education Project was established, coordinated by the FFP and the Anti-Martial Law Coalition. It provided an interface between Philippine human rights activists in the United States and members of Congress. The immediate concern of the American-based Filipino organizations was to cut American military aid to the Philippines (Rivera and Bello : ). This largely American-centered

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network was later complemented by a host of solidarity and support groups in Europe with the Catholic and Protestant churches as central nodes of the network. In , the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, successor to the Russell Tribunal and also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal, conducted a hearing on the human rights situation in the Philippines. It soon became the epitome of a broad-based European leftist resistance against martial law in the Philippines (Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session in the Philippines ). The church itself was split into several groups that acted quite differently toward Marcos (Youngblood : ): • A left-oriented group espousing a theology of struggle and represented by the Christians for National Liberation, described below • A more conservative bloc organized around Archbishop Cebu Rosales • A third bloc encompassing the mainstream headed by Cardinal Jaime Sin. This third group pursued a politics of critical collaboration with the Marcos government, which was unlike the critical opposition that other groups practiced. Cardinal Sin would later emerge as one of the most charismatic opponents of the Marcos government. On a regional level, the regional chapters of the National Secretariat for Social Action of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines assumed an important role in galvanizing criticism. The activist stance of the CBCP emerged against the backdrop of a growing armed movement around the country and mounting criticism by reformist and revolutionary Catholic clergy. The Second Vatican Council encouraged greater lay participation in social action as well as in the local church. In the s, inspired by this change, so-called Basic Christian Communities had emerged in various parts of the Philippines. As these communities expanded beyond well-established and town-based parish organizations to include poorer rural communities, they were also exposed to the growing problems of human rights violations (Tiglao ; Youngblood ). This not only greatly increased the network coverage for human rights violations, but also led to internal strains within the church, as church social activists were increasingly pitted against Marcos’ military forces in both rural areas and urban slums. But in the early s, as domestic mobilization grew, the CBCP was eventually able to project its moral leadership nationwide (Hedman : f).

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Meanwhile, under the National Council of Churches of the Philippines and the United Church of Christ, Protestant groups also established human rights desks and the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace began to monitor human rights abuses and organize people against them. Much of the groundwork for the solidarity among Christian groups can be attributed to the Christians for National Liberation, founded in  (Tiglao : ). It was connected to an extensive international network of church organizations such as the World Council of Churches, as well as national church organizations in the United States and Western Europe. Despite Marcos’ efforts, the traditional nationalist and liberal opposition remained relatively outspoken against martial law. He neutralized opposition factions through arrests and military force and by expropriating their wealth. For example, the Cojuangcos, the family of Corazon Aquino, was forced to pass its wealth to a relative, a Marcos supporter (Thompson : ). The elite or legal opposition, as it was also known, consisted of the surviving elements of the national political parties and former members of Congress. Some of them, such as Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino and Gerry Roxas, came from families in the economic elite, but most were from the upper middle class. The liberal opposition under Aquino offered fierce legal and political challenges to Marcos. Ninoy’s personal fate became a symbol for the aberrations of the martial law regime. The foreign media covered his suffering thoroughly (Wurfel : –). Moreover, for ideological reasons, the most consistent critic of martial law was the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). It used human rights in an instrumental way to further its genuine interests in revolutionary struggle. It sought to manipulate not only international actors, including Amnesty International, but also domestic organizations. This strategy had a positive effect. As part of its consciousness-raising efforts, the CPP brought knowledge about human rights standards into almost every Philippine village. The CPP relied on its own underground media, which it distributed widely. By , about thirty underground publications were circulating throughout the country. The CPP newsletter, Ang Bayan, appeared fortnightly. The organization had its own newsletter and operated its own radio station (Rajaretnam : ). The huge community of Filipinos in the United States constituted a potentially influential audience and pressure group in the United States. This audience could only be reached through mass media, as activists and regime critics in the United States were well aware. Thus, Manila’s Archbishop Sin articulated his trenchant criticism of human rights violations in November

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 in a meeting with foreign newsmen, which ensured that his criticism would circulate in the United States and other countries (Youngblood : ). The transnational network worked strategically to attract the attention of foreign media, both “to make the regime doubt its own legitimacy” and to undermine its support, “both foreign and domestic” (Youngblood : ). In fact, “critical assessments of martial law in the foreign press were duplicated so often that they reached a wider audience than they would have without censorship” (Wurfel : ). Newspapers such as the Philippine News were widely read by the Filipino community in the United States. Underground weeklies and monthlies enjoyed extensive circulation (Blitz : ). Thus, many Filipinos gained access to a critical representation of martial law through reprinted mass media reports of foreign newspapers. International Groups Challenge Marcos’ Legitimacy, 1975–1978

To motivate action, networks activists are innovative. They identify particular social issues as problematic; they attribute blame, propose solutions, and provide a rationale for action (Keck and Sikkink : ; Crawford ). And these struggles increasingly are conducted as struggles over legal rights taking the form of legal arguments. As we will see in this section, the interventions by Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) made a critical difference in international perceptions of the Marcos government. On December , , Marcos went on national television to address concerns about human rights. At that point, he emphasized, “No one, but no one has been tortured . . . None has reason to complain that his dignity has been violated, or that his convenience has not been looked after” (as quoted in Claude : ). To most human rights organizations, his statement was an invitation to scrutinize the government’s human rights practice. In April , the chair of the United States Subcommittee on International Relations, Donald Fraser, visited the Philippines. In July, he conducted hearings on the Philippine situation. The Friends of the Filipino People and the Anti-Martial Law Coalition filed two witness accounts of human rights violations and demanded an immediate moratorium on financial assistance (Rivera and Bello : ). In December , Primitivo Mijares, a Filipino journalist and former functionary under Marcos, described the Marcos government’s personal favoritism, corruption, and election fraud in a hearing before the United States House Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements (Claude : ).

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However, as of  and early , the United States government was ambivalent about human rights in the Philippines. A ten-page report on the situation, prepared by the Department of State (DoS), provided stateof-the-art knowledge on human rights, but commented that hearings with major advisors had “ended somewhat inconclusively.” Fraser had avoided any sweeping judgments on the subject. Senator Mike Mansfield had not even addressed the human rights problem in his report, and even Congressman Lester Wolff, who had met with the legal opposition in August , “did not stress human rights violations.” According to the DoS, the American and New Zealand representatives to the ICJ left the Philippines, thinking the country had no major human rights problems. The American representative reportedly told Fraser he was “wasting his time” there. The American embassy concluded there was no consistent pattern of torture and maltreatment. This left Amnesty International as the only organization that saw a “major human rights problem” primarily connected with the maltreatment of political prisoners. Still, critical press reports alerted the Ford administration. In December , Henry Kissinger, secretary of state and national security advisor, described human rights as “one of the potentially most damaging issues in United States-Philippine relations” in his briefing book prepared for Ford’s visit to the Philippines. He mentioned “the plight of the small number of political detainees held without trial . . . that has aroused the most outcries among the large number of Filipinos in the United States and has held the attention of Members of Congress.” He advised Ford that “it would be helpful” if he would “raise the difficult issue of human rights with Marcos to show him that it is an issue which can affect our bilateral relations.” The Ford administration noticed the moral concerns, but decided to downplay them in its bilateral relations. It would not take a public position and regarded comments on the human rights situation as “inappropriate.” Thus, when Amnesty International announced its intention to visit the Philippines on a fact-finding mission, neither embassy officials nor the Philippine government expected vehement critique. The embassy arranged appointments with key government officials, including a briefing by members of the Task Force on Detainees (TFD) and visits and interviews at key detention centers. When the delegation left the Philippines, the government’s impression was that the delegates had been “polite.” They believed, “AI would not be unkind to the Philippines as result of the excellent cooperation it received.” But a member of TFD recounted that the Amnesty International

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“representatives were ‘shaken’ by what they saw” in the detention facilities and government authorities were somewhat surprised by the excellent preparation of the Amnesty International delegates. Amnesty International Reports on the Philippines, 1976

On June , , the New York Times reported in a short notice the key findings of the mission. Amnesty International regarded torture of martial law prisoners as widespread and part of a general approach to intimidate suspected political offenders in the Philippines. American Embassy officials in Manila were completely taken by surprise. The DoS immediately asked them to get a copy of the report and check the allegations point by point. Their answer came within days. In a secret cable to Washington, they called the report a “damning indictment” of the Philippine government’s “handling of detainees.” According to the American Embassy, “AI’s comprehensive treatment of rule of law in martial law society is strongly critical and hits at heart of the current martial law set up.” Embassy officials were convinced that, given Amnesty International’s status as a “respected international organization,” the allegations would carry more credibility than the reports of the Philippine Association of Major Religious Superiors and it would be “grist for mills of those critical of Marcos government.” Soon, the report would be in general circulation, and key points appeared in Signs of the Times. Yet, the full report remained unpublished until August. Only a few groups in the Philippines, such as the Protestant group led by Senator Jovito Salonga, had an unofficial copy of it. In the report, Amnesty International made two interrelated arguments, both aiming at the political legitimacy of the Marcos government. Despite Marcos’ statements to the contrary, “constitutional authoritarianism” was not legitimate for two reasons. First, it systematically violated the human rights of the population. The practice of torture was “widespread.” And it lacked essential features of the rule of law. The rule of law was “authoritarian presidential-military rule, unchecked by constitutional guarantee or limitations” (Amnesty International b: ). By demanding resignation letters from judges of the Supreme Court and their replacement, Marcos had created a subservient judiciary. Virtually none of the detainees had been charged with any offense, and their right to habeas corpus had been denied. Because the judiciary’s independence and responsibility had been curtailed, the courts could not exercise their authority to control the actions of the executive. The report concluded with a devastating

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indictment of the Marcos government. “In reality, at least up to the time of the Amnesty International mission, the only rule of law in The Philippines under martial law has been the unchecked power of the executive branch and the military” (Amnesty International b: ). On June , only a day after the Associated Press reported on Amnesty International’s findings, the Philippine government reacted to individual points of criticism in the report. Full compliance with human rights norms was out of the question, as that collided with the Marcos government’s own definition of the security situation. But it was essential to demonstrate its commitment to human rights to domestic and foreign audiences. To diffuse some of this criticism, Philippine secretary of defense, Juan Ponce Enrile, ordered frequent inspections of the armed forces detention centers. He transferred responsibility for those centers to the Department of National Defense to guarantee a “humane and efficient handling” of detainees. Enrile warned of severe disciplinary actions against military and police personnel involved in unauthorized arrest and detention. Key Philippine government officials, including the military’s undersecretary of national defense for civilian relations, Carmelo Z. Barbero, and Supreme Court Justice Claudio Teehankee indicated they understood Amnesty International’s concerns and emphasized the president’s willingness to consider lifting martial law. At the end of July , the government announced the long-awaited court-martialing of key opposition politicians, including Benigno Aquino. All of Manila’s daily newspapers carried the statement in their headlines. Trials started on August  under intense international media surveillance. These official statements and his dependence on the goodwill of international financial institutions compelled Marcos to take a public stance toward the continuation of martial law right before a meeting of the World Bank, UNDP, and Asian Development Bank. Diplomatically, he called on external forces to respect the Philippine sovereignty. It was “impolite and unwise for anyone to come and say we suspend or terminate martial law.” At the same time, the government became engaged in an extended dialogue with its critics over the question of what kind of situation the human rights organizations and the government was looking at. Human rights organizations, most importantly, AI and the ICJ, argued vehemently that human rights were at stake and the government’s unwillingness to comply implied that it violated human rights out of personal interests. The government maintained that the situation was about state security and it had the right to abrogate some human rights under these conditions. Enrile alleged that critics

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such as Jovito Salonga; Jose Diokno, the human rights lawyer; and Diosdado Macapagal were promoting anarchy, even potential bloodshed. He even accused religious groups of helping the Communists (Rajaretnam : ). Besides these immediate public responses to the still unpublished Amnesty International report, the government also provided a principled answer. This began a detailed discussion with Amnesty International. Like his role models in Indonesia, Marcos rejected the report’s political claims on all levels. He denied that human rights were at stake, the allegations were true, and Amnesty International could be regarded as having credible information. Martial law is rule of law! This is the essence of the entire government argument on the charge that it was a dictatorial authoritarian-military complex. The existence of martial law did not make the Philippine government authoritarian. Martial law did not negate the rule of law, but instead served as a precondition for it. “The Government would not have survived had the proclamation been delayed a few months more” (Amnesty International b: ). Thus, Marcos invoked state of emergency exceptions to international human rights law. At the same time, he actively justified martial law as a new form of government that pursued other legitimate state goals. “Constitutional authoritarianism” was a reform government under martial law. Its purpose was not only to reestablish civil order, but to demonstrate the usefulness of a legal mechanism that democracies in other developing countries could use to bring about urgently needed radical or revolutionary reforms and changes in their societies (Marcos : –). In this framework, the judiciary had also not lost its independence. Judges had been dismissed, but not in order to create a subservient judiciary. Instead, this was part of “the total crusade to remove from government all those unfit by reason of corruption, graft, incompetence and greed” (Amnesty International b: ). Cases of torture were isolated incidents. They were in violation of these principles and had been followed by appropriate sanctions (Amnesty International b: –f). Delays in the prosecution process were due to bureaucratic problems. In sum, the government justified martial law and excused violations by shifting the blame to individual state institutions. In line with this argument, the government attacked the credibility of Amnesty International. It said the abuses Amnesty International documented were not representative and communist political groups, aimed at destabilizing the government, had misled Amnesty International. Thus the report was “one-sided” as the communists “had every reason to exaggerate” or fabricate

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“any form of maltreatment” (Amnesty International b: ). The government then presented evidence that the CPP had utilized detained members in an intensified propaganda campaign. To implement this campaign, they had linked outside forces with detained members. In sum, for the Philippine government, torture, as a general approach to the treatment of suspects, was “anathema to official policy.” Marcos’ rejection of Amnesty International’s claim prompted the ICJ to publish a second report, which again challenged each argument that the Marcos government had put forward in response to Amnesty International to justify the existence of martial law. Unlike Amnesty International, the ICJ accepted the central justification of the Marcos government that a state of rebellion existed in September . This claim had been widely rejected by the previous Amnesty International report. Proceeding from this common definition of the situation, the ICJ advanced several interrelated claims, which basically repeated the claims of Amnesty International and were based on the same norms. If judged according to human rights norms and standards of the rule of law, the martial law government was not legitimate. The ICJ report responded in detail to the Marcos government’s justifications. Marcos cited the Supreme Court in arguing that martial law was legal, but the court had relinquished its authority to determine the legality of martial law. So how was it in any position to determine the legality of arbitrary arrests (International Commission of Jurists : )? Perhaps the court’s rulings were in line with national legislation in a formal sense, but not if they were judged according to international law and internationally accepted standards and norms. The ICJ felt compelled to find out for itself. Was martial law still justified, or were the Philippine authorities continuing the state of emergency in order to perpetuate personal or military power? To answer this question, the ICJ explicitly shifted the jurisdiction over the constitutionality of martial law to an international level (International Commission of Jurists : ). Overall, the ICJ verdict was unequivocal. There was sufficient evidence that the Philippine army could contain the communist insurgents and the CPP was no longer likely to attempt to overthrow the government. Thus “a continuation of Martial Law is no longer necessary.” It was driven to agree with “the contention of the President’s opponents . . . that Martial Law is being maintained” to ensure Marcos could continue in power (International Commission of Jurists : , ). The ICJ had published its report in July , four weeks in advance of the World Law Congress in Manila in August . Within days, the findings

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received broad coverage in the mass media. The findings squarely contradicted official Philippine statements justifying martial law based on armed rebellion. Just a couple days earlier, a columnist at the Philippine Daily Express had publicly defended the  declaration of martial law to a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. And at the end of May, Marcos himself had reaffirmed his “irrevocable commitment” to human rights. The international press had a field day with the report’s findings and stepped up its rhetoric questioning Marcos’ reputation and squaring his rhetoric with the lack of substantial action. A New York Times editorial lamented the Marcos government had not kept its promise to hold elections for the national legislature (“Promises, Promises in Manila” ). Marcos used the opening speech of the World Law Congress in Manila to announce he would end martial law. But the next day, the government drew more headlines in American newspapers when the Philippine police broke up an anti-martial law demonstration of up to , people organized by the Association of Major Religious Superiors and domestic opposition groups. They had used the Congress to stage a People’s Conference on Human Rights (Machado : f). During the conference, church and student leaders denounced human rights violations. The situation completely ridiculed Marcos’ rhetoric on human rights and the rule of law. Within days, Marcos developed in greater detail his plans for a “normalization process.” This would entail the lifting of restrictive measures, such as the night curfew and a ban on international travel, and the release of  martial law prisoners. He also unveiled plans to hold elections in  for a transitional legislature, referred to as the Interim Batasang Pambansa (IBP) (Corsino : ; Wurfel : ). Thus, within three years, transnational activities had extracted significant rhetorical concessions from Marcos. Transnational advocacy had collected firsthand evidence of human rights violations, developed a persuasive frame, and engaged the Marcos government in a substantial public debate over human rights. Most importantly, it had successfully challenged an important rhetorical justification for martial law, the state of rebellion that Marcos had cited to justify martial law in the first place. At the same time, this left untouched a more proactive justification for Marcos’ government. It would be a new mechanism to promote the welfare and development of the Philippine people. The next section considers international audiences, most importantly, the American government, and how it was drawn into the exchange to evaluate the human rights situation in the Philippines.

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International Norms, Pressure, and Domestic Reforms The United States Pressures Marcos: 1976–1980

Public concern for human rights in the Philippines provided a substantial political challenge to the American administration, the most important Philippine ally and potential enforcer of human rights norms. Making the United States vulnerable were its historical and military ties, and this could be exploited by pro-human rights groups. The two human rights reports not only presented a significant challenge of the American administration’s declared policy to take no public position. The sudden salience of human rights concerns constrained its options regarding the finalization of a new military bases agreement with the Philippines (Corsino : ; Wurfel : ). Thus, the best option was to try to influence Marcos through diplomatic channels. High-level representatives of the American government, including Richard Holbrooke, Peter Bourne, and Michael Armacost, started expressing the American administration’s serious concern about human rights. Activities centered around three crucial tasks: • Monitoring the implementation of the recommendations of AI and the ICJ • Protecting individual Philippine opposition figures • Withholding (or threatening to withhold) important resources such as financial assistance and reputation. When Amnesty International’s report was officially released in , it attracted considerable attention. Now, the public dialogue implicated the Carter administration, which judged the dialogue. Washington requested that staff at the American Embassy cross-check Amnesty International’s demands with the Philippine government’s actual implementation of them (Claude : ). The list revealed multiple instances of non-compliance. The embassy concluded, “GOP compliance with specific AI recommendations has been almost minimal.” This was understandable, according to the American Embassy, because “compliance goes against the entire martial law system.” In the following months, the Marcos government faced repeated questions from the American Embassy about its compliance with Amnesty International’s demands. American Ambassador David Newsom had just arrived from Indonesia to take up his new position in Manila. In a personal meeting with Marcos, he

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said he considered the ICJ report “fair.” He suggested that Marcos invite the ICJ “to confirm this progress” now that he had responded to some of its key demands. The American Embassy closely followed cases of alleged disappearances, such as those of Jessica Sales, Hermon Lagman, and Victor Reyes, and raised them in bilateral meetings. And it closely followed Marcos’ plans for the interim National Assembly elections. It even suggested that Marcos invite outside observers to ensure the election was credible. In many areas, the American Embassy noted compliance with specific demands. The government did release Trinidad Herera, the popular leader of a Manila-based slum organization (ZOTO) and court-martialed her alleged torturers. It also released , civilian detainees, reviewed the purview of military tribunals, and transferred them to civilian courts. Embassy officials also followed the fate of detained opposition figures closely and lobbied for their release. The incarceration of Aquino and other high-level opposition figures still attracted substantial interest in the United States as an “outstanding manifestation of human rights violations.” Of special concern to the American administration was Benigno Aquino. His death sentence from a military court had attracted worldwide attention. The American Embassy apparently felt pressure to intervene for him on a diplomatic level. This pressure came not only from the public at home, but also “from friendly countries.” It was crucially involved in negotiating and preparing Aquino’s political exile in the United States. According to Richard Holbrooke, the assistant secretary of state, President Carter was “watching the situation carefully.” He warned Marcos that holding out on Aquino would endanger his support in Congress and among the American people. And Carter would have to speak out at some point. Marcos promised to “take care of it.” The administration also voiced its concern over the subversion charges against Father James Reuter, a priest who had published an illegal newsletter and whose arrest had drawn particular interest in the United States. Holbrooke advised Ambassador Newsom to state that Americans generally do not understand the Philippine government taking “actions against Catholic clergy” and they “raise fundamental questions here about freedom of religion.” Embassy officials seriously evaluated reports by local human rights organizations and discussed the situation with staff members of the TFD to come to an agreed description of the situation. These measures were also evaluated with an eye on the effects they would have on Marcos’ image in the American press. The American Embassy was concerned that the military tribunals of key Philippine opposition figures like

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Aquino, Lopez, and Osmena would be “magnets for the foreign press.” After the second day of the Aquino trial, the embassy reported to Washington, “It is difficult to imagine anyone in Marcos government seriously believes charade at Fort Bonifacio’s Hall of Justice is having beneficial effect on international public opinion.” The administration used several levers to persuade Marcos, both financial and psychological. Holbrooke warned the Philippine Finance Minister Cesar Virata that the United States would make its support in international funding organizations conditional on human rights progress. Although its abstention did not prevent a single credit from getting to the Philippines, it sent Marcos a strong symbolic signal (Stohl et al. ). Also, the administration saw Mondale’s visit to several Asian countries as an “opportunity for a highlevel discussion of human rights problems” to influence both the Philippine and Indonesian governments and an inducement for both countries to “make further progress on their problems” before Mondale arrived. Symbolic measures hurt Marcos’ personal pride. In , the DoS listed the Philippines as a nation that violated human rights. Marcos publicly branded this action a “provocation.” President Carter denied Marcos the privilege of an official state visit. In December , Assistant Secretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs Patricia Derian visited the Philippines and openly criticized the government’s human rights violations, an action that annoyed Marcos personally (Bonner : ). Derian met with leading figures from the political opposition and human rights advocates. Both tried to convince Derian that they could not effectively oppose the “one-man government” in the Philippines without explicit moral support from the United States. These interactions with the Marcos government seemed to bear fruit. A memorandum by Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher to President Carter in January  was quite optimistic about the impact of American pressures: More has happened there . . . on human rights than in almost any other country, due to American pressure, but the final returns are far from in. We are at an important stage in our dialogue with Marcos on human rights and we have a chance, with careful and discreet handling, to induce some rather significant improvements in human rights conditions in the Philippines. We intend to maintain a firm policy, emphasizing that the full range of our relations will be affected by a failure to see significant improvements.

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In September , an internal assessment of the American administration’s human rights policy credited the ICJ and “the human rights dialogues with high-ranking officials.” The Philippine leadership had become highly sensitized to the human rights issue. But the United States should be realistic: The foregoing steps and developments are in the right direction and merit appreciation; nonetheless we should recognize them for what they are—a mixture of shadow and substance, an incipient program with a heavy public relations component (for both domestic and foreign consumption) which make the measures seem more than they are.

Public Perceptions of the Marcos Government’s Responses and American Pressures: 1978–1980

A key issue influencing mobilization is the credibility of actors. Whether or not actors are serious about political reforms and develop an intrinsic motivation toward it influences mobilizing capabilities. In this context, mass media performs a key function of judging the credibility of actors by screening their motivations. This can be clearly observed in media reports and their representations of Marcos and the Carter administration. For different reasons, both actors had to deal with considerable public doubts about their true motivations. Observers had little doubts that Marcos was only responding to public pressure. Oscillating between his New Society program, state security concerns, and human rights pressures, Marcos policy appeared contradictory. Critical American media openly called him a “rhetoric.” He only responded when he could not evade pressure. Marcos had to continually affirm that he was not reacting to public pressures. For example, when Patricia Derian visited, Marcos reassured her of his commitment to human rights and emphasized he did everything “not because somebody else is telling us to do so, but because we believe in it.” These affirmations invited continual criticism. Public press reports speculated openly on the reasons he announced normalization. They basically assumed foreign pressure. A New York Times article saw “evidence that Mr. Marcos feels some pressure from the United States because of the Carter administration’s stress on human rights.” It suspected that he possibly announced the prisoners’ releases “with Washington in mind.” And it noticed the inconsistencies of Marcos’ reforms. Marcos would react to criticism and submit to public pressure to improve human rights, but, at the same time, introduce new measures that served

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the same purpose (Butterfield ). Apparently, the American public was concerned about human rights in the Philippines, and articles generally expressed serious doubts about Marcos’ genuine willingness to liberalize. It was convinced that the Marcos government reacted strategically to external pressures, which invalidated his reform moves. Public criticism was not limited to the Marcos government. It also included the Carter administration’s approach to human rights in the Philippines. Carter’s silence on human rights violations in the case of an important ally neither matched his general rhetoric on human rights nor his explicit remarks on the importance of the strategic military relationship with the Philippines. Despite the open debate on Marcos human rights practices, the official American position basically remained unchanged. As the American Embassy had put it in , martial law in the Philippines was an internal matter and critique was “inappropriate.” Likewise, Carter did not comment on the Philippine human rights situation, even if he followed it closely, as Holbrooke had indicated in his private conversation with President Marcos. News reports pointed their fingers directly to this discrepancy. For the press, the Philippines, together with Chile and Iran, became crucial cases for judging the sincerity of Carter’s human rights policy, even if some shared the administration’s view over the importance of the American military bases in the Philippines. Many editorials emphasized his hypocrisy with regards to the Philippines and Indonesia (Crittenden ; Lewis ). In mid-, the House of Representatives rejected a Senate bill that would have limited the World Bank’s use of American funds for specific countries. With its rejection, members of the House also eliminated a cut in military aid to Philippines because of human rights violations, and newspapers mentioned it explicitly. Four months later, the House rejected another bill that would have introduced a ceiling of US$ million on military aid to the Philippines (“Senate Panel Backs Carter, Eliminates Restrictions on Aid” ). In August , in a New York Times editorial, James Reston accused the administration of dramatizing human rights issues in relation to the Soviet Union, but ignoring them in the Philippines (Reston ). A year later, the Times published an article entitled “Carter Asks for No Cut in Arms Aid to Marcos Despite Negative Human Rights Report” (Burt ). The journalist saw a contradiction between the State Department’s critical report on human rights in the Philippines and the administration’s request to maintain existing levels of military aid to the Philippines. It said military aid had been reduced at least in some countries that were accused of human rights violations, but

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not in the Philippines. And it detailed administration plans to raise the levels of military aid (Butterfield ). In December , the ABC television network ran a one-hour documentary on “The Politics of Torture,” which focused on Carter’s dilemma of balancing human rights and security concerns in Chile, Iran, and the Philippines (Hoagland ; Simons ). In March , another Times editorial pointed to the high cost of Philippine bases. It argued that the bases were “the most efficient way to maintain a credible American military presence in Southeast Asia.” But this agreement would jeopardize the “long-term American position in the Philippine archipelago” unless “the Marcos government begins taking human rights more seriously” (“The High Cost of Philippine Bases” ). It is important to understand these ambivalent evaluations of Marcos’ reforms and the Carter administration’s foreign policy, as these also had an impact on the effects that human rights discourses could have had on the domestic opposition in the Philippines. International Norms Affect Domestic Policy The Political Opposition to Marcos Gains Legitimacy: 1978–1981

Liberal approaches to the influence of international norms on state practice expect human rights to work primarily through domestic interest groups. Human rights pressures strengthen those groups that are in line with these norms. These effects can also be observed in the Philippines. But these pressures had mixed effects on the domestic Philippine opposition partly because the credibility of the Carter administration was low, delegitimizing the liberal opposition, partly because the growth of armed rebellion provided Marcos with a justification to maintain some repressive practices. These effects will be described in the next two sections. This section focuses on the growth of the domestic opposition. The next section describes how Marcos controlled these developments. The public debate through the international news media had several tangible effects on domestic politics in the Philippines. The international legitimization of human rights and the  announcement of political normalization shifted the debate over the political legitimacy of Marcos rule to a domestic level. Now, international pressures for human rights translated into selected domestic human rights reforms. The American Embassy, in a

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 evaluation of human rights, noted, “Human rights has become something of a household word.” The emphasis on human rights had given the opposition important “encouragement” (Machado : ). And “Carter’s talk of human rights” had “made talk of human rights [in the Philippines] legitimate” (Claude : ). One Filipino attorney commented, “Since so much can now be done in the name of ‘human rights’ which was previously forbidden, it is not surprising that there is much curiosity about these human rights” (as quoted in Claude : ). The church, the only legal opposition to the Marcos government until , now became more vocal and united in its opposition to human rights abuses (Youngblood ). Political opposition groups utilized the international spotlight to draw attention to their concerns and mobilize international audiences. The number of demonstrations increased. On several occasions, domestic opposition groups used international conferences, such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Manila, to stage protests. In October , the political opposition headed by Senator Jovito Salonga staged a political demonstration that attracted , participants. It was reported in the international media, but not the domestic. In contrast, a demonstration in late  became both international and domestic news. The political opposition in general gained strength after , and it was taken more seriously by the media and the government. Student protests against tuition fees developed into protests against martial law (Ocampo : ). Both TFD and FLAG expanded their membership and their organizational structure. Initially affiliated to the AMRSP, FLAG reorganized as the Civil Liberties Union of the Philippines (CLUP) in  and recruited more lawyers, mostly from the provinces. By , FLAG had expanded to a network of about  lawyers (Free Legal Assistance Group : ). In particular, the political normalization process legitimized the liberal opposition, which had been marginalized since the declaration of martial law. Unlike the underground opposition, CPP and MNLF, between  and , the liberal opposition had refused to operate from underground. Doing so could be seen as answering the radicals’ call to join forces. In , the liberal political opposition had articulated its timid opposition to the Marcos government in a pamphlet entitled “A Message of Hope to Filipinos Who Care” and developed a concept of a third way, an alternative to support for either Marcos or Communist revolutionary struggle (Malay : ). Only in , in the course of political normalization, was the third alternative translated into a concrete project.

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But this general assessment of the effects of human rights discourse on domestic politics conceals the unbalanced shifts of political power on a domestic level. Human rights discourse, in combination with doubts about the seriousness of political reforms, affected domestic discourses and political groups differently. The administration’s mixed policy of diplomatic pressures coupled with public silence on the Marcos government’s human rights violations placed the liberal opposition in a precarious position and weakened its domestic power. From an international perspective, its liberal human rights discourse best matched the international human rights discourse. It shared the basic definition of the situation as it was portrayed by Amnesty International and the ICJ. Authoritarian regime structures were the root causes of human rights violations. Getting the American administration to increase the international pressure on Marcos was an essential part of its strategy, and it supported the American military installations in the Philippines (Abinales : ; De Dios : ). However, its close association with the American administration, whose policy was highly contested in the Philippine, also delegitimated it in the eyes of other opposition groups, most importantly, the radical left but also the nationalist opposition. For the leftist opposition, Benigno Aquino represented the old oligarchic elite. It vehemently criticized his continual lobbying of the American administration, now controversial in itself. It framed human rights concerns in socialist terms. The root cause was the unequal distribution of economic ownership between the landed oligarchy and the Philippine peasants. Consequently, its political program focused on redistributing land and calling for a People’s Democratic Revolution in the Philippines. Thus, even as the National Democratic Front (NDF), the legal front organization of the CPP, offered to cooperate in a “united front” strategy, it internally denounced the liberal opposition as “anti-Marcos reactionaries” (Abinales : ), whose main purpose was to “secure privileges for themselves, not to push forward the basic rights of the people” (Abinales : ). Nationalists, on the other hand, were deeply suspicious of the American military presence, which it saw as the major reason the United States continued to support Marcos. For them, the military bases were a matter of life and death. On Christmas Day of , leading nationalist opposition figures, including human rights advocate Jose Diokno, released a statement demanding the bases be dismantled immediately, as they posed “such a clear and present danger to the very survival of the Filipino people and are so detrimental to their interests and welfare” (as quoted in Wurfel : ).

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Thus, even as international moral pressure restrained the Marcos government and provided opportunities for public debate, it did not lead the domestic opposition to take a unified stance toward him. Exactly to the contrary, the human rights discourse was itself colored by the ideological preferences of these groups. Consequently, international news reports consistently described the political opposition as “disunited,” “ineffective,” and “in a dilemma” (Machado ; Thompson ). Given the continual political divisions among the political opposition, Marcos and the military had a relatively free hand in setting the political agenda. The IBP elections, held in April , provided the domestic opposition with the momentum for change. The election campaign was uneven. The opposition had limited access to the media and could hold only a certain number of rallies, but the pre-election campaign did nothing to restore Marcos’ international image. The Liberal Party (LP), headed by Jovito Salonga and Gerry Roxas, announced a boycott of the election, calling it a “useless exercise” (as quoted in Wurfel : ). But some liberal politicians, most importantly, Benigno Aquino, decided to participate and established their own People Power Party (Lakas ng Bayan [LABAN]). This was one of the first attempts at cooperation between the liberal opposition and the moderates within the various strands of the CPP in Manila (Abinales : ). The CPP gave LABAN access to its underground network of organized labor, urban poor, and students in exchange for including three CPP-backed leaders and formulating the LABAN campaign platform. This allowed it to reach previously inaccessible segments of Manila society (Franco ). The opposition used the election campaign to attack human rights violations and corruption. Meanwhile, Marcos used the forty-five-day campaign period to castigate LABAN as American-backed and Communist-influenced (Machado ), aiming to destroy its legitimacy within nationalist and anti-communist circles. Marcos created a new political party to contest the elections, the New Society Movement (Kilusang Bagong Lipunan [KBL]). This governmental party included twelve of the twenty-seven cabinet members, national government officials, ex-Senators, and ex-Congressmen. Pre-election surveys indicated that some LABAN candidates, especially Aquino, would win. On Election Day, opposition poll watchers were forcibly evicted from many precincts. At others, the KBL vote was higher than the total number of registered voters. Members of LABAN who protested the election fraud were detained and charged with sedition. To justify this action, Marcos claimed that most

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of the reported election cheating was the fault of the opposition, which had been infiltrated by subversives (Wurfel : –). In the end then, the elections attracted international media attention primarily because they did not deliver what Marcos had promised, a critical test of his political legitimacy. At the same time, they did not deliver what the opposition hoped for, a significant share of political power. Consequently, after the elections, the domestic opposition grew increasingly frustrated that it could not pose a real political challenge to Marcos. The elections did not remotely fulfill the expectations that Marcos had generated, and there was a marked mismatch between the short-term expansion of the political process and the opposition’s inability to translate increased mobilization into election gains. As election did not produce any victories for the independent opposition (LABAN), they widened the rift between the dictator and the pre-martial law political elite in the opposition. Moreover, the CPP was disappointed because it had predicted that participating in the election would bring a revolutionary upsurge and lead to the collapse of the Marcos government. Moreover, the Marcos government could still draw on political legitimacy in other areas, most importantly, its promise of a revolutionary political reform process that would dismantle oligarchic structures. Here, the continual struggle against a growing counterinsurgency gave it a crucial rationalization for upholding martial law. This justification became more important in  when its cease-fire negotiations with the Muslim Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) broke down. The Philippine military had engaged , troops against a Muslim insurgency of , fighters. The MNLF’s successful raids against AFP units led to air raids by the Philippine Air Force (Machado ). During these operations, human rights organizations documented a steep increase in human rights violations. Despite the considerable public debate on the military’s lack of discipline, its political role expanded further. Military control became more centralized in the south. Marcos presented the reorganization as an effort to make the regions into key units of local administration, to weaken the local influence of old provincial leaders, and to increase central control (Machado ). In short, these activities still resonated with military-led modernization. Meanwhile, the growth of the New People’s Army (NPA) provided Marcos with American backing and gave him control over resources to contain the communist opposition. On the public stage, democratic elections and the lifting of martial law kept the opposition engaged without providing it with

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the resources it needed to sustain its party machinery and its access to local bases of power. The Domestic Opposition Becomes Polarized: 1979

Taken together, these developments held the potential for more radical types of protest. Over the course of , the militant Light-A-Fire Movement had emerged. Its mastermind was Eduardo Olaguer, a Harvard-trained businessman in his forties who considered it his Christian duty to take “up arms against the corrupt and illegal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos” (as quoted in Wurfel : ). In January , Aquino suggested a power-sharing arrangement with Marcos and a council of elders, including Cardinal Sin, to allow a three-year transition period before the full normalization of the Philippine political process. While the United States reacted positively to the suggestion, the international press was negative. At the end of June, a secret cable from the American Embassy to Holbrooke expressed alarm over the polarization within the Philippine opposition. The Light-A-Fire Movement and another militant group were being arraigned for trying to overthrow the Marcos government. Ambassador Richard W. Murphy told Holbrooke that he had revised the talking points for the new Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie and the Marcoses. Murphy was shocked by the “increasing rhetoric of violence or the threat of violence among Marcos’ critics, many of whom have long asserted that they were committed to work for a peaceful evolution of the political process.” The State Department planned to press Marcos to restore the writ of habeas corpus, as that would be “particularly meaningful to the non-radical opposition” and mentioned that Marcos had promised a partial lifting of martial law a year ago, which he might consider now. “We urge you to consider moving on both these paths. Restoration of the writ and partial lifting of martial law.” These pressures soon became more urgent. During a highly publicized and controversial speech at the Asia Society in New York on August , , Aquino, who had been released from prison to undergo heart surgery in the United States, revealed the plans of the Light-A-Fire Movement. This movement was to launch massive urban guerilla warfare, blowing up buildings and assassinating corrupt presidential cronies and cabinet members, along with military officers who had engaged in wanton and rampant tortures of political prisoners (Neher : ). Aquino justified this turn because the opposition had been unable to elicit any response from Marcos. “We have decided

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to use force as our ultimate weapon against a repressive government that has refused to listen to reason” (Chapman ; Ocampo b: ). It is reasonable to assume that the liberal opposition increased its militant rhetoric out of a strategic interest of enhancing the pressure on Marcos to grant the opposition more freedom (Wurfel ). However, actors rarely have control over how audiences interpret statements. The American Embassy was acutely concerned that militant groups would read Aquino’s speech as “an endorsement and a go ahead signal for the use of violence.” In a similar speech at the Asia Society in Washington on August , Aquino did not repeat these claims, a fact that American officials noted with relief. On August , however, bombs went off in nine buildings in Manila. The so-called April  Liberation Movement claimed credit. Marcos ordered the arrest of key opposition leaders and the detention of Jovito Salonga (Wurfel : ). The combined pressures from the American administration and a radicalized opposition did not miss their target. At the end of August, Marcos announced the Philippines would eliminate all vestiges of crisis government, lift martial law, and restore habeas corpus. For the rest of the year, Marcos repeated his intention, but made it conditional on a resolution of the conflict with the self-determination movement in Muslim-dominated Mindanao and the absence of a severe economic crisis. After a bombing attack at the International Convention Centre in Manila almost killed him, Marcos threatened to defer the lifting of martial law and issued arrest orders for thirty prominent opposition figures, including Aquino (Neher : ). He continued to castigate the political opposition, which hurried to come together on an unprecedented political platform, including members of several major political parties. The group presented a detailed indictment of martial law and a statement of goals in its National Covenant for Freedom. On August , , seventy-two leading oppositionists signed it, including former President Diosdado Macapagal, former Vice President Fernando Lopez, and former Senators Jovito Salonga, Eva Kalaw, and Ramon Mitra (Ocampo a, c, d). Better human rights protection was the key demand of the covenant around which the signatories resolved to unite: • Immediately and absolutely terminate the Marcos dictatorship. • Unconditionally dismantle martial law and hold free, orderly, and honest elections.

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• Promote national independence, human dignity, human rights, and social justice. • Rectify political, social, and economic injustices. • Liberate and protect the country and people from all forms of foreign domination. In an official reaction to the covenant, Marcos accused the opposition of merely aspiring to power and threatening “the cause of national welfare and development” (Neher : ). His supporters pointed out that the overwhelming majority of the signers were part of the oligarchy in the times before martial law when crime was rampant, a few families controlled the economy, the bureaucracy was inefficient, and the legislature was obstructionist. The covenant did not have a consistent following and did not propose a specific program (Neher : ). Through the end of , pressures by the American administration continued. On January , , bowing to long-term pressure, both external and domestic, and preceding the pope’s visit to the Philippines by only a couple weeks, Marcos revoked martial law. He abolished the mass media councils. But many of the martial law powers that had been criticized by the opposition remained in effect through executive orders and decrees. The armed forces maintained their power to prevent or suppress lawless violence, insurrection, rebellion, and subversion. The privilege of writ of habeas corpus remained suspended in the two autonomous regions of Mindanao and with respect to persons detained for insurrection, rebellion, subversion, or conspiracy or proposal to commit such crimes. These exceptions were legitimate to make for a state government that faced acute threats to its state security in the form of armed rebellion. The inherently crosscutting dynamics of public pressures and reforms continued to shape Philippine politics in several ways. First, American support for Marcos continued to increase, influenced by both the growth of the Philippine insurgency and the change in the international context. The Iranian hostage crisis in late  had already precipitated a clear shift in the administration’s perceptions about international security. The Philippine bases assumed much greater importance, forcing the Carter administration to reconsider its priorities, as described above. Thus, the Reagan administration’s support for Marcos did not present a dramatic departure from American policy, as formulated at the end of the Carter administration. What did constitute a radical turn was the way it

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framed this policy. The Reagan administration officially ended what many perceived as the Carter administration’s hypocrisy with regard to human rights. Consistent with Reagan’s emphasis on military competition with the Soviet Union and clearly impressed by developments in Iran, it explicitly subordinated human rights concerns to its geopolitical interests. Elliott Abrams, the assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, explained that the administration would not only address the symptoms of human rights violations, but also their causes, most importantly, Communism (Orentlicher : ). In April , Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. reaffirmed the Reagan administration’s commitment to human rights “by ally or adversary,” but explained the United States should be more critical of totalitarian than authoritarian governments. He specifically mentioned the Philippines as a country with which the administration had tried to improve relations (Gwertzman ). While this did not constitute a dramatic departure from American policy, the explicit and official support for the authoritarian Marcos government was unprecedented, and the consequences were immediate. The Reagan administration lifted many of the symbolic constraints placed by Carter. In June , after Marcos had lifted martial law, Vice President George H.W. Bush visited the Philippines and praised Marcos’ “adherence to democratic principles,” despite indications that Marcos was now ruling by presidential decrees that lacked basic principles of the rule of law. In September , in a clear reversal of the Carter administration’s policy, Marcos was invited to the United States for an official state visit. To observers of Philippine political developments, the invitation was “a blow to the opposition” that “had long dissuaded the United States from supporting Marcos” (Sodusta and Palongpalong : ). Marcos’ visit was carefully prepared by American Embassy officials who saw it as an opportunity for him to present a “different picture of the Philippines than is regularly reflected in the US press and media.” Meanwhile, human rights organizations tried to provide additional evidence that ending martial law had not ended human rights violations. In fact, Marcos was now ruling without a legal cover for those violations, as he had revoked the state of emergency (Amnesty International ). They could use this finding strategically to scold the United States for supporting Marcos. Second, on a domestic level, in response to these public and explicit signs of political support, Aquino again said he saw cooperation with the militant left as a means of struggle against Marcos. He explained the moderate and radical opposition groups in the Philippines were moving closer together

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because some of their major differences had been eliminated. The NDF insistence that the liberal opposition take a position against the American military bases had been the “only sticking point” in their negotiations. “After the Bush statement,” Aquino sensed “a shift” that could lead to a better “working relationship.” Commentators widely interpreted his statement as indicating a “drift to the Left” by the moderate opposition (“Dissidence and Détente” ; Tasker , ). And, in fact, the statistics did indicate that this threat had increased. For example, the armed strength of the NPA had risen from approximately , to between , and , fighters between  and  (Tasker ). Until the end of the s, the NPA had mostly grown in the rural hinterlands of the archipelago, especially in sugar, coconut, and logging areas, but, in the early s, it expanded into areas surrounding towns and cities (Hedman ). Catholic priests, students, and intellectuals in the Philippines joined the NPA, which was now widely perceived “as the only real force in the country . . . capable of battling Marcos” (Tasker : ). Francisco Tadat, a columnist for the Far Eastern Economic Review, summed up the change. He saw a link between the Reagan administration’s support of President Marcos and the rise of militant opposition in the Philippines: Communist subversion and dissidence have grown in the country more than anywhere else in Southeast Asia: . . . Systematic destruction of democratic institutions, to a point where the integrity of any adversary process can no longer be presumed, has sucked moderates into the ranks of armed dissidents. (Tadat : ) Thus, as we see, transnational human rights pressures had contributed to important concessions by the Philippine government. But the same pressures that legitimated human rights concerns domestically also further polarized the domestic opposition and radicalized it. Marcos’ Economic Modernization Program Presents a Public Challenge

Though little seemed to be gained from the international human rights discourse for human rights practices on the ground, over the course of , Marcos lost a second important ethical debate over the ultimate goals of the New Society. Since he had imposed martial law in , Marcos’ ultimate claim to legitimacy was military-led modernization. As long as this particular

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type of governance fulfilled its purpose, its proponents, most importantly, in the financial institutions, were still inclined to support a government that lacked legitimacy in the human rights area. But this argument lost some of its persuasiveness as the s began. A  World Bank report on poverty noted that the real income of Filipinos had dropped “in both urban and rural areas, in all regions, and practically all occupations” between the mid-s and . The bank noted, “Martial law in the Philippines has been justified considerably on the basis of its benefits for the poor.” Now both the bank and the International Monetary Fund contradicted Marcos’ justification of his rule. Even the projects that the bank financed were scrutinized for their impact on the living conditions of ordinary Filipinos. In this case, too, a sophisticated church network in the Philippines and the TFD, along with other groups, exposed human rights violations and pressured the Marcos government and the World Bank to consider the detrimental effects of their economic programs. In Manila, the bank funded an urban upgrading project for Manila’s largest slum, the Tondo district. Residents were to relocate to upgraded sites nearby to clear space for an industrial park with port facilities for multinational corporations. In response, the grassroots organization ZOTO organized mass protests, alerted co-financers of the project, such as the West German government, and mobilized an effective worldwide support network by using contacts in international church circles. A West German evaluation of the project called it “authoritarian” and questioned whether the project benefited its intended beneficiaries (as quoted in Bello, Kinley, and Elinson : ). ZOTO’s political struggle became a model for other anti-World Bank protests in the Philippines. Two months later, in April , the murder of Macli-ing Dulag, a Kalinga tribesman, gained international attention. In the s, he had been instrumental in building an impressive regional community-based grassroots opposition movement to the World Bank–funded Chico River Basin Development project. Primarily established to provide water to the national center, the project would have meant constructing four dams on the Chico River in the Cordillera Mountains of Northern Luzon and potentially displacing up to , members of the Kalinga and Bontoc tribes from their ancestral lands. The World Bank faced strong resistance from the tribes who mustered widespread international support from environmentalists, church groups, and solidarity organizations (Bello, Kinley, and Elinson : ). The Kalinga began to rely on the NPA to support their resistance. In response, military reinforcements were sent in. By , the Chico River

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dam site had become a battleground. Human rights organizations documented human rights violations, and the project became impossible to continue. In , the World Bank decided to stop it. The gradual emergence of a regional opposition movement of local Kalinga and Bontoc communities capable of matching the huge scope of the dam project constituted a major breakthrough for the human rights movement and a grassroots democratization movement. Facilitated and supported by the efforts of Friends of Tribal Filipinos and documented by the Association of Major Religious Superiors and the TFD, the press reports probably provided the first uncensored view of the situation in the countryside (Franco : ). In November , a visiting staff member of the World Bank provided its top management with an indicting analysis of the Marcos government’s efforts at modernization. The Ascher Memorandum warned that the Marcos government was marked by increasing instability, “which could result in the lifting of martial law under a parliamentary system in which President Marcos . . . would have serious difficulty remaining in power, or a military government.” Not only was Ascher concerned about the bombings in Manila and the moderates turn to violent strategies, he also noted a substantial level of nationalism. “Nationalism is the general appeal of the opposition’s attack on Marcos’ policy,” and “anti-American sentiment is its most immediate and growing manifestation.” Ascher noted further that the worsening gap in income distribution focused attention on “the sincerity and competence of the New Society program, which was to bring greater economic equality to the Philippines by stripping away the political and economic power of the ‘oligarchy.’ Marcos’ justification of martial law . . . is weakened by any evidence that the martial law arrangement cannot reverse the trend of income concentration” (Ascher Memorandum, as quoted in Bello, Kinley, and Elinson : ). The critique of key financial institutions, superbly documented in the widely read  Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, further eroded Marcos’ public reputation as a modernizer of the Philippine nation-state and focused public attention on political patronage and the extensive links between Marcos and his cronies (Hutchcroft ). The state monopolies, in the hands of his friends, came under particular public attack. These developments particularly alerted the American administration. When Secretary of State George Shultz visited Manila in June , a senior aide was quoted as saying, “Future instability in the Philippines might jeopardize American access to vital military bases,” and “Washington wanted to begin positioning itself to deal with the forces . . . likely to replace Marcos”

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(Ocampo-Calfors ). For the first time since Marcos had gained power, the American administration signaled it would consider an alternative to Marcos. It was in this atmosphere that Benigno Aquino decided to return home to the Philippines. He was assassinated on August , , right after his arrival at the Manila International Airport. It propelled protests to an unprecedented level, which had been developing since the s and mobilized anew the whole network, both nationally and internationally. The Crisis Grows: American Policy and Domestic Mobilization: 1983–1986

The Aquino assassination galvanized the political mobilization against the Marcos government and further hurt his public image abroad, moving it “from bad to worse.” Almost  percent of media reports on the government now used negative descriptors (Soderlund : ). Immediately after the assassination, at a nationally televised news conference, he said he had reacted with “shock, humility and tears” to the shooting of Aquino and accused his foes of attempting to spread panic (Campbell ). In public, Marcos vehemently denied that either the government or the military was implicated in the assassination. Given the public outcry, he reluctantly set up an investigating commission, but critics immediately challenged its credibility, as did “senior diplomats from half a dozen Western and Asian countries” (Haberman ). A delegation of American lawyers visiting the Philippines in October  confirmed allegations that the commission was not credible. A second investigative commission, the Agrava Board, repudiated the government’s official report that the assassination had been the act of an individual (Wurfel : ). It also doubted Marcos’ emotional reaction to Aquino’s assassination and alleged it had been part of a military conspiracy, possibly involving Fabian Ver, chief of the armed forces. This increased the pressure, especially from the United States, to retire Ver and nominate Fidel Ramos instead. Marcos did so, but later reversed himself. The Agrava Board flatly contradicted the findings of the first investigation and publicly disavowed the claims of Marcos and the military. These pressures and Marcos’ contradictory reactions to them only confirmed the opposition’s suspicion that Ver had been only a scapegoat and the real culprits sat in Malacañang Palace. Moreover, the Aquino assassination caused massive capital flight and set the stage for an economic decline that would eventually contribute to Marcos’ removal (Overholt ).

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Equally amplified were the American administration’s responses to Marcos. The American administration remained divided and struggled for a unified stance toward the Marcos government, thereby providing him with numerous opportunities to manipulate these divisions to his advantage. On the one hand, a public consensus developed between the State Department and Congress that Marcos had to be publicly pressured to relinquish power. On the other hand, the Department of Defense and the Pentagon continued to support Marcos, seeing him as the only alternative to communist rule in the Philippines. Aquino’s assassination provoked a stern condemnation by the DoS, which supported demands to establish an independent commission of inquiry and urged the Philippine government to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation. But this was as far as the United States would go. James A. Kelly, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Pacific affairs, stated the importance of the two American bases in the Philippines was not affected by Aquino’s death. The Reagan administration did not consider making any adjustments to its financial assistance to the Philippines (Weinraub ). American officials maintained that, “regardless of whether the Philippine authorities had a role in the Aquino killing, the United States must try to insure that it retains air and naval bases in the Philippines and that the Philippine Government is not overthrown by the continuing insurgency of the New People’s Army” (Gwertzman ). Nor did it reschedule Reagan’s planned state visit, a decision that the administration revised a couple weeks later in the face of pressure by members of the Congress. Even then, the administration allowed Marcos to save face a bit. The Reagan trip to several Southeast Asian countries was postponed indefinitely, and Reagan reassured Marcos of their “warm and firm friendship,” adding that Reagan had confidence in Marcos’ “ability to handle things” (Karnow : ). In , a joint resolution from both the House and Senate presented an explicit attempt to formulate a common position. Democratic reforms and, within this definition, human rights reforms, were considered conducive to maintaining the American presence in the Philippines. To pursue that aim, the Reagan administration mainly contemplated regaining popular support for the long-term Philippine-American connection, including the bases. It saw the church and the business community as pro-American forces and thus instrumental in moderating between the various forces on the radical Left. The American administration wanted to use a new commission of investigation into the assassination of Aquino as an instrument to seek reconciliation between Marcos and the opposition (Nations ).

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In the State Department, support for Marcos began to wane and resulted in pressure to hold national elections, but the Pentagon did not change its assessment that Marcos was still useful for maintaining the American military presence in Asia. The NPA remained the primary threat to American interests, and Marcos was the primary guarantor of these interests (Bello ). While Congress considered cutting security and military assistance to the Philippines in an attempt to send a symbolic signal to Marcos and his opponents, the Department of Defense and the Pentagon insisted on maintaining existing assistance levels to strengthen the military (Chanda ). A National Security Study Directive of , signed by Reagan in , outlined American policy. The strategy was to influence Marcos “through a well-orchestrated policy of incentives and disincentives.” Marcos needed to be influenced to the point where he would begin to “set the stage for peaceful eventual transition to a successor government whenever that takes place.” But “the US does not want to remove Marcos from power or to destabilize” the Philippine government (as quoted in Bello : –). These directions and other statements could be interpreted as attempts at stabilization, not reform (Jentleson : ). Gradually, as  passed, advisers close to Reagan became unified in their opposition to Marcos and pressured him to reform. A wide range of administration officials was openly critical. Still, the American policy remained deeply divided until the very end of Marcos’ rule. It supported the holding of elections in February  and sent several personal envoys who convinced Marcos of the need for elections, but it was prepared to live with him despite early allegations of election fraud (Kessler : ). In its first reaction to allegations of cheating, the White House stated that electoral fraud most likely had been committed “on both sides.” It soon reversed that position (Bonner : ). Mass Mobilization Drives out Marcos: 1983–1986

In the Philippines, Aquino’s assassination energized a broadly based social movement. It encompassed a diverse set of social groups, including the previously more or less apolitical middle class. Alternative newspapers became important platforms for the opposition. Several covered government corruption and military and police abuses (Gander and Rohter ). Mass protests over Aquino’s murder, initially spontaneous and unorganized, were channeled into political groupings, as the assassination united political organizations of various kinds. The various umbrella movements that developed regularly demanded that the government free all political prisoners, restore

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habeas corpus, and repeal repressive decrees. This largely urban mass movement distinguished itself from the previous opposition mainly by focusing on issues rather than individuals. The three key principles were human rights, national sovereignty (with a focus against military bases), and social justice (Lane ). Opposition politicians did their maneuvering within the context of a search for unity (Youngblood ). Although fissures remained in this opposition, too, the general spirit was constructive. By , clearly identifiable splits had developed between the ruling coalition and the military. As Marcos lost visible support from his most important ally, factional infighting within the ruling coalition became apparent, and further splits appeared in institutions that had long supported Marcos and his cronies. Even within KBL, cabinet members began criticizing Marcos for issuing presidential decrees and his patronage network. The military also split into two factions, one headed by General Fabian Ver and the other by Fidel Ramos, head of the Philippine Constabulary. The United States actively supported the Ramos faction, which legitimated itself domestically by urging investigations into alleged human rights violations by soldiers (Tasker ). In late , the Reform of the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) was launched in reaction to the arrest of General Ver and twenty-four other military men in connection with the Aquino assassination. Moreover, many offices were embarrassed over military abuses, graft, and corruption (Youngblood ). In November , Marcos finally announced that he would hold snap elections the following year. The Catholic church had recently emerged as a credible mediator between the government and opposition forces. Cardinal Sin’s intervention persuaded Salvador Laurel to let Corazon Aquino be the United Nationalist Democratic Organization’s (UNIDO) presidential candidate. His aides had carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages of Laurel and Aquino. They finally chose Aquino because she had more credibility in terms of the struggle for human rights and was not linked to pre-martial law politics, as Laurel was. Her inexperience in politics was seen as an advantage rather than a disadvantage (Diokno ). The international media played a major role in providing Aquino with the recognition and legitimacy denied her by the controlled media under Marcos, and she made human rights a key issue in the campaign. She would have received a majority of the votes had Marcos not manipulated the results. Marcos announced himself the winner of the elections, and Aquino called for a campaign of civil disobedience leading to mass protests.

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Regime change was eventually initiated by a coup of the soft-liners within the AFP. Two weeks after the election, Generals Enrile and Ramos staged a coup attempt, which finally ousted Marcos. Initially, they intended to unseat him and establish a military junta. But human rights had become so predominant in the domestic discourse and pointed so clearly to military responsibility for human rights violations that this plan was simply impossible. A crackdown on the military rebels was avoided through rising people power outside the military camp. The United States warned Marcos that it would immediately cut off military aid if his troops attacked the rebels. After the United States withdrew its support and offered asylum to him and his family, Marcos finally resigned. Conclusion: Transnational Mobilization under an Authoritarian Regime Just as the first years of transnational mobilization against the Philippine government had demonstrated the unexpected power of international norms, the increase of human rights violations after , including the resort to more repressive practices such as salvaging (extrajudicial executions) between  and , demonstrated the limitations of norms as a catalyst for political change. Transnational activism achieved significant results under an authoritarian regime, although its effects have varied over time. International public pressure generated by human rights groups, combined with pressure on a diplomatic level by the United States, provides a reasonable explanation for the human rights reforms of the Marcos government after . As international human rights organizations publicly contested the normative rationale of military-led modernization and engaged Marcos in a debate over human rights violations, he found he could not justify human rights violations and, by extension, martial law, leading to a process of normalization. But once these dramatic reforms had been introduced, the pressures from international human rights forces remained limited, primarily because political power was being redistributed on a domestic level and having a feedback effect on American policy toward the Philippines. Credible reports of systematic human rights violations and of Marcos’ cronyism and the mismatch between his rhetoric and action were increasingly pitted against public American support for him around –, leading to more radical opposition in the form of the communist underground movement. This allowed

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Marcos to portray himself as the only credible force that would prevent the Philippines from falling under communism and instrumentalize state security norms to help legitimize his continued political rule. This situation in which human rights norms had only a limited influence reminds us that, although norms can expand political opportunities for certain actors, they can also be overwhelmed by competing political interests. Yet, as this chapter makes clear, the years between Marcos’ introduction of a political liberalization and his ouster were characterized by two contradictory trends. Human rights advocates and church groups continued to mobilize around international human rights norms, aiming to delegitimize Marcos’ modernization arguments. Meanwhile, the Marcos government was increasingly willing to violate those same norms to safeguard the Philippine state from a communist takeover, a policy supported by some in the American administration.

5 Indonesia’s New Order 1986–1998: Transnational Advocacy and Human Rights Change

On November , , the Indonesian military massacred civilians in Dili, the capital of East Timor. The world watched in shock. On television, we saw Indonesian soldiers shooting at unarmed East Timorese civilians. We saw these civilians fleeing through a graveyard and hiding behind gravestones. We saw them shot by soldiers who followed them into the graveyard. Documented by two journalists, Alan Nairn and Amy Goodman, the massacre became instant international news. It mobilized people and governments around the world. In many Western and Australian cities, people took to the streets to demonstrate against the Indonesian government. The European Community, whose member governments were then convening in Noordvijk, Sweden, promptly issued a declaration condemning the massacre. Several Western states withheld financial assistance to the Indonesian government. Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Ali Alatas once described allegations over human rights violations in East Timor as a pebble in Indonesia’s shoe. By the late s, this pebble would become a major rock that the Suharto government could no longer ignore and would influence domestic politics. Following the St. Cruz massacre, another name for the Dili massacre, the Indonesian government introduced several measures to improve its human rights record. Among others, it established a national human rights commission that quickly gained a reputation for its relatively strong criticism of the military. For the next three years, the number of political activists detained under a so-called Anti-Subversion Law would drop substantially. In , the

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government dissolved a controversial security agency that had been accused of conducting arrests and detentions in a highly arbitrary way. What explains these unprecedented moves by the Suharto government toward accountability for human rights violations? Why did Suharto initiate reforms that would ultimately make his military-backed government crumble and give way to a process of democratization? A well-established literature argues that, in the early s, the Indonesian military had become dissatisfied with its political role and that it allowed public criticism, within limits, to undermine the political power of Suharto and thereby enhance its power. The military relaxed repression and did not intervene, for example, in the student protests of the late s because these students articulated a direct critique of President Suharto and his family. In response (and to counteract the growing influence of the military), Suharto started to strike back and introduced human rights reforms that exposed the military as a human rights violator and contained the military’s political influence. The self-destructive forces of intra-elite battles provided civil society organizations with political space and initiated the games of transition that no elite group could fully control. Human rights were a convenient tool that political actors could use to further their narrow political power goals by challenging the political legitimacy of their political opponents (Aspinall : chap. ; Bertrand ; Honna : ; Robison , ). Little evidence indicates that Suharto or the military introduced human rights reforms solely out of domestic concerns. The account does not explain why student protests posed a challenge to which the military reacted. Nor does it explain why human rights issues could be used as a tool to discredit an political opponent. It leaves unexplained why Suharto and the military were not able to control political dynamics when the human rights pressures threatened their very political survival. This becomes especially apparent in comparison to Indonesia in the s, as discussed in Chapter , which demonstrated that the New Order government was able to contain human rights pressures. An alternative explanation is that Suharto ultimately fell prey to its own success. He initiated a political liberalization. The main goal of military-led modernization had been achieved. It had created a stable polity with spectacular economic growth rates and a stable middle class; however, that role was disputed among scholars (Heryanto ; Robison ; Tanter and Young ). The Asian financial crisis of – ultimately wrecked the Suharto government, as it exposed the nepotism and corruption at the highest levels (Ganesan ). I do not argue that these explanations are wrong. I argue

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that this structural explanation ignores agency, the comprehensive political activities that contributed to Suharto’s fall and pushed Indonesian politics in an unprecedented direction toward human rights and democracy. In this chapter, I argue that the change of human rights policy under Suharto cannot be explained without considering the activities of transnational human rights advocacy. In the late s, there were virtually no domestic signs that the Suharto government would change substantially. Many even regarded it as a stable “democracy with attributes,” Pancasila democracy (Liddle ; Pabottingi ). Journalists and many academics expected a political transition that would leave the military’s power untouched (Suryadinata ; Ramage ; Vatikiotis ). My argument therefore connects to more general arguments in international relations on the influence that transnational advocacy networks have on authoritarian governments. I show that, as early as , international human rights groups started lobbying and advocating for a greater respect of human rights in Indonesia and East Timor. Two influential reports, one on human rights violations in East Timor and the other on Muslim prisoners of conscience, focused international attention on the policies of the Suharto government. The report on East Timor soon galvanized international opposition against the Indonesian military (Angatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia [ABRI]), leading to the opening of the previously closed territory in . The concession to international pressures backfired. As the self-determination movement and the Indonesian democratization movement established stronger network ties, the military became a target of a comprehensive domestic and international campaigns challenging its outstanding political role, a role that political parties and the Indonesian population had almost taken for granted as inevitable and normal. Thus, as transnational human rights advocacy emerged, actors changed rules of appropriateness for Indonesia’s government and the powerful military. This chapter confirms one of the central arguments in this literature. Once transnational advocacy networks emerge and develop a powerful mobilizing frame, governments that violate human rights are prompted to make tactical concessions. Furthermore, these tactical concessions provide opportunities for domestic actors to mobilize, and this mobilization will elicit more comprehensive reforms (Jetschke ; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink ). Throughout this chapter, I continue to develop the central theme of the book: that the norms about human rights are contested on the ground through arguments related to state security, arguments that also connect to international standards of legitimacy in an international community.

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Although the story in this chapter is one of success for transnational mobilization, my focus on the discourse of human rights in Indonesia shows that human rights were highly contested there. Human rights norms were forced to compete with arguments for state security, but those arguments drew on engrained norms that value the political stability and secular character of states in a world polity and resonated among particular groups in Indonesia. And these rules were, of course, also deeply embedded in (and emblematic of) the military-led modernization discourse that had so all-embracingly set the tone and limits of political developments since the mid-s (van Langenberg : ). I proceed as follows. The first section describes early activities of human rights organizations to bring human rights violations in East Timor on an international agenda. I then show how actors inside and outside Indonesia utilized changed normative understandings about what is appropriate state behavior in the early s to pressure the Suharto government for political reforms. Unlike in the s, this time, the Indonesian government did not find a justification that would legitimate its authoritarian outlook. Given public human rights pressures and no active defenses against them, it introduced human rights institutions that developed a life of their own. The third section describes key norm dynamics. Here I focus on instances in which Indonesia’s democratic transformation and the upsurge of local insurgencies and ethnic-religious conflicts provided the military with opportunities to reframe the human rights and democracy cause promoted by human rights organizations by skillfully playing out domestic divisions. I show how transnational activism overcame this challenge. The conclusion provides a summary of this path-dependent process. The Evolution of the Transnational East Timor Network: 1985–1988 Substantial historical evidence points to changes in Indonesia’s international context and indicates that Suharto’s reforms were influenced by specific international events. Starting around , Indonesia again walked onto the international human rights stage. The  political trial of members of the Petition Fifty, along with the executions in  and  of long-term political prisoners who had spent more than twenty years in prison, attracted international attention. But it was the issue of East Timor that proved to have the most damaging effect on the Indonesian government’s international reputation—and at a time when the government had officially declared that

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East Timor had returned to a state of normalcy and had been successfully integrated. It was precisely this assertion that invited NGOs to scrutinize the human rights situation on the ground and challenge the government’s assertion. In , human rights organizations took up the issue of human rights violations in East Timor and published a report that pulled the Indonesian government into a substantial process of public argumentation over human rights practices in the territory. Why would East Timor assume such a significant role in Indonesia’s human rights discourse? And why would human rights, in general, assume greater significance? The first factor is that, legally speaking, the East Timor question was still unresolved. Although the majority of states had silently accepted East Timor’s integration with Indonesia, formally, the chapter on the territory was not closed. The most visible expression of East Timor’s unfinished struggle was the regular discussions in the United Nation’s decolonization committee, which provided an opportunity for the self-determination movement to channel its demands. Moreover, the end of the Cold War changed the international context in which this question could be debated. Indonesia’s strategic importance for the United States declined, providing political space for human rights groups. In comparative perspective, this does not explain, however, why East Timor assumed such a central role for Indonesia’s human rights practice when other territories did not affect democratization in a similar way, as we see in the relationship between the Western Sahara and Morocco. A second factor is that a well-strategized shift among the domestic opposition in East Timor provided a better resonance with both international human rights norms and the domestic opposition in Indonesia. Several issues contributed to this development. First, the opposition groups in East Timor united and refrained from armed resistance in their encounters with the Indonesian military. Partly, this was a necessity. In the early s, military operations by the Indonesian military had effectively reduced Falintil’s military strength to just a few hundred soldiers. Falintil is the military organization of Fretilin. As a consequence, Fretilin was forced to abandon its strategy of maintaining permanent bases and created clandestine organizations behind enemy lines and in the so-called strategic villages and population camps that the military controlled (Pinto and Jardine : ). A series of cease-fires with the Indonesian military further undermined the impression that Fretilin was involved in a civil war (Carey : ). The organization strengthened its contacts with young Timorese in the cities and

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encouraged a policy of non-violent resistance (Schwarz : ). But these developments changed the military’s pattern of repression. Because Fretilin members were part of the civilian population, but indistinguishable from them, more civilians became victims of human rights abuses as the military fought Fretilin, and now those civilians filed complaints with the local churches. In turn, these developments galvanized the local Catholic church to act. Because local military authorities did not deal with the complaints brought before them, the church decided to channel information on human rights violations to the outside world. The Catholic church was in a unique position to act as channel of information. East Timor was the subject of an international dispute. The Vatican did not attach the diocese to the Bishop’s Conference of Indonesia, but administered it directly from Rome via the pronuncio’s office in Jakarta (Archer : ). Thus, the church was the only local institution that communicated independently with the outside world (Carey : ). Its involvement proved to be crucial because it was seen as undeniably impartial and in a position to undermine the controlled information environment of Indonesian authorities. The East Timorese bishop, Marthinho da Costa Lopes, complained publicly about the arbitrary and repressive attitude of the Indonesian military and urged Jakarta to grant access to journalists and independent observers to evaluate the situation (“The Timorese Will Fight to the End,” Interview with Martinho da Costa Lopes ). This information on human rights abuses allowed international human rights organizations to scrutinize Indonesia’s human rights practice more thoroughly and to reframe the East Timor issue from a case of self-determination to one of human rights and the personal integrity of individuals. This altered the gravitational center of the network, allowing it to shift from classical resistance to human rights advocacy. It also brought more impartial actors into the network, including the international human rights organizations and the church. Thus, the identity of actors in the network changed, as did the framing of the East Timor issue. These activities by non-state actors are but one necessary condition (Keck and Sikkink : f). Amnesty International’s Reports on Human Rights in Indonesia: 1986–1987

In June , Amnesty International published a major report on human rights in East Timor, explicitly taking no position on self-determination

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and focusing exclusively on the right to personal integrity (Amnesty International : f). It contrasted the government’s positive evaluation of conditions in East Timor with the actual situation on the ground. The government had claimed that life in East Timor had returned to normal, that the East Timorese were successfully integrated, and that the government had succeeded in extinguishing the military resistance there. But human rights violations persisted. Even “at this time of supposed normality, arrests and extrajudicial executions were still being carried out,” said Amnesty International. Moreover, Indonesian troops had generally acted outside the framework of the law, and no one could constrain the military’s illegal activity. In short, the military conducted itself “in an arbitrary fashion towards the general population” (Amnesty International : ). Amnesty International intended that its detailed documentation on individual abuses would prove its claims. If the Indonesian government was in control of the territory and had formal jurisdiction, then it was accountable for human rights violations. But targeting the Suharto government on East Timor was only one aim. Another one was to reveal that the military’s practices harmed not only the supposed anti-integrationists, but also Muslims in Indonesia. Only a year after the East Timor report, Amnesty International and Tapol, a human rights organization originally founded in the s to focus on the fate of political prisoners in Indonesia, published comprehensive reports on Muslim political prisoners, documenting the Indonesian government’s policy of human rights violations against alleged fundamentalist Muslims and equally making the case that the government lacked political legitimacy. These reports focused on the Tanjung Priok massacre of September  when security units shot into a crowd of Muslim demonstrators, killing several people. The reports also challenged the political legitimacy of the military, seeing its political role as a key impediment to greater respect for human rights. Analyzing the politicized trials of members of the Petition of Fifty, a small group of retired generals who had voiced cautious criticism of the Suharto government, both organizations claimed the military-backed Indonesian government was exaggerating an Islamist threat in order to escape demands for comprehensive political reforms (Amnesty International ; Tapol ). The reports constituted a systematic attempt to link two official taboos, East Timor and political Islam in one frame, and to make them instances of the same argument. The Suharto government used separatist opposition

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and Islamic opposition as rationalizations for maintaining authoritarian rule, but these justifications were no longer appropriate and merely served the government’s power interests. The linking of these taboos was an excellent strategy and crucial to the credibility of international human rights organizations. Any special focus on the human rights of Catholics would have likely resonated negatively among Muslim groups and given the Suharto government a chance to fend off pressures on its military. But as they were framed, the reports increased the authenticity and credibility of the human rights networks in the eyes of the domestic Indonesian Muslim community. As Carmel Budjiardo, Tapol’s director, remarked, Tapol previously had no links to human rights organizations in Indonesia because the government had branded it as pro-communist and not a pure human rights organization. Many groups in Indonesia saw “Muslims on Trial” as a “final proof—if such was needed—that” Tapol did “not restrict itself to defending only Communist prisoners.” International Pressures Build to Open East Timor

The unexpected attention to human rights in East Timor and Indonesia clashed with the Indonesian government’s diplomatic offensive, which aimed to improve its international reputation and present it as a successful model among developing states. The government had become more confident based on its economic success, its ability to maintain social peace and harmony, and its leadership within the regional organization, ASEAN. Another change was Indonesia’s greater material vulnerability toward these pressures. The oil boom, which had significantly financed the Indonesian economy and weaned Indonesia’s dependence on foreign aid, increased. Between  and , Indonesia’s debt service would run up to  percent of its gross national product, as compared to  percent in  (World Bank ). In this situation of increased material vulnerability, transnational human rights activism began to interfere with the government’s reputation of itself. And internationally, the political claims transmitted with the information on East Timor resonated more and more. International forums repeatedly called on the Indonesian government to open the territory to outside observers. They also revived activities in the UN. In , several NGOs asked to make presentations at the UN Commission on Human Rights. Specifically, they referred to reliable information that had recently been received “concerning the continued practice of torture” (United Nations Economic and Social Council. Commission on Human

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Rights ). The commission did take up the issue, as did its Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination against Minorities. In , a bipartisan group of  House members urged United States Secretary of State George P. Shultz to pressure Suharto to open up East Timor. In their letter, published in the New York Times, the senators explicitly referred to information obtained by Amnesty International (“ Senators Ask Shultz’s Help on East Timor” ; see also Bentley : ). Tony P. Hall argued, “We cannot overlook the situation in East Timor, where . . . people are living under a military regime imposed by force.” They were not swayed by Jakarta’s claim that the reports about human rights violations were part of a misinformation campaign. In , the senators reiterated their calls, referring to “repeated reports by Roman Catholic and humanitarian organizations” (Halloran ). For several years, they repeated their demand, and the number of signers grew steadily (Human Rights Watch : ; Taylor : ). Portugal was still the administrative power in East Timor, and it continued to speak up for the East Timorese. Its  accession to the European Community (EC) meant it could get important backing from other European countries. Starting in , the EC Parliament issued resolutions to open the territory. Criticism came not only from Western countries, but also from Indonesia’s own in-group. It failed to become the chair of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) because of resistance among influential members of the NAM that supported East Timor. In March , the European Parliament issued a resolution on the human rights situation there. It urged the government to respect the freedom of the press and to stop human rights violations (Europäisches Parlament a). In June , these demands received surprising support from East Timor’s Governor Mario Carrascalao, who wrote to President Suharto and asked him to lift travel restrictions so the province could return to normal (Feith ). As international pressure intensified, moderates within the Indonesian cabinet were increasingly willing to respond to international demands. The Indonesian government began to perceive the East Timor issue as an impediment to its aspirations to develop its international profile. Indonesia’s new foreign minister, Ali Alatas, saw this especially clearly (Vatikiotis ). Even advisors close to Suharto, and cabinet members such as Interior Minister Rudini, now supported the opening. Hadi Soesastro, Suharto’s economic advisor, argued that maintaining East Timor “as a special and closed province results . . . in a variety of abuses by the authorities” (Hadi Soesastro, as

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cited in Singh : ). In August , the government invited a delegation from the European Parliament to address the critique (Vatikiotis ). In December , in another resolution, the EC Parliament sharply condemned violations of human rights, including the detention of , persons who had been officially charged with subversion (Europäisches Parlament b). In response to these continuing demands, Suharto eventually issued Presidential Decree No. , which would open the previously closed province. Other steps followed that were supposed to enhance Indonesia’s credibility in the eyes of its critics. In late , Suharto replaced hard-line military commander Brigadier General Mulyadi with Brigadier General Rudolph Warouw, who promised to promote a more persuasive approach to the antiintegrationists. Among other measures, Warouw released batches of political prisoners and made torture a less widespread interrogation technique (Feith : ; Schwarz : ). The East Timor Political Opposition: Increased Access to International Publicity Suharto’s decision to open up East Timor backfired, as the publicity changed the political context for the military and introduced previously unknown constraints on its behavior. Independent organizations gained access to East Timor. One commentator stated that government “policies in the province since  became more transparent, showing up what has and has not been undertaken in the province since integration.” Moreover, the better information now available about various allegations of abuses placed “greater pressure on the government” (Singh : ). The government lost its information monopoly on the province. It could no longer contain allegations (Vatikiotis ). For the first time since , the presence of foreign journalists gave the East Timorese access to international publicity. Changing their strategies to draw attention to their plight, they provoked military reactions that increased the impression of a repressive military. Meanwhile, as ABRI under Warouw took a less repressive approach to the East Timorese resistance, they became less afraid of persecution (Pinto and Jardine : chap. ; Vatikiotis ). And the many high-profile visits let the resistance address an international audience. The pope visited in October , providing the youth a chance to stage a pro-independence demonstration. Immediately after the pope left Dili, the military cracked down on the suspected organizers of the

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demonstration, attracting international attention. Other opportunities arose to explicitly address an international public: • The fiftieth anniversary celebration of the diocese of Dili • American Ambassador John Monjo’s visit in  • The  march to the St. Cruz cemetery (which then turned into a massacre) (Carey : ; Feith : ). Constancio Pinto, leader of the civilian opposition, recounted that in, “thinking of how we might take advantage of the Pope’s visit,” which looked like a crucial opportunity, they agreed “a demonstration would be the most effective way to embarrass Indonesia internationally” (Pinto and Jardine : ). Minor incidents, such as people shouting “Free East Timor” and others raising the East Timorese flag, provoked harsh responses from the military, which saw these actions in security terms. During political demonstrations while Monjo visited, Benny Murdani, then the chief of the armed forces warned: Don’t dream about having a state of Timtim [East Timor]. There is no such thing! . . . There have been bigger rebellions; there have been greater differences of opinion with the government than the small number calling themselves Fretilin, or whoever their sympathizers are here. We will crush them all! This is not in order to crush East Timorese but to safeguard the unity of Indonesian territory physically and in other ways. (As quoted in Schwarz : ) International concern over human rights violations revived negotiations between the Indonesian and Portuguese governments under UN sponsorship. Under the terms of the negotiations, Jakarta agreed to invite a Portuguese delegation and the UN special rapporteur on torture to the territory in . When the Portuguese delegation cancelled its long-awaited visit, tensions peaked, leading to the Santa Cruz massacre in Dili on November , , described at the start of this chapter. During the international outcry that followed, the Indonesian military reacted with a nationalist fervor that shocked the international public. Indonesian Armed Forces Commander Try Sutrisno accused foreign journalists of helping organize the procession and vehemently denied it had been peaceful. To the Indonesian audience,

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he explained the Timorese “continued to be obstinate. . . . Finally, yes, they had to be blasted. Delinquents like these agitators have to be shot and we will shoot them” (as quoted in Schwarz : ). East Timor had seen even larger massacres in the past. But this time, the world had been watching, and the Indonesian government could not get away with the massacre. International condemnation came swiftly. Meeting in Noordvijk, Norway, on November , , the foreign ministers of the EC condemned the killings. The United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and Denmark announced they would suspend financial aid to Indonesia and supported calls for an investigation. Members of the Japanese Diet said financial aid would be conditioned on the outcome of an investigating commission (Feith : ; Schulte-Nordholt : f). A wave of anti-Indonesian demonstrations broke out in Australia (Tirtosudarmo : ). American Embassy staff visited East Timor several times to check allegations of abuses. One week after the St. Cruz Massacre, the United States Senate issued a resolution demanding that the UN send a special rapporteur to investigate. Senator Claiborne Pell’s justification for the measure is but one example of how the government’s image changed after the massacre. He alleged that Indonesia was “out of step with a changing world bent on greater respect for human rights and self-determination.” He said the event “cast serious doubt on Indonesia’s ability to be a civilized nation” (as quoted in Aarons and Domm ). Given the almost unanimous international condemnation and spurred by contradicting statements on the number of victims, the Indonesian government took an unprecedented and costly step. Suharto decided to establish a National Investigating Commission, led by a retired Supreme Court judge, Major General Djaelani. State Secretary Murdiono, a close Suharto aide, admitted that concerns for public opinion played a role in the decision. “If we didn’t care about international opinion, we would never have set up the commission” (as quoted in Schwarz : ). The Indonesian armed forces information center announced it would check an Amnesty International report for names of missing people. Within a month, on December , , the commission produced a report, which was exceptionally critical given the previous attitude toward human rights issues. The report revised upwards the earlier army figures on the number of victims and criticized the army for not using proper riot control procedures. The report also demanded action against everyone involved in the “ November incident” (Schwarz : ). Based on the findings, President Suharto retired two Indonesian generals and

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sought prosecutions against seventeen other members of the military (Baehr ; Feith : ; Schulte-Nordholt : ). International Scrutiny of Indonesia’s Human Rights Practice in the United Nations These disciplinary actions against the Indonesian military, though unprecedented, did not satisfy an international public interested in human rights. The UN became an important forum where the Indonesian government was asked to account for those who disappeared in the massacre and to explain its later steps toward a greater respect for human rights. Here, the major dialogue developed about the interpretation of this event. What kind of situation was it? Human rights organizations claimed the St. Cruz massacre showed a general disregard for human rights standards and exemplified a systematic pattern of human rights violations. The government denied this. Indonesia’s representative at the UN stated, “What had happened in Dili had been an incident and not a massacre, as some speakers had stubbornly claimed. [It] had nothing to do with the policy of the Indonesian Government nor did it reflect deliberate action on the part of the military authority in East Timor” (United Nations Economic and Social Council ). He said that human rights NGOs were providing “exaggerated and dramatized” statements or distributing “false and uncorroborated allegations or incitements” of separatist elements (United Nations Economic and Social Council ). At the same time, it admitted to some human rights problems and agreed to set up “a national commission on human rights” (United Nations Economic and Social Council : para ). Initially, the argument that the St. Cruz massacre did not represent a government policy seemed to be convincing. For the general public, Indonesia had no reputation as a human rights violator. Moreover, the government backed rhetoric with unprecedented actions. Given their economic interests in Indonesia, this allowed individual governments and experts at the UN to take the Suharto government’s claims at face value. The Japanese, Australian, and Canadian governments expressed their displeasure over the massacre through private channels, but regarded the human rights violations as aberrations rather than the results of systematic policies (Kingston : ). Because the government was willing to seek clarification about the military’s role in the killings, the major aid donors—the United States, Japan, and

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the World Bank—withdrew their threats and continued the aid. The three countries that had suspended disbursements resumed them (Feith : ; Schulte-Nordholt : ). On a diplomatic front, the Indonesian government initially succeeded in closing ranks behind itself. In a diplomatic offensive, Foreign Minister Ali Alatas secured important symbolic backing when he managed to secure greater development assistance from major donors. The government led a diplomatic counterattack against the Dutch in retaliation for taking the lead to condemn Indonesia in international forums (Baehr : ). Given its successful diplomatic efforts to secure financial assistance and to prevent a UN resolution, Indonesia was widely seen as having overcome the challenge of the massacre. Key members of the international public had accepted its account of the massacre, which focused on organizational rationality and the military’s overreaction to an unforeseen event. Some scholars even argued that, by allowing the Djaelani commission to investigate the military’s violations of human rights, Suharto had managed to get out of the crisis with his personal power strengthened (Bertrand ; Schwarz ). They saw Suharto’s decision to establish the commission as a strategic action to calm down international critics and hold his political competitors in check. While not wrong, this explanation overlooks two important facts. First, Suharto might have succeeded in fending off international pressures in the short term, but he could not control this challenge in the long term. Second, Suharto actually had little choice. The international political legitimacy of his government hinged on his responding appropriately to such an important incident. Internationally, a wide range of audiences now shared the human rights frame. They constituted the intersubjective standard by which to judge the situation in Indonesia. Moreover, even if these audiences did accept the government’s explanation, that account depended on its credibility and its sincerity in accounting for the massacre victims and complying with established procedures for handling such extraordinary incidents. But UN bodies charged with looking into the situation frequently complained that the Indonesian government did not cooperate in efforts to account for victims. This cast doubt on the government’s claim that the Dili massacre constituted an exception. A major dispute developed on the number of victims,  according to the government and over  according to human rights organizations. The Catholic church and other NGOs provided international observers with comprehensive information on the number of disappeared (Haseman ). This gave

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third parties an opportunity to decide the debate. UN Secretary-General Bhoutros Bhoutros-Ghali dispatched a personal envoy, Amos Wako, of Kenya to Indonesia and East Timor to follow up on the recommendations of his first visit as special rapporteur on torture in February  and to conduct an overall assessment of the human rights situation. His findings also contradicted the Indonesian government’s account, especially with regard to the number of disappeared. Jakarta’s handling of Fretilin’s leader Xanana Gusmão drew headlines. He had been in jail since November  in a government attempt to contain the political fallout from the St. Cruz massacre. But, from Cipinang prison in Jakarta, he smuggled out letters in which he condemned Indonesian rule over East Timor. In , he was tried in an Indonesian court with heavy publicity from international media and unprecedented access by human rights organizations. But when he used the court to present an indictment of Jakarta’s rule in East Timor, the government clamped down. It suspended visits to the prison by the International Committee of the Red Cross, stating that Xanana had “blackened Indonesia’s name in the eyes of the world” (as quoted in Human Rights Watch Asia : ). A New York Times editorial condemned Xanana Gusmão’s trial as a “mockery of justice” because judges had suppressed the defense’s statement. According to the editorial, “Indonesia has only tarnished itself, not its prisoner” (“The Verdict on Two Courts: Indonesia’s Silenced Accuser” ). In , members of the UN Commission on Human Rights again tried to persuade the Indonesian government to accept a “chairman’s statement,” which criticized the government for failing to cooperate with investigations into the massacre. When the government vehemently rejected this proposal, the commission members adopted a resolution censuring Indonesia for its human rights violations in East Timor. The United States supported it. Australia expressed its discontent by abstaining. For many years, both countries had voted in favor of Indonesia (United Nations Economic and Social Council ; Schwarz : ). The Dili massacre turned out to be critical juncture in the discourse over human rights in Indonesia and East Timor. Its influence extended far beyond the national and international investigations into the shootings. The human rights discourse over East Timor not only legitimized domestic opposition groups in East Timor, but also domestic groups in Indonesia, who took up the issue. For East Timor activists, human rights norms presented an opportunity to justify demands for self-determination, but, for Indonesian activists,

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they provided an opportunity to link human rights with demands to remove the military from domestic politics. The activities of these groups and their strategies will be described in the next section. Human Rights Organizations in Indonesia—Growth and Reorientation: 1991–1996 Domestically, the Indonesian government’s initial reaction to international criticism of the massacre opened the floodgates to an unprecedented public criticism of ABRI, especially for its incompetence during the massacre (Singh : ). ABRI had held an exalted position in society and was rarely criticized in public, so the combination of the Djaelani Report and President Suharto’s comments was a major blow to its prestige. The army had hardly ever been held accountable for its human rights violations. Now, it could no longer count on impunity (Liddle ). These developments had observable effects. Civil society organizations, both inside and outside of Indonesia, grew and reoriented their framing of political claims toward the government. As they could not have done in the s, Indonesian NGOs now took full advantage of the new international context as they mobilized against the regime’s repressive features. International and domestic NGOs changed their tactics. They brought together the two weakly connected network structures of East Timor and Indonesia and mobilized domestic action by providing resources and platforms that Indonesian activists could use to get information to foreign governments. In the United States, activists who had previously worked with other solidarity movements on Central America founded the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) in December . ETAN soon lobbied to end American military assistance to Indonesia and thus brought additional attention to human rights concerns. ETAN took an unambiguous stance on the East Timor issue. A solution would require a referendum for self-determination (Simpson b). Linked through the International Federation for East Timor (IFET), a network connecting support groups worldwide, ETAN quickly developed into a crucial node in the vast network of solidarity groups working on human rights and democracy in Indonesia and East Timor. By , East Timor solidarity groups existed in more than twenty countries (Simpson b: ). Between  and , ETAN expanded from a handful of people to a dozen local chapters and, by , had doubled in size again. It organized speaking tours in the United States of East Timorese who had

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witnessed or experienced atrocities. It also started (and continues to operate) an Internet portal that regularly distributes newspaper articles from Indonesia and Western countries on East Timor. Equally important was the vast church network that converted concerns for human rights in East Timor, whose population is predominantly Catholic, into public pressures by Western states. In the early s, the Indonesian churches joined church efforts to find a negotiated solution to the East Timor question. Their change of position had great symbolic value. In the s, the church was deeply split over the question of self-determination for East Timor, with the Indonesian Protestant church not supporting the cause (Taylor : –). It had accepted the official policy that East Timor had been integrated (Archer : ). In , the Vatican recalled the acting bishop of the East Timorese church, Martinho da Costa Lopes, an outspoken critic of the Indonesian occupation, under pressure from Indonesia’s pro-nuncio in Jakarta (Taylor : ). In , the youth delegation of the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) brought up the subject of East Timor at the conference’s general assembly. The Indonesian delegates left the hall in protest and suspended their membership in the CCA for five years (Clement John : ; Pattiasina ). The World Council of Churches (WCC) was also active and organized several seminars on the East Timor question. An ecumenical delegation representing the CCA and the WCC visited East Timor in April . It met with Brigadier General Theo Syafei, the military commander of East Timor, who identified the Roman Catholic church as the “principal source of tension in the province” and declared “he would take a hard line against all voices of dissent” (as quoted in John : ). An Indonesian human rights activist told me in an interview that Indonesian human rights organizations had previously not worked on human rights in East Timor for two main reasons. Doing so would have confirmed the government’s view that the territory had been integrated. And NGOs did not want to overtly challenge the military, which had imposed a taboo on the issue. This had also been the strategy of many Western NGOs. They had earlier focused exclusively on either the Indonesian democracy movement or the East Timor solidarity movement. Now they changed. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch now focused simultaneously on Indonesia and East Timor (Amnesty International a, a; Asia Watch ). Other organizations did the same, such as the Australian organization AKSI (Action in Solidarity with

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Indonesia). In Indonesia, domestic human rights organizations organized their own conferences on East Timor, a development that Anders Uhlin calls a “significant new trend in increasingly broad sections of the prodemocracy movement” (Uhlin ). This connected to a new generation of mostly student NGO activists. Earlier, welfare-oriented NGOs had dominated the domestic NGO scene, mobilizing opposition against development projects such as the World Bank–financed Kedung Ombo dam project or generally highlighting how the Suharto government’s development policy was hurting the Indonesian population (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and Elsam : f; Riker ). Until the early s, few of these NGOs had taken up civil and political rights issues. In fact, the Indonesian NGO Forum for Indonesian Development (INFID) explicitly avoided sensitive human rights issues because it feared being delivered “into the hands of the military” (“Reining in the NGOs” ). Because it regarded Amnesty International’s working methods as too confrontational, even in the mid-s, INFID had no contacts with it or Tapol. But now, the focus changed. After the St. Cruz massacre, prominent Indonesian human rights organizations criticized the military’s conduct. LBH (the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute), Infight (the Indonesian Front for Human Rights), LPHAM (Institute for the Defense of Human Rights), and the League to Uphold Justice denounced the killings and urged authorities to set up a fact-finding commission to determine the number of victims (“Human Rights NGOs Meet DPR Members” ; “Indonesian Army Kills at least  Timorese: LBH Tells Army to Investigate” ). Infight sent a delegation to Parliament and organized student protests in Jakarta. Six days after the massacre, students demonstrated outside the office of the UN representative in Jakarta. Some were later interrogated by the military and police. The same day, the Yogyakarta-based Students Association circulated by fax a petition on East Timor. It urged the government to “reconsider the fake process of integration” and to initiate a referendum on East Timor (as quoted in Aditjondro b). A coalition of twelve student councils, meeting at a university in Bandung, held a protest rally and sent faxes to international actors asking that Indonesian troops be withdrawn from East Timor. The rally was timidly covered by the Indonesian weekly, Tempo (Aditjondro b). Although underground organizations had distributed information on East Timor before the massacre, critics now became public and more outspoken. One group published pamphlets on pro-East Timor organizations. Calling

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itself the Islamic Front for Democracy and Human Rights in Indonesia (PIJAR), it translated articles from the British activist magazine Tapol Bulletin and other publications (“Interview of Robert Domm with Xanana Gusmao, ). PIJAR published the defense plea of Fernando de Araujo, the leader of the underground East Timorese student organization Renetil, and the report by Bacre Waky Ndiaye, the UN special rapporteur on torture, after he visited East Timor in  (Aditjondro b). Infight issued its own report on the massacre. It would not let the government get away with the tactical concession of an investigative commission that lacked credibility in the eyes of domestic NGOs. Infight argued that Suharto was not committed to improving the human rights situation, whatever he claimed publicly. “In reality, Suharto is clearly no human rights hero, and there can be little improvement in the Indonesian human rights situation without significant structural change” (Infight : f). Between  and , a dense student network developed in Indonesia. Its underground publications regularly covered issues on East Timor and human rights abuses in Indonesia. In , Student Solidarity for Indonesian Democracy (SMID) was founded. Along with the People’s Democratic Party (PRD), it gained a wide reputation inside and outside Indonesia. In , the Indonesian Centre for Human Rights Studies (Yapusham) emerged, specializing in publicizing human rights violations. It published its own journal, Index, and later the Human Rights Journal and deliberately modeled itself after the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines. In June , SMID launched its first pro-East Timor mass action. Other actions included publicity-generating sit-ins at foreign embassies and anti-military demonstrations in East Javanese cities. These actions generated political support among more senior democracy activists, such as Gunawan Mohammad, the editor of Tempo, the news magazine that would be banned in . Muchtar Pakpahan, the prominent labor leader, joined the pro-East Timor movement and publicly indicated his support for a referendum on East Timor (Aditjondro b: ). In sum, as international networks grew in size and density, so did the domestic network, providing much greater opportunities to challenge the Indonesian government (Uhlin ). One important trend among these organizations was that activists made human rights a higher priority than the unity of Indonesia. Human rights activist Liem Soei Liong said, “Many new activists do not regard the unitary state of Indonesia as sacred. The

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struggle for democracy and for human rights is regarded as more important than rigid views about nation states” (Liem Soei Liong ). The Rhetoric-Practice Gap and the Dynamic of Reform As the public dialogue over Indonesia’s human rights practices continued, it drew in and mobilized more and more external actors. Increasingly, other governments and international organizations acted as final arbiters on claims. An emerging structure of transnational governance—through international NGOs, the UN, an attentive international press, and individual governments—assumed three important functions. It monitored the government’s human rights practice, it protected Indonesian opposition figures and thus increased their chance to survive politically and physically, and it occasionally sanctioned violations. In contrast to the Philippines, where the American government acted as sole enforcer of international norms under the Carter administration, more countries were involved in Indonesia. The American government under President Bill Clinton adopted a proactive human rights policy that consisted of regular public statements in support of human rights in Indonesia and East Timor. The EC (European Union from  onwards) addressed human rights issues through bilateral and multilateral forums such as the Asia-Europe Meeting (Wiessala ). In October , the United States Congress voted to cut off aid to Indonesia under its program for military education and training (IMET) because solidarity groups in the United States, most importantly, ETAN, had made the training controversial given the human rights violations. A congressional committee investigated whether members of the military involved in the St. Cruz shootings had received American training (United States General Accounting Office ). And during its summit with ASEAN, the EU addressed human rights issues. In contrast to the American government, however, the EU did not condition financial assistance on an improvement in human rights. Now, the domestic institutions of Indonesia’s political system came under scrutiny. Human rights organizations evaluated the government’s claim that the massacre was only an isolated incident. In February , the International Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR) released a report on torture and the right to redress in Indonesia. Its conclusion was a compelling indictment. “The political structure of the state” was “the fundamental obstacle” to preventing torture and ensuring the right to redress. Until

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the government recognized the “importance of constitutionalism” and “an independent judiciary,” there was “little chance that the problems” could be addressed (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ). The report essentially argued that torture was a standard procedure and eliminating it would require a change of government. Along with other groups, the LCHR demanded that Indonesia repeal its Anti-Subversion Law. This report led to the resolution by the Human Rights Commission, mentioned above. Now, many individual events helped to institutionalize this perspective. In July , the government banned the first national congress of the independent labor organization, the Prosperous Workers Union of Indonesia (Serikat Buruh Sejahtera Indonesia [SBSI]). SBSI had been founded in  by pro-democracy activists in an effort to organize the first workers’ union outside officially state-sanctioned structures. Its members had faced harassment. In June , two members of the Medan branch were arrested without warrant and then tortured. In this case, Human Rights Watch was quick to focus on the abuses, and SBSI had already attracted considerable attention. So when the government banned the congress, the move invited stern criticism from the United States, which castigated Indonesia for refusing to pursue an impartial investigation. Then a popular labor leader called Marsinah was tortured, strangled, and mutilated. Her case received wide domestic press coverage and galvanized the labor movement in Indonesia (Ufen : ). It was also taken up by several human rights organizations and the UN rapporteur on torture. The Clinton administration warned it would consider withdrawing Indonesia’s privileges under the generalized system of preferences (GSP) if the government did not cooperate on promoting workers’ rights and investigating the Marsinah case. In February , SBSI called for another strike. Two days before its scheduled date, the government arrested its chairman, Muchtar Pakpahan, and twenty other unionists. A Far Eastern Economic Review article said the action displayed “an ill-conceived sense of timing . . . in the face of international critique over workers’ rights [it] astonished many observers” (McBeth : ). Pakpahan and others were charged with inciting hatred against the government. The strike eventually mobilized about , workers, who demanded the government officially acknowledge the newly established SBSI and raise the minimum wage enough to guarantee an adequate standard of living. The demonstration organized by SBSI led to riots in which several shops of economically powerful ethnic Chinese were plundered. Members of

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NGOs and SBSI were detained, and one was tortured. Four months later, Pakpahan was detained and again charged with incitement (Ufen : ), an action that Human Rights Watch Asia branded as “a pretext for cracking down on the independent labor movement and deflecting attention from the grievances of the workers” (Human Rights Watch Asia : ). The case was taken up by several international NGOs, among them the International Federation of Labor Unions, and eventually drew the attention of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. In October , the Working Group conveyed its decision to the Indonesian government. Based on the information transmitted by the government, it said Pakpahan and three other suspects arrested in relation to the riots “were doing no more than exercise their rights to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association” (United Nations Economic and Social Council : ). Pakpahan was convicted in an Indonesian court, but remained free, another unprecedented action. International attention also protected another key opposition figure from imprisonment, Sri Bintang Pamungkas, a prominent Muslim democracy activist and economist at the University of Indonesia. Pamungkas was charged on “insulting the head of state” because he had publicly criticized the New Order at the Berlin Technological University in . His lecture coincided with a state visit to Germany by President Suharto, which was marked by demonstrations against human rights violations in Indonesia. Several human rights organizations lobbied for his unconditional release. Pamungkas was sentenced to a prison term, but released pending the outcome of his appeal, an action that would have been unthinkable earlier. Another government move that provoked a sharp critique from both international and domestic audiences was the June  revocation of publishing licenses of three popular weeklies: Tempo, Detik, and Editor. For the next two months, students, NGO activists, workers’ unions, and parliamentarians demonstrated against these closures. For the first time in New Order Indonesia, the bans provoked a long and continuous series of protests across different islands of the archipelago (Ufen : ). These interactions contributed to the image that the Indonesian government acted arbitrarily. Despite these incidences of harassment, the Indonesian authorities responded to the post-Dili increase in dissent and social mobilization with unprecedented tolerance. The mere fact that independent groups were allowed to exist after  contrasts sharply with the intolerance of opposition so evident just a few years earlier.

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As Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (Keck and Sikkink : ) have pointed out, constituent mobilization is the key to network success. We can observe this in the case of the transnational advocacy network’s activities. International human rights organizations carefully selected exemplary cases of human rights violations in Indonesia and East Timor and showed how each one fit into their argument that the government was not accountable. In September , Human Rights Watch Asia (Human Rights Watch Asia ) published a carefully prepared report on the human rights situation that openly exposed the “Limits of Openness” and compared the Suharto government’s commitment toward liberalization with its actual behavior. The report was remarkable for several reasons. First, it deliberately addressed a wide range of human rights issues in Indonesia and East Timor. It described efforts by domestic groups to seek remedies and argued that these efforts ultimately failed because of the authoritarian structures of the Suharto government. It also showed what a wide range of Indonesian citizens had been victims of military intimidation: Muslims as well as Christians, nationalists as well as so-called separatists, and workers as well as farmers. According to the organizations, this intimidation had only one goal: to preserve the military’s political role. The increasingly critical attitude toward the Indonesian government that was reflected in the actions of individual governments, NGOs, and international organizations can also be traced in international press reports. Such reports routinely mentioned human rights problems in Indonesia and regularly linked human rights abuses to political repression by Indonesian state authorities and the Indonesian military. A dense and active Indonesian network of human rights organizations and access to publicity ensured that international actors learned about instances of human rights violations, but also became actively involved in sanctioning violations. Repression had become much costlier. Cheap and Costly Responses to Human Rights Criticism Given the public attention on human rights, the Indonesian government found its options of handling dissent increasingly constrained. The government changed its rhetoric on human rights and regularly affirmed its commitment to improving its record. In April , it converted Xanana Gusmão’s life sentence into a twenty-year sentence. It adopted a more lenient attitude toward public criticism, even if that attitude was not predictable, as we saw

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in its revocation of publishing licenses for the three most outspoken Indonesian weeklies. Between  and , the government did not use the Anti-Subversion Law to deal with its critics (Yayasan Lembaga Bantuan Hukum di Indonesia ). Then, in January , Suharto liquidated ABRI’s central intelligence agency, the BAIS (Armed Forces Strategic Intelligence Body), which had been developed under Murdani, and replaced it with a less powerful institution. According to Admiral Sudomo, BAIS was dissolved because it had deviated from its original task by manipulating other political organizations. In , in one of its most far-reaching concessions on human rights, the government established a National Commission on Human Rights (Komisi Nasional Hak Asasi Manusia [Komnas HAM]). Thus, it institutionalized human rights on the state level. The decision to establish Komnas HAM had been preceded by several international events, and came only one week before the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in June . The government had promised the UN that it would set up a commission. The report by the Lawyers’ Committee, described earlier, provided additional publicity on the structural features of human rights violations that were creating a demand for the commission. The commission began operating in January . The public discourse on the commission clearly reflected great skepticism about the government’s motivation to establish it in the first place. Human rights activists inside and outside Indonesia believed it had been created mainly to silence international criticism, but were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Only one member of an Indonesian NGO joined the commission upon request, Asmara Nababan of INFID. Human rights organizations criticized it as extraordinarily weak and said it lacked clearly defined powers as well as a legal basis. They questioned whether “Komnas has or can develop the capacity to challenge authority in Indonesia and survive” (Human Rights Watch Asia : ). Its first chairman, Ali Said, took great care to emphasize that it would be politically independent (see, for example, Independensi Komnas HAM Jangan Hanya Sekadar Retorika ). It did try to be independent and fair. It investigated many outstanding instances of alleged human rights violations that had received wide media attention, such as the July  incident, described below, and adopted positions that diverged from or partially contradicted official government interpretations. An international and domestic public widely expected Suharto to close down Komnas HAM when the commission published this first report.

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Backed by the demands of domestic NGOs, Komnas HAM recommended revoking the Anti-Subversion Law and ratifying the Convention against Torture, which the Indonesian government had signed in  (Bertrand : ; Human Rights Watch : –). Thus, mounting social pressure in the fallout of the St. Cruz massacre, from domestic NGOs and continual international and domestic media attention when the Suharto government was concerned about its international reputation, opened up an unexpected political space to promote human rights in Indonesia. And, despite conflicts between the members of the commission, among them members of the military, did Komnas HAM eventually gain autonomy. Thus, it became a point of reference for foreign countries as well as domestic NGOs (Jones : ), which locked it into a network of concerned human rights advocates. Sidney Jones, then-director of the New York-based Asia Watch, even argued that Komnas HAM had become part of the transnational human rights network. Now, the Indonesian government could no longer brand human rights as a foreign idea. Commission member Asmara Nababan stated, “Human rights belong to us” (Asmara Nababan, “Human Rights Belong to Us” ). The media referred to the commission as being immune from government attempts to portray human rights concerns as partisan issues for enemies of the New Order (AFP ). Komnas HAM’s activities were widely publicized in national media. Occasionally, the commission received “thinly veiled government rebukes and warnings,” and the government “tended to ignore” recommendations, but it did not close it down. Why did Suharto not close down Komnas HAM when its findings threatened the stability of the New Order? Many Indonesian specialists have interpreted its establishment and the dissolution of BAIS as outcomes of intra-elite conflicts. In order to gain political power, Suharto tried to check the influence of Benny Murdani and his military intelligence network. In this struggle, even human rights were a useful tool. This line of argument reflects the theoretical approaches that view human rights reforms as the outcomes of a rational contest for power, a dynamic that has little to do with human rights norms as such. The evidence presented here allows a different interpretation. Both actions were responses to human rights criticism and attempts to establish civilian control over the military and increase the government’s credibility. Indonesian news reports specifically mentioned that the new Military Intelligence Agency (Badan Intelijen ABRI [BAI]) would be less free to detain individuals without warrant or trial, a clear reference to critiques from

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human rights organizations. In his official explanation for the restructuring, Armed Forces Commander Feisal Tanjung referred to the security problems that had emerged because the military lacked intelligence information and thus had improperly handled protests. He also mentioned that these problems had “hurt the credibility of the armed forces and police forces” and the issue needed “attention because it has attracted attention even from the international community.” Thus, BAIS was dissolved because it symbolized an organization that could not be called to account, one that lacked civilian control and was therefore an ideal target for critique by Western organizations. Komnas HAM had a different purpose. It might have been an attempt to deflect criticism and establish an arbitration agency that was under the government’s control. It had been established in a context in which Indonesia’s international reputation was at stake. Still, it became well connected among the domestic human rights community and international organizations, it developed its own rules and a public record of independent evaluation, and the commitment of individual members gave it public credibility. Together, these factors insulated it from the government. Once Komnas HAM had taken up its work and was virtually alive and kicking, clamping down on it would have cost the government too much in terms of its reputation. Major changes in the military leadership after the massacre also aimed at achieving more professionalism within ABRI and a greater respect for human rights. For example, John Haseman draws a clear line between efforts to increase the military’s professionalism after the St. Cruz massacre and the military promotions of Armed Forces Commander Feisal Tanjung; Army Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant General Surjadi; and General Hartono. All three wanted to increase ABRI’s professionalism and thus improve its human rights record (Haseman : ). In the next section, I focus on the distributional effects of human rights norms in terms of political power: the impact that human rights advocacy had on the military and its strategies to deal with its loss of political power. Human Rights Advocacy and the Indonesian Military This emerging discourse on human rights had clear effects on the military, challenging its political legitimacy and de facto political power. Substantial elements of the military were seriously concerned about how human rights would affect on state security (McRae ). Indonesia’s state ideology had

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institutionalized the military’s dual role, giving it almost unrestricted control over civil society and political participation (Tanter ). But this ideology also connected to wider world polity norms, reflected, for example, when Suharto stressed that “Indonesia’s unity and diversity should not be taken for granted.” Vice Admiral Sunardi held that, “For ABRI, the very existence of Indonesia is the essence of Pancasila . . . without Pancasila Indonesia will disintegrate, it’s that simple” (as quoted in Ramage : ). The military believed that no other political institution could guarantee secularism, national unity, and interethnic peace because none was as neutral and above politics. Thus, it could draw on a potentially persuasive set of norms that resonated with state sovereignty. The international understanding that human rights were at stake and the domestic debate about the military posed a significant challenge to the military’s understanding of itself, but it had few options for responding. To remain politically legitimate, it now had to create an acceptable rationale for its continued political rule. Otherwise, it would have to accept the consequences of the human rights norms, give up its exceptional neutral role in Indonesian politics, and accept some form of civilian supremacy. This option was deeply resented by military figures who had profited financially from the New Order regime and by the hard-liners who genuinely believed that this would lead to political instability or even to the disintegration of the state (Bertrand ). For the military, human rights concerns affected state security. As Suharto tried to give the New Order a civilian outlook, the military’s initial response was hostile. Since , hard-liners in the military had seen Suharto’s endorsement of Key Islamic organizations like the Indonesian Association of Islamic Intellectuals (Ikatan Cedikiawan Muslim Indonesia [ICMI]), and the Islamization it implied, along with the dissolution of Kopkamtib, as attempts to marginalize the military politically. When he dismissed officers after the St. Cruz massacre and dissolved the power structure of Benny Murdani, they felt he had diminished national stability. So they strongly resented his promotion of military leadership figures who were not closely aligned to Murdani, among them Habibie, Feisal Tanjung, Suharto’s son-in-law Subianto Prabowo, and Wismoyo Arismunandar, who was married to Mrs. Tien Suharto’s younger sister. Komnas HAM looked like another tool Suharto could use to publicize military problems to promote his own power interests (Honna : ). In Suharto’s actions, hard-liners saw a strategic attempt not to silence international criticism or increase the regime’s legitimacy, but to

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deliberately undermine their legally guaranteed role and their political power within Indonesia’s political system for his own self-interest. Thus, a two-star general insisted that “ABRI faces declining independence from the President, and ABRI can never be professional” in the current situation (as quoted in Honna : ). But the strategy the hard-liners used to oppose these promotions ultimately deepened the existing splits within the military, splits between supporters of a more Islamized military, which many saw as legitimate, and supporters of secularism, represented by many Catholics within the military hierarchy. Because the strategy further exposed the military’s political influence in Indonesia, it hurt ABRI’s public image. In parallel to its political opposition to Suharto, on a rhetorical level, the military embarked on three framing strategies to counter any public challenges to its authority. It framed demands for democracy and human rights as essentially foreign values that would eventually destroy Pancasila society. Among the groups Murdani saw as presenting a threat to Pancasila were people who wanted liberal democracy with unlimited freedom. So the military set out to eliminate any ideas in society that might contradict Pancasila and the national interest (Honna : ). It broadened its definition of communism, a catchall phrase for all mass organizations that were too critical of the government, to include not only groups with a communist ideology but others that borrowed and adapted their tactics. For example, it began to frame Western liberalism and capitalism as threatening to Pancasila and as anti-Islamic because capitalism would strengthen the power of the ethnic Chinese. The potential audience for this discourse was the Islamic community. So the military aimed to promote Islamic nationalism and encourage Muslim suspicions of the democratic movement, allegedly manipulated by Western anti-Islamism (Honna : ). Some within ABRI questioned the theory of a latent communist threat, but it served as a valuable frame. Military leaders identified prominent critics of the military and the government among students and academics who it saw as involved in communist activities (Honna : ). For example, it accused SBSI for provoking the anti-Chinese riots in Medan in April  and said SBSI used communist-like tactics to mobilize workers. This frame did resonate among some in the Islamic community, as became clear in July , shortly before the raid on opposition candidate, Megawati Sukarnoputri. To win approval for their anti-communist campaign, the military met with prominent pro-government youth organizations, many of them oriented toward Islam, including the Majelis Dakwah

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Indonesia, Pemuda Muslim Indonesia, Pemuda Ansor, and the student organization, HMI. It asked them to look out for suspected communist activities and to publicly condemn the opposition’s free speech forum. Many groups publicly supported the proposal that ABRI take action against Megawati and the PRD (Honna : ). In a second frame, the military argued that criticizing human rights violations was illegitimate because it encouraged people to form critical opinions and therefore posed a threat to political stability. In regions where separation movements were active, such as East Timor, Irian Jaya (West Papua), and Aceh and where human rights organizations had been watching events, these concerns were coupled with a deep concern for the territorial unity of Indonesia. By appealing to these concerns and to the audiences that shared them, especially the secular nationalists, the military actually maintained considerable domestic legitimacy. Thus, the very situations that international audiences saw as human rights violations in response to peaceful protests were, to the military, instances of disorder that resulted because the once-powerful military had lost much of its power. An ABRI spokesman pointed out that, only after Kopkamtib was liquidated in the mid-s, did communism in Indonesia experience a revival (Honna : ). A third frame the military used to legitimize its continued political role was the need to contain political Islam. This issue was potentially divisive for the Islamic community, as conflicts between Abdurrahman Wahid and the more conservative ICMI leadership testify, as well as for inter-religious peace in Indonesia, but it resonated widely among secular nationalists within all sectors of Indonesian society. Interestingly, however, this frame played a less prominent role than in the s for several reasons. First, the open conflict between ICMI and other Islamic organizations such as Nahdlatul Ulama divided Muslims enough to keep more radical versions of Islam from gaining power, and publicity about these divisions in the Western and domestic media kept Indonesian Islam from looking strongly unified. Second, the military had been Islamicized since the late s, so it could hardly serve as a solid bulwark against Islam. More importantly, the Indonesian Muslim leadership began to appeal to both domestic and international audiences. Wahid and other outstanding actors, such as Nurcholish Madjid, were regularly cited by journalists and published their views in scholarly journals. Wahid, a charismatic personality widely regarded as a voice of reason, often traveled abroad to explain the aspirations of moderate Muslims in Indonesia. He consistently argued that the political participation of Muslims should did not necessitate an “Islamic

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state” (Wahid ; : ). And Madjid had consistently argued that Islam should be a moral and ethical force in Indonesia, but not a political one (Effendy ). Meanwhile, several scholars on Indonesia affirmed the democratic credentials of the Islamic community (Aditjondro a; Barton ; Ramage ). At a crucial time in Indonesia’s democratization process, these moral interventions effectively provided reassurances to domestic and international audiences that the Muslim community would not use democratization to turn Indonesia into a formal Islamic state. This argument resonated strongly with world polity norms that promote secular states. But to gain wider validity and become intersubjective understandings, these rhetorical claims first had to be confirmed by events, including consistent positions by these actors in the face of political challenges. Norm Dynamics: Confirming Events Increase the Appeal of Human Rights As stated in Chapter , confirming events create an important norm dynamic. Ethical arguments always create societal expectations about how events will develop in the future. If events and political developments do not meet these expectations, the orthodoxy is likely to prevail. As mentioned, the Suharto government’s defense of the military-led modernization paradigm predicted three developments if the military lost its dual function. Indonesia would disintegrate because provinces with self-determination movements would separate. There would be religious or ethnic riots. And communism, now latent, could emerge again. Eventually a series of well-publicized events crystallized these diverging and contending political claims into the human rights frame, providing a substantial challenge to the Suharto government’s political legitimacy in the area of human rights. The Military Loses its Public Legitimacy as Guarantor of Territorial Integrity

The St. Cruz massacre had led international audiences to challenge the government’s action in East Timor, but, because it marked the beginning of mobilization in Indonesia, it had attracted less attention among a broader public in Indonesia. This changed in January  when six civilians were killed in the East Timorese city of Liquica. The military originally framed the event as a clash with armed guerrillas, but this frame slowly lost its power as church and human rights organizations, along with intellectuals and the media, took more

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interest. Local church sources contradicted the military’s version and claimed the victims had been civilians. ELSAM, an Indonesian human rights organization, published a report on the incident, sparking broader interest. As media reports later established, the military and armed groups had been involved in a shootout, but the killings occurred one day later and appeared to be an act of revenge by Indonesian soldiers against civilians. International furor over the six killings prompted several diplomatic representatives in Jakarta to raise questions with their Indonesian counterparts. When the incident was finally brought to Suharto’s attention, he instructed General Feisal Tanjung, commander-in-chief of the Indonesian armed forces, to open an immediate inquiry. ABRI’s two internal fact-finding teams produced contradictory results and were only willing to concede that actions by several soldiers had breached legal procedures. On February , in a joint petition, several Indonesian NGOs demanded an independent investigation by Komnas. Three days later, five members of Komnas arrived in Dili to investigate the killings. One member warned against prosecuting soldiers, as it could hurt morale. He was joined by an armed forces spokesman, Brigadier General Syarwan Hamid, who told the daily newspaper, Kompas, “If soldiers are continually prevented from taking action because of human rights considerations, who is going to secure peace and stability in the area?” Equally, Armed Forces Chief General Feisal Tanjung defended the killings by claiming that, without firm military action, Liquica would have become a guerrilla base camp (Human Rights Watch Asia ). Eventually, Komnas HAM established that the victims had no links to the self-determination movement, also called “security disturbing movement” (Gerakan Pengacau Keamanan [GPK]) in Indonesia. They were ordinary citizens and were probably tortured before being shot. The day that Komnas issued its press release, fifty academics and students in Jakarta signed a letter urging ABRI to drop its security approach in dealing with East Timor and demanded the government instead appoint an inquiry team reporting directly to the president. This time, the critique was not confined to the usual human rights organizations. Among religious groups, a competitive logic set in, further raising demands for accountability. In an action that illustrates the complicated microdynamic among different religious groups in Indonesia, the Islamic student organization, HMI, demanded that ABRI establish an investigative commission for human rights abuses in Aceh. It even requested that a fact-finding system be established for Muslim victims of ABRI shootings. This demand worried ABRI representatives who feared the issue of equal

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treatment for Christians (in East Timor) and Muslims (in Aceh) would threaten inter-religious peace in Indonesia. The final ABRI report closely followed the lead established by Komnas. It stated that individual soldiers had engaged in misconduct in the field. As a result, two soldiers faced prosecution before a military court (Aspinall ). Human rights organizations and the media had successfully established the counter-frame of human rights. In May , a similar incident gained wide domestic press coverage and engaged the Indonesian public for months. This time, the location was in Irian Jaya. A Catholic bishop had read a report about human rights violations documented by the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA). Bishop Muninghoff decided to compile a report on a massacre he had learned of. ABRI soldiers had shot eleven civilians, among them children. When the report became public, the military justified the killings as a military intervention against the GPK”—that is, the self-determination movement in Irian Jaya. General Hartono, the army chief of staff, rejected criticism of ABRI. “The GPK in both East Timor and Irian Jaya is almost the same, thus it is clandestine groups which are more dangerous and need to be watched” (General Hartono, as quoted in Honna : ). Komnas HAM eventually published a report that confirmed Bishop Muninghoff ’s claims and publicly contradicted the military leadership. Despite the allegations, Hartono announced that ABRI would not establish a military commission to investigate the incident, as he said the level of deviation from military procedure had been smaller than in Liquica. The statement provoked an immediate condemnation from Indonesian human rights NGOs (Honna : ).Over the course of  and , Indonesians had several opportunities to witness similar patterns of military denial for abuses noted by local human rights organizations and church organizations. A similar dynamic developed in the raid on the Indonesian Democratic Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia [PDI]) office on July , . This incident again confirmed that the military was involved in instigating the very events that it argued needed to be prevented, riots and political instability. It also demonstrated arbitrary action. These actions violated accepted rules about appropriate state behavior. Countering the Argument of Political Instability: The July 27 Incident

The July  incident unfolded against the backdrop of heightened political tensions in the countdown to parliamentary elections scheduled for ,

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whose results would determine the presidential elections in . Clearly, the government and the military were deeply concerned about the significant popularity of opposition figures such as Megawati Sukarnoputri and Abdurrahman Wahid, although he did not have his own political party. But in the context of greater attention to ABRI’s misconduct, the events were also interpreted as reactions to public criticism of the military and its dual function (Bertrand : f; Liddle and Mallarangeng f). The political conflict with the PDI dated back to  when Megawati was elected head of the PDI despite Suharto’s explicit disapproval of her. He wanted PDI members to endorse Surjadi, an alternative candidate loyal to him. Regime forces at that time were concerned about the rising popularity of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno. Manipulating internal party leadership struggles had been one way to ensure that the political opposition remained loyal to the regime and did not stray too far from the official government line. In December , ABRI first approved Megawati’s election as the new head of the PDI, but wanted to see the decision reversed. In , General Feisal Tanjung set up a new party congress. Apparently, Suharto had instructed him to topple Megawati and reinstate Surjadi. The rebel congress elected Sujardi, who immediately got the government endorsement. However, by now, the Indonesian government faced different expectations. Megawati filed a lawsuit against senior government and military officials, including Tanjung, in an attempt to bring the political struggle into the courtrooms (Bertrand ). She initiated a free speech forum that drew hundreds of supporters from a broader democratization movement. The emerging mass movement brought ABRI into action. On July , it publicly condemned the forum as disturbing law and order. One day later, the PDI office was raided, according to early official announcements by Surjadi supporters who took over the office. The raid and forced evacuation of the PDI office provoked riots that lasted two days. According to PDI officials, around  party members were missing after the raid. Again, a major argument developed about the meaning of this event. Tanjung suspected the conflict had been exploited by irresponsible communist-inspired groups, and House Speaker Wahono saw indications of rising sectarianism among the Indonesian population that would destroy what Indonesians had “painstakingly achieved through the development program.” On television, Lieutenant General Syarwan Hamid, the chief of ABRI’s sociopolitical affairs department, alleged that the student organization

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Partai Rakyat Demokrasi (PRD) was behind the riots. He pointed out that PRD had links to international and domestic communist organizations and Amnesty International. This was an apparent attempt to discredit the new party and, with it, human rights concerns in Indonesia (Honna : ). In contrast to the military, human rights and democracy activists quickly tried to frame the incident as a human rights violation and alleged the military had itself provoked the riots. In words that show clearly how people hesitated to blame the military officially, members of the PDI pointed out that the people who had raided the office had not been PDI members. Immediately after the riots, international actors commented most critically on the attack. The American government censured the Indonesian government for the Indonesian military raid on the opposition. It was deeply concerned about the violent crackdown and the violation of the freedoms of expression, press, and association, along with the violation of rights to peaceful assembly. The British and Australians voiced similar concerns. The Indonesian government did not call these statements an illegitimate intervention into its domestic affairs. Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Ali Alatas just warned that many of those foreign media reports were not depicting the real situation (“People Told Not to Believe Foreign Media” ). Within Indonesia, the military’s explanation of the event initially seemed to garner support. The Indonesian Council of Ulemas, the Muhammadiyah, the Nahdlatul Ulama, and the Indonesian Council for Islamic Propagation issued statements expressing their conviction that the rioting was an attempted revolt. They said it was masterminded and carried out by radical groups who wanted to revive communism, undermine the government, and obstruct the political order established by the New Order administration (“Social, Religious Groups Comment on Violent Rioting” ). The public condemnation of the PRD led to the persecution of known PRD members in the following weeks and months. Budiman Sudjatmiko, PRD’s leader, was arrested in August . In addition, several outspoken government critics became the target of the military and police, including some prominent Catholics. Labor leader Muchtar Pakpahan was detained and charged with subversive activities. The government cracked down on the newly founded Partai Uni Demokrasi Indonesia (PUDI) and its leader Sri Bintang Pamungkas. Thirty-two NGOs were investigated. Heading the list were those NGOs that had been most critical of the Suharto government, such as the Legal Aid Institute and the environmental NGO WALHI (Bertrand : ). This was the first time in three years that the government

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applied the Anti-Subversion Law against the political opposition. Pamungkas was brought to court on charges of insulting the head of state. This time, he had to serve his sentence. Several international NGOs, including Germany’s Watch Indonesia, lobbied Western governments to seek protection for Pamungkas and his possible discharge. But this military-led move against outspoken dissidents hardly silenced the government’s critics. In the domestic and international media and equally important Internet forums, debate continued over the ouster of Megawati. It focused on issues such as the legality of the Anti-Subversion Law, legal justice, and the seriousness of a Communist threat (“Opposition Growing to PRD Charges” ). The American government and the representatives of the EU regularly contributed to this discussion (“Foreign Pressure Grows on RI over PDI Crackdown” ). In sum, what developed was a more sustained discourse on justice in Indonesia. Given the public debate on the issue, the official ICMI statement on the riots, released on August , , condemned the PRD, but was extremely cautious in blaming it for the July  riots and emphasized the need to “respect the presumption of innocence” (Aspinall : ). ICMI’s statement was clearly motivated by popular dissatisfaction with the Suharto government. As Nurcholish Madjid said, in giving Islamic legitimacy to the New Order power structure, ICMI ran the risk that “Islam itself will lose its legitimacy.” The riots also presented the first substantial challenge to Komnas HAM. It was empowered to investigate the case in order to establish the exact number of victims in the raid on the PDI office and to calm down the political situation, according to its deputy chief, Marzuki Darusman. According to press reports, the government called on Komnas to put the nation’s interests above anything else when disclosing the truth behind the July  riots. Komnas delayed the publication of its final report several times, nurturing public suspicions that the military tried to influence the investigation. This increased the public pressure on it to justify itself in domestic and international circles. During an international human rights seminar, Darusman stated, “There have been discussions with the military but no pressure.” The Komnas HAM report, eventually released in October, was exceptionally critical. It established that five people had died in the ousting of Megawati. Thus, its casualty figure differed slightly from the three victims that the military had consistently mentioned. More importantly, the report claimed that twenty-three individuals were still unaccounted for (United States Department of State : Sec. ). It completely exonerated the PRD in

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the riot and accused the government of interfering in the internal affairs of the PDI. And, in a statement obviously directed at security forces, it alleged third party involvement. It recommended that the government-backed raiders be brought to court. In a blatant rejection of the official findings, the Indonesian government ignored the recommendations. In September , it banned all organizations affiliated with the PRD. Its leader, Budiman Sudjatmiko, who had been detained immediately after the riots, and some fellow students were brought to trial in December on subversion charges (Heryanto : ). The suppression of the legitimate opposition in Indonesia demonstrated quite vividly that Suharto still held political power over civil society. He could still intimidate the opposition. But the government obviously did not calculate the international costs of its action, as international audiences immediately sanctioned its behavior. The United States delayed a planned sale of F- fighters to Indonesia immediately after the July  riots and continued its suspension of military training programs, which had been instituted after the St. Cruz massacre in East Timor (“Rewarding Indonesian Repression” ). The Public Framing of Ethnic-Religious Riots

When a series of riots broke out after September , it was much more difficult to frame them as a mobilization against the Suharto government. Riots in cities in provinces as different as Java, North Sumatra, and Sulawesi, occurring between  and , were supposedly religiously motivated. They were followed by so-called food riots in East Java between January and February  and then by riots in Jakarta, Solo, Medan, and Palembang in May . These riots had complex causes over which academics have developed a considerable body of debate in recent years. Many academics argue that this violence was locally driven and caused by factors that combined differently in each location (Bertrand ; Davidson ; Sidel ; Klinken ). All of these riots had overtly racial and religious undertones and thus appeared to be a clear threat to Indonesia’s unity, thus confirming the military’s greatest concerns. Moreover, the beginning of ethnic-religious clashes in Maluku in  appeared to confirm that Indonesia remained a country of latent instability, in which an economic downturn, like the one in  after the Asian financial crisis, would lead to riots between Muslims and Christians, and between the poor and an economic (ethnic Chinese) elite. Thus, one powerful frame described the riots as more or less spontaneous ethnic-religious clashes. But despite their potential capability to frame

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these events effectively, a different popular frame emerged. The riots happened because of the political conflicts in Jakarta. According to some popular accounts, the riots implicated the traditionalist Muslim organization, NU, headed by Abdurrahman Wahid, because the cities were NU strongholds. Riots against ethnic Chinese, supposedly by more radical Muslims, immediately heightened concerns over inter-religious relationships in Indonesia. These events were supposed to suggest that the traditional NU mass base was not as pluralist and moderate as Wahid had wanted the public to believe. Wahid directly attacked ICMI rather than the government or the military, alleging it was implicated in the riots. This sequence of events led to a rapprochement between Wahid and Suharto and exposed the division between ICMI and Wahid. Others saw Wahid’s support for the Suharto government as his tactical maneuver to remove himself as a political target of the government. The second frame suggested involvement by political groups that had an interest in utilizing these riots to promote their own narrow power interests. Although the military could not be linked directly to the riots, few believed they were spontaneous. The illegal news magazine Suara Independen suspected they had been staged by green military circles and groups within ICMI to delegitimize Wahid (Eklöf : f; see also Hefner : –). And many believed, “Jakarta elites were responsible for the Ambon tragedy” (Klinken : ). John Sidel (Sidel ) contends that this frame does not accurately depict the real causes of the riots, and he may be right. But to stop pressures on the Suharto government over human rights, these events and media reports on them would have needed to produce evidence that the military was not implicated, which they clearly did not: “Many incidents that involved soldiers ‘taking sides’ looked as if they were at least tolerated, if not condoned, by commanding officers” (Klinken : ). Given the already tarnished reputation of the military, the human rights frame prevailed. In the context of human rights debates, what makes these clashes significant is that they could not prevent key institutions within the government from losing legitimacy. Meanwhile, they further legitimized political demands for change. These seemingly unconnected events appeared to have quite different origins. They did not fit neatly into the human rights frame. But neither did the military’s frame of disintegration and ethnic-religious wars fit, given the history of local communities living together peacefully. As Gerry von Klinken holds, the violence “came from nowhere,” and it had “no ready-made explanation” (van Klinken : ). Many media, especially

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in the West, portrayed the riots either as being caused by economic disparities or as being instigated by groups outside the local communities. Indonesian sociologist, Heru Nugroho, for example, explained the riots as stemming from “a political system that is less than transparent and which leads to a sense of frustration among the people.” Riots in Tembagapura near the Freeport gold mine in Irian Jaya in March  were explained as caused by disgruntled communities that saw no economic benefit for themselves and feared the environmental impact of the mine. Human rights and democracy organizations pointed to the need for greater democratization in Indonesia. In May , a series of political abductions of students and the alleged military involvement in mass riots further highlighted the repressive role of the military or parts of it. As in the raid on the PDI office, the political debate revealed a familiar pattern. The military denied any abuses, and that denial later turned out to be untrue (Eklöf : –). The abduction of students spurred the founding of a new human rights organization, the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (Komisi untuk Orang Hilang dan Tindak Kekerasan [Kontras]) headed by Munir. Kontras managed to mobilize considerable domestic and international pressure on the Suharto government to account for the disappeared. When some of the students reemerged, they testified they had been abducted and tortured by members of the military. The military under General Wiranto strongly denied the allegations, but, two months later, he acknowledged publicly that the abductions had been organized by Army Special Kopassus forces (Eklöf : –). To summarize these events then, discourses about human rights norms and their applicability contributed significantly to the public’s coming to see the Suharto government as less and less legitimate. More importantly, they saw the military’s role in violating human rights. Given the two competing frames, human rights require military withdrawal and maintaining law and order requires the military’s continual involvement, these public political debates exposed how deeply the military, or parts of it, were involved in instigating exactly those conflicts that it claimed could justify its continued political role. The emergence of evidence implicating the military moved the public to see it as an actor in the domestic political space that lacked credibility. This increased expectations for Suharto to resign (“Suharto’s Endgame” ; Ganesan ; Hill ). Over the following twenty-two months, the government’s credibility diminished further (Eklöf : f). The economic crisis of –, which

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hit Indonesia late in , provided an important external shock accelerating Suharto’s fall. It exposed several high-profile examples of Suharto family nepotism, increased the critique of the New Order regime, and led to a massive deterioration in living conditions among Indonesians (Eklöf : chap. ). The acronym KKN (kollusi, korrupsi, nepotism) became a buzzword in the political debate that crystallized the political opposition to Suharto. But, in itself, the economic crisis cannot explain his fall. Human rights were clearly a contributing factor. On the eve of May , , Suharto finally resigned and named Baharuddin Jusuf Habibie, his vice president, as his successor. The demise of the New Order had been a significant accomplishment of transnational human rights activities. Conclusion: Norm Contestation and the Influence on Suharto of Transnational Mobilization In Indonesia, the military-backed Suharto government’s monopoly on political space was definitely broken in the early s. As public pressures on the Indonesian government after the St. Cruz massacre in East Timor demonstrated, activist appeals to Western state governments, international organizations, and an international media audience challenged the fruits of military-led modernization of the Indonesian government. The Indonesian government had badly miscalculated the costs of easing repression in East Timor and opening it to outside observers. Its decision virtually backfired as its policies in the area were scrutinized by external actors and rhetoric was measured against practice. Activists in East Timor and Indonesia became deeply enmeshed in networks of organizations promoting universal human rights norms. The Indonesian government rhetorically complied, but also wanted the world to appreciate its precarious situation in upholding Indonesia’s unity, territorial integrity, and secular government. In responding to pressures, it continually referred to an alternative set of norms that it wanted to see honored. For the military as corporate institution, the challenges of nation-building were still alive. In explaining the process of human rights reforms in Indonesia since the early s as an outcome of transnational advocacy, I do not argue that international norms invoked by activists to frame particular events are responsible for the demise of the New Order. Other critical factors were a deteriorating economic situation around  and the excesses of the huge patronage network established by Suharto’s family. However, the initial

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international outrage over an inappropriate reaction to a massacre that left over  civilians dead spurred the rapid growth and enlargement of a transnational advocacy network after  that mobilized other governments into action. International human rights norms encouraged veterans and activists to link more purposeful demands for domestic reforms to human rights. Human rights pressures limited the options for dealing with political opposition of the military and influenced key decisions in the human rights area by Suharto. Human rights norms and the pressures that came with it constrained the military and galvanized more opposition into action. The density of the transnational network eventually proved to be an important factor when key events challenged to fracture the human rights frame used by activists. Although the major focus of this chapter has been to explain the success of these transnational activities in bringing about unprecedented human rights reforms, we have also seen that human rights norms remained contested among domestic groups, a fact that some parts of the military skillfully tried to use to their advantage. Public debates over human rights developed in a path-dependent way. The starting point of these processes was the justifications that the Indonesian government had continually used to justify the military’s outstanding role in domestic affairs: The state security of Indonesia required a strong military. Self-determination movements in East Timor and elsewhere challenged the territorial integrity of Indonesia, and Islamic fundamentalists challenged Indonesia’s secular state organization. These central justifications had long backed military power in Indonesia. Both claims resonated with world polity norms. They were undermined by the two campaigns’ focus on Muslims who were not fundamentalists and on evidence of torture of East Timorese who were not separatists. These claims brought in more credible actors, who supported central network demands. The linking up of Indonesian democratization activists with East Timorese activists struggling for the self-determination of the territory was crucial in the face of countervailing pressures that the military tried to mobilize among nationalist groups who feared for Indonesia’s territorial integrity. Even as the military became deeply split over reform goals, it did not accept human rights claims without opposition. And it had good arguments, which resonated with state sovereignty and which it played out skillfully. Here, two factors appear decisive in closing off these branches from a potential pathway toward human rights. First, key events invalidated these arguments by showing that the military was responsible for instigating the very developments

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that it claimed would justify its continued political role. Second, the inclusion of key Muslim authorities with strong transnational ties ensured the government’s argument about a potential threat to secularism did not take root. The integration of key Islamic individuals into network structures further strengthened a transnational network centering on church organizations for mobilization that faced a predominantly Muslim constituency in Indonesia. The message Muslim authorities continually sent to Western audiences was that they firmly acknowledged the secular character of the state. This chapter’s focus on justifications of the government and the military has demonstrated what makes human rights change a difficult business. Governments frequently have good arguments that resonate among their domestic constituents. These repositories of legitimacy require sophisticated campaigns by human rights organizations to persuade audiences of their claims.

6 Subcontracted Violence in the Philippines 1986–1992: Excusing Violations

When President Corazon Aquino, the widow of slain popular opposition figure Benigno Aquino, assumed power in the Philippines in February , human rights advocates had a field day. Their political struggles for human rights and their personal pain and sacrifices were finally worthwhile. The high public visibility of human rights concerns and the mobilization of other states and organizations during the Marcos era had come to a happy end. Within weeks after Aquino’s inauguration as president, the human rights situation would improve significantly. Aquino and respected members of the human rights community in her cabinet epitomized the Philippine government’s human rights commitment. Jose Diokno, founding father of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), became the chairman of the Presidential Commission on Human Rights, established in  as a forum for individual complaints. Aquino appointed Rene Saguisag, a lawyer active in the human rights organization, MABINI, as secretary of state. With these committed individuals involved, her cabinet began to take it for granted that international human rights instruments would be ratified. They no longer generated internal debate. Saguisag said, “We tried to carry out all commitments. Otherwise, we would have lost our credibility. . . . I think that it did not even lead into a debate because we were all so philosophically committed to supporting any human rights initiatives” (Interview with Rene Saguisag, Manila, April , ). Within the next few months and years, international human rights standards would be incorporated into the domestic legal structure. An interim freedom constitution granted Filipinos all civil and political rights and Aquino extraordinary presidential powers. Thus, she had both executive and

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legislative power. Within a year, the freedom constitution was ratified by a popular plebiscite (Rüland : –). Within three years, her administration ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (); the First Optional Protocol (), making it possible for individuals to file complaints to the Human Rights Committee; and the International Convention against Torture and Other Inhuman or Degrading Treatment. In , the government created an independent permanent agency to deal with individual complaints on human rights violations, the Constitutional Commission on Human Rights. In sum, Aquino’s government did the rational thing for a transitional regime, according to liberal theories in international politics. It linked up with an international human rights regime and locked its incipient democratic structures into international regimes to guarantee it would not fall back into authoritarian governing (Moravcsik ). Even more important, human rights provisions were incorporated into the domestic legal structure. The administration restored legal guarantees such as habeas corpus and supported a more independent judiciary. In addition, the newly ratified constitution outlawed torture and all forms of secret and incommunicado detentions, protected citizens from random searches and seizures, and called for the dismantling of the private armies and paramilitary units established during the last years of Marcos’ rule (Green : f; Rüland : ). In sum, the mobilization for human rights under Marcos immediately translated into concrete actions to implement domestic legal human rights laws. International human rights organizations were pleased. Amnesty International and the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights concluded that, despite isolated abuses, the military was profoundly improving its human rights record. Serious abuses, characteristic of the armed forces during Marcos’ final years, had become the rare exception (Amnesty International c: ; Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : x). According to Amnesty International, “The Aquino Government’s commitment to the protection of human rights and the establishment of legal safeguards” had “led to major improvements” (Amnesty International c: ). But this picture would not remain so rosy. The next two years,  and , saw the emergence of some  armed private bands, collectively called “vigilantes” and ostensibly organized against a rising tide of communist guerilla insurgency. Late in January , the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), the region’s principal federation of civil right watchdog groups, sharply criticized the Philippine government for “serious and unjustifiable” violations

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of human rights. AHRC particularly cited alleged abuses by governmentsupported, anti-communist vigilante groups operating throughout the country. These groups were creating the impression of a widening militarization that was “turning the whole of the Philippines into a battlefield” and was “pitting civilian against civilian” in a war that properly should be fought by military forces (Asian Human Rights Commission ; van der Kroef : ). Other human rights organizations voiced similar concerns. In March , Amnesty International observed that “a pattern of widespread human rights violations committed by the military and paramilitary groups” had reemerged (Amnesty International c: ). Human rights organizations documented cases of torture; salvaging, the common term for extrajudicial killings; and excessive use of force against the civilian population. At the end of Aquino’s second term in office, the Task Force Detainees (TFD) of the Philippines would report  victims of enforced disappearances, more than . million people dislocated due to military operations,  massacres, , victims of summary executions, and , victims of illegal arrest and detention (Task Force Detainees of the Philippines ). International human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights, and Asia Watch (Human Rights Watch), engaged in extensive monitoring. They conducted a total of twenty-five fact-finding missions between  and  and issued an impressive number of reports. International organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (Asia), the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights, and a number of domestic human rights organizations documented extralegal executions, disappearances, torture, and consistent legal impunity for these abuses in the Philippines. By November , the Presidential Commission on Human Rights had received , complaints against vigilantes (Kowalewski : ). Despite the flood of reports, their efforts stirred little response from other states and international organizations. The United States State Department and Central Intelligence Agency, as well as private American organizations (Unification Church and World Anti-Communist League), strongly encouraged the program to civilianize counterinsurgency and supported the Reagan administration’s “low-intensity conflict” strategy against revolutions (Kowalewski : ). Why did human rights violations resurface (and largely go unheeded by international audiences) in the Philippines after the elites and civil society groups under Marcos had undergone extensive human rights socialization through various campaigns? The Aquino administration had internalized new norms by incorporating human rights law into its domestic structures, and one could reasonably expect human rights improvements under these conditions

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(Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink : ). And individuals in the Philippines filed a number of complaints with domestic human rights mechanisms and courts without significant effects. Why did domestic legal commitments not translate into effective constraints on military and paramilitary forces? And when international and domestic human rights organizations had been so instrumental in bringing down the Marcos regime, as we saw in Chapter , why could they now provide no constraints on the government? One obvious answer to why the Aquino government violated human rights is that it faced an internal conflict. As Christian Davenport has argued, even democracies violate some human rights if faced with civil war (Davenport ). In the case of the Philippines, two groups—the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its military wing, the National People’s Army (NPA)— did pose an undeniable threat to the government. These organizations had not participated in the national elections in . After the change of power from Marcos to Aquino, they found themselves politically marginalized. The NPA was acting out of a politically weak but militarily strong position. It claimed to still control one-fifth of the , barangays, as the lowest level of political and governmental subdivisions in the Philippines are called. In May , it took up its armed struggle in the countryside, posing an immediate threat to the new government. As of , it had , men and women under arms. Its parent, CPP, and the communists’ National Democratic Front (NDF) had an extensive network of labor, youth, women’s, and other interest groups, posing a formidable “and somehow indestructible threat to the survival of the Aquino regime” (van der Kroef : ). Given armed rebellion, we would not expect any government to systematically respect human rights. And given that many states see state action as legitimate in the case of armed rebellions, we would not expect other states to mobilize. Theorists like Davenport, however, do not explain the causal pathway through which democratic governments block out factors that are equally associated with better human rights practices, the networks of domestic and international human rights organizations that mobilize audiences against violations and urge governments to comply with international norms (Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink ). Moreover, references to potential civil war accurately predict behavior, but they miss an important element in the pattern of violations that occurred under the Aquino administration. Paramilitary groups, not state security actors, committed the abuses. At first, the Aquino administration did not take responsibility for them. Also, the NPA had posed a significant threat to state authority under Marcos’ authoritarian regime, but the mobilization for human rights

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had been quite successful. Thus, the existence of military challenges to state authority is not sufficient to explain this phenomenon. In order to explain why the human rights abuses reappeared, we need to look at why the NPA challenge was seen differently under Aquino, how it was reframed under a democratic system, and how the newly established democracy was securitized. In short, we need to look at discourse and the symbolic and political struggles on the ground and the competition over authoritatively defining the situation as a state security issue to understand the limited influence of human rights norms. But we also have to focus on why the activities of international human rights organizations did not affect the same mobilization by state governments and international organizations once these abuses were reported. Points in the literature on international law make this distinction even more important. Some scholars who look at the effects on states of international human rights law expect these international institutions to exert the greatest effects on transitional states, those that are neither authoritarian nor fully democratic. Under these regimes, they say, domestic groups have the greatest incentives to utilize international normative prescriptions to affect practices on the ground. Groups supporting human rights will be strengthened and have incentives to take advantage of domestic judicial mechanisms to seek remedy for violations (Simmons ). While being an important dynamic in the Philippines, the more important ones were governmentsupported violations conducted by paramilitary organizations that overrode initiatives of domestic and international human rights organizations to seek acknowledgement and remedy for these violations. This chapter takes up the questions raised in Chapters  and . Why do governments routinely violate human rights? Why does mobilization vary even if violations are similar? And why do some governments get away with human rights abuses? This chapter focuses especially on the role of excuses during human rights campaigns. Excuses are rhetorical devices that actors can use to deny responsibility for their action. And, as laid out in Chapter , if audiences accept excuses, they can block mobilization because they affect a key characteristic of mobilizing frames, the rhetorical techniques that advocacy actors use to rally support behind their position. Excuses deflect responsibility. They diminish the influence of that part of a frame that accords blame to individuals, groups, or states for a specific phenomenon. Excuses make actors unaccountable, which, in turn, impedes mobilization and/or sanctioning because there is no target to which demands can be addressed. Thus, at issue in this chapter is not the legitimacy of military operations against the

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NPA or whether they were necessary at this particular time. Many policymakers, political advisors, parts of the population, and other state governments believed the Philippine state faced an armed threat from the NPA that needed to be addressed by military means, if not exclusively. But there was also public indignation over the abuses that came with it. At issue is how the Aquino administration deflected transnational mobilization despite systematic evidence showing that the experiment with paramilitary units ran out of control and began to target human rights defenders and ordinary civilians. This chapter traces political developments in the Philippines and explores the limitations and successes of transnational activism after democratic regime change. It shows how democratization changed the rules of the game about which actors, actions, and procedures were legitimate and which ones were not. It examines the decline and reactivation of an international solidarity movement for human rights in the Philippines after the inauguration of the nation’s first democratically elected president, Corazon Aquino. I specifically focus on the discursive mechanism of excuses to show how the military and Aquino systematically deflected responsibility for human rights violations by blaming paramilitary units for them. These excuses, however, concealed a military support network that actively assisted and encouraged subcontracted violence. A similar episode occurred in East Timor and is discussed in the next chapter. In addition, of course, some violence emanated from independent action by local warlords. In some cases, militia forces were indeed out of control. But the dominant pattern was state recognition of (and encouragement of) vigilantes, coupled with effective denial for responsibility. In this chapter, I lay out the importance of offering excuses in discourses over noncompliance. I show that Aquino and the military first securitized the newly established democracy in a public discourse by declaring the new democratic state was existentially threatened by the communist movement. Once domestic and international human rights organizations started mobilizing, excuses effectively shielded the administration from criticism. Vigilantism in the Philippines after 1986: The Political Context It was in an atmosphere of increased political agitation that observers noticed paramilitary units emerging in the countryside, apparently operating independently against communist organizations. “Vigilantism,” as the phenomenon soon became to be known, was also a specific governance

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problem in the transition from an authoritarian system to restored oligarchic democracy. As Eva-Lotta Hedman and John Sidel point out, the most dramatic manifestations of vigilantism surfaced where and when the process of regime transition ran up against the martial law legacies of “civilian government contraction and armed revolutionary movement expansion.” (Hedman and Sidel : ) In a country dominated by family clans, the nature and direction of groups organizing as vigilantes was also shaped by the patronage of local politicians and businessmen and of plantation families and mining companies (Hedman and Sidel : ). The authors use this setting primarily to explain why the vigilante phenomenon emerged as forcefully as it did in some locations and not in others. Still, two factors they name—“civilian government contraction” and “revolutionary movement expansion”—find clear illustrations in two key developments that severely undermined the authority of Corazon Aquino’s administration and the Philippine state’s claim to domestic sovereignty. These were the continuous threats against Aquino by Marcos’ loyal supporters and parts of the military and the threat posed by the communist insurgency (Hernandez : ). In the last days of the Marcos government, the military had saved its face virtually at the last minute when important groups within the military supported Marcos’ removal. Thus, the military came to believe (and the American administration probably endorsed their belief) that they could exert military supremacy over the civilian government or at least have an equal share of power (Aquino : ; Hernandez : ). Within a year, Aquino faced down several coup attempts, surviving the last one only because of massive support from the American military. In July , Marcos loyal, Arturo Tolentino, proclaimed himself acting president, reportedly on orders from Marcos, who was in exile in Hawaii (Aquino : ). In November , Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos frustrated a plan to oust Aquino, code-named “God Save the Queen.” Disaffected members of the reform movement within the AFP led it. In response, Aquino dismissed Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and replaced him with Rafael Ileto. Enrile’s chief security aide, Gringo Honasan, and his co-conspirators were given different assignments, but not charged. In August , they attempted a second coup. And in January , officers loyal to Marcos took over a television channel, but failed get it into operation. The mutinous soldiers claimed they wanted to save the country from communism.

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Challenges from the left connected to and aggravated these threats to the administration from elements of the military. In addition to controlling a significant number of barangays, the CPP/NPA claimed to rule in some larger cities and to have thousands of armed regulars under its command (Timberman : ). While the CPP explicitly acknowledged Aquino’s “liberal views on vital issues, especially those pertaining to the people’s political rights” and the “expansion of space within which the progressive and revolutionary forces can advance the open and legal struggles,” the movement had little reason to believe that politics in the Philippines would change fundamentally. For people on the left, whether activists or academics, many things pointed more to continuity than to change. A few wealthy families still dominated the political scene. Aquino herself came from a landed family, and she had shown little energy in implementing the promised land reform (Anderson ; Hutchcroft ; Timberman ). Also, there is little to gain from tracing, chronologically, why exactly a civil war developed in the Philippines and who was ultimately to blame for it. The more important point is that, over the course of , the Aquino administration entered into peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front (NDF), which represented the then-illegal CPP at the negotiating table, but it is unclear how much the parties were sincerely interested in it. At first, the CPP reacted favorably to Aquino’s call for a cease-fire in March , “sincerely acknowledging the popular support” she had gained. The party also appreciated the “corresponding positive efforts by her and the democratic forces in the new government in unconditionally ordering the release of political detainees” and assured her and “our people” that the “call for a cease-fire has not fallen on deaf ears in the ranks of the revolutionary forces.” At the same time, however, it was clear that the CPP was split internally and unable to commit itself to such a course. Despite its military strength, the CPP acted out of a politically weak position. Even its leadership saw what a fatal blunder it had been to boycott the elections of February . This decision significantly reduced its political influence and alienated it from its constituency. Another drastic mistake was the NDF’s campaign to vote against ratifying the popular new constitution. It badly miscalculated public support for the electoral process and watched the overwhelming majority of people vote to ratify. Finally, the party refused to recognize parliamentary struggle as a valid form of revolutionary struggle. This move drew consistent criticism not only from critics of the NDF, but also from some within the progressive camp

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who accused the NDF of dividing “the progressive bloc into two increasingly contradictory streams” (Aquino : ; Magno : ). Over the year, an open conflict developed between reaffirmists who wanted to reinvigorate the insurgents’ armed struggle and the more modest progressive factions. By the end of , the reaffirmists had gained the upper hand within the CPP, hardening the NDF’s negotiating position. And former CPP members claim that, as early as August , the Executive Committee of the Central Committee decided to reverse its supportive stance toward the Aquino administration (Rocamora : , footnote ). There are equally strong reasons to doubt that the Aquino cabinet was seriously committed to a negotiated solution. In July , members of Aquino’s cabinet met with Robert Gates, the United States deputy director of central intelligence, to get moral and military support from the United States for a planned counterinsurgency campaign against the NPA. At this meeting, Aquino emphasized that she preferred a military option to negotiations. Those at the meeting developed a consensus that, unlike the Communist party of the Philippines, the NPA was a military problem that needed to be tackled by military means. Joker Arroyo, Aquino’s executive secretary, emphasized that the Philippines was facing “an NPA problem, not a communist problem.” The CPP could be defeated politically, but the NPA was incorrigible. Aquino agreed with the thrust of the Gates briefing. “By integrating political, economic and civic action and military policies into an overall counterinsurgency strategy, inroads could be made in stopping CPP/NPA growth and later reducing the size of the insurgent numbers by consciously targeting certain groups to be weaned away.” The Philippine military was united in its stance against negotiations. It openly resisted them because they would give the CPP/NPA “a chance . . . to regroup, to improve their combat capability, to gather arms and to consolidate their forces, and to be able to communicate,” as General Rafael M. Ileto, Aquino’s minister of defense, publicly put it (as quoted in Aquino : ). The event that eventually finished the chapter on the question of negotiations was the so-called Mendiola massacre in January . Philippine security services killed nineteen unarmed demonstrators and wounded several others during a demonstration for farmers’ rights at the Mendiola Bridge in Manila. This gave the NDF an opportunity to pull out of the peace negotiations because the casualties were mainly members of the left-leaning Peasant Movement of the Philippines. And over the course of , the NPA explicitly targeted what it called the “vestiges of fascist rule and struggle for the full

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realization of democracy and national independence.” These vestiges took the form of the Civilian Home Defense Forces (CHDF), along with “paramilitary right-wing groups, warlord armies, death squads, and armed fanatical sects” and “units of the reactionary armed forces” (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : f; Rocamora : ). In May , the CPP finally declared that it had again taken up its armed struggle. However, the massacre also came as a shock for the human rights community, and the members of the newly created Presidential Commission on Human Rights resigned in protest (Maglipon ). The Rise of Paramilitary Forces in 1987 Such was the political atmosphere when vigilantes first emerged. Radiating from a group called Alsa Masa (Masses Arise) in Davao City in southern Mindanao, this movement of paramilitary units, also called vigilantes, gradually extended its operations into the surrounding countryside. The Philippines had certainly seen vigilantism and paramilitary units in the past. Colonial authorities had first established them, most importantly, to help quell anti-colonial resistance against the United States. Later, they were used to suppress the communist-inspired Hukbalahap movement in the s. Reintroduced in  by President Marcos, vigilantes assumed a key role as the CHDF in the regime’s anti-communist campaign in the villages. They made an additional push during the s when the Philippine military received American military assistance and policy advice to train them. At that point, American military advisors had already acquired intensive experience with paramilitary units in the anti-drug wars in Latin America (Kraska and Kappeler ). When Marcos fell, CHDF forces numbered , and had become notorious for their human rights violations (Amnesty International ). Popular legend has it that three former NPA rebels founded Alsa Masa in April  in a slum district of Davao City, tapping into a deep reservoir of resentment among residents of Davao who had formerly been supportive of the NPA. Late in , the NPA had realized that military agents had infiltrated its ranks. The discovery touched off a violent internal purge in which NPA squads killed countless alleged conspirators, many of them “in error.” The purges alienated the population, and the NPA was forced to retreat from Davao (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : xi). By mid-February , Alsa Masa had , members and had begun to pursue the NPA and

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special (sparrow) hit squads in the back alleys of Davao and among the city’s million or more inhabitants. At first, military commanders were probably not involved directly in organizing the movement. Still, they were seen to encourage the establishment of vigilante groups and publicly praised Alsa Masa for providing valuable intelligence to the armed forces that let them find and destroy several communist hideouts in Davao City and in the surrounding Davao del Sur province. Spurred by the publicity surrounding Alsa Masa and official support for establishing similar paramilitary units in Mindanao, Cebu, and elsewhere, a plethora of vigilante organizations sprang up. The first vigilantes, such as those in Alsa Masa, anchored themselves in a discourse of popular democracy that related them to the goals and aspirations of the highly legitimate People Power movement that had brought down the dictatorship (see also Hedman ). These groups carried names such as KKK (Kusog sa Katawan Alang sa Kalinaw [People Power for Peace]), Puersa Masa (Power of the Masses), and CACA (Citizens Against the Communist Army) that closely resembled many organizations that had emerged during the People Power revolution in  (van der Kroef : ). The movement frequently relied on strategies from the NPA that they saw as effective, such as building front organizations and coordinating platforms (Hedman ). For example, the National Alliance for Democracy (NAD), an umbrella organization created in late  by leaders of several anti-communist groups, was composed of approximately twenty vigilante groups and attempted to establish a national network of vigilante groups. This umbrella organization emulated the creation of other umbrella groups, such as the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates, established a year earlier. By mid-February , human rights organizations reported the first serious human rights violations and attributed them to Alsa Masa and other paramilitary organizations. The violations included summary executions and forced subscriptions, criminal actions like looting, and deep involvement in criminal racketeering. Suspected members of the NPA were murdered and sometimes beheaded. Human rights organizations reported repulsive acts of cannibalism. Official Denial of Responsibility for Vigilante Violence Initially, President Aquino excused violations. She argued that her administration was not responsible for militia violence. The official position of the government was that all private militias had to be disbanded. Backing her

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official stance, the  constitutional commission inserted an article in the new constitution to disband the notorious CHDF of the Marcos era. In , after the constitution was ratified, Aquino indeed issued a presidential directive to disband the vigilantes. In effect, however, the directive was stopped by her military advisor Brigadier General José Magno, a declared supporter of paramilitary units. Just three days before the constitution was ratified, Magno had hailed the formation of presumably unarmed civilian patrols against communist insurgents in the rural areas of southern Mindanao. Seeing Aquino’s directive, Magno sent it back for revisions (van der Kroef : ). Aquino reduced the directive to a revised memorandum. In it, she requested that, by April , , the defense and local government departments would submit a draft of an executive order implementing the constitutional ban on paramilitary forces, including the CHDF. Then, at the end of March, she revised her position on vigilantes. She publicly praised Nakasaka as an example of a people power group that had carried her to ultimate victory over Marcos and into the presidency the previous year. At that time, the group was generally considered law-abiding and unarmed. When local human rights organizations sharply criticized her position, her presidential spokesman clarified that Aquino did not support armed vigilantes and her support hinged on three conditions. Vigilantes should be “unarmed, popularly supported, and effective in combating the insurgency” (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ). The vigilante phenomenon did receive crucial moral support from key military representatives. Two who offered public encouragement were General Fidel Ramos, chief of staff, and Jaime Ferrer, the secretary of local governments. As local commander of the Police Constabulary (PC) metropolitan district command in Davao City, Lieutenant Colonel Franco Calida became a key promoter of Alsa Masa and promoted its formation nationwide. Yet, even as these men stressed the vigilantes’ role in fighting the NPA, their support was deeply embedded in a discourse on popular democracy. In April , Ramos singled out Alsa Masa, the prototype of a spontaneous vigilante group, as deserving “full support and encouragement in dismantling communism” in Davao and elsewhere. Likewise, PC chief Major General Ramon Montano told supporters of the Puersa Masa that they “all deserve the support and protection of your government and the military” (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : xv). Aquino stepped up her rhetoric after the NPA officially took up arms again in May , and she made sure to refer to the most popular vigilantes,

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Alsa Masa, calling on them for a “string of honorable military victories.” Over the course of , she frequently expressed her political support for the vigilante movement. In October , she traveled to Davao City and praised Alsa Masa as a “model in the battle against . . . the communist insurgency” (as quoted in Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ). Official support for vigilantism contrasted sharply with statements about the local human rights community. At the same time that Aquino praised paramilitary organizations, she publicly condemned allegations of human rights abuses by paramilitary units as “complete lies” and portrayed them as exaggerated statements by communist organizations. She and the military conceded that some vigilante forces used excessive violence, but called these “unfortunate aberrations” within an otherwise highly institutionalized and professionalized military counterinsurgency operation (Hedman : ). As local and partly international media started focusing on the issue, circulating stories of abuses and forced memberships in vigilante organizations, she backed up her position by strengthening the supervision over these forces. In October , Ramos issued guidelines establishing an interagency commission to do so. This action was accompanied by a highly symbolic move to separate the good vigilantes from the bad and ugly. Militias were now officially called Citizen Volunteer Organizations (CVOs). In her state of the nation address on July , , Aquino told the Philippine Congress, “We need civilians to assist in defending their communities.” But she cautioned that they needed to do this “with the same respect for human lives and disciplined restraint we expect of our soldiers in dealing with non-combatants.” Aquino then instructed the chief of staff to begin the process of disbanding all so-called vigilante groups in line with the constitutional injunction against paramilitary groups. Two days later, Fidel Ramos issued a clarification, stating that armed anti-communist civilian groups must not be disbanded because they were helping to turn around the fight against the communist insurgents. He wanted to see only the “scalawags” ousted from the groups. According to Ramos, the “Department of National Defense and the armed forces firmly believe that we must retain the Bantay Bayan,” (as quoted in Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ) or civilian groups. As the government sent out mixed signals regarding its policy toward vigilantes, local-level military officials continued to encourage the groups openly. In , in a visit to Davao City, Colonel Jaime Canatoy, chief of operations of the military civil relations group, told members of Alsa Masa that it should be “expanded, not only in Davao City,” but also in Metro Manila

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and other provinces “to help eradicate the insurgency.” In September , Ramon Montano, chief of the Philippine Constabulary, the branch of the military primarily responsible for counterinsurgency operations, spoke before members of the Puersa Masa at an indignation rally in Baybay, Leyte province. There, the military had exhumed eighteen bodies of Filipinos who had become victims of NPA atrocities. Montano encouraged the group, saying they had “demonstrated how a strongly united populace can fight and repel the communists.” Thus, they “deserve the support and protection of your government and the military.” On a different occasion, Montano praised Alsa Masa’s human rights record, which was “better than” that of “some armed forces units” and insisted that criticism of its human rights record was communist propaganda. In March , two years after President Aquino’s state of the nation address, the Philippine Senate’s Committee on Justice and Human Rights reported that “many vigilante groups continue to exist and operate,” despite Aquino’s directive to disband them. Now, the military increasingly justified its use of paramilitary forces as necessary to combat the insurgency and rescue the fragile Philippine democracy. It regarded vigilantes as “effective complementary forces” in its fight against the NPA, given that the Constabulary, which had prime responsibility for fighting the NPA, was hopelessly understaffed and lacked the equipment to be effective. This and other explanations were presented in a primer that the military wrote to justify the Citizen Armed Force Geographical Units (CAFGU), the new official name for the paramilitary units. Here, CAFGUs were described as providing bases to expand the AFP and to help government forces to maintain “local security, law and order” (as quoted in Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ). CAFGUs were an inexpensive alternative to the military, and their lower cost was a very major factor in the decision to establish the militia. Failure to Establish Responsibility In retrospect, Aquino’s credibility is an important element in explaining the extent of vigilante violence. Once she was inaugurated, given her high credibility in the human rights area, major parts of the international component of the human rights network were deactivated. The Aquino Mystique led some of the most important groups, earlier the backbone of transnational activism under Marcos, to leave the network. One example was the New York-based Filipino Lawyers Committee on Human Rights. Some of the network’s members were recruited into the new government, and many others

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were convinced that Aquino held a pro–human rights stance. The groups that had come together around a strictly anti-Marcos agenda were deactivated (Angeles : ; Legaspi : ). J. Virgilio Bautista of FLAG remembered a “general perception that the Cory Aquino government was protective of human rights and that there was now a regime of civil liberties in the country” (as quoted in Bakker : ). It is important to emphasize the ways that Aquino’s credibility helped make denial successful, at least initially. While Aquino credibly defended the position that she did not support militant vigilantes, the vigilante phenomenon itself fractured the human rights frame, so effective under Marcos, along key dimensions. Under Marcos, the frame that had unified the human rights movement had emphasized the government’s responsibility for human rights violations. According to this frame, human rights violations had clearly been acts of a monolithic state apparatus. As Eileen C. Legaspi notes, this context “facilitated a tacit consensus as to what human rights violations were and who the perpetrators and the victims were, whatever the conceptual and philosophical differences among human rights advocates might have been” (Legaspi : ). After , subcontracted violence became deeply embedded in a symbolic grammar of people power and democratization that resonated in several directions: with the domestic discourse on democratic participation, with grassroots organizing at the local level, and with liberation from the authoritarian structures of authoritarian elite democracy. As Eva-Lotta Hedman points out, this process “redrew the imaginary map of the national battlefield.” Now the key combatants were identified “as vigilantes defending the good people of the Philippines from communist threats to peace and democracy rather than the old lineup of Marcos-era abusive military and paramilitary forces against its most sustained opposition, the New People’s Army” (Hedman : ). This framing of vigilantes by the military and Aquino proved effective. It undermined the persuasiveness of the long-established human rights frame. Under Marcos, paramilitary units had been effectively portrayed as local extensions of an abusive state apparatus, but now, under Aquino, vigilante mobilization was subsumed under the broader theme of democratization and people power as she and her generals underscored its local origins. We can see the symbolic importance of this framing of vigilantism in multiple statements by government officials. For example, Manila police chief,

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Colonel Romeo Maganto, heralded the umbrella organization as “the shield of democracy from the threats of the Communist party of the Philippines and its military arm, the NPA” (as quoted in Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ). Maganto officially assumed the function of a national advisor to NAD. In January , he announced the formation of the Metro Manila Crusaders for Peace and Democracy to counter the threat of “military mutiny, criminality and communist insurgency” (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ). Likewise, Davao’s military commander Franco Calida praised Alsa Masa as being “already in the heart and mind of the people” and as “participatory democracy in action.” Through these statements, Calida pushed the buttons of people power. He effectively characterized the decision as one between friends and foes. “In the fight between democracy and communism, there is no way to be neutral. Anybody who does not want to join Alsa Masa is a communist.” As if to officially acknowledge that vigilantes were expressions of democracy, a demonstration in Davao City drew ,. Another one drew , supporters. The message got through. A member of an Alsa Masa group believed his organization was useful to the military as a means of avoiding investigations of human rights abuses. “We in the Alsa Masa don’t give a damn about a review from the top.” At the same time, members of Communist organizations were dehumanized in the popular discourse, and their legitimate political aspirations were denied. A full-page advertisement sponsored by Calida heralded Alsa Masa as “an effective vehicle” that “sanitized our city of the germs of communist insurgents.” Members of the vigilante movement were “active partners of civilian and military authorities in peace-keeping efforts” (as quoted in Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ). Generalizing from the rather unique experience of Alsa Masa in Davao City, the military and some civilian officials were able to portray the nationwide growth of vigilantes as a spontaneous and grassroots democratic response by civilians who were victims of the NPA. Securitization was only one characteristic of the justification practice under Aquino. Another one was excuses, which effectively served to deflect responsibility for abuses. Moreover, Aquino consistently distanced herself from vigilantes, and she was credible, so the conventional human rights frame did not fit (Kowalewski ). Her orders to disband the paramilitaries were disregarded by the military and especially local military commanders (Bakker : ). This distribution of roles effectively split the critics, who threw their political weight behind Aquino. “Cory’s popularity shielded her from culpability, with most

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opinion-makers blaming the military and excusing the president” (Lim : ). This dynamic was reinforced through the military coup attempts. And, as mentioned earlier, the vigilantes “redrew the imaginary map” of the “national battlefield.” Vigilantes defended the good people of the Philippines from communist threats to peace and democracy. These were not state forces in the form of Marcos-era abusive military and paramilitary forces (Hedman : ). Discrediting the Local Human Rights Movement Moves to establish legitimacy for an actor, institution, or practice usually go hand in hand with parallel activities to delegitimize a political opponent. Political psychologist Herbert Kelman defines legitimization as “the acknowledgement of rights or powers that were not previously recognized or the extension of certain rights or powers to claimants to whom they were not previously granted.” In turn, delegitimization “refers to the denial of rights or powers that previously were recognized or the withdrawal of rights or powers from claimants to whom they were previously granted” (Kelman : f). Examples of this process include attempts to discredit local human rights movements. Governments and militaries made such moves, but so did government think tanks. Such efforts aimed particularly at blocking the international support bases for human rights struggles at the level where they were generating information on abuses. In Chapter , we saw how this technique was also employed under Marcos. But under Marcos, the credibility of human rights organizations was rarely contested in public. This changed under Aquino, as information from within the human rights movement emerged, providing evidence for the claim that some human rights groups were using the issue in an instrumental way to justify their continued struggle to overthrow an elite democracy. Over the course of , the credibility of the local human rights movement deteriorated remarkably, accelerated by military intelligence about the CPP’s subversion of human rights organizations such as the TFD. By the early s, the Philippine military had already obtained such evidence during raids of major church and human rights organizations in Samar Province. This suggested, in their view, that “virtually the entire framework for social work and human rights assistance in the Visayan region—stretching across the Philippines—had been co-opted” (Marks : ). Some of this evidence was highly controversial, as it might have been obtained through “coerced confessions” (see the brief discussion in Marks : footnote ; McCoy : –).

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In , this argument was echoed by Time correspondent and journalist Ross Munro, who identified the CPP’s infiltration of local human rights organizations as one reason for its positive image abroad. In a well-publicized article in the influential monthly magazine, The Commentary, he discussed the CPP’s internal purges during  and accused the party leadership of being “paranoid, rigid, and totalitarian,” like the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. A substantial part of his commentary dealt with the failure of local Philippine human rights organizations to document these abuses, which he called “human rights violations.” Munro complained, “The media can learn nothing about NPA atrocities from Philippine organizations that claim to be committed to civil liberties and human rights” (Munro : ). He specifically targeted the TFD, which he described as openly pro-communist. The TFD had “consistently ignored NPA killings and other abuses of civilians” and refused to investigate, report, or act on killings by the NPA, primarily because it was manipulated by the CPP. Using examples from TFD’s statistics on human rights violations, Munro argued the TFD was distorting facts and wrongly attributed violations to the military in order to divert attention away from its political aim, to support a communist revolution (Munro : f). These arguments surfaced again in  and . Two reports by the conservative Heritage Foundation took issue with the first reports by Amnesty International and the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights that were critical of the Aquino administration. It was “not the military but the communists who pose the greatest threat to Aquino and to Philippine democracy.” They said the communists killed Filipinos on a daily basis and illegally assassinated government officials and members of security services (Fisher ). If anything, the Aquino government needed more financial resources to combat the CPP and the communists and to protect American interests. The  report provided detailed evidence on the Soviet Union’s financing of the CPP and the CPP’s subversion of key solidarity groups such as the Friends of the Filipino People. It urged policymakers to increase economic and military assistance to the Philippines. Moreover, it suggested that the United States should “identify Soviet and other international support to the CPP.” It urged Manila “to identify foreign political fronts of the CPP” and pressed Aquino to formulate a comprehensive counterinsurgency program (Fisher : ). These allegations might not have had much impact. They could have been dismissed as self-interested rhetoric aiming to legitimize the Reagan government’s mostly covert operational support for counterinsurgency. Yet, the internal conflict within the CPP over tactics between reaffirmists or militarists

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and progressives effectively produced confirmatory information from the communists themselves. It revealed how effective the CPP had been in taking over some legal organizations. Moreover, in , Satur Ocampo, a key Aquino negotiator with the NDF, revealed an extensive transnational support network. The CPP had “support networks in twenty-five countries, including fifteen in Western Europe” (as quoted in Aquino : ). Here, we observe an interesting example of the recategorization of behavior through a different context. Under Marcos, the same information about an international support base would have been interpreted as transnational popular support for popular struggles against a repressive regime. Under Aquino, this information received a different meaning. It appeared to confirm that the human rights campaign of the late s might have been biased. On a domestic level, this played out against the CPP. It undermined the long-held CPP myth about its nationalist identity, solely drawing on local support and its political legitimacy among the Filipino people. During the Marcos era, the CPP leadership had continuously claimed that its struggle was firmly embedded in the aspirations of the Filipino people and it did not need foreign assistance. In the end, then, the discourse on links between the CPP and local human rights organizations produced a subtle justification for extending counterinsurgency techniques to human rights advocates. However sensible it was to question the motivation and information-gathering procedures of human rights groups, the debate did not lead to a genuine dialogue on how to improve the credibility of statistics, but mainly served to discredit human rights concerns on a local level. Stanley Cohen calls such statements “justificatory denials.” The grammar they follow can be summed up as “they deserve it.” That is, members of human rights organizations deserve to be killed because they are not, in fact, defenders of human rights but communists. This technique had two important consequences for local human rights organizations, both drastically diminishing their effectiveness. First, the labeling of human rights monitors as communists had immediate consequences for the local human rights network. Spokespersons for the vigilante movement and military officials indiscriminately identified human rights activists as communist agents. In Davao City, where the vigilante movement had originated, a sympathetic radio broadcaster identified human rights lawyers as enemies (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ). Denounced as communist sympathizers or outright communists, human rights activists became legitimate targets of right-wing vigilantes (Amnesty International b: ).

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This so-called red-labeling not only affected those who deserved it in the eyes of the arguments’ proponents. It also jeopardized many human rights advocates who had no connection at all to communist organizations. Documentation provided by international human rights organizations provides a vivid picture of the persistent threats posed by vigilantes (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : –). A female human rights lawyer of Misamis Occidental, did not remotely fit the profile of a communist sympathizer because she was middle-aged, middle class, and politically moderate. But she became the target of repeated death threats by the criminal syndicate Kuratong Baleleng, which had its roots in an organization devoted principally to criminal activities. The groups conducted illegal house-to-house searches of neighborhoods thought to support or sympathize with the NPA and conducted drives to get residents to surrender and then participate in a public oath-taking ceremony. It was soon accused of salvaging and partly operated as a private army of political patrons. Soon after its formation, Kuratong Baleleng declared an open war on human rights professionals in or near Ozamis City. During a radio broadcast, the group’s leader declared that lawyers affiliated with FLAG were its enemies and mentioned the names of seven FLAG lawyers. As a result, one of them received persistent death threats, and members of the group observed her private residence. Because she was also the mayor of a city, she could get some protection from a local CHDF force that she had previously purged of abusive elements. After some public pressure, a PC soldier was assigned to guard her (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : –). Human rights defenders who were not linked to powerful elites found themselves in vulnerable positions. Over the course of , human rights lawyers and monitors were intimidated and received death threats. Some were murdered. A human rights delegation that wanted to provide relief assistance to evacuees of a military operation was surrounded during the night by a vigilante group armed with rifles and bolos, traditional weapons. The vigilante members reportedly ordered the group to come out of the house, accused them of being NPA members, and searched their bags of relief supplies. The group was then taken to a military camp and questioned by a military commander. Second, this process of red-labeling effectively required human rights monitors to condemn alleged human rights violations by any armed group. Otherwise, they would risk being further branded and harassed. Some radio broadcasters said on air that they regarded “anyone who protested military abuses” as “a communist sympathizer” (Lawyers Committee for Human

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Rights : ). Consequently, “almost every human rights group” found that it had to consistently uphold individuals’ basic rights to due process when they were “accused of any wrongdoing” and “to condemn torture and all other forms of cruel punishment committed by either government or opposition groups” (Lim : ). This task not only strained the capacities of most local human rights organizations, but overtly stretched the legal definition of a human rights violation as a practice engaged in only by governments. A final factor enhanced the persuasiveness of both the Aquino administration and the military in accounting for the vigilante phenomenon. The communist movement lost its legitimacy early on through congressional elections. During these elections, voters demonstrated very little support for political parties in which communists figured prominently. This apparently demonstrated how little electoral support the communists could muster. The May  congressional elections lent additional impetus to the surge of violence. During the campaign, several left-wing groups, the so-called national democratic bloc, had joined forces to establish the Alliance for Popular Democracy (ANP). ANP then assembled a new political party, the Partido ng Bayan (PnB), which combined BAYAN and the Volunteers for Popular Democracy. PnB included CPP’s Jose Maria Sison and Bernarbe Buscayno, the founder of the NPA. The ANP hoped to translate its estimated numerical strength at the grassroots level into an effective electoral machine to counter the resurgence of the land-based, regional political elite. It specifically targeted the Aquino administration’s initiative on agrarian reform, which was lackluster at best. As Jennifer Franco points out, ANP members had high expectations that they would win a substantial share of electoral votes, up to  percent. But when the votes were counted, ANP managed to get only . percent of the total vote nationally (Franco : ). ANP chairman and labor leader, Rolando Olalia, had already been killed in November , but attacks against PnB members increased after the May elections (Franco : ; Hedman : ; Thompson ). Resurgence of a Transnational Network and International Mobilization: 1988–1992 As we have seen, after Corazon Aquino came to power, network actions remained paralyzed for about a year-and-a-half, but, by , new efforts were being made to mobilize an international audience. Meanwhile, a public debate focused on the frame of the network’s collective action and led to an official split in the domestic human rights movement. A liberal, but very

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weakened, human rights faction emerged as a credible actor in the domestic realm. Still, based on a liberal framework, new Philippine solidarity organizations concentrated on expanding what was left of the transnational network. They also shifted the venue. In , over  NGOs came together to found the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA), an umbrella organization that submitted yearly reports about the human rights situation to the UN Commission on Human Rights. It immediately produced a highly critical report showing how deeply involved the United States was in counterinsurgency operations (Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates ). Then, with the help of international donor agencies, Philippine groups established various offices in Europe and in the United States. They purposefully expanded the network to include international organizations, most importantly, the European Union and the UN. Also in , the Philippine International Center for Human Rights, located in Luxemburg, started lobbying international organizations. The National Council of Churches sent a representative, Alvaro Senturias, to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. These activities focused on UN mechanisms and ensured the Philippine government would constantly need to justify its continuing human rights violations. In April , based on its obligation to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the Philippines submitted its first state report on how it was implementing human rights norms in its domestic legal structure. Amnesty International and the Lawyers’ Committee on Human Rights published several substantial reports that criticized the human rights violations of paramilitary groups and the general impunity of human rights perpetrators. These reports demonstrated, most importantly, that many vigilante groups formed and prospered because of moral and financial support and training from the military. The exception was prototypical vigilante groups, such as Alsa Masa of Davao City. Second, they undermined the rationale for justificatory denials in the they-deserve-it category by showing that members of human rights organizations were targeted simply because they had defended suspected communists. The verdict of these human rights organizations was unanimous and negative. The Philippine government proved to be “unwilling or unable to hold vigilante forces legally accountable for grave abuses,” and the evidence provided by the organizations showed that vigilantes who fell away from the regular military command structure “simply cannot be adequately controlled.”

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These groups were lawless, and the Philippine nation was paying a heavy price for the military’s “experiment with vigilantism” (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : xvii). And they quickly discredited the public myth that the vigilante groups formed spontaneously in response to dissatisfaction with internal NPA purges and illegal taxation, revealing this was a deliberate attempt to deceive the public and to conceal military complicity in various cases. Through these strategies, they compelled the Aquino government to take a public position on vigilante control and to increase its bureaucratic supervision of the groups. Thus, during the campaign, the Aquino cabinet saw how costly it would be to its reputation to support or even tolerate paramilitary groups that had acquired a reputation of being out of control. But the government efforts to scrutinize the NPA’s human rights practices also had an unexpected side effect. Human rights organizations also targeted NPA abuses and pointed to the NPA’s process of revolutionary justice. Using detailed information about the process, international NGOs undermined the view that this process was either legitimate or legal. The report of the New York-based human rights organization, Asia Watch, illustrates this. The report examined so-called sparrow units and their practice of assassinating members of the military. A comparison with legal standards revealed that sparrow units violated the rules of war in many aspects. Victims did not conform to legal definitions of a legitimate target. Policemen, a preferred target of NPA sparrow units, did not fit the definition of legitimate targets because they did not have combat duties. Likewise, persons with political roles, such as abusive mayors, also targeted for assassination, were not proper targets. The shooting of ordinary criminals constituted arbitrary punishment as the severity of their crime did not justify the death penalty. This was aggravated because the so-called revolutionary trials lacked due process (Asia Watch b: ). International organizations were crucial in backing local human rights groups by confirming the established norm. Human rights violations were primarily state violations. Thus, under international law, it was appropriate that human rights organizations documented governmental abuses only. “In fact . . . most human rights organizations throughout the world monitor only government violations,” and “International law establishes obligations binding upon governments only” (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : ). In practice, however, this attempt to reframe an important part of the discourse did not succeed. The government expanded the mandate of the Constitutional Commission on Human Rights to include the documentation

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and investigation of NPA abuses. Human rights organizations remained under strong pressure to document these abuses. Using this strategy, the network continued to monitor the military’s strategic use of human rights and democracy in its battle against the communists. In addition, for the first time, it held communist organizations accountable to the rule of law, which they had claimed to value during the struggle against Marcos. Thus, it was able to compare the behaviors of the military and the communists. During this phase when local human rights defenders were so vulnerable, international human rights organizations used their moral authority to good effect. They defined appropriate behavior both for government institutions claiming to fight a legitimate counterinsurgency war and for private organizations claiming to exert governance functions. During this phase, members of local human rights movements watched their moral standing in the Philippines gradually increase (Lim ; Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates ). The sheer evidence of human rights violations attributable to paramilitaries and their sponsorship by local militaries eventually prompted other state governments to mobilize internationally. When Aquino first visited the United States, she was welcomed enthusiastically, but, during her second visit there and some visits in Europe, she faced vehement criticism and demonstrations. In , for the first time during her administration, the country report of the United States Department of State for the Philippines officially acknowledged that the human rights situation was deteriorating. Individual members of Congress began criticizing American support for paramilitary groups in the Philippines (Green ). When she visited Germany in , Aquino was greeted by protests. When the Philippine delegation presented its first state report on the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, it faced tough questions from the UN Human Rights Committee members. The transnational network had prepared them with information about continuing human rights violations. Their questions pointed directly to the great gap between incorporating human rights norms into the legal system and actually observing them. These organizations also focused public attention on the Philippine judiciary’s policy of impunity for human rights violations, and the public pressure to revoke controversial presidential decrees increased remarkably under Aquino. Significantly, however, it was only under the following administration of Fidel Ramos that these reform suggestions were implemented. Moreover, the remaining vigilante groups were only dissolved under Ramos,

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who could take that step because he had both the public legitimacy and the personal authority and respect among the military. Given the heightened international attention and his weak domestic position because he had won only . percent of the votes during the presidential elections in , Ramos made human rights reforms an important pillar of his reform program. Shortly after taking office in June , he repealed the Republic Act of , which effectively legalized the CPP. He also revoked some of Marcos’ presidential decrees that had contributed to abuses, but could not be repealed under Aquino. Others were drastically modified to fit with accepted standards of human rights. And he strengthened the judiciary, leading to an increased adherence to the rule of law. Under Ramos, Philippine legislators repealed important legislation that was considered to contribute to human rights violations, such as Presidential Decree , which provided for courtmartialing members of the military. The peace agreement concluded with the CPP included human rights issues. Most importantly, Ramos succeeded in disciplining the armed forces and dissolving vigilante forces. As human rights conditions improved, the focus of international organizations shifted away from the Philippines. Conclusion: Excuses, Paramilitary Organizations, and Human Rights Just as the Marcos era demonstrated the power of human rights norms and transnational advocacy under an authoritarian regime, this chapter demonstrates how international human rights protection can fail under a new democracy. The focus on the comparatively brief period of militia violence in the Philippines between  and  right after Aquino’s rise to power shows how governments committed to human rights develop a practice of human rights abuses. Why did transnational advocacy not achieve the same results as in the Philippines under Marcos? Why did the clear human rights commitment of the Aquino administration not translate into better protection of human rights? The answers to these questions are the choices that actors perceived they had to make between observing human rights law and securing their hard-earned liberal democratic system. The choice made in this case appears particularly interesting, as the common assumption is that human rights and democracy go hand in hand or that a democratizing political system offers unique opportunities to further a human rights agenda and to increase the level of human rights protection. While this might be true,

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on average, the Philippine experience exemplifies a case demonstrating how extended mobilization and the politicization of human rights blocks human rights reforms. Moreover, we have seen how the instrumental use of paramilitary organizations can thwart international human rights pressures by making it possible for governments to deflect responsibility for human rights violations. While the NPA undeniably posed an objective threat to the state authority of the Aquino government, the speed with which the NPA could be recategorized as a deadly threat to democracy is surprising. Here it is interesting to note that, under the Marcos regime, the NPA had developed a considerable level of political legitimacy as the only force capable of combating an authoritarian regime. What were the conditions under which human rights advocacy failed? And what was the role of excuses in this context? In general, the government’s discourse drew on highly legitimate norms of an international state society, in this case, the need to retain state authority over a long-standing insurgency. Given the fact that the Aquino administration was a democratically elected government, this frame was highly resonant to begin with, and Aquino enhanced it by coupling state authority to her continuous struggle to maintain a liberal-democratic system. Aquino and the military effectively securitized Philippine democracy by portraying the NPA as a deadly threat to democracy. As this followed a democratic script, the communist movement was publicly delegitimized. The May  elections had effectively demonstrated the marginal public support base of the communist movement, and negotiations had stalled. Democratic procedures to deal with the insurgency appeared to be exhausted. At this point, the government and the military were effectively able to seize the discourse from human rights organizations. While the human rights frame under Marcos equaled the struggle for human rights with democratization and the repression of the Marcos government legitimated unrecognized public opposition against him, the cards were shuffled differently under a democratic government. The Aquino administration reframed counterinsurgency not only as a struggle for state authority against a subversive movement, but more importantly as a struggle to rescue the newly acquired liberal-democratic political system. In this struggle, human rights concerns had to be subordinated to maintain the democratic system. The government effectively attempted to securitize the Philippine democracy. As described in Chapter , in the practice of securitization, actors manage to symbolically define an issue as vital to security and thereby override the binding norms that usually characterize social relationships. Securitization

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serves to legitimate practices severing the social bonds that would usually bind actors, such as respect for human rights. Its major characteristic is a specific threat-related grammar over some matter of life and death (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde : f). One strand of public discourse, led by left-leaning political organizations in Philippines, emphasized that the new democratic system was not a true democracy yet and the revolution bringing down Marcos was unfinished. The public contest over the question of “What kind of situation is this?” at this point focused on the interpretation of continuing human rights violations. For any political system calling itself democratic, the increasing level of human rights abuses was unacceptable. But did Aquino’s inability to eradicate these abuses imply that her administration still embodied the “vestiges of fascist rule,” as the CPP put it? Here, a number of factors ultimately propelled the government’s account that the communist insurgency indeed posed a threat to democracy. First, as we have seen in many statements, this framing did not neatly fit public perceptions about Aquino’s personal human rights commitment and hence her credibility. Human rights had now been institutionalized in the legal structure, and a human rights commission had been set up. Together, they provided a reasonable expectation that human rights violations would be investigated under the existing political system. Once information on human rights violations emerged, the Aquino administration was able to block mobilization against it by two discursive strategies. First, it provided a compelling frame challenging the very definition of itself as a government violating human rights. It portrayed the entire local human rights community as biased. It was undermined by the CPP and essentially a front organization of it, and this became visible in the fact that it was not documenting the NPA’s “human rights violations.” Because political interests were at stake, the movement exaggerated human rights violations. The government consistently portrayed as propaganda any indications that military operations were illegally expanding to target legal organizations and individuals, such as members of political parties and human rights advocates. This strategy succeeded not only because of external actors lending support to this definition of the situation. It succeeded because it was validated by information emerging from within the movement itself. It is not clear to what extent the military had anticipated the potentially disrupting effects of counterinsurgency operations against the NPA. In any case, by subcontracting violence to paramilitary organizations, it was able to avoid the potentially troublesome effects of the public shaming strategies that a

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transnational network of human rights organizations would have been able to mount. Excuses consequently served to deflect responsibility for violations. These excuses proved effective because paramilitary units as main perpetrators themselves drew on the cultural commonplaces of peoples’ power to legitimate themselves. They were at least initially portrayed and seen as spontaneously emerging phenomena that could not be controlled by external actors and that were expressive of the democratic atmosphere prevailing after people power. This weakened the discursive connections that could be made between the Aquino government and paramilitary organizations. Second, excuses worked in a context in which the government was credible and had itself no record of human rights violations. Aquino and the many human rights activists in her cabinet epitomized credibility in the area of human rights and were unconnected to human rights abuses under the previous Marcos regime. This impeded efforts to blame her administration for violations. Subcontracted violence thus helped the military avoid being publicly branded as a human rights violator. At the same time, it excused the government of any culpability or liability. The boomerang hit not the government, but the paramilitary organizations. One might also argue, third, that the transnational network was much weaker when the counterinsurgency operations started (Keck and Sikkink ). Yet, this seems to be a process endogenous to the discursive construction itself. Aquino was credible, and so did transnational networks disappear. As we have seen, as the local human rights movement split and a liberal human rights movement emerged more clearly, international organizations became active again, and missions by several human rights organizations began to pressure the Aquino administration to establish effective constraints on vigilantes. Most important, these organizations took a unified stance against the Aquino administration’s policy on paramilitary units. They unearthed evidence about officially unacknowledged military supervision of paramilitaries and weapons supplies.

7 Excuses and Paramilitary Violence in East Timor and Indonesia 1999–2005

On August , , in a referendum that made history, the people of East Timor voted on the question of self-determination. When the ballots were counted that evening, more than  percent of the population had voted for independence from Indonesia. The election ended East Timor’s twenty-fouryear struggle and seemed to finally reward the huge network of solidarity organizations in Asia, Europe, and the United States that had, for decades, raised issues of justice and human rights, mobilized world opinion, and pressured governments and international organizations (Simpson a). But the election was soon overshadowed by militia violence. Members of paramilitary organizations, armed with machetes and traditional and automatic weapons, rampaged through the capital city of Dili, destroying key administrative buildings and provoking a mass flight from East to West Timor. The reframing of East Timor from a case of self-determination to one of human rights proved to be crucial for achieving self-determination in the first place. Solidarity and human rights organizations had long argued that gross and systematic human rights violations justified reversing East Timor’s integration into Indonesia. Their argument eventually prevailed, because, as we saw in Chapter , the Suharto government and the military could not make credible their counterclaim that easing repression in East Timor would strengthen the self-determination movement and eventually lead to the loss of East Timor, which would then trigger the disintegration of Indonesia. The premise of human rights and democracy groups inside and outside Indonesia had been that making Indonesia democratic would prevent precisely that sequence of events. Provinces would opt to voluntarily

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stay within Indonesia once repressive practices ended. After the referendum, human rights pressures continued to account for referendum-related violations committed by the Indonesian military. The United Nations Security Council briefly considered setting up a criminal tribunal on East Timor. Domestic constituents in Indonesia took advantage of these pressures to further a human rights agenda. This chapter compares East Timor to two similar cases, Aceh and Irian Jaya. The province of Aceh, part of the island of Sumatra, has a long history of self-determination movements, as does Irian Jaya (also called Papua or West Papua by pro-independence Papuans), the western part of New Guinea. In , Irian Jaya was integrated by Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, after the Dutch withdrew from their colonial possession. UN-mediated negotiations led to a historic compromise, establishing Indonesian sovereignty over the territory after a UN-assisted popular consultation in . Since then, an active self-determination movement called Organization for a Free Papua (Organisasi Papua Merdeka [OPM]) had been trying to reverse what it regarded as unfair treatment of the population, which had not been consulted properly. In Aceh, the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka [GAM]), focused on self-determination, was founded in the mid-s and has since struggled for independence from Indonesia. In , media reports revealed Aceh’s long history of harsh military repression and abuse, targeting members of the self-determination movement but ultimately victimizing the whole population. A report by the National Commission on Human Rights estimated that more than , people had died during the military struggle against the insurgency. Despite this revelation of abuse and repression and despite the existence of a transnational human rights network, the outcomes were quite different in these two cases. In both cases, international actors quickly converged on the position that Indonesia’s territorial integrity was at stake, and they stopped mobilizing. This decision was consequential. In both provinces, the military began extended military operations, including the declaration of martial law in , that again victimized the civilian population. At the end of , human rights groups estimated that at least , Acehnese had died in the conflict. They also saw undeniable evidence of torture, involuntary disappearances, and extralegal executions of civilians. Some outspoken human rights lawyers disappeared. The self-determination movement in Papua was equally suppressed by the military, forestalling a peaceful resolution of the

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conflict, which continues as of early  (International Crisis Group a, b; Amnesty International ). In combination, these three cases raise important questions about the influence of international human rights norms. First, why did similar struggles in Aceh and Irian Jaya not provoke the international mobilization against abuses that we saw in East Timor? This question directly addresses one of the questions raised in the introduction. Why do similar human rights violations not provoke similar reactions, even if they occur in the same country and about the same time? From a perspective of transnational human rights activism, this outcome is puzzling, given an overlap in networks, a similar issueframing (human rights), and even the mimicking of successful strategies. The more general question is why some issues do not come on the international human rights agenda (Carpenter ). Second, why did the human rights discourse and the Indonesian government’s commitment to human rights after Suharto’s fall not provide effective constraints on the Indonesian military? Third, why did international publicity on human rights abuses and the existence of international human rights organizations focusing on Aceh and Irian Jaya not prevent human rights violations? In short, why did the constraints that we regard as effective deterrents for human rights violations not work in these two cases? From a liberal perspective, we should have seen greater respect for human rights after the transition to democracy. One explanation is that the very existence of armed rebellion made it easy for the Indonesian government and the military to use repression. The government did what any government would do under similar circumstances. It defended its sovereignty. A number of quantitative studies show that “all states . . . respond to national security threats by violating personal integrity to at least some degree, regardless of any international or domestic human rights pressures” (Cardenas : ; see also Poe and Tate ; Ellingsen and Gleditsch ). But this explanation falls short of explaining the variance. It takes as given what I take as problematic, that the state security frame was the only frame accurately portraying the situation on the ground and other domestic and external actors agreed with this definition of the situation. More precisely, it fails to explain why state security was at stake in Aceh and Irian Jaya, but not in East Timor. From the Indonesian military’s perspective, all three territories were national security issues. From the perspective of human rights activists, all three territories were instances of human rights violations. In the case of Aceh, Edward Aspinall (: ) goes as far as to argue, “The defining issue,

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the one that drove the mobilization spiral, was human rights abuses.” Domestic constituents were in great emotional solidarity with a population that had experienced gross and systematic human rights violations that had been widely publicized by domestic and international human rights organizations (Amnesty International a, b; Human Rights Watch ). Western countries and international organizations had been consistent critics of the military’s human rights practice in these territories, suggesting that audiences recognized that human rights were at stake and not an armed rebellion. Finally, like Fretilin in East Timor, the separation movements in both Irian Jaya and Aceh had reoriented their struggle toward nationalism and human rights issues, making their demands more resonant among domestic and international audiences (Aspinall a). So even if the Indonesian government had an interest in suppressing these movements, it is not clear why Western governments also changed their approach. They provided few constraints on the Indonesian military when it started offensives in these two provinces. One explanation focuses on the fact that East Timor is unlike Irian Jaya and Aceh, so it is misleading to juxtapose Aceh and Irian Jaya as comparative cases to East Timor. The three areas do vary in the religion of their populations, the natural resources at stake, and their legal status. East Timor and Irian Jaya have a predominantly Christian population, whereas Aceh’s population is staunchly Muslim. Moreover, both Irian Jaya and Aceh are rich in resources, accounting for a significant share of Jakarta’s overall budget. In contrast to East Timor, Aceh and Irian Jaya were of considerable economic and strategic importance because of their oil, gas, and other natural resources. Aceh contributes a large share to Indonesia’s national income (Emmerson ; Solingen ). Thus, material interests (also by Western states) help explain greater resistance against a mobilization for human rights. Not only were Western states interested in exploiting the two provinces natural resources, Indonesia became more important as an ally in the American war against terror after the attacks of September , . According to realist assessments, interests won over norms because the interests were more powerful when set against human rights advocacy. While Western states undeniably have material interests, little evidence indicates that these ultimately prevented their mobilization against abuses. The key turn in discourse to safeguard Indonesia’s territorial integrity occurred in the course of  when Indonesia was not yet on an antiterror agenda. After , it was widely speculated that American emphasis

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on fighting militant Islamic forces would take the wind out of the sails of human rights pressure to win the Indonesian government’s support for the War on Terror. President Megawati Sukarnoputri happened to be among the first presidents that visited the United States after the attacks. During the attacks, the Bush administration made clear that it wanted the Indonesian government’s cooperation in the fight against terror. There was a pronounced debate in the United States about the lifting of restrictions on security cooperation with a financial incentive amounting to US$ million (McBeth and Djalal ; McBeth and Hiebert ). However, the Indonesian government astutely refused to bow to American pressure, primarily out of domestic concerns for its large Muslim constituency. Moreover, if military-strategic considerations played a role, these should affect international human rights pressures on Indonesia in general and not only for Aceh and Irian Jaya. East Timor support groups in the United States continued to successfully lobby for restrictions on military aid. The American Congress led the campaign to account for human rights violations in East Timor with Senator Patrick Leahy managing to link a human rights and anti-terrorism agenda by portraying Indonesia’s government as being in violation of both commitments (McBeth and Hiebert ). In sum, human rights pressures from the United States did not ease after . Another final argument is that Aceh is unlike East Timor because its legal status was not an issue of international dispute. Despite an active self-determination movement, neither Aceh’s nor Irian Jaya’s international legal status was seriously disputed until recently. So the implication is that, because East Timor’s integration had never been formally accepted by the international community, human rights violations committed by the Indonesian military appeared to be more egregious and facilitated mobilization. But, again, if this argument matters, it can be interpreted in an alternative way. It could be argued that, precisely because there was no real threat that Irian Jaya or Aceh would secede from Indonesia, it should have been easier to mobilize, most importantly, in Indonesia itself. My main claim in this chapter is that, even within one country, situations that objectively share characteristics with others are played out in human rights dialogues very differently and make different world polity rules applicable. In East Timor, the discourse was still about human rights. In Aceh and Irian Jaya, it was about state security and territorial integrity. In the course of , the logic of appropriateness changed and, with it, exchanged the range of possible behavior of the Indonesian military. The normative argument

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linking these two norms is that the state is the primary guarantor of human rights. Breaking the state and destroying its territorial integrity would lead to more human rights violations. My second claim is that this is a highly pathdependent process. Focusing on the content of the debate and the sequencing of events makes it possible to explain the variation on the ground. I argue that all three cases exemplify normative clashes between human rights and territorial integrity. But the outcomes of these debates vary. And here the causal story becomes complex. For simplicity, it helps to think of it in two stages that develop dependent paths. The crisis in East Timor occurred before those in Aceh and Irian Jaya. Therefore, the three cannot be considered independent cases in which the existence of transnational advocacy groups and human rights violations all lead to the same outcome. Instead, the cases are pathdependent. The sequence of arguments presented in the discourse over East Timor influences the outcomes in the other cases. This concept deserves consideration in more detail. First, at time point , before the referendum in East Timor in , multiple actors are debatt ing East Timor’s right to self-determination. Human rights organizations and solidarity organizations argue that the population should have the right to determine its own fate because human rights abuses have invalidated the claims of both government and military to legitimate authority. Audiences generally accept the claim of human rights organizations, given indisputable evidence that the military was and continues to be engaged in gross and systematic violations and the government is unwilling or unable to stop it. All actors prepare for a referendum. This gives the military two choices. It can accept the outcome of the debate or try to influence events so actors come to believe that they have made the wrong decision. The military takes the second path. It activates a long-standing network of paramilitary organizations to sow fear among the East Timorese population, provoke clashes with pro-independence organizations, and create the impression of a civil war. It hopes these developments will deter similar movements from pursuing self-determination and domestic and international audiences from supporting them (O’Rourke : f). To increase the credibility of their forecasts, however, they have to deny responsibility for abuses to make their manipulation invisible to outside observers. This brings in excuses as a means to deflect responsibility and subcontracted militias as the executioners of violence and terror. Even as human rights organizations are watching and there is some external monitoring through the UN, it is impossible, within t, to mobilize audiences into action

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to put effective constraints on military behaviour. The rather unexpected overwhelming vote for self-determination and referendum-related violence then triggers developments at time t. In the second stage, at time t, this outcome of self-determination has an impact on debates over human rights in Aceh and Irian Jaya. First, it encourages self-determination movements in these provinces. They mobilize and copy techniques from Fretilin in East Timor to gain access to international publicity and increase external leverage on their government (Aspinall : –, f; Drexler ). Likewise, the military copies its strategy of setting up militias in these provinces. At this point, human rights pressures are halted by two factors. The fact that there is no hard evidence to pin responsibility for militia violence in the earlier episode shields the military from accusation of insincere motives in the second episode. This is the important function of excuses at this stage. Second, the fact that the East Timorese did indeed vote for self-determination adds an independent norm-dynamic. It provides an after-the-fact validation for the military’s argument that East Timor would set a precedent for other areas and, if granted the right to self-determination, Indonesia would break apart. This concern is shared by external governments and international organizations that want to prevent a catastrophe comparable to East Timor. They converge on the government’s position. Backed by external authorities, the government can now suppress self-determination movements. It can also increase its credibility by showing that self-determination movements use human rights as a tool to attract international public attention. This stylized account summarizes the argument in this chapter. The chapter is structured as follows. First, I show that, after Habibie announced a vote on self-determination for East Timor, the Indonesian military reactivated and set up a network of paramilitary organizations to create the impression that self-determination would lead to civil war. As we will see in statements by domestic and international actors alike, this strategy initially persuaded audiences, making it impossible to accord the military responsibility for militia-related violence. In the second section, I describe the impact of East Timor on the struggles for self-determination in Aceh and Irian Jaya. In these provinces, selfdetermination movements perceived themselves as being in situations that were quite similar to that in East Timor and started to mobilize for independence. Their political demands were justified by emerging evidence about the military’s past human rights record in each area. I then show how the more

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forceful demands for self-determination provoked the concerns of international actors about the breakup of Indonesia and how Indonesia’s newly elected president, Abdurrahman Wahid, secured the support of other states to preserve the country’s territorial integrity. Once this support was granted, it triggered more repressive practices by the military and eventually led to the declaration of martial law over Aceh in . In the course of event, human rights organizations and activists were harassed, and some were killed. In the conclusion, I compare this case to the case of the Philippines discussed in Chapter  and speculate whether spectacular violence in East Timor or the suppression of self-determination movements could have been avoided. Self-Determination I: Militia Violence in East Timor 1998–1999 In December , President Baharuddin J. Habibie stunned Indonesians and the international community by offering the East Timorese a referendum on self-determination or, as he put it, a popular consultation. Habibie thereby reacted to increasing international pressures and pressures from Indonesia’s human rights community, which had long mobilized for a referendum. His decision constituted a clear departure from earlier statements in which he had consistently rejected these demands. In June , Habibie had expressed his view in a CNN interview, “East Timor is an integrated part of the republic . . . There is no need for a referendum, it is Indonesia” (as quoted in Crouch b: ). In a BBC interview a week later, however, he announced he was “ready to consider giving East Timor special status like Jakarta, Aceh, and Yogyakarta.” Later that month, he suggested that, in exchange for granting East Timor special status, the UN would have to recognize integration and “the whole world should stop making problems” (Crouch b: ). Habibie’s offer initiated UN-sponsored talks between the Indonesian and Portuguese foreign ministers in Austria. These began in July , but did not produce substantial results until December . At that point, Habibie suggested that Jakarta grant East Timor some form of self-determination after a lengthy period of autonomy. A vote on self-determination had long been the dream of Alexandre “Xanana” Gusmão, East Timor’s hugely popular independence leader. But both Xanana and the UN had hoped that demilitarization would take place before the referendum. They anticipated a period of several years in which to

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prepare East Timor for a fair and peaceful vote. Instead, in late January , Habibie suggested that Jakarta give the people of East Timor the opportunity to accept or reject its autonomy later in the year. Habibie further insisted that the vote take place before the next session of the People’s Consultative Assembly. That order gave all interested parties only nine months to prepare the consultation (O’Rourke ). Later that year, the Security Council, by Resolution  (), would authorize the establishment of the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) on June , . An agreement reached between Indonesia, Portugal, and the UN, the so-called  May agreement, stipulated that, after the vote, UNAMET would oversee a transition period. During which, the decision of the East Timorese people would be implemented. The military under Wiranto reportedly did not reject the proposal in public (Crouch a: f), although it was collectively against self-determination (O’Rourke : ). As internal military documents show, the military firmly believed that East Timor had become a part of Indonesia and letting East Timor separate from Indonesia would only set a dangerous precedent, leading other provinces to demand self-determination and then developing into civil war (McRae ). Human rights organizations pointed to the gross and systematic human rights violations and urged the government to resolve the East Timor question through a referendum in which it could be tested (instead of just claimed) that the people strongly supported integration with Indonesia. The very announcement of a referendum led to immediate militant activity in East Timor. Only days after Habibie’s statement, militia violence erupted in several western districts of East Timor. In mid-February, so-called WANRA, or people’s resistance militias, undertook a full-scale assault on suspected sympathizers of independence, forcing , East Timorese to flee. In early March, pro-integration militias threatened to kill the Australian envoy if the Australian government continued to interfere with Indonesia. One of the militia leaders, Joao Tavares, openly made Australia responsible for the melee. “We will face Australia if they don’t stop leading us to a civil war.” Indonesia’s respected foreign minister, Ali Alatas, predicted a referendum-style solution to the East Timor question would “reignite conflicts, it will reopen old wounds, and, if we’re not careful, it will bring us back to civil war.” Even human rights organizations in East Timor were skeptical about Habibie’s plan. Aniceto Guterres Lopes, director of the Hak Foundation, the local human rights organization, stated that, “whichever way

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it goes, it will mean civil war . . . and because this war will be among East Timorese, it will be harder to resolve than the war between East Timorese and Indonesians” (as quoted in Mydans c). As reports about clashes involving militias became more frequent, international audiences began seeing developments in East Timor as the beginning of a civil war. Reports portrayed the violence as an outcome of existing divisions among the East Timorese population over self-determination and a hopelessly overstretched military. Illustrative of this portrait is a New York Times article by Seth Mydans in April . He described the significant possibility of civil war, as militia forces were fighting each other and the military, which was overextended by “trying to maintain stability and unity at a time when the nation is going through a dangerous transition from . . . dictatorship.” Stating that “separatist guerrillas have also used brutal tactics against their enemies during the conflict,” Mydans described the fears of pro-integration forces that they would be killed by pro-independence militias (Mydans c). In mid-March , the Indonesian newswire, Antara, reported that Bishop Jimenez Belo had called on all parties, whether they favored or opposed integration with Indonesia, “to reconcile immediately to avert a civil war in the province.” And in early March, John McCarthy, the Australian ambassador to Indonesia, had expressed understanding for the pro-integration militias when he described them as “inexperienced, confused, and frightened about the future.” He saw a clear need for “more dialogue between the militias.” These evaluations of the situation in East Timor before August  are important for several reasons. First, they show that, until May , observers of developments in East Timor were misled by a military strategy of denial that aimed at deliberately creating an impression of civil war. In fact, an independent UN commission, charged with investigating the violence in East Timor between January and August , established that the military used the announcement of a referendum on self-determination to activate long-standing paramilitary units in East Timor so it could sow fear and terrorize the pro-independence population. To achieve that aim, the military relied on a network of paramilitary units established in the s as well as newly trained recruits in East Timor. Second, the statements demonstrate that the military managed to deflect responsibility for these acts. It impeded the efforts of transnational human rights organizations, the media, and other states to blame it for the violence

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both before and after the referendum. In fact, the military’s consistent denials of responsibility undermined efforts to hold it accountable. These denials had consequences for developments elsewhere. The military transplanted the East Timor model of paramilitary units to other areas with active self-determination movements, creating the threat of potential militia violence. These threats, in turn, influenced how actors interpreted the situations and then adjusted their strategies. The Military and Militias Before 1999

When Habibie went public with his plan to grant East Timor a referendum on self-determination, the Indonesian military, led by General Wiranto, resorted to a vicious strategy to push its message that this would only trigger self-determination demands elsewhere. It activated a long-nurtured network of East Timorese militia forces extending throughout the territory to create the impression of staunch resistance to independence. The military had a historical relationship to the militias, of which it had made no secret over the years. In the mid-s, paramilitary forces were part of a regional drive toward inexpensive military support against insurgency groups. In fact, they virtually matched the civilian home defense forces or paramilitaries of the s that had been set up in the Philippines under Marcos to reinforce the military. The most prominent at that point was Halilintir, set up in the s and headed by Joao da Silva Tavares. Dormant from  onwards, it was reactivated in  in parallel with the Gada Paksi militias (Bartu ). Moreover, from  onwards, the Indonesian military had established and trained WANRA forces, an acronym for perlawanan rakyat, or people’s resistance. These were groups of militias that were supposed to aid the Indonesian military in combat situations. Because the policy was legitimate in an Indonesian context, where the Indonesian military had primary responsibility to safeguard the nation’s territorial integrity, the military had never made a secret of this practice for which the Philippine vigilantes, discussed in the previous chapter, might have provided models. But with growing public attention and the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission in , indepentent monitoring of the military’s human rights record increased remarkably. Around this time, the military realized that militia forces could be useful in combating the independence movement in East Timor and would let it avoid responsibility for its detrimental effects on human rights. In , the military intelligence command, Kopassus, under Suharto’s son-in-law,

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Prabowo Subianto, and East Timor’s military commander, Mahidin Simbolon, established so-called Gada Paksi militias. These seemingly autonomous pro-integration militias purposefully targeted suspected members of pro-independence groups and helped co-opt young East Timorese into the integration cause. In , Gada Paksi groups became notorious for killing suspected pro-independence sympathizers. Human rights organizations attributed severe abuses to these groups and suspected the military had a role in training and supporting them. As in later episodes, the military denied any involvement (Bartu : , footnote ). The close relationship between the military and militias made it reasonable to assume that the military was responsible for the militia violence that erupted in , but media reports and the statements of outside observers show that the military managed to deflect blame for the violence. In public statements, it primarily used excuses as a strategy of denial. For example, in early February, Wiranto declared the military was “not arming the people. On the contrary, several people’s militia groups, which used to assist ABRI (the Indonesian Armed Forces) in assuring security, have been disbanded and their weapons taken back.” He portrayed the outbreak of violence as spontaneous battles between pro-independence and pro-integration forces (McDonald, Ball et al. : ). An army spokesperson admitted the militias had received weapons, but affirmed, like Wiranto, that the militias only helped the military to uphold security, law, and order. The killing of civilians was an aberration for which he apologized. Another provincial commander confirmed that the military was training militia forces to maintain security, but they would not be armed. In January , the Indonesian Human Rights Commission submitted its report to the UN on the atrocities in East Timor. It revealed that this was an outright deception intended to deliberately mislead international and domestic audiences. From the beginning, the military had full command responsibility over the militias. They were fully integrated into the military structure and part of a military chain of command. Their organization paralleled that of the military, and they were based in military buildings. They received their weapons and ammunition, their communication devices, and, most importantly, their commands from the Indonesian military (United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights ; Othman : –). Human rights organizations, the church in East Timor, and the media were instrumental in assembling information on the organization and structure of militias, linking them to the Indonesian

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military. Yet this information came in bits and pieces over the course of . Only after the ballot did the public learn the full story behind the militia violence.

Militia Structure and Violence in 1999

The first pro-integration militias emerged in mid- in Maliana in East Timor. As early as May , the Dadurus Merah Putih (Red and White Typhoon) began recruiting members as a direct response to the formation that month of the Council on National Resistance in Timor (CNRT), the umbrella organization for all pro-independence groups in East Timor. Some of these militias were old paramilitary groups that had been established as early as . Among the earliest established of the militias was Halilintir (Thunder), led by Joao Tavares, but actually under the command of the TNI, as the Indonesian Armed Forces were called after the transition to democracy. Some appeared to have special functions, such as Halilintir, which had  members since  and was on the payroll of TNI, but on a different budget line than other militias (Bartu : ). Tim Alfa was originally established in  by Kopassus forces to fight the pro-independence group Falintil. It was directed by Kopassus commanders, reactivated between April and September , and operated out of the same building as Kopassus. The two groups shared logistics and conducted joint operations, which included unlawful arrests and abduction of suspected independence supporters for interrogation at the TNI barracks. Its leader had also received military training from the TNI (Othman : f). The command structure of the militia groups purposely followed that of a TNI battalion, but without any general staff. The militias adopted names such as Blood of Integration, Thorn, Red Dragon, and Thunderbolt. One militia group called itself Mahidi, an Indonesian acronym for “Live or Die for Integration” (O’Rourke : ). Most operated under the de facto command of the TNI. They also had a close working relationship with the intelligence unit of Kopassus, the Special Forces Command, which was directly in charge of overseeing their activities. As the pro-integration militias grew, so did the pro-independence militias, leading to occasional clashes that were usually provoked by the pro-integration militias (Bartu : ). By October , at least eleven militia groups were in operation throughout East Timor. By mid-May , twenty-five of them existed stretching out to cover all thirteen of East Timor’s regions. They were brought together loosely in the Fighters

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for Integration Force, which was estimated to include about , soldiers (O’Rourke : ). Because the militias were under the command of the military, they could be activated any time. In addition to the attacks directed against CNRT members, other military operations aimed at recruiting and establishing a province-wide militia force consisting of all males over the age of seventeen. In addition, the political fronts campaigning for East Timor’s integration with Indonesia established a province-wide network of offices (Bartu : ). Excuses and Human Rights Advocacy in East Timor

It is interesting to look at the domestic and international discourse on responsibility for violence. As we know from earlier episodes of transnational advocacy, anyone who tries to mobilize audiences needs information on military responsibility for abuses. Church and human rights organizations in East Timor, as well as several international solidarity groups, tried to assemble evidence on the links between the Indonesian military and paramilitaries. They also tried to reframe the portrayal of militia violence in news reports and held conferences to discuss new strategies. Starting in February , human rights organizations, church groups, and Komnas HAM started questioning the portrayal of spontaneous uprisings as indicating a civil war. And, in several international conferences, East Timorese solidarity groups discussed the question of militia violence and military responsibility for it. However, as many statements show, the human rights frame remained in a state of limbo concerning a crucial question until after the election in August . Who was ultimately responsible for the violence? Pro-independence proponents and human rights groups initially guessed the answer and attributed blame to ominous third elements within the military structure that were actively manipulating developments in East Timor. Xanana Gusmão was convinced the Indonesian military intelligence service was provoking the violence to “ruin the image of President Habibie and General Wiranto.”  Human rights organizations and later governments blamed “rogue local commanders” for the violence, but not the military as such (Othman : ). Kevin O’Rourke, a specialist on Indonesia, claims that two massacres of civilians, the so-called Liquica massacre in April and another in May, were instrumental in shifting outside perceptions of militia violence (O’Rourke ). At Liquica, between sixteen and forty-five civilians died in a militia attack that was apparently supported by Indonesian mobile brigade forces.

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The massacre outraged the public because it was committed in a church where , refugees had gathered to escape the violence. In a similar incident on April , , members of the Aitarak and Red and White Iron (Besi Merah Putih) militia, headed by Eurico Guterres, attacked the house of Mario Carrascalao, the brother of East Timor’s former administrator. When Carascalao approached the Indonesian military commander to ask for help, he just laughed and told Carascalao to seek assistance from CNRT, the pro-independence forum. In the course of the attack, Carascalao’s seventeen-year-old son was killed. The commander was not even deterred by the presence of David Andrews, the Irish minister of foreign affairs. Part of a EU observer team, Andrews witnessed the encounter and watched as the mob ransacked a nearby office of East Timor’s main newspaper while Indonesian security personnel stood watching (Othman : ). While these two incidents certainly made the public doubt that the militias acted independently from the military, the evidence was circumstantial. It was based solely on the fact that the military did nothing decisive to stop the violence (Robinson : , ). In the Liquica case, the church where the massacre had happened was renovated the day after, obstructing any official investigation.And the military consistently and categorically denied any involvement. For example, a military spokesperson insisted it was the military’s task to safeguard the situation in East Timor, not to sow terror. Armed Forces Chief Wiranto promised to “take strict measures to restore law enforcement as well as human rights and public order in the province” and blamed out-of-control militia forces. In a highly symbolic act, Wiranto organized a disarmament ceremony after the attack on Carrascalao’s house. Journalists observed, however, that, after the ceremony, the weapons were returned to the same militia members. These and other press reports prompted one militia leader, Enrico Guterres, to threaten the safety of foreign journalists (O’Rourke : ). In May , UN staff began to move into East Timor under the  May agreement, which accorded the Indonesian military responsibility for the safety of the operation. They became personal witnesses to military-militia collaboration and victims of militia atrocities. UN investigators personally saw members of the Indonesian military training militia forces. Journalists provided evidence in the form of personal eyewitness accounts and photographs (Dodd ; Martin : ). This information provided crucial backing of domestic accounts, which had so far been exclusively provided by East Timorese church groups and human rights organizations such as Yaysan

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Hak. Thus, Kevin O’Rourke’s statement is certainly true. More evidence was available about military backing for the militias. Subtle shifts in press reports indicate that public perceptions changed. But even as human rights organizations provided “unique and valuable insights” about the organization of militia in all districts, as Peter Bartu, a political officer with the United Nations mission, recalls (Bartu : ), two key questions remained unanswered. Who in the military hierarchy organized the campaign, and who knew of it and gave the orders? In May , David Wimhurst, the UN spokesman in East Timor, was still calling on the Indonesian government to stop the militias. He demanded the “appropriate Indonesian security authorities” take “determined action . . . to curtail the activities of the armed militias” (as quoted in Dodd ). Media reports now regularly referred to the fact that the militias had links to the military and consistently spoke of “militias backed by the Indonesian military” or “military backed militias” (Mydans b). This represented a small victory for the human rights organizations that had worked hard to associate the military with militia violence. Journalists noted the military was able to “switch the violence on and off ” and the police and military personnel blithely ignored the rules of the  May accord (Dodd ; O’Rourke : ; Nevins : ). UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan complained the military did nothing to prevent militia violence (Mydans b; Shenon ). But a number of organizational ambiguities also continued to allow the Indonesian government and the military to shift the blame. In April , a law came into effect that effectively separated the Indonesian police from the military. Under the  May agreement, the police officially had responsibility over all security issues in East Timor. Although Wiranto was chief of staff for both the military and the police, the military now used its diminished role as an excuse to avoid responsibility for the militias, although it clearly controlled them (Bartu : ). Moreover, the Indonesian government used the very presence of UN staff in East Timor to deflect the blame. A spokesperson for the Indonesian Foreign Ministry accused the UN of “siding with one side” and said the UN could “make more of a contribution” to ending clashes between rival groups. The military effectively created the impression that it was holding officers responsible. It shifted commanders. Two weeks before Election Day, Wiranto replaced Colonel Suratman, the sub-regional military commander in Dili since June , with Colonel Mohammad Noer Muis. Muis apparently

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continued to give the militia free rein, however. Wiranto also replaced commanders in Bali and East Timor (Othman ). When it became apparent that the change of command had proved ineffective, Wiranto stated on Election Day that the security forces in East Timor “cannot guarantee against the outbreak of chaos” (as quoted in O’Rourke : ). This was one more variation on the theme that the military was unable to control the militias that acted independently of the military hierarchy. At the end of August, a three-member American congressional delegation, visiting East Timor to collect firsthand evidence, castigated the military. Senator Tom Harkin, the delegation leader, lamented, “The civilian forces, the Indonesian police, are not going to stop these thugs. They’re openly associating with them.” President Clinton, in a letter to President Habibie that was described as tough, reportedly warned that relations with the United States would be seriously damaged if mass violence occurred during the referendum on self-rule in East Timor. The very fact that these overt threats had some effect was taken as further evidence that the military had more control than it would admit openly. Although members of the UNAMET force, now numbering , men and women, were assaulted repeatedly, and voter registration had to be delayed twice, the population was able to vote on August . On that day, no militia attacks were recorded. An overwhelming majority,  percent, rejected the offer of wide-ranging autonomy and voted for independence. But immediately after the vote, conditions deteriorated quickly. Militia members launched a campaign of destruction and killing that left Dili and other towns and much of the countryside in ruins. As UNAMET watched, the campaign made tens of thousands of people into internal refugees and prompted calls by the international community for an international peacekeeping operation. Thus, the human rights and solidarity groups faced a dilemma. Official statements by the military provided no hard evidence that it had masterminded the attacks. An editorial in the Singaporean newspaper, Straits Times, captured this dilemma vividly. The editor, Susan Sim, asked, “Does it matter if the massacre of innocent people and the rape of a stillborn nation were premeditated or unintentional? Whether a peeved military high command carried out Plan B to hang illegally onto some land, to extract retribution and deter other would-be integrates elsewhere, or simply allowed local thugs to vent their rage with no fear of a final counting?” She answered her own question: “In the court of public opinion, no difference” (Sim ). The military’s image

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was tarnished, but the hard evidence was missing. Wiranto was especially careful to stick to the official line throughout. On September , during a session with a special delegation of the UN Security Council, which had arrived in Jakarta to convince Habibie of the need for an international intervention, Wiranto emphasized the military had the situation under control and was well-intended. He did so even as Martin Andjaba, the leader of the delegation, accused Wiranto personally of “failing the international community . . . the people of East Timor and the people of Indonesia.” Wiranto had to accompany the UN delegation to East Timor where he registered surprise over the extent of devastation in Dili. Wiranto repeated his position when hard evidence linking the military to the violence became public. In February , Indonesia’s Commission of Investigation into Human Rights Violations in East Timor (KPP-HAM) released key findings from its report on the violence in East Timor. It saw undeniable evidence that the violence had been planned by the Indonesian military. The full KPP-HAM report was not available until March  because the Indonesian attorney general prevented its publication (McDonald, Ball et al. : ). In February , when Wiranto was asked to comment on the findings, he repeated his description of spontaneous uprisings and even claimed the East Timorese were themselves responsible for the destruction: Why does the damage appear to be that extensive? Because, according to accounts from local eyewitnesses and several pastors, and even a pastor that was on Portuguese radio, after newcomers and those who were pro-integration heard of their loss, they felt life in East Timor was over and that it would be better to move somewhere else. They began to destroy and burn buildings and stores that they had built up little by little over tens of years. They did not want to have their houses abandoned and taken over by those they considered the enemy. After they finished burning their own houses then they helped their neighbors burn their houses. That’s why it looks so extensive but not because it was planned by TNI [the military]. It was spontaneous by the homeowners themselves. As a result, until March , there was no official resolution to the question of who was ultimately responsible for East Timor’s destruction and a humanitarian catastrophe affecting hundreds of thousands of East Timorese

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(Crouch b). This circumstance allowed key military figures to continue their denial. The military got a crucial opportunity to work on its public credibility and gain sufficient political stature to influence public debates on Indonesia’s future in the debate on Aceh and Irian Jaya. Militias had made the frame of a coming civil war persuasive and provided a vivid picture of future developments that might haunt Indonesians and the world community if demands for self-determination were supported. As we will see in the next sections, it was ultimately the success of East Timor’s movement for self-determination, coupled with the experience of militia violence of unconfirmed origin that precipitated developments in Aceh and Irian Jaya. Self-Determination II: East Timor’s Impact on Aceh and Irian Jaya 1999–2001 In , East Timor provided an ideal testing ground for various groups inside and outside Indonesia to emulate the strategies that had succeeded there. Developments in East Timor, Aceh, and, to a lesser degree, Irian Jaya were highly connected in a public discourse about human rights violations. East Timor was widely regarded as having set a precedent for Aceh and Irian Jaya. It provided arguments for self-determination, it constructed the threat of territorial disintegration, and it served as a model for prosecuting military abuses. Likewise, when members of the military were prosecuted for the East Timor atrocities, that action was evaluated not only in its own right, but also with a view to constraining the military’s political role in Indonesian politics, especially its role in suppressing self-determination movements. But because various actors had learned valuable lessons in the laboratory of East Timor, they were able to adapt their strategies. This was nowhere more obvious than in the cases of Aceh and Irian Jaya, where human rights were at stake. Human rights violations in Aceh and Irian Jaya had been on the agenda of transnational networks since the late s, but it was only after regime change in  that the Indonesian public got a glimpse of what had happened to the Acehnese under a quasi-martial law status. Between  and , sweeping military operations against the separatist Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka [GAM]) had cost the Acehnese population between , and , lives and had been accompanied by numerous human rights violations, including torture and disappearances (Ross : ). According to the Carr Center for Human Rights, , children had

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been orphaned during the – military crackdowns. By mid-, these children of DOM victims constituted a significant corps of GAM fighters. DOM was the official abbreviation for Daerah Operasi Militer or “area of military operations.” Although GAM was also implicated in human rights violations, the overwhelming majority of human rights violations could be clearly traced to the Indonesian military (Ross : –). Although the population in Irian Jaya had not experienced the same degree of military repression as the Acehnese, its self-determination movement had also been harshly repressed. Irian Jaya had been integrated into Indonesia in the s when the Dutch had withdrawn from their colonial possession. Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, had taken a chance in annexing the territory and risked a war with the Dutch. UN-mediated negotiations between the Dutch and Indonesia had led to official acknowledgements that Indonesia had sovereignty over Irian Jaya. Starting then, a self-determination movement, the Organization for a Free Papua (Organisasi Papua Merdeka [OPM]) became active, but was severely repressed under Suharto’s New Order. During Suharto’s rule, human rights organizations regularly reported that suspected members of the OPM were arrested for minor incidents such as raising the Papuan flag, and they were charged with subversion. They also noted that, especially in areas with an active insurgency like Irian Jaya, the use of torture was so widespread that it amounted to a standard procedure (United States Department of State : ; Human Rights Council of Australia ; Amnesty International ; Human Rights Watch Asia ). Thus, when Suharto resigned in May , the new political openness and public attention to human rights abuses created high expectations that there would be some accountability for military behavior in these two provinces, too. But in –, the military brutally dissolved several independence demonstrations in Irian Jaya. During demonstrations in Biak, the military killed twenty-six demonstrators and immediately closed the terrain to independent observers, thereby preventing an independent investigation of the assault. At the end of , human rights organizations raised an alarm over the extent and brutality of the military’s approach to pro-independence demands in Irian Jaya (Human Rights Watch ). At first, the Indonesian government and the military seemed responsive to the numerous demands from the grieving population. In early August , armed forces commander Wiranto announced he would lift the DOM status in Aceh. That is, it would no longer be an area of military activity. He also withdrew troops that were not Acehnese (non-organic) from Aceh

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and apologized for past abuses. President Habibie had a series of high-level meetings with community leaders from Aceh and Irian Jaya. At which, both communities’ representatives presented their demands. Acehnese demands centered on the prosecution of human rights abusers, the release and rehabilitation of political prisoners, special autonomy, specific clarifications about Aceh’s status as a special region, and a statement that Aceh remains part of Indonesia. In this highly charged situation, however, President Habibie failed to keep his pledge to bring human rights violators to justice (Bertrand : –). This reaction prompted a hardening of positions in Aceh. GAM, which had been dormant until , reemerged and drew on the widespread grievances of the Acehnese population. Habibie’s announcement of a referendum in East Timor at the end of January raised hopes in these two provinces that their populations would have the same kind of chance to determine their own fate. In Irian Jaya, intellectuals, church leaders, and activists had already established the Forum for the Reconciliation of Irian Jaya Society (Foreri) in August . This platform emulated East Timor’s Council of National Resistance in Timor (CNRT) and called on Jakarta to allow Papuans to manage their own affairs through autonomy, a federal system, or independence (International Crisis Group b: ). The forum linked up with solidarity groups in Europe that were also engaged in solidarity work in East Timor and Indonesia. In February ,  representatives from Papuan communities met with Habibie.Also that month, Acehnese students from all over Indonesia founded the Centre for Information on an Aceh Referendum (SIRA). In East Timor, undeniable evidence of human rights violations had provided the bond of solidarity, making the self-determination argument stick with both domestic and international audiences. This created expectations, primarily in these two provinces, that international groups would also support their demands. And over the year, specific incidents of human rights violations indeed made it highly likely that these two provinces would follow on East Timor’s path and get the chance for a referendum. In May , a massacre of civilians in Krueng Geukeueh, near Aceh’s provincial city of Lhokseumaweh, led to an escalation of the situation and an open confrontation between GAM and the Indonesian military. The Indonesian government made credible efforts to respond to demands for autonomy, but no promises of independence. In April , the parliament had already issued a pair of decentralization laws that gave extensive powers to all of Indonesia’s regional and local governments and

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enabled them to retain much of the income from natural resources extracted in their own regions. A third law affirmed Aceh’s right to control its own cultural, religious, and educational affairs (Ross : ). On November , , a demonstration calling for a referendum in Aceh drew the support of a million protesters and confirmed those predictions warning that East Timor’s independence would lead to the disintegration of Indonesia. Only a few days later, similar demonstrations occurred in Irian Jaya. A stream of revelations about human rights violations committed by the military in Aceh before the fall of Suharto backed up the demands of pro-referendum supporters. The population needed a chance to determine its own fate. In November, an investigative committee appointed by President Habibie presented the new Wahid government with a -page report on military abuses in Aceh. A separate fact-finding team looking into the massacre at Lhokseumaweh established that the military had lied about the incident. It had not been a clash with members of GAM, but a unilateral shooting in which soldiers had killed civilians. At the end of November , a parliamentary subcommittee questioned six of former President Suharto’s top generals regarding the military’s human rights record. The hearing was transmitted on national television. Individual commission members left no doubt that the inquiry was part of a struggle to satisfy the political pressure for legal sanctions against the military and was part of a broader push to consolidate civilian rule in Indonesia. Heri Akhmadi said, “We are trying to control the extent of military power over national affairs . . . Everyone expects that, within the next five years, the military will no longer play a political role.” But could human rights concerns be pursued in an atmosphere in which Indonesia’s territorial integrity was at stake? According to the military, no. The military was convinced that “If they succeed in shaking the strongest pillar of national unity, Indonesia is finished” (as quoted in Cohen ). A key argument gained immediate currency after the mass demonstrations in Aceh and Irian Jaya. There was a dangerous liaison between human rights concerns and self-determination, and acknowledging the first would unleash the second. Within days, domestic and international actors converged on the position of both the government and the military. The territorial integrity of Indonesia was at stake. On a domestic level, key factions within the democratically elected parliament supported Wahid’s position. Akbar Tanjung, Golkar chairman, and Amien Rais from the Muslim National Mandate Party (PAN) both wanted to suppress any possible referendum. Rais predicted,

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“If Aceh breaks away, we will break apart.” One might assume that these spontaneous references to the territorial integrity of Indonesia were purely domestic in origin. In this case, Indonesian nationalism would provide the key blocking factor for the activities and concerns of human rights advocacy. Yet, as we will see, international support for Indonesia’s territorial integrity was unequivocal and provided a crucial element that gave a different direction to developments in Aceh and Irian Jaya. Thus, the subtleties of the discourse on Aceh and Irian Jaya show that, when the Indonesian government chose to use military means to tackle self-determination movements in these two provinces, it was hardly an autonomous decision developed independently of international audiences. As I will show below, it was a social action oriented toward acquiring understanding, acquiescence, or explicit approval, especially from Western governments and ASEAN member states. International Support for Indonesia’s Territorial Integrity

During the East Timor crisis, ASEAN member states had remained unobtrusive. Given the existence of Muslim minorities in Thailand and the Philippines and a substantial number of Acehnese exile communities, these governments had a clear position on Aceh. The Thai, Malaysian, and Philippine governments voiced serious concerns that developments would raise self-determination demands in their countries. Philippine Foreign Minister Domingo Siazon warned that, if staunchly Muslim Aceh was allowed to break away from Indonesia, it would stoke simmering Muslim separatist movements in the southern parts of both the Philippines and Thailand. In fact, as we will see in the next chapter, the Muslim groups in the Philippines were already drawing inspiration from East Timor’s struggle for self-determination, even if their religious affiliation made Kosovo and Chechnya more attractive models (Richardson ). Dewi Fortuna Anwar, an Indonesian foreign policy adviser, described the dilemma facing the Indonesian government: [H]ow to pacify the demand for an Acehnese referendum on self-determination without undermining the unity of the Indonesian state? How can [President Wahid] keep his word to the Acehnese that they, too, could get a vote, East Timor style, but not trigger the Balkanization of Indonesia? (as quoted in Richardson ) The Indonesian government’s policy on Aceh and Irian Jaya received crucial backing from Western state governments, and the credibility of newly

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elected President Abdurrahman Wahid was crucial in getting these governments to acquiesce. Wahid had taken over the presidency in October . As spiritual leader of Nahtladul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization, Wahid had emerged as one of the most respected Muslim community leaders under Suharto. On assuming the presidency, he immediately promised negotiations to end the violence in Aceh and agreed to internationally mediated negotiations with the Swiss-based Henri Dunant Center as facilitator. At the same time, Wahid swiftly convinced the Western state governments that they had to unequivocally support Indonesia’s territorial integrity. During his visits to the United States and to European and Middle Eastern countries between November  and February , he sought reassurances that the international community would not support the demands for self-determination. He soon succeeded. In January , on the eve of Wahid’s visit to Brussels, the EU dropped an arms embargo that had been put in place in August  in response to the violence in East Timor. The action was intended as an explicit support of Wahid’s reform goals because he had come under pressure from his own military, which saw his conciliatory approach to domestic conflicts as too weak. A joint EU-Asia Ministerial Meeting Declaration noted the EU’s “support for a strong, democratic, united and prosperous Indonesia and for the territorial integrity of the Republic of Indonesia.” It supported Indonesian government efforts to “strengthen the country’s democracy, ensure respect for human rights, reform its military and judicial systems, [and] enhance the rule of law and good governance.” In May , the EU took a similar position in a joint EU-United States statement. With regard to Aceh, the statement called on the Indonesian government to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Thus, a statement intended as a strong signal from the EU Council to the military that it supported Wahid simultaneously let the military wash its hands: The authoritative support for Indonesia’s territorial integrity did not allow discussion of the question whether the military’s motives were sincere. And it legitimized the military’s normative claim that territorial integrity was at stake. But it was not only state governments that supported territorial integrity. As newspaper reports show, public opinion converged on the need to safeguard Indonesia’s territorial integrity. A broad spectrum of mass media voiced concern over the potential breakup of Indonesia. The International Herald Tribune described widely held views that “Indonesia could become the Balkans of Southeast Asia unless the government and armed forces take effective action

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to control the often violent agitation” (“New Unrest Fuels Fear of Breakup of Indonesia” ). The New York Times showed a distinct concern with the breakup of Indonesia around  and  (Landler ; Mydans b). The British Guardian, although consistently critical of the Indonesian military and human rights abuses, saw Indonesia disintegrating, “on the brink of meltdown” or imploding in the face of an outbreak of violence in the Moluccas, Lombok, and Ambon. Writers in academic journals and policy journals also mentioned the possible disintegration of Indonesia. The precedent of East Timor looming over the fate of Aceh and Irian Jaya is also obvious as authors labored to explain exactly why East Timor was not a model. One example is a piece in Foreign Affairs by foreign policy advisor and Indonesian specialist, Donald Emmerson, who explained in detail why the secession of East Timor was “unlikely to cause a chain reaction” and why Indonesia “may shrink” but was not “about to unravel” (Emmerson : ). Renewed Repression of Human Rights Activists in Aceh and Irian Jaya

The broad acknowledgement that Indonesia’s territorial integrity was at stake precipitated a different approach than in East Timor. Western governments considerably moderated their criticism of the Indonesian government’s human rights policy in these two provinces. The EU supported demands for regional autonomy in Aceh and Irian Jaya, but shied away from denouncing individual cases of human rights violations. In August , Jaffar Siddiq Hamzah disappeared in Aceh. A human rights lawyer, Siddiq had been the director of the New York-based Forum for Aceh, which campaigned peacefully for Aceh’s self-determination. His badly mutilated body was found four weeks later in a ravine outside the Medan city limits. In December ,  militia members armed with traditional weapons attacked a police station in Irian Jaya. The incident was portrayed as a clash between Papuan Highlanders on the one side and the police or Indonesian settler community on the other. In the course of the incident, the police detained ninety students. Some were tortured, and three were killed. Only later was it established that the raid had been orchestrated by Kopassus forces (International Crisis Group b: ). In November , Theys Eluay, Papua’s Presidium Council leader, was abducted and strangled. Human rights groups pressured other governments to condemn these abuses and pointed out that the military had a clear interest in fanning the conflict between GAM and the military because it legitimized the latter’s political

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role. They also warned that the military was mimicking its East Timor strategy and had started to train militia forces in these two provinces to create an impression of civil war so it could justify the use of military force. Despite all this effort, the public outcry failed to appear. The human rights argument no longer seemed to stick. Indicative of this shift was a visit in February  by members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Development and Cooperation in Indonesia. The parliamentarians underlined the EU’s support for Indonesian efforts to implement regional autonomy, but also emphasized the delegation was “not here to support separatism or battle or tell Indonesia what to do.” During the fifty-seventh session of the UN Human Rights Commission in March , member states discussed the human rights situation in Irian Jaya and Aceh, but failed to take concrete actions, a decision that many church and human rights organizations criticized as inadequate. A month later, several United States senators wrote a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, expressing their deep concern about the military operations in Aceh and urging him to clarify the American position. “Within Indonesia, there appears to be a serious misunderstanding of the United States position on Aceh. Repeated statements by US officials of support for Indonesia’s territorial integrity have been treated by some Indonesian officials as a green light for the planned offensive.” The United States had to make it clear that it supported a negotiated settlement of the conflict, the offensive would erect additional barriers to resuming aid to the Indonesian military, and the United States was deeply concerned by the growing number of displaced persons in Aceh. Indonesia’s Territorial Integrity and Democracy

It is worth looking at how the Indonesian government and military anchored their actions in an international world polity of appropriate behavior to legitimize military operations in Aceh. The first is a persuasive appeal to international audiences. Their statements show a clear concern for human rights groups and wider audiences while, at the same time, supporting the government’s concerns about security and territorial integrity and promoting its new democracy. The second is accountability. The military regularly referred to the need to protect human rights and displayed an explicit concern about implementing its counterinsurgency campaign within the realm of legality. When Acehnese community leaders demanded the government drop a decree providing the basis for military operations, the military

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justified the decree, arguing that it authorized the operations and provided the necessary legal cover for them. This concern might be considered negligible, but it clearly indicated the willingness of the military, absent during much of the New Order regime, to situate its actions within an explicit rule of law framework. As Indonesian Military (TNI) Commander Admiral A.S. Widodo put it, “We still need the presidential decree as the legal rationale to deal with the Aceh issue.” Third, the military emphasized it would remain responsive to the public will. Army Chief General Endriartono Sutarto promised the military would pull its troops out of the strife-torn province. “In principle, we are part of the state apparatus. If the nation wants to resolve the Aceh situation by removing the Indonesian Defense Forces, then we would quit. But if the nation wants us to prevent Aceh from seceding, we would do that. Our moves depend on the will of the nation” (“Army: Troops Could Be Pulled Out of Aceh” ). At the same time, a military spokesperson prepared audiences for what would be necessary to avert the threat. He made clear that “only maximum firepower could wipe out the separatist rebels.” And the military never missed a chance to emphasize that the Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad) Forces, which had acquired an image as human rights violators under Suharto, “must uphold the law in order to avoid human rights abuses.” As in the Philippines under Aquino, here we see moves to securitize democracy by linking it to threat-related language and indicating a point of no return. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, then-minister for state security, associated military operations in Aceh directly with the maintenance of a democratic system. To a gathering of foreign ambassadors in Jakarta, he argued, “If we cannot maintain security, stability, and law and order, then I am afraid our democracy will die young.” In a clear securitization move, he warned that escalating unrest in Aceh could snuff out the nation’s fledgling democracy. It also helped that, over the course of , the military met an important test in democratic accountability. It resisted President Wahid’s attempts to utilize its political support to prevent an impeachment process. Because of several corruption scandals, Wahid was under significant pressure to resign, and parliament had initiated an impeachment process against him. He then sought the military’s support for an unconstitutional move. He wanted to dissolve parliament by announcing martial law. He also refused to leave parliament. At this point, the military refused to support his move and ostensibly backed Megawati. New York Times correspondent Seth Mydans captured the prevailing mood. The military’s “act of insubordination” underscored its

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political power. “But nobody seemed to mind. Suddenly, one of the country’s most unpopular institutions was the hero of the day” (Mydans a). By late , the military had managed to legitimize its actions against separatist demands. One sign of this was a steep increase in the military budget, which was widely interpreted as official sanction for its stabilizing role. Moreover, as evidence emerged about human rights violations, so did more information on the separatist movement GAM, information that discredited it and made it a legitimate target of military action. Having failed to negotiate a solution between  and , GAM began to look as if it were not seriously interested in a peaceful solution, despite credible steps in Jakarta to grant greater autonomy to Aceh. Newspaper reports mentioned that GAM’s governance in Aceh included the practice of extorting voluntary donations, taxes, extortion, and kidnapping. Most important were the killing of civilian administrators and, after , attacks on Exxon Mobil, which operated a gas facility in Aceh. Revelations that GAM was deliberately using human rights as a propaganda tool to draw international and domestic attention and provoke repression further discredited the movement (Aspinall b, Aspinall ; Martinkus ; Ross ; Solingen ; Wiryono ). When Megawati Sukarnoputri, a staunch nationalist, became Indonesia’s president, the military was given an even freer hand to conduct military operations in Aceh. When peace negotiations between GAM and the government failed once again in April , Megawati declared a state of emergency “to safeguard the integrity of the nation . . . so that human rights and the laws remain upheld and respected” (Aglionby and NortonTaylor ). She then explicitly addressed human rights organizations. “I hope that this action receives the understanding and the backing of the entire population of Indonesia, including those groups which operate in the name of democracy and human rights” (Unidjaja and Rukmana ). Along with martial law came a call on the press to support the war effort in the name of patriotic journalism. According to Syamsul Mu’arif, the minister of communications and information, “Publishing statements from GAM will only hamper the (military) operation and alienate the TNI from the people.” He then added, “Covering both sides is aimed at developing objectivity. But when it comes to separatism, it [the principle] might be damaging.” The United States, the EU, and Japan immediately condemned the imposition of martial law in Aceh. But their main concern was preventing moral

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dilemmas at home. The Blair government feared that its Hawk fighters and Scorpion light tanks would be used in the military’s security operations. It reminded the Indonesian military of its promise that British equipment would not be used to violate civilians’ human rights, but would only be used defensively. The Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, equally registered his deep concerns with the Indonesian government over the imposition of martial law. All called on the concerned parties, GAM and the Indonesian military, to spare Acehnese civilians (Aglionby and Norton-Taylor ). When these measures proved insufficient to bring human rights NGOs in line with official policy, the government further restricted the access of independent monitors. At the beginning of June , Komnas HAM announced it would investigate allegations of human rights abuses against twenty civilians. In reaction to the reports, the Indonesian military decided to further restrict the access of foreign NGOs to Aceh. From the beginning of June , foreign journalists were banned, and the Indonesian police announced it would file subversion charges against activists of well-known Acehnese NGOs, among them the Centre for Information on an Aceh Referendum (SIRA), which campaigned peacefully for a referendum. One year after the declaration of martial law, the human rights situation in Aceh had deteriorated dramatically. In May , the government downgraded its status from martial law to civil emergency. In a press release, Amnesty International noted a dramatic escalation in human rights violations, which included torture, arbitrary killings, and sexual harassment. It estimated that around , people had been killed within a year and found increasingly strong evidence that many of those killed were civilians. Arrests had been carried out on a massive scale. It also had evidence that those who had been brought to trial were sentenced on the basis of forced confessions (Amnesty International ). Aceh again found its place on the international and domestic media agenda when it was hit by the tsunami in December . In Aceh alone, the catastrophe killed up to , persons, according to official figures. The tsunami “opened a window for the peace process,” as one news headline put it (Williams ). It reminded the world of the twenty-six-year-old conflict and spurred renewed peace negotiations. GAM publicly announced that it would not pursue its struggle for independence in Aceh. A peace accord between the government and GAM was finally signed in August  and monitored by European and Southeast Asian observers. In December , the government withdrew its troops from Aceh. In December ,

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local elections in Aceh proceeded peacefully and closed Aceh’s chapter on political violence. Conclusion: Comparing Outcomes of Transnational Advocacy in Indonesia Why did transnational advocacy not achieve the same results in East Timor, Aceh, and Irian Jaya? Why did the international attention on Indonesia between  and  not translate into clearer constraints on its military’s behavior in Aceh and Irian Jaya? Why were other governments, including the UN and even the EU, not able to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Aceh and, to a lesser degree, in Irian Jaya? The simple answer is that these actors had to make hard choices. Would they support human rights demands and thereby risk Indonesia’s disintegration or focus on a state’s right to territorial integrity even if this included human rights violations? This chapter has focused on the process dynamics that led to this choice situation, and it traced the process leading actors to converge on the territorial integrity of Indonesia. In answering these questions, this chapter has highlighted two factors of general interest in the analysis of the effects of transnational human rights advocacy: Excuses and path dependent sequencing. I have argued that state actors accused of human rights violations can use excuses as a discursive strategy to block human rights pressures. Inability of human rights organizations and external monitors to pin responsibility for referendum-related violence onto the military ultimately saved the military’s reputation when the question of how to deal with demands for self-determination and human rights accountability came up for Aceh and Irian Jaya. Of course, excuses can also be accurate representations of state of affairs if governmental actors do in fact not have control over paramilitary units or militias. However, in the Indonesian case, excuses turned out to be a deliberate strategy of the military to sow terror among the population and to signal other actors that any support for self-determination would have undesirable consequences. Had actors been able to blame the military right at the beginning of militia violence, a different sequence might have unfolded. The deception might have tarnished the military’s reputation and, during the second sequence, maintained the pressure on the government to account for human rights violations in these two territories and to hold members of the military responsible. As we have seen, a broad movement in Aceh and Irian Jaya seeking

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remedy for human rights abuses under the Suharto government only radicalized under the conditions of a contracting political space in the wake of the East Timor referendum coupled with an immediate model teaching them how to pursue that goal, the self-determination movement in East Timor. In other words, had the excuse been detected earlier as strategy, the choice situation might have presented itself quite differently. Second, this chapter has shown that success in one campaign can trigger failure in another campaign even if the human rights situations are initially perceived to be quite similar. Here, the focus on independent norm dynamics is helpful to understand the sequencing and interdependence of campaigns. In this case, I have argued that one important factor blocking human rights pressures was that the outcome of the campaign on self-determination in East Timor contradicted one of the strongest arguments of human rights and democracy groups themselves. Once Indonesia became democratic, self-determination movements would stop their struggles and opt to stay in Indonesia. The very outcome of self-determination in East Timor and the violence that accompanied the vote disconfirmed the expectations generated by human rights groups. In effect, it came as a shock to all those who had believed that elections would stop the self-determination movements. This dynamic was enhanced as it became apparent that, this time, no authoritarian state was about to fail. Indonesia had just managed a successful transition. National elections had produced the first democratically elected president. Again, the credibility of the government turned out to be important. Abdurrahman Wahid’s personal credibility became crucial to the military’s ability to back up the norm on territorial integrity. And Yudhoyono securitized Indonesia’s new democratic system. Thus, similar to the  situation in the Philippines under Aquino, the need to safeguard democracy served as an important justification for subordinating human rights under state security. The chapter has also highlighted the transformative power of a strategy to transnationalize human rights issues. The literature on transnational human rights advocacy considers the reframing of issues as an important strategy to enhance resonance among international audiences (Keck and Sikkink ). This chapter has demonstrated the importance of timing in such a strategy. As self-determination movements changed their strategy and emulated Fretilin’s successful strategies of reaching out to an international audience, this appeared like a transparent move to increase the resonance of their arguments. In a public discourse, this was coded as rhetorical device, following the logic that these groups only used human rights as a tool to achieve

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self-determination. A special challenge to GAM’s credibility was its lack of willingness to engage in serious negotiations with the Indonesian government between  and  despite the government’s apparently serious steps to respond to Acehnese demands. To draw on the boomerang metaphor, selfdetermination movements threw the human rights boomerang, but what came back was the territorial integrity boomerang. Finally, my argument complements other studies on human rights and self-determination in Aceh. Edward Aspinall () argues that concerns for human rights have shaped and transformed the struggle for self-determination in Aceh. The self-determination movement’s enmeshment in global structures transformed a previously ethnonationalist movement into a broad movement that made demands for self-determination conditional on accountability for human rights violations. Elisabeth Drexler () argues that the strategy of putting concerns for human rights and self-determination on an international agenda—that is, making them transnational—ultimately blocked more genuine domestic aspirations of Acehnese organizations to seek local solutions to the Aceh question. This chapter confirms some of their findings, but puts it into the larger perspective of East Timor’s self-determination.

8 The Philippines 1999–2008: Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Violations

In , major international human rights organizations raised alarm over the human rights situation in the Philippines. Since , depending on who is counting, between  and  individuals, many of them human rights activists, trade unionists, and members of left-oriented political parties, have been extralegally executed (Amnesty International ; Human Rights Defenders ). In September , the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, castigated the Philippine military as being in a state of denial concerning the extralegal executions. He demanded swift action against military perpetrators and an end to a practice of legal impunity (United Nations General Assembly ). In an apparently separate development, the Philippine military, with American assistance, has waged an all-out war against terrorism in the Muslim-dominated south, leading to huge numbers of people becoming internal refugees. The National Disaster Council and the International Displacement Monitoring Center of the Philippines recorded approximately , internal refugees due to military campaigns in  and another , refugees in October . In that month, an effort was made to develop a memorandum of agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an Islamic movement that has been struggling for the self-determination of southern provinces since the s, but the effort failed when the Philippine Supreme Court intervened, leading to immediate violence (Amnesty International : ).

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For the first time since the early s, the Philippines and its government under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and newly elected President Benigno Aquino are perceptibly back on an international public agenda. In , Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International mobilized against extant human rights violations in the Philippines. The International Crisis Group has targeted the Philippines for its handling of the conflict in the Philippines’ Muslim-dominated south. These two spotlighted points prepare us for the task ahead in this chapter. In previous chapters, I have focused on the interaction between human rights organizations and governments that are accused of human rights violations. My focus is how these governments effectively use justifications and excuses to engage their critics in a dialogue over their practice, to persuade audiences that their action is necessary, and to try to block advocacy. The last few chapters have thus focused on ex post facto situations in which the governments had already made the major decisions about state security and the human rights organizations challenged their definition of the situation. In this chapter, I describe the pathway that leads to human rights violations by focusing on the Philippine government’s role in the American-led global war on terror. In doing so, I provide an answer to the question I posed in Chapters One and Two. Why do governments routinely violate the most basic human rights? In this explanation, the two seemingly unrelated events described above play a key role. I show how the Philippine government skillfully connected these apparently unrelated events in a domestic discourse on the war on terror. By doing so, the government not only secured important external financial and moral support from the American and European governments to address two long-standing domestic insurgencies. It also blocked domestic opposition groups that could have served as important bulwarks against and watchdogs over the human rights violations that followed. Thus, in this chapter, I look in particular at how a pattern of human rights violations could develop since  and how this pattern became possible through the distinct framing strategies of the Philippine government and the spectacular events that confirmed its account. I also show how the counterstrategies of opposition groups in the Philippines were not sufficient to challenge the Philippine administration under President Joseph Estrada (–) and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (–). The first argument is that international normative influences helped the Philippine governments under President Joseph Estrada and Gloria

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Macapagal-Arroyo to develop a counter-terror policy that made military operations against two long-standing domestic insurgencies, MILF and the National People’s Army (NPA) possible with American assistance. More generally, the Phillipine case illustrates how some governments have utilized the normative shift constituted by the international war on terror to seek state security from long-standing armed insurgencies, even as these armed challenges to state security—in the form of threats to the territorial integrity of the state, its legitimate authority and its monopoly to violence to garner external support. They seek, and receive, international legitimization for their action. The case presented here thus is an exemplary case of how states of the global South in their quest for state security deal with challenges to their authority. The second argument concerns the process that is one of gradual expansion of counter-terrorism policies to legal political organizations. The Estrada administration first utilized a tiny extremist Islamic group, the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), to then expand counter-terrorism policies to target two longstanding domestic insurgencies: MILF and NPA. This was backed, most importantly, by the United States along with other governments in the framework of newly established international anti-terrorism norms. Although having distinct and separate conflict dynamics, I argue that the Philippine government around  was able to use anti-terrorism norms to link both domestic conflicts on a rhetorical level as terrorism issues. This gave the government access to military equipment and expertise from the United States and allowed the military to unleash resources against these two domestic insurgencies that it could not muster before . ASG thus proved useful for the Estrada administration to get vital American support. The very initial success of the political strategy used to recategorize military operations against this group then encouraged the government to extend the same strategy to other organizations, like MILF and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CCP). Unlike NPA, CPP was, at that time, a legal organization. Between  and , the government succeeded at criminalizing legal, left-leaning organizations under the banner of counter-terrorism, thereby internally facilitating the development of a pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations. The third argument is that the Philippine government’s interaction with domestic and international actors shares several characteristics with the influence of good normative pressures and transnational advocacy described in earlier chapters. The Philippines had come under international pressures to

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commit itself to newly emerging global anti-terrorism norms. It was branded as the weakest link in anti-terrorism efforts (Gunaratna ). It partly took advantage of the new normative environment because this policy promised financial and reputational rewards, but then had to comply with its own rhetorical commitment. These moves would most likely not have succeeded had particular events not lent credibility to the government’s account. For example, MILF itself facilitated Estrada’s move. By demanding independence for Mindanao, it gave Estrada a justification to defend operations against MILF in the name of territorial integrity in July . NPA continued to resort to kidnap-for-ransom tactics, and its actions of revolutionary justice facilitated categorizing the movement as terrorist. Also helping Estrada were several pieces of evidence apparently confirming terrorist activities. In sum, the Estrada administration’s decision did not occur in a social vacuum. Instead, it was embedded in an institutional symbolic grammar that resonated among particular audiences and was further institutionalized by confirming evidence. These two factors jointly increased the chance that its legitimation moves would be endorsed by domestic audiences and international organizations. Pressures to comply with human rights norms remained quite limited until . First, action against Muslim self-determination was in the realm of acceptable behavior for states facing a threat to their territorial integrity. Domestically, the government was able to stifle the arguments of primarily left-of-center human rights advocates and the nationalist opposition, which focused narrowly on the illegality of joint American-Philippine military operations instead of pursuing a broad human rights agenda including the violations of the rights of Muslims. Moreover, Estrada managed to split the anti-American nationalist opposition over the question of the territorial integrity of the state. Territorial integrity was impossible without the American assistance. Once the Philippine Supreme Court declared the joint military operations legal, the argument of human rights advocates lost currency. Both developments allowed the Philippine government to merge counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. The chapter is structured as follows. The first part briefly describes the conflict between the Philippine government and the two self-determination movements in the south: the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and MILF. I show that the resurgence of ASG and MILF was largely a result of failed expectations of an autonomy deal between the MNLF and the Philippine government. Many of the grievances articulated by MILF concern the living

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conditions of Muslims. The failure of the institution charged with developing the Muslim-dominated southern regions in September , coupled with diffusion effects from East Timor’s campaign for self-determination, gave support to MILF’s demands for self-determination and, at the same time, allowed the government to securitize the Philippine state over the issue of self-determination. Muslim Self-Determination Creates Domestic Challenges to State Authority In the late s, the simmering conflict in Mindanao in the Muslimdominated south began to escalate. It would soon become a catalyst for the Philippine counter-terrorism strategy against the two long-term domestic insurgencies. Why did this region become so important for later developments? After all, for decades, Philippine governments had been facing the Mindanao conflict, which separated the Philippine south from the rest of the country. For many, what lay at the heart of this conflict was an interreligious and interethnic cleavage that had developed out of the unique historical circumstances of the Philippines’ colonization in the sixteenth century. At the start of the twentieth century, approximately , people lived on Mindanao and Sulu, the two most southern provinces of the Sulu archipelago. The majority of this population was Muslim and had never been under the full control of the Spanish colonial administration. When the United States took over the Philippines in , its colonial administration also conquered the Philippine south and brought it under effective control, resulting in dramatic socioeconomic changes. After the Philippines gained independence in , its governments regarded the Sulu archipelago as an integral part of the nation-state and the Muslims as an ethnic and religious minority. As a result, governmental strategies aimed at resolving a double problem: “integrating into the Philippine body politic the Muslim population of the country and . . . inculcating into their minds that they are Filipinos and that this Government is their own and that they are part of it” (as quoted in Kreuzer and Weiberg : ). This is how a commission created by the Philippine Congress formulated the task in . Two factors would hamper against this task in the long run, however. First, in the decades to come, a demographic revolution would take place, marginalizing Muslims in their own ancestral homeland. By the s, the demographic composition of the southern provinces had changed dramatically, as

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many Filipinos moved there from other densely populated provinces. The land, seen as abundant, was distributed with little respect for the property rights of Muslims. Over the long term, this process made Muslims a numerical minority in their ancestral homelands. Meanwhile, Muslims account for the majority of the population only in Maguindanao and Sulu, where they make up  percent of the population (Kreuzer and Weiberg : ). Second, economic development and education would increase the upward mobility of members of a young, educated, Muslim middle class, which then adopted political programs seeking the political independence of the Philippine south. Until the late s, Philippine politicians managed to contain most political conflicts by integrating and co-opting the traditional Muslim authorities, the Datus, into the political leadership structures (McKenna ). This situation changed in the late , largely due to the educational and economic opportunities created for Muslims by the government. Having studied at universities in Manila and at Islamic universities, these new educational and economic elites returned to the Philippine south to challenge and overcome both a political system of Datu leadership based on tradition and personal connections and the hegemony of the Christian-dominated Philippine state (Kreuzer and Weiberg : f; McKenna : –). This is when the two self-determination movements were founded: MNLF in , which had a nationalistic and secular outlook, and MILF, initially a splinter group of the MNLF that pursued a religious agenda and aimed, as its leader Salamat Hashim put it, to establish its own state with a distinct Islamic identity (Buendia : ). In the following years to come, these two self-determination movements would constitute armed challenges to the Philippine state. Efforts to come to a negotiated solution would continually fail under quite different circumstances. Under pressure from the Organization of Islamic Conferences, an umbrella organization for Muslim states, the Marcos regime concluded a peace agreement, the Tripoli Agreement, in  that would not be implemented. Peace negotiations under Aquino failed, too. A transitional solution was only worked out under the succeeding Ramos administration, which implemented a law that the Aquino government unilaterally issued, to establish an Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). In , MNLF’s longtime leader, Nur Misuari, became the regional governor of the ARMM. He also headed the Southern Philippine Council for Peace and Development, which acted as a transitory administrative arm under the office of the president (Quimpo : ). However, ARMM failed to achieve its ultimate goal

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of significantly lifting the living standard of the Muslim population. In fact, between  and , the share of its population living below the poverty threshold rose from approximately  percent to over  percent (Kreuzer and Weiberg : –). For a complex variety of reasons, the agreement failed to get past the initial transition phase, and the Muslims never got the full autonomy the accord had promised them (Labrador : ). The failure to achieve an effective autonomous region provoked a legitimacy crisis within MNLF. Now MILF and ASG became more popular, riding on a wave of anti-MNLF and anti-government sentiments. They accused Misuari of having traded self-determination for an ARMM that did not deliver, thus perpetuating the cultural and political suppression and underdevelopment of the Bangsamoro people. MILF tripled its membership by  and claimed to have , fighters. Peace negotiations with MILF had begun under the Ramos administration in . But, unlike MNLF, MILF was unwilling to renounce its demands for full selfdetermination, and fighting erupted again at the end of . From the Failed Experience of Self-Government to Self-Determination The timing of ARMM’s eventual demise around – coincided with developments in East Timor, which was on a path toward a referendum. Indonesian President B.J. Habibie had offered East Timor a vote on self-determination in January . These surprising developments gave Muslims an immediate regional model for their own aspirations. Events in East Timor, coupled with initial success in more remote but religiously affiliated Chechnya and Kosovo, gave MILF leaders hope they could also realize their political demand to secede from the Philippines. In September, Al Haj Murad, MILF’s vice chairman for military affairs, argued that East Timor might set a precedent for Mindanao. At the same time, negotiations came to a standstill when Libya, Indonesia, and Malaysia, which had been instrumental in mediating between MILF and the Philippine government under the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), suddenly found themselves branded by the Bush administration as “exporters of international terrorism.” The contracting political space to come to a negotiated solution at the same time as self-determination demands increased worldwide gave Muslim groups new opportunities. In March , MILF’s chairman, Salamat Hashim, emphasized that MILF “would never agree to any solution other

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than the full independence” and demanded “the establishment of an Islamic State” (as quoted in Buendia : ). The potential for Murad’s statement on self-determination to escalate the conflict in Mindanao provided the government with the rhetorical ammunition it could use to construct an imminent threat to the nation-state. Militarily, however, the Philippine government did not control the resources that would have provided a credible deterrent. This situation also changed at the beginning of  and influenced how the government viewed its options concerning what was and was not possible concerning Muslims in Mindanao. The key opportunity came in December , when an international crisis erupted over the resource-rich Spratly Islands in the China Sea west of the Philippines. The Estrada government utilized the conflict to align the United States more closely to the Philippine foreign policy (Cruz de Castro ; Kreuzer ). The two governments signed a cooperation agreement, the so-called Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), foreseeing joint military exercises and comprehensive military assistance. Just one month later, Philippine Defense Minister Orlando Mercado visited Washington to secure military training for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and financial assistance from the Pentagon. The ink on the agreement was hardly dry when Estrada stepped up his rhetoric against ASG, but also against MILF and NPA. At the end of January , for the first time, he called for an all-out war against MILF, and the Philippine military shelled suspected MILF hideouts, provoking MILF to announce its own all-out war against government troops. The announcement astonished observers because the government had declared a cease-fire with MILF. Having come under public attack, Estrada clarified he was only “declaring war on those who violate the law and those who go against our laws.” Though both sides briefly escalated the conflict, they concluded peace negotiations. On February , , they signed an agreement setting up joint Coordinating Committees on Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH), which were supposed to verify the existence of MILF’s headquarters at Camp Abubakar and several other camps and acknowledge MILF’s political claims to authority (Kreuzer and Weiberg : ). Opposition to Estrada’s Anti-Terrorism Posture 1999 At this time, Estrada’s escalation policy toward MILF still provoked staunch criticism from within the government-negotiating team and international media, which haggled with Estrada over several other points. Now, the

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opposition questioned not only the rationale of Estrada’s escalation toward MILF, but also the legitimacy of his VFA with the United States. The process of ratifying the VFA created a controversy within the Philippine Senate. It did eventually ratify the agreement in May  because of the Spratly conflict, but under strong protest from church and nationalist groups. In protest at the government’s signing of the VFA, the National Democratic Front had already withdrawn from peace negotiations with the government in January. But it was only in  that domestic pressures to commit fully to counter-terrorism became visible as the international counter-terrorism campaign took root in the Philippines. A series of incidents increased the perceptions of insecurity in the Philippines and lent credibility to Estrada’s account that the Philippines faced a terrorist threat. A series of bomb attacks by ASG in the Philippine south heightened these perceptions. On April , explosions in Zamboanga City killed twelve people. The government cancelled its peace talks scheduled with MILF. Then, in early May, explosions rocked the Davao city hall. More explosions followed within days. Then, in June , ASG staged a spectacular abduction of European tourists from an island resort in Malaysia, focusing more international attention on the Philippines. These kidnappings threw domestic and international public opinion behind the Philippine government. Drawing headlines in international news media for weeks as the abducted tourists were transferred to the Philippines and then shifted from one jungle camp to the next, the kidnappings exposed the weakness of the Philippine military and its inability to deal with a tiny terrorist group. Suddenly, the international public was willing to believe the Philippine government’s claims that Muslim groups in its south did present a threat. Given MILF’s stronger stance on self-determination and the bleak outlook for a negotiated solution, Estrada could now take the next step in escalating the MILF conflict. He tried to effectively securitize the Philippine nation-state. In his state of the nation Address of July , , Estrada dramatically justified his policy, saying that military operations were a struggle for the unity and territorial integrity of the Philippines. He described Mindanao as an “integral, inseparable, and organic part of the Philippines” and said the government had “to neutralize the attempt of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to amputate the southern parts of the country away from the organic whole and to convert them into an independent Muslim state.” According to Estrada, the rebels were eating up more and more of the country’s territory. Although he would have preferred to solve the problem through an exchange of words,

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force was necessary, as MILF had only exploited negotiations as an opportunity to build up its troops and enlarge its threat to the republic. Its claim to self-determination threatened the territorial integrity of the Philippines. The sovereignty and integrity of the republic was not negotiable. Then, in a speech on August , Estrada derided peace advocates in Mindanao as traitors and the previous Ramos administration, which had negotiated a peace deal with MNLF, as a “sucker,” which kept “talking and let the problem grow until the Republic was in real mortal danger.” He claimed MILF had occupied territories, it was engaging in acts of terrorism and extortion, and it illegally controlled public buildings and was pursuing secession. Estrada’s get-tough policy did boost his sagging approval ratings (Labrador : ). And he received crucial international backing, which is noteworthy because it came from Islamic circles. The OIC, which had sponsored talks between the two warring factions, declared it supported the Philippine campaign against the Muslim insurgency. The OIC respected the territorial integrity, independence, and sovereignty of the Philippines. From Securing the State in the Name of Territorial Integrity to Transnational Counter-Terrorism At this point, several different arguments could have challenged Estrada’s policy. One could have challenged Estrada’s personal credibility. Why did he purposefully escalate the conflict in Muslim Mindanao rather than seek a long-term negotiated solution to the conflict? He and his administration also faced charges of corruption and mismanagement. And important segments of the Philippine population were highly skeptical of his moves because of evidence that the military itself had established ASG to split MILF and it worked closely with the group (Roque : ). Further, one could have questioned the military’s rationale in this game, as the struggle to secure the Philippine state invariably strengthened the military’s political power. For example, as Mark Beeson has argued, in comparison to Thailand and Indonesia, the Philippine military was more likely to interfere politically because it lacked business opportunities that provides it with material resource outside the normal budget (Beeson ). A further fact that should surprise us here is that the nationalist opposition, which rallied around a nationalist agenda to question the intervention of the American military, unlike under Marcos, did not present a greater challenge.

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As we will see, however, these arguments did not play out as we would expect. First, emerging evidence about the military’s corruption and inefficiency appeared to make American assistance the most rational solution. Second, key events appeared to demonstrate that Estrada’s as well as the military motives were sincere. They were concerned about state security. As Estrada tried to mobilize support for his terrorism rhetoric, the ASG kidnappings of tourists in Mindanao in  and  exposed the enormous collusion between the military and the kidnap-for-ransom gangs in the Philippine south. There was credible evidence that the military profited from the abductions. In December , the Senate tried Estrada, looking into his wealth and business connections and trying to verify allegations of corruption. In the process, it also produced credible evidence that Estrada’s chief negotiator, Roberto Aventajado, had taken half of the US$ million ransom for himself and possibly shared it with Estrada. The German Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst) had negotiated directly with Commander Robot, ASG’s military commander, over the release of the Germans among the European hostages. It had intercepted a satellite telephone conversation in which Aventajado had haggled for a sizable amount of the ransom. Commander Robot repeatedly complained that the government was attributing political motives to him when he was just interested in the ransom. The conjunction of the public exposition of military collusion and corruption not only posed a reputational problem for the Philippine military, it also exposed Estrada’s lip service to counter-terrorism (Roque : ). But this did not challenge Estrada’s motive in getting American support, which would have strengthened the opposition and legal groups. The evidence actually strengthened proponents arguing for better training and professionalization by American specialists. This, in turn, deflated the hopes of the leftist-nationalist opposition, which tried to mobilize against the VFA on nationalist grounds. Indicative of this process is a comment by journalist Amando Doronila in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a newspaper critical of Estrada’s policy. Despite his paper’s general direction, Doronila claimed that opponents of the joint RP-American military exercises had resorted to the ridiculous to “demonize the exercises” when they denounced the VFA as infringing on the Philippine national sovereignty and warned the VFA would make it impossible for Filipinos to hold American forces accountable for their actions. In addition, pledges by the French, German, and American governments to help the Philippine military combat terrorism legitimated the account of a terrorist threat.

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Second, when the Philippine armed forces took a neutral position during Estrada’s impeachment process in January , this boosted their credibility. If they had wanted to seize power by unconstitutional means, as many Filipinos suspected they would, including Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, they could have done so during Estrada’s impeachment process when prosecutors walked out, charging that pro-Estrada senators were manipulating the trial. Instead, the military stayed neutral until January , , when Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Angelo T. Reyes formally announced that the military was withdrawing its support for the president (Labrador : ). As we have seen, over the course of –, a number of events and their strategic reframing allowed Estrada to delegitimize MILF in a discourse directed at domestic and international audiences. These rhetorical devices allowed him to deflect important opposition on a domestic level. Thus, he broke important rhetorical ground for a full-fledged campaign to discredit MILF and define terrorist groups (see also Hedman : f). He could not reap the fruits of this strategy, however. With a debate on charter changes underway, his law-and-order rhetoric inspired fears that he would expand his presidential powers. He did not survive an impeachment process for corruption, cronyism, and mismanagement and was ousted by another form of People Power in January . Arroyo’s Call for an All-Out War When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was inaugurated in January , she promised to reverse Estrada’s all-out war policy and replace it with a strategy of all-out peace. In a radio speech on January , , she urged that the country “begin in earnest the task of rebuilding Mindanao, of achieving peace and oneness as a people, as a nation” (as quoted in Kreuzer and Weiberg : ). Within weeks, she established various governmental bodies and charged them with dealing with the Mindanao problem. She appointed Jesus Dureza, a civilian and native of Mindanao, to her negotiation team and ordered a unilateral cease-fire with MILF. In March , MILF and the administration agreed to take up negotiations again, and both sides promised to stop their military operations. In June , they signed an agreement of peace in Tripoli. The agreement foresaw an OIC monitoring team that would observe the process of ceasing hostilities, establishing rehabilitation and development projects, and returning internally displaced persons.

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But her rhetoric changed when ASG kidnapped another group of foreigners, including two American missionaries, Martin and Gracia Burnham. Like the first abductions, these triggered more comprehensive and partly covert American support for the Philippine military. When Gracia Burnham published a book about her experience in ASG’s captivity, she provided similar evidence about collusion between the military and the criminals (Roque ). She had overheard conversations between military commanders and ASG members. In one conversation, a member of the Philippine military was talking about splitting the ransom that private groups would pay to effect the victims’ release (Burnham and Merrill : –). And another kidnap victim recounted a conversation between bandits and an official of the armed forces in which they agreed on a schedule for a military initiative against the bandits (Roque : ). Importantly, the / attacks in the United States provided a critical juncture that made Arroyo fully commit herself to counter-terrorism. By , international security experts, along with the United States Pentagon and some media reports, had successfully framed the Philippines as the weakest link in the struggle against terrorism (Desker ; Gunaratna ; Kaplan ). And the Bush administration repeatedly vowed to root out terrorist networks “wherever they exist.” While there was no evidence linking ASG to Al-Qaeda, the activities of both NPA and MILF increasingly lent themselves to being categorized according to global anti-terrorism conventions. While she initially resisted American pressures to quickly end the hostage crisis over the American citizens, it was harder to stand up to the embarrassment when thousands of military and police failed to find the kidnappers. Now, the international embarrassment was coupled with concrete financial incentives to buy into counterinsurgency. When Arroyo declared her support for the Bush administration, the United States rewarded her close alignment, pledging about $ million in military aid and massive economic support. When Arroyo met President Bush in Washington in November , she boasted to Filipino reporters, “It’s $. billion and counting” (Bello ). In May , President Bush would award major non-NATO ally status to the Philippines, along with Thailand, giving it primary access to military aid and technology. Arroyo’s commitment raised red flags in the Philippine opposition and within her cabinet. During a Senate hearing in January , Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Vice President Teofisto Guingona questioned the joint American-Philippine plans. The debate focused on the legality of deploying American troops to the south of the country. In that hearing,

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Senator Francisco Tadat accused the Arroyo administration of turning the Philippines into an extension of Afghanistan, an accurate description given that the American military itself referred to its operation as second front in its war on terror, or Operation Enduring Freedom with a Philippine component (OEF-P) (Wilson ). In response, Arroyo charged that anyone who opposed American military intervention in the Philippines was “not a Filipino.” Then she asked, “If you are not a Filipino, then who are you? A protector of terrorists, a cohort of murderers, an Abu Sayyaf lover?” By that time, evidence of human rights violations was emerging and galvanized a left- and nationalist-oriented opposition into action. Left-wing groups also used the sixteenth anniversary of the People Power Revolution on February  to protest the deployment of the American military. In March , an international peace mission conducted the first fact-finding survey in the area of military operations in the south. Its report was highly critical, detailing cases of warrantless arrests and imprisonment, along with allegations of extrajudicial executions and torture. Mission members lamented the government blurred the distinction between terrorists and legitimate opposition. It predicted these practices were “the surest way of creating more recruits for Abu Sayyaf.” Mission member Wigberto Tanada claimed the counter-terrorism training exercises were “derailing our efforts to obtain and achieve a peaceful resolution of our other armed conflict in the country.” The military rebuffed these charges. National Security Advisor Roilo Golez predicted that human rights groups would “see human rights violations in everything the military, both the Philippine and US, does but will not see evil in the ways of the Abu Sayyaf.” In sum, at the beginning of , there was a substantial domestic mobilization against Arroyo’s quick submission to counter-terrorism pressures in the Philippines. Three arguments about the military operations sustained the mobilization: • They would lead to unjustifiable human rights violations against civilians. • They undermined the peace effort with MILF. • The joint operations were illegal, given that the VFA was unconstitutional. As I pointed out at the beginning of this book, ethical or normative arguments create expectations about how behaviors will develop in the future. In

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order to become persuasive, these expectations must be fulfilled to give the normative claim more leverage (Legro ). To develop a normative dynamic, these arguments would have to be confirmed by unjustifiable human rights violations, a court ruling declaring the VFA as unconstitutional, and the breakdown of the peace effort. It took the government only four months to destroy this argumentative edifice, largely due to four events: • The Supreme Court ruled the VFA as constitutional. • The military operations succeeded. • The two sides pursued negotiations. • A dual campaign effectively delegitimized MILF by associating it with international terrorism. I discuss each of these issues in the next sections. Countering the Counterarguments 2002 In February , two members of the Philippine Bar Association filed a petition with the Supreme Court to prohibit the joint AFP-American exercises. They argued that the exercises violated the Philippine constitution of  and the spirit and intent of the VFA, which foresaw military training, but not joint exercises (Roque : ). In April , the Philippine Supreme Court ruled on the legality of the VFA with the United States. It noted that the VFA permitted American personnel to engage, on a temporary basis, in activities in the Philippines during war exercises and these exercises were themselves not defined in the VFA. The Supreme Court held the view that both parties had left the question of the kind of activities deliberately ambiguous to “give both parties certain leeway in negotiation.” The exercises, as currently conceived, did not contravene the VFA. Helping make this judgment possible was the very way American military planners had designed the operations. The Philippines had emerged as a prime spot for American counter-terrorism strategy. As early as the mids, it had come onto the counter-terrorism radar of the US Pacific Command (PACOM), as counter-terrorism specialists focused on Islamic terror networks. By , they came to see the Philippine south as an “ungoverned area” and “fertile breeding ground for terrorism.”

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But since the s, military planners had significantly changed their approach to counterinsurgency. They were well aware that American military operations in democratic countries like the Philippines faced considerable constraints. Constrained by requirements of democratic accountability and the watchful eyes of professional media, American military engagement faced narrow limits, especially on troop levels. By the time American strategists became engaged in the Philippines, they had internalized the idea, as journalist Robert D. Kaplan puts it, “An age of democracy means an age of frustratingly narrow rules of engagement.” According to Kaplan, fledgling democratic governments would “find it politically difficult—if not impossible—to allow American troops on their soil to engage in direct action.” The Philippines was no exception, as we have seen in the debates on American assistance. In , the American military had to abandon its military installations there, mostly because of a nationalist reaction following the long-standing American support for the Marcos government. The United States needed to tailor an approach against Al-Qaeda-linked groups around the globe that was sustainable, low-visible, and politically acceptable and changed the moderate Muslim community perception of American operations in the War on Terrorism (Wilson : ). Under these constraints, American military strategy had significantly changed. It pursued a protracted strategy that relied on indigenous security forces and enhanced their own capacity to conduct effective operations against common enemies. The yearly, routine, joint Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises between the American military and the AFP accomplished precisely that. They were military-to-military counter-terrorism exercises that did not jeopardize military operations through too overt American exposure. They included a humanitarian component that would substantially improve infrastructure like roads and bridges. A psychological operations component aimed to handle the Philippine media, which was seen as hostile to American operations in the Philippines and as having “a decidedly anti-American bias” (Briscoe ; Wilson ). Their mission was to conduct unconventional warfare operations by, with, and through the AFP to separate the population from ASG and destroy the latter. When American military advisors arrived in the Philippines, they confirmed the bad reputation of the Philippine military. The combination of “neglect and lack of military initiative” had created circumstances that contributed not only to the continuing presence and even growth of insurgent groups, but to the “genesis of new terrorist and criminal organizations”

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(Wilson : ). These evaluations by the American military confirmed the justification for deploying the military in the Philippines in the first place. In July , evaluations by American and Philippine observers and the media were clearly positive about the joint maneuvers. Weeks before the exercises were scheduled to conclude, the American military announced the mission had accomplished almost all of its objectives. The ASG group had been driven from a posture of open defiance to scattered remnants strung across a few small southern islands. To the press, President Arroyo announced that ASG was on the verge of being wiped out. In short, the main goals had been achieved, and human rights violations had been limited. To conclude, as early as mid-, the vocal opposition to counterterrorism was quieted. Despite ongoing fighting, the success of the government’s operations limited any political opportunities for mobilization. In July , a poll conducted by Pulse Asia found that  percent of those Filipinos who were aware of the joint exercises were in favor of them. And the majority of the population in Mindanao did not oppose them, as they were apparently tired of the violence perpetrated by Islamist terrorist groups and the military’s inefficiency in tracking down ASG (Morada : ). This had redistributional effects on the political power of contending groups. In July , President Arroyo accepted the resignation of Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teofisto Guingona, who had earlier criticized the joint exercises. He had experienced a humiliating challenge of his authority by Roberto Romulo, an appointed special advisor to Arroyo and declared supporter of the American presence. Arroyo appointed a new AFP chief of staff, Michael Santiago. Many believed she appointed him to silence his sister, former Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, an outspoken critic of Arroyo (Montesano : ). Now, the government revived its campaign to link MILF to terrorist organizations in Southeast Asia and Al-Qaeda. It consistently claimed that MILF leadership harbored kidnap-for-ransom gangs, such as the notorious Pentagon Gang. On February , , the military launched an attack on MILF’s main base in Buliok and justified this move by arguing that MILF was providing shelter to the Pentagon Gang. The date was significant. It was the day after the peace agreement signed with MILF two years before was tabled in the Senate. Moreover, it was the Holy Feast of the Sacrifice, one of the biggest celebrations in Islam. The operation was severely criticized as it gave the conflict a religious color (International Crisis Group ). And MILF’s chairman, Selamat Hashim, categorically and consistently denied the allegations that MILF was a terrorist group. In June  he stated, “MILF, as

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a liberation organization, has repeatedly renounced terrorism publicly as a means of attaining political ends” (International Crisis Group : f). At the same time the government worked to delegitimize these organizations, it pursued peace negotiations, which were frequently undermined by its military operations. Two further events helped the government to consolidate its frame. Most importantly, investigations into the bombing of a discotheque in Indonesia’s Bali in October  revealed the suspects were part of a Southeast Asian terror network known as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which also operated in Indonesia, Malaysia, and southern Thailand. This evidence confirmed intelligence accounts of such a network. A key terrorism suspect, Indonesian national Fatur Rohman Al-Ghozi, was captured in July . He escaped from a Manila prison in broad daylight a year later, embarrassing the Philippine military. That same day, high-level members of the Australian and Philippine governments were meeting to discuss counter-terrorism measures. Second, a report on Mindanao by the respected International Crisis Group (ICG) lent credibility to the Arroyo administration despite the flaws within its counter-terrorism campaign. The ICG’s report, Southern Philippines Backgrounder: Terrorism and the Peace Process of , provided detailed evidence demonstrating what MILF had consistently denied. It had links to terrorist groups (International Crisis Group ). The report described in great detail the activities of JI and ASG in the southern Philippines and its links to MILF leadership. Under the protection of MILF, it said JI had set up training camps and started to replicate the Afghan camp system in the southern Philippines (International Crisis Group : i). The report also castigated the Arroyo government and American counter-terrorism planners for blurring the line between counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency and for the lack of legal investigations. Still, it basically confirmed the government’s line that a terrorist threat existed in the Philippines. Expanding the Policy of Counter-Terrorism to the Left The simple fact that the Philippine government was struggling to maintain state security in the face of challenges to its territorial integrity does not explain how it could also extend this challenge to the communist insurgency. To explain that requires us to look at how the government manipulated the changed normative context and recategorized the communist insurgency as a terrorist issue that should concern an international community dealing

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with terrorist challenges. Much more than her predecessor had, Arroyo took advantage of the American-led War on Terrorism to legitimate a struggle against communist insurgents. In part, her commitment stemmed from international normative pressures. Here, Arroyo was able to build on the rhetorical groundwork laid by her predecessor, Joseph Estrada. In February , Estrada had attempted to frame the actions of NPA in a way that resonated with international counterterrorism norms. NPA had kidnapped an army brigadier general and had announced a tactical alliance with MILF to conduct joint attacks against the government. This gave Estrada an opportunity to link NPA activities to the international fight against terrorism. He demanded a “clear, strategic, and principled commitment” from the National Democratic Front leadership that it would no longer resort to kidnapping or other acts of terrorism. International anti-terrorism norms also provided an opportunity to anchor this strategy transnationally. In July , it prompted the Dutch government to declare key communist figures, most importantly, Jose Maria Sison, as a terrorist. The move would have prevented him from entering the EU. According to Foreign Minister Domingo Siazon, Sison had used “the Netherlands as sanctuary to direct acts of terrorism and violence against the people of the Philippines.” From July  onwards, the Arroyo administration and the military systematically expanded their counter-terrorism campaign toward NPA, the long-standing insurgent movement. NPA had been the target of rhetorical attacks since , but now the military also targeted legal, left-oriented groups in an attempt to recategorize them as terrorist. Claims that the government’s ultimate aim was to destroy these parties’ electoral gains, especially those of the Bayan Muna, did not have currency at this point of time (Amnesty International ). Again, the government’s strategic offer to recategorize NPA in terms of state security depended on acceptance. And key international organizations endorsed the move. In August , the United States listed CPP as a terrorist organization. One month later, led by the Dutch and German government, the EU Council officially declared CPP and NPA as terror organizations. This was an interesting move. The Philippine government itself had not declared CPP illegal because it lacked a legal basis to do so. When an NPA hit squad killed one of its former commanders, Romulo Kinantar, who had broken with CPP leader, Jose Maria Sison, in , in January  and the assassination attracted wide attention in the Philippine papers, this provided confirmatory

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evidence. President Arroyo’s spokesman Ignacio Bunye now argued that, by admitting to the assassination of Kintanar, NPA had identified “itself as a terrorist and criminal organization of the worst kind. This clearly justifies the government’s policy of counterforce against the CPP-NPA, which has lost all legitimacy in its struggle.” So the link was made, and the very persuasiveness of this move made the actions that followed much more likely. In the course of the campaign, several political parties with representatives in the Philippine Congress were labeled as terrorist, and their activities became recategorized in line with anti-terrorism norms. The military alleged, for example, that Bayan Muna was directly financing NPA with the funds that party members received as members of the House of Representatives. Given the prescriptions of the international terrorism-financing convention, this claim was based on accepted norms. Well-known NGOs were tagged as supporting terrorism. Though most were left-leaning groups, they had campaigned peacefully for their goals. Anak ng Gabriela became one target of the military. The organization had made itself suspicious in the eyes of the military because it defined part of its work as consciousness-raising. It fought “for the rights of the people against arbitrary, excessive, or oppressive acts of government officials and agents” and helped “in the cultivation of the people’s knowledge in the political, social, and economic aspects of society.” According to a military spokesperson, these leftist-oriented political goals qualified the organization as terrorist. The NGO was consequently dissolved. One year later, in July , Arroyo repeated that the counterinsurgency strategy would expose guerrilla-linked groups and cut the sources of their funding. While she did not name groups, press reports indicated this statement would apply to “many political, labor, and human rights organizations.” To achieve this aim, she intended to apply the same measures that had succeeded with ASG, a mix of military operations and humanitarian assistance in the form of a distance learning program involving teacher-soldiers to “extricate these poverty-stricken barangay [community] villages from the grip of the dissidents.” Special operation teams would neutralize Bayan Muna. Her announcement was followed by a wave of violence directed against journalists, human rights workers, trade unionists, and left-wing politicians. Assassins attacked members of Bayan Muna. Between  and , the party counted ninety-three members who were assassinated. According to the domestic human rights organization, Karapatan,  people were assassinated during , the highest number of extrajudicial killings since Marcos was ousted (Karapatan ). Some of the victims achieved international

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attention, such as the three active members of leftist (progressive) youth organizations murdered in Mindanao in May . Two of the victims were teenagers known to be highly critical of military abuses in the Philippine south. The military denied its involvement. Instead, it claimed that the victims had died as a result of internal purges within CPP. In March , thirty-fouryear-old Juvy Magsino was killed, along with another human rights worker. Her murder received international attention because it occurred during the election campaign and Magsino was a founding member of Bayan Muna. In the areas of the most intensive military operations, leaders of human rights organizations complained that men in jeeps harassed them and the military was videotaping their activities. One could claim that this was a transparent military maneuver to deny responsibility for the slayings of activists. This argument ignores other facts, however. Actors besides the military were circulating this particular account, suggesting it relied on a more popular belief that emerged after NPA assassinated Ronaldo Kinantar in January . For example, Patricio Abinales, a professor at the University of the Philippines and a prominent critic of Jose Maria Sison, also claimed CPP had “eliminated less-known cadres and activists and in places where the media rarely ventures.” The military vehemently denied these claims, and Arroyo backed it up. In December , during her keynote address at the celebration of International Human Rights Day, Arroyo called allegations of human rights abuses as human rights propaganda that negatively affected the morale of soldiers and policemen. She called NPA as the worst violator and demanded a proper mechanism to receive and process complaints of human rights abuses against insurgents and terrorists, including ASG. Arroyo noted that, while NPA rebels “extol human rights in words, they engage in illegal logging, cultivate marijuana, push drugs, burn buses, and murder civilians,” a reference to the definition of terrorism under UN anti-terrorism resolutions. Early in , the conflict with NDF and affiliated leftist organizations escalated significantly. In January, the Arroyo government decided to put CPP on its domestic list of terror organizations, but, just one day earlier, Norway, having served as a mediator in peace negotiations between CPP and the government, had removed CPP from its own list. Arroyo’s popularity had plummeted significantly since June  when tape recordings were published that linked her to vote rigging in the  elections. She had won the election by a margin of one million votes (. percent of votes compared to her main competitor, Fernando Poe Jr. [. percent]) and

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had already faced allegations that she stole the election from her political opponent. In February , plans for a coup d’état from sections of the military against her became public. Now she announced a state of emergency and declared an all-out war against the communists in a counterinsurgency plan called Oplan Bantay Laya (Cibulka : ). The brief state of emergency in February , however, eventually triggered international reactions that would slow the destruction of institutions of accountability, among them civil society organizations. The Transnational Human Rights Mobilization, 2006–2008 International anti-terrorism norms and the financial incentives attached to them, as well as the Philippine branding as violator of these international community standards (“weakest link”), had so far not faced significant counter-constraints. A debate on the implications for human rights had been domestically contained, and transnational networks were nearly absent. As international human rights pressures grew, the government was increasingly compelled to justify its choice for state security instead of human rights. As human rights violations drew international headlines, the government took its first steps to address human rights problems. On May , , it established an interagency task force (Task Force Usig) within the Philippine National Police to investigate the slayings of party members and media personalities. The task force was mandated to provide focus and resources to immediately investigate, solve, and prosecute the perpetrators. Major General Jovito Palparan, a key suspect in the disappearances and extrajudicial executions, continued to belittle the emerging official concern for human rights. He stated publicly that party list members were still enemies of the state even if they were representatives in Congress. At the end of May , the EU Council again declared that Jose Maria Sison and the Communist party of the Philippines, including those in NPA, were terrorist individuals and entities. Thus, it supported one important line of the government’s defense. Then in August , the Dutch detained Sison and charged him with ordering the murder of two NPA comrades in  and . Meanwhile Task Force Usig began to use documentation compiled by the left-oriented Karapatan to clarify the controversial count of victims of human rights violations, in cooperation with the Asian Human Rights Commission. As a result, the task force significantly corrected the number downwards.

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The administration’s justice secretary, Raul Gonzales, called possible human rights violations as collateral damage and emphasized the “defense of the state is the prime responsibility of the government.” The military continually repeated its internal purges theory. Retired General Jovito Palparan, whose involvement in political killings had been officially investigated by then, repeated that Karapatan “fabricated its data on murders of activists.” The government also continued to brand civil society organizations as terrorists and urged the United States to help the administration break the back of the communist insurgency. It proposed that the American government focus on “human rights groups and other front organizations of the CPP-NPA.” And it declared that it was determined to destroy CPP, the “Abu Sayyaf kidnap gang,” and MILF with newly purchased equipment worth P billion (approximately US$. million). This pattern of denial changed again in August  when Amnesty International published a comprehensive report on political killings and human rights in the Philippines and triggered the mobilization of individual governments and the UN. As in previous episodes, Amnesty International clarified what would be appropriate behavior for a government during counter-terrorism. It criticized the blurring of the lines between legal domestic opposition from the left and insurgency, as demonstrated through the attempted arrests of leftist congressional representatives on charges of rebellion (Amnesty International : ). It condemned the condoning of violations by senior officials as “a tacit signal that political killings were a legitimate part of the anti-insurgency campaign” (Amnesty International : ). Three days after Amnesty International published its report, Arroyo undertook two costly steps to show her human rights commitment. She established the so-called Melo Commission, named after its chairman and retired Supreme Court Justice Jose A.R. Melo, to “address media and activist killings.” She also invited Philip Alston, the UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, to come to the Philippines in February . Just one day after Alston had left the Philippines, the Melo Commission confirmed that the military had done the politically motivated killings of party members, journalists, and human rights activists. In its first reaction, the military called the commission’s report “strained, unfair, and a blank accusation,” thereby denying the allegations. Spurred by the murder of Siche Bustamante Gandinao, a member of Bayan Muna and the Misamis Oriental Farmers Organization, the network of surveillance and monitoring

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organizations intensified its work. Gandinao, an outspoken critic of the military and a witness to the murder of her father-in-law, had met with Alston. The United States Senate’s Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs held a hearing on human rights in which Eric G. John, the deputy assistant secretary of state of the Bureau of East Asian And Pacific Affairs, expressed the administration’s concern about extralegal executions in the Philippines. And the EU sent a forensic mission to exhume a mass grave of victims of extrajudicial killings. Alston’s report, eventually published in April , was a comprehensive indictment of the military’s violations of human rights (United Nations General Assembly ). The rapporteur not only castigated the extrajudicial executions of leftist activists in the Philippines after the military deliberately targeted them as fronts for CPP. He strongly rejected the military’s claims that the killings were internal purges, given that the government and military failed to provide evidence to bolster their claim. He regarded these claims as “cynical attempts to displace responsibility.” The practice reflected a “deliberate strategy in keeping with the overall trajectory of counterinsurgency thinking at the national level.” He urged the Philippine government to “identify and decisively reject at an institutional level those innovations in counterinsurgency strategy that have resulted in such a high level of political killings” (United Nations General Assembly : para ). In addition, Arroyo’s accusation of the Dutch government boomeranged. In December , a Dutch judge considered the documents provided by the Philippine government as insufficient to charge Jose Maria Sison with murder. Six months later, on July , , the European Court of First Instance annulled the decision of the EU Council that had declared Sison, who was represented by a team of international lawyers, a terrorist. The court said the “tactic of blacklisting Professor Jose Maria Sison” was “calculated to pressure the NDF to capitulate in its peace negotiations with the Manila government.” The Arroyo government reacted to these demands with more policy changes. The AFP reiterated the principle of command responsibility and established its own human rights office to investigate, along with the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, any cases that alleged involvement by military elements. The Department of Justice’s witness protection program was expanded, and the Supreme Court established special courts to handle these cases. To instill confidence in the judiciary, Arroyo ordered it to speed up its prosecution of cases involving human rights violations. She now

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referred to military perpetrators as killers. In October , Arroyo finally issued an arrest order for Jovito Palparan. The official justification emphasized that giving him a fair and credible trial “would show the international community that the Arroyo administration did not and will not condone human rights violations” and it was in no way linked to condoning extrajudicial killings. Conclusion: Muslim Self-Determination, Terrorism, and Human Rights The global war on terror provided the Philippine government with an opportunity and an obligation to link up with global efforts to counter-terrorism, to secure the financial resources to modernize its military, and to effectively combat two long-standing domestic insurgencies with military means. This first exposed the Philippine south, which never was under the comprehensive control of the central government, to heightened struggles for governmental supremacy. As has become evident, international normative calls on the Philippine government to commit to the fight against terrorism, the opening of a second front against terrorism by the United States, and its effective branding as the weakest link in the international struggle provided the normative pushing factors that made the Estrada government commit itself to counter-terrorism. But Estrada and later Arroyo also actively manipulated international norms to seek a shared understanding that the insurgencies presented deadly threats to the nation-state. My focus here on the discourse that led the government to adopt these norms and later to expand them to parts of the legal opposition reveals a path-dependent process in which excuses and justifications play out in quite different ways to support the policy of the Philippine government. Significantly, in the process sketched here, the Philippine governments of Estrada and later Arroyo acted as norm entrepreneurs that took advantage of deeply ingrained international norms embedded in the very concept of state sovereignty. First, the Estrada government quite successfully took advantage of internationally accepted norms referring to a state’s monopoly of organized violence. The weakness of the Philippine military could be played out as an excuse for the lack of ability to go against ASG, which, by this time, had already been targeted as a terrorist organization by the United States. In rationalizing the need for the VFA, the government drew on accounts emphasizing that its

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military was not efficient enough to combat a tiny extremist Islamic group and the government could therefore not exert effective authority over the Philippine south. Domestic opposition against American intervention, most vocally supplied by the nationalist and left opposition, was ill equipped to provide a long-term, principled resistance against this strategy. Its strategies to legally challenge the VFA were blocked by the Philippine Supreme Court, and the military’s dual approach to counter-terrorism did respond to the needs of affected constituents. In combination, these events, which confirmed the government’s position, stifled public opposition to the government. That the Philippines would become a second front in counter-terrorism was neither natural nor inevitable, a point that will become evident in comparison to Indonesia. Philippine domestic actors, most importantly, the military, but also Estrada and Arroyo, had material and reputational interests in the campaign as it gave them access to better equipment and a chance to polish the military’s bad reputation as a corrupt and inefficient force. The Indonesian government was also pressured to support the global campaign against terror. Indonesia’s Megawati Sukarnoputri was equally embarrassed by charges that the government was not complying with international antiterrorism law and Indonesia constituted a weak link in counter-terrorism policy. After a long phase of denial, she eventually had to admit that a network of Islamic terror organizations was active in Indonesia after the discotheque in Bali was bombed in October . As happened to Mindanao, Indonesia’s largely-Muslim Aceh province was framed as an ungoverned area and likewise identified as an area where Islamic terrorists (GAM) were active (Rabasa et al. ). Unlike the Philippines, however, Indonesia had an active human rights community, which was still transnationalized. The resistance from Muslim communities carried weight. In combination, these factors allowed Indonesia to resist American pressures. This did not prevent the Indonesian government from taking up the struggle against terror. It chose the path of legal prosecution, leading to the conviction and punishment of terrorists. The Indonesian government’s approach was later heralded as a model for a legal approach to terrorism in Southeast Asia (McBeth ).

9 Contested Norms and Human Rights Change

This book started with a series of questions, most importantly: • Why do governments routinely violate the most basic norms of human rights? • Why do they change their practices? • Why do they sometimes get away with the most flagrant human rights violations? Rational institutionalist approaches to international relations emphasize that human rights violations result, most importantly, from inadequate or weak international enforcement mechanisms that do not sufficiently monitor and constrain governments. Governments change their practice when the costs of repression outweigh their benefits. Constructivist approaches emphasize the role of intersubjective normative understandings and the ways that constructions about reality influence the interests and identities of states or groups within the state. The mobilization of Western states and domestic civil society can pressure governments to change their policy. To explain continuing human rights violations, they highlight three factors, among others, incomplete processes of international norm socialization, the absence or weakness of civil society actors or transnational advocacy networks as effective safeguard for abuses, and the enduring misfit between international and domestic norms. This book emphasizes normative contestation. Transnational human rights advocacy influenced the Indonesian and Philippine states’ human rights policies in unexpected ways. It challenged

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authoritarian governments that had backing from strategic-military allies. Advocacy brought human rights on a domestic agenda and proved to be an effective tool to constrain the powerful militaries’ role in the Philippines and Indonesia. In both countries, transnational advocacy contributed to the demise of authoritarian rule. But as we record these influences, the Indonesian and Philippine governments suppressed human rights concerns after regime changes from authoritarian to democratic governments and after both political elites and domestic societies had experienced an extensive socialization process during the s (the Philippines) and the s (Indonesia) (Jetschke ; Risse and Ropp : ). In the s, Indonesia’s Suharto effectively managed to deflect transnational human rights pressures despite considerable transnational and domestic mobilization. These governments could stop significant transnational mobilization, but also had to submit to human rights pressures. I have argued in this book that some states can evade pressures for human rights change even when the conditions are present that we usually associate with changes of policies and improvements of human rights practices: • States had transited from authoritarian rule to a more democratic system. • They were still on an international human rights agenda, or transnational advocacy networks still existed. • Governments were committed to human rights. • Transnational advocacy had already achieved important concessions from authoritarian governments, which should have facilitated mobilization. The empirical case studies in this book support the proposition that arguments and discourse matter in human rights advocacy and campaigns. An important rhetorical weapon of activists and international human rights organizations in their encounters with governments were good arguments seeking to invalidate government’s accounts for human rights violations. Interested audiences consisting of civil society groups in other states, individuals in state departments, and representatives of international organizations listened carefully to and understood what these actors said to each other. Their dialogue was mediated through media who critically evaluated statements. Because the outcome of these dialogues was consequential, actors rightly devoted time and attention to them.

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My three main findings in this book relate to this point. First, I have shown that both the process through which governments were pressured and decided to change their human rights practice as well as the process through which they restrict human rights guarantees and the political space for human rights monitors can be social. These decisions were embedded in transnational discourses that engaged human rights organizations, international organizations, and governments. It was in these discourses that all the parties worked out their identities, roles, and courses of action. They legitimated the actions of actors, a crucial factor in modern democratic polities. State governments initially did not decide to violate human rights in a social vacuum, making an autonomous choice primarily determined by their own preferences to stay in power. Governments spent a great deal of time justifying their policies to audiences and seeking their support. They did so in the expectation that their justifications for curtailing human rights might be accepted. They were not forced into a process of rhetorical self-entrapment by the “pressure of a fully mobilized domestic and transnational network” (Risse and Ropp : ), they also had an intrinsic motivation to account for their behavior. Their decisions aimed at receiving endorsement or at least understanding. My second main finding is that, in these discourses, the accounts of governments had persuasive power. Neither the Philippine nor the Indonesian government confined itself to invoking state sovereignty in the form of the right to non-interference. Both governments astutely defended their practice in the expectation that they had good reasons for their behavior that would also have currency in a state community. Their accounts influenced the outcome of public campaigns against them. They took the form of justifications and excuses and drew on a symbolic universe of collective norms, values, and practices emphasizing legitimate state functions that are deeply embedded in the social structure of world polity. Third, a discourse perspective sheds light on this process of coming to a shared definition of the situation. Actors struggled to determine the right course of action and tried to persuade audiences that their particular definition of the situation was accurate and the norm they evoked was the superior one. Whether or not each one succeeded depended on the actor’s credibility, how the arguments resonated among audiences, and independent norm dynamics. The discourse developed in path-dependent ways. Crucial here were events that confirmed predicted developments and the fact that external actors—other state governments, international organizations, or the mass media—adopted specific perspectives.

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All this is to say that we have to look at framing processes and the reactions of relevant audiences to understand why transnational human rights advocacy can sometimes lead to dramatic changes; why it will sometimes be blocked or will elicit no response; and why it might even lead to the implementation of policies that restrict important human rights guarantees. Normative contestation sheds light on the seeming contradictions of human rights advocacy. One important conclusion of this book is that it is important to understand the issues that are at stake: human rights or state security. But these two situations play out in very specific, localized situations that seldom appear to have larger consequences for overall human rights policy. We have seen this in Chapter  when we discussed the role of the St. Cruz massacre in East Timor in . When Indonesian military shot into a crowd of demonstrators demanding the independence of East Timor, no one could have predicted that this singular event would eventually overhaul Indonesia’s New Order. But the implications that human rights organizations drew from the Indonesian government’s reaction to the massacre had political consequences. The government’s inappropriate reactions symbolized the authoritarian nature of the New Order. These conclusions connected to the wider aspirations of civil society in Indonesia, which appropriated this discourse and pressured its government. In pointing to normative competitors throughout the empirical chapters, I highlight that governments, activists, and scholars must first understand the political conflicts over rights. They must understand how governments react to accusations of human rights violations, on what kind of legitimating norms they can draw, and how their very reactions to accusations influences whether or not external actors can be mobilized. It is then that it becomes possible to design even better advocacy. In justifying their behavior, actors are likely to refer to those universal norms that best fit their preferences. But this does not render these justifications meaningless. The very fact that actors perceive that they have to provide accounts points to the fabric of cultural meanings and understandings in which action is embedded. The very fact that talk has consequences points to the efficacy of these accounts. The most important element here is the way that actors established intersubjective, that is, commonly shared understandings about what was at stake, whether human rights or state security. By considering this process, the book has addressed a weakness in research on international norms, This research has, at various points, been criticized for its focus on perceived good norms,

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with human rights serving as primary example (Acharya ; Kowert and Legro ). Because human rights constitute such good norms, it has been easy to demonstrate that they override materially defined interests. In studies on human rights institutions, this focus too often translates into a dichotomy between norms and interests in which actors have clearly defined roles. In this view, the advocates of human rights norms usually rely on legitimacy as a powerful resource, but all that the rulers of norm-violating states or regimes have is powerful self-interests. Here (authoritarian) regimes violated human rights because the ruling elite’s own security seemed to be at stake, along with the regime’s survival (see, for example, Christie ). By focusing instead on state security and the constitutive norms associated with it, I have argued that governments have interests, just as human rights organizations do, but they also have normative and moral concerns, as when they fear the breakup of their nation-state. Thus, the argumentation emphasizes the role of those who are pressured by norms (Acharya : ). The aim is to bring in more clearly to the fore the subjective definitions of a situation that governments and constituents have and then to reconstruct how all actors come to a common definition of the situation, that is, whether there were human rights or state security at stake. But the interaction between human rights organizations and target states is as much a dialogue as it is a highly political struggle over the authoritative definition of a situation. In determining what kind of situation this is making which norms applicable, audiences played a crucial role as judges and final arbiters of the claims that were made. In the Philippine and Indonesian cases, this has become most visible in attempts by both parties, human rights organizations and state governments, to bring in external judges, including the United States as their most important ally. Dialogue is a matter of social construction, and it can be studied by looking at discourse. This concluding chapter summarizes the empirical findings and indicates some implications of my research. In the first section below, I discuss justifications and excuses in the process of transnational advocacy. My main claim here is that justifications and excuses help us understand the varying outcomes of human rights campaigns. It is therefore important to look at the conditions under which both discursive mechanisms lead to undesirable effects, deflecting human rights pressures. In the second section, I discuss my second central finding; that is, the literature on the influence of international norms overestimates the influence on domestic groups. One mechanism is central to both, constructivist and rationalist approaches to human rights, the strengthening and mobilization of groups within the country. Here, I argue that scholars and

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practitioners must pay more attention to how competing claims mobilize different constituencies. This qualifies one central mechanism of normative influence that rationalist and constructivist approaches assume, the linear strengthening of domestic constituents or stakeholders. Norms do legitimize domestic groups that operate in line with these norms, but if norms are being contested, these effects can cancel each other out. This can lead to a decoupling of human rights reforms and real practices on the ground. Thus, a lack of human rights reforms is not necessarily the outcome of weak international pressures, but of continued contestation. In the third section, I discuss the power of international NGOs such as Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. These organizations have gained considerable moral authority, making them a potent moral force in international politics. But their function is not confined to providing information on gross and systematic abuses wherever they occur or developing legal human rights standards (Clark ; MacDermot ). In their daily actions, their most important function is to continually define role identities and to delimit what behavior is and is not acceptable for governments and non-state actors that violate human rights. In the fourth section, I look at a mechanism that has not yet been addressed in the process of human rights change, learning and diffusion in processes of human rights. In fact, given my emphasis on path dependence and the interaction between norms, it should not be surprising to find that actors also learn how to deal with transnational advocacy—for the good and for the worse. This section discusses the implications of learning for transnational advocacy. In the final section, I pull all these themes together and look at the larger picture of the role of international law. While some proponents of legalization in international relations see a development toward a hierarchical legal order, gradually taking the form of an international constitution, others see legal pluralism in the future. According to the second view, international NGOs, international organizations, and the media will, through their interaction, be increasingly involved in establishing transnational law. This kind of law results in highly functional regimes, which will be linked to each other only in processes of contestation. Justifications and Excuses In looking at human rights dialogues in the Philippines and Indonesia, a remarkable phenomenon becomes apparent, the dense interaction between state governments, civil society organizations, opposition figures, state

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representatives, and other international and domestic actors. These actors constitute a virtual community of communication, even if many of them never meet each other personally. Nevertheless, domestic and international mass media allowed the actors described in this book to communicate through what Seyla Benhabib calls “impersonal communication” (Benhabib ) and Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have described as “political spaces” in which differently situated actors “negotiate—formally or informally—the social, cultural, and political meanings of their joint enterprise” (Keck and Sikkink : ). In these public discourses, actors exchanged opinions about the need to limit or extend human rights guarantees and provided accounts for why they behaved as they did. As I argued in Chapter , these accounts were introduced as active defenses against the evaluative inquiries by human rights organizations, but were equally directed at obtaining political legitimacy, endorsement and, in the case of international organizations and media as external authorities, authorization. These transnational debates were hence very political in nature. They aimed to gain public legitimacy for particular political positions. And these political battles had political consequences. Political power shifted to those actors whose positions were legitimized. If human rights norms prevailed, this shifted power to human rights organizations and other groups in line with these norms. If state security prevailed, this distributed power to state security institutions. In countering the evaluative inquiries of human rights organizations, justifications and excuses proved to be an important accounting technique for governments involved in social discourses about norm violations. Public discourses mediated the influence of human rights norms in significant ways. Policies changed predictably only when human rights groups managed to invalidate governmental justifications and when state representatives accepted their responsibility. The human rights norms had to be enforced through social or material sanctions when the government was recalcitrant. This structure, which acknowledged rights, responsibilities, and enforcement, also provided the key to evading human rights pressures. If state governments could justify human rights violations, that would let them gain more control over the framing process. They could also deny their responsibility and excuse themselves by portraying the government as not in control of the situation and could thus impinge on unwanted external interference by other actors. The discussion of justifications and excuses will be organized along Table .. It sets out four types of actions that target states can take in response

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Table 9.1. Justification and Excuses, and Human Rights Change Target State

Accepts Norm

Rejects Norm

Accepts responsibility

Appropriation of norm

Justification

Change

Change unlikely (only after public contestation)

Excuse Change unlikely

Combination unlikely

Rejects responsibility

to human rights organizations’ challenges. My focus here is on three cells of this table, which are logically possible and likely. The combination, rejection of norm/rejection of responsibility, is logically possible, but unlikely and will not further be discussed. This leaves three outcomes. Two might lead to the deflecting of human rights pressures, and the outcome of one is a change of practices. I will discuss the top-left quadrant together with justifications, as this is usually the end point of transnational advocacy, to bring a government to accept human rights as rules-guiding behavior and accept responsibility for the protection of human rights. First, in the top-right quadrant, the situation is given by a government that rejects the allegation that human rights are at stake and offers an alternative frame. This is what we have referred to as justification. Justifications can be very powerful in establishing alternative norms on the agenda. They recategorize a specific behavior and therefore establish “what is and what is not” (Meyer, Boli, and Thomas : ). This has an important effect. Now other actors will regard a particular behavior as not involving human rights violations in the first place. For example, shooting an individual on the spot might be an extrajudicial execution, but, if this individual is tagged as an independence fighter, some might see that shooting as within the limits of appropriate behavior in the context of a struggle for territorial integrity. Here, the introduction of justifications into a discourse can diminish the chances of changes in human rights because it starts a struggle to define the situation authoritatively. This might also be when actors develop an intrinsic motivation to draw in audiences as judges. The human rights literature discusses this setting as one in which a target state denies the validity of human rights on the grounds of its right to noninterference into its domestic affairs (national sovereignty). “Governments

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tend to stress the Westphalian norm of state sovereignty in their attempt to garner domestic and international support” and indicate “they are not interested in engaging in a serious dialogue with their critics” (Risse and Ropp : ). But it is important to stress here that this implies that there is something like an objective description of a situation that is accepted by anyone. While this is true for some cases like when somebody observes an individual being tortured, this is less clear for situations that are ambiguous and lent themselves to several interpretations. And even in this case, actors might discuss what exactly torture means, for example, whether sleep deprivation is torture or not, as we have seen in debates on Israel’s and the United State’s human rights practices (Liese ). Justifications can be a serious attempt to engage in dialogue and, through it, to establish a common definition of a situation. They can also be used to gain time and engage critics in a legal argument, as we have seen in the tedious efforts of American policymakers to redefine the status of detainees in Guantanamo (Steyn ). Whatever motivation is attributed to an actor, it is within the discourse that it will be established and is therefore always a political act. In this setting, actors might also verbally harass each other. We can consider this an attempt to establish the credibility and trustworthiness of each other. An example is the Indonesian government’s challenge of Amnesty International in the s when it denied that Amnesty International could speak up for the people of developing countries (Chapter ). To be persuasive, the justification must resonate with widely shared norms in an international and domestic community. The main justifications that the Philippine and Indonesian governments introduced were related to state security and thus to norms that are intricately connected to state sovereignty and functions that are legitimate for sovereign states. The need to secure the territorial integrity of the states figured prominently. In the Philippines under Marcos, this justification not only provided one original argument for introducing martial law in . It also allowed Marcos to justify not lifting martial law until . He also used it to explain why specific decrees could not be changed after martial law. Human rights were still to be restrained for the communist rebels and Muslim insurgents operating in the southern Philippines (Chapter ). An important justification for developing states in the s constituted the need to establish modern nation-states and economic welfare under military-led modernization. In Indonesia under Suharto, safeguarding Indonesia’s territorial integrity against separatist movements in Aceh, Irian Jaya, and East Timor was

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a major justification for the political role of the Indonesian military after , but it became so habitualized and localized through the state ideology Pancasila that few people were aware how Pancasila reflected basic norms of sovereignty. Amitav Acharya has most forcefully made the argument that local norms frequently reflect international norms (Acharya ). The Indonesian state’s right to territorial integrity was again forcefully played out against human rights after East Timor’s vote for independence. This election triggered demands for self-determination in those Indonesian provinces that had suffered most at the hands of the Indonesian military. Here, the initial motivation of activists in Aceh and Irian Jaya was to use demands for selfdetermination as a bargaining chip to seek restitution and accountability for past and ongoing human rights violations. But as soon as they raised the demand for self-determination, the government had a good justification to suppress them. Similarly, the aspirations of specific groups to establish an Islamic state collude with norms defining the state as a secular and rational organization. The Indonesian government deflected human rights pressures and further ongoing demands to liberalize in the mid-s by pointing out the potential negative consequences to an international audience. Liberalization would lead to an Indonesian Islamic state. The Iranian revolution provided the necessary evidence to make the justification persuasive. In essence, this confirms sociological institutionalist assumptions that a world polity confers legitimacy to the state not only as a territorial organizational form, but also as a rational-bureaucratic form. The mere fact that a government introduces these justifications does not necessarily mitigate against international mobilization. Justifications depend on specific conditions to be persuasive. Apart from drawing on world polity scripts, justifications have some chance of being persuasive if there is a close match between the situation at hand and world polity norms. This is by no means self-evident. For example, a self-determination movement does not in itself present a normative blocking factor for human rights advocacy. If a self-determination movement pursues its goals peacefully and members of the movement are subject to gross and systematic human rights violations, this will arouse attention and potentially mobilize audiences. An armed selfdetermination movement is a different matter. It not only challenges a state’s territorial integrity, but also rules of democratic governance. Armed opposition groups can also not be legitimately supported by other external actors. As long as they pose a military challenge, a government’s justification for

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suppressing them is likely to persuade. We have seen this in Chapter  when we discussed the change of strategy of East Timor’s self-determination movement for the ability of transnational networks to mobilize against abuses. Thus, if governments are accused of human rights violations against members of self-determination movements, they justify their action with a threat to their state security. If human rights organizations provide undeniable evidence that members are innocent, then the government’s depiction of the situation does not fit with the norms that it invokes. The cases discussed here suggest that justifications will work effectively if threats are credible and these threats challenge the state and its legitimate functions. Justifications will also be persuasive if they draw on world polity norms, address a predictable development, and consider the rights of stakeholders. Drawing on her findings about how large companies account for accidents causing environmental harm, Kimberly Elsbach shows that justifications are an effective accounting technique for predictable events (Elsbach ). As we have seen in Chapter , the Indonesian government’s pledge to the international community to respect Indonesia’s right to territorial integrity in the case of Aceh and Irian Jaya was persuasive because audiences believed in the causal chain that East Timor’s referendum on self-determination would trigger the disintegration of Indonesia. This development appeared predictable. Similarly, the Philippine government could at least partly capitalize on knowledge that actors had acquired about East Timor when it justified its counterinsurgency campaign against the self-determination movement MILF. This is what made the Indonesian and Philippine government’s justifications immediately persuasive. As we have seen, there is a considerable amount of construction process going on in the definition of threats. Securitization sometimes helps actors construct threats. Democratic states were able to block concerns on human rights violations and could legitimately take measures that included some human rights violations when they respected procedural rules of democratic processes. Impartial judges confirmed their definition of the situation, elections had delegitimated those groups that were then targeted as threats to state security, and the government had communicated understanding by addressing affected target audiences in advance. In the Philippines under Arroyo, a Supreme Court decision in  ruling over the legality of a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States removed the only issue from a public agenda around which traditionally strong nationalist and left domestic groups were able to mobilize at that time. This left the legal opposition with

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little active defenses when members became victims of extrajudicial killings. Although this was not intended by the court, the ruling thus foreclosed one important discourse in which human rights abuses could be discussed. Catherine Powell assumes that a similar process underlies the limited debate over the legality of key executive orders of the Bush administration concerning the limitation of human rights guarantees and the application of torture (Powell ). The justification of the Aquino administration to start a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign to rescue the newly established democratic system enhanced its persuasiveness when congressional elections appeared to show how little electoral support the communists could muster, and peace negotiations with them failed in . Not only did the limited opportunities for the Communist party of the Philippines to influence the political system through democratic means enhance its determination to continue its armed struggle, the elections and failed negotiations showed that the Aquino government had exhausted democratic means to deal with the insurgency (Chapter ). Thus, it appeared that counterinsurgency and the violations that might come with it were undesired but unavoidable side effects of that very counterinsurgency campaign. Justifications increased their appeal when they explicitly addressed affected constituencies. But the ability to make a credible justification is not necessarily associated with a democratic regime type. If this were so, we would expect to be authoritarian regimes to be less effective in giving persuasive justifications. Transnational advocacy under an authoritarian Suharto government precisely disconfirm this expectation. Suharto was able to introduce the justification that further political liberalization would undermine the secular basis of the Indonesian state and jeopardize the nation-building process under the banner of military-led modernization. The bottom-left quadrant of Table . describes the situation in which governments accept the frame of their political contestants, but use excuses to deflect responsibility. Like justifications, excuses are persuasive when they draw on a state government’s legitimate claim to authority and its monopoly over the means of violence, but they pervert this norm to construct an account that denies responsibility for the act in question. The main point here is that governments claimed they did not have full control over their population and could therefore not comply better. Under a democratic regime, the Philippines successfully resorted to excuses to deny responsibility for gross and systematic human rights violations that occurred during the

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counterinsurgency campaign that started in . This campaign was led by non-state actors, in effect, paramilitary units that had been set up and trained by the Philippine military to support its counterinsurgency efforts. A similar excuse was used by the Indonesian military to deny responsibility for the activities of militias in East Timor and later Aceh and Irian Jaya over the course of  and . To be persuasive, there needs to be match between the norms that a government invokes and the situation at hand. The domestic institutional structure supporting excuses is constituted by norms of democratic governance. The establishment of paramilitary organizations was itself embedded in a cultural-institutional context that cherished norms of self-determination and democracy from below. Paramilitary units could thus be portrayed as spontaneous, and the military support network was effectively concealed. This was a key argument of members of the Aquino administration in their discourse on paramilitary units. And Geoffrey Robinson’s discussion of militia violence emphasizes how the very fact that paramilitary units also had a history in East Timor shaped the attribution of blame (Robinson : –). Also, the right of citizens to defend themselves if the state is too weak to guarantee security contributes to the legitimization of militias. This is how the Aquino administration explained the emergence paramilitary organizations. When governments do this, accountability politics and public branding to elicit enforcement become elusive in the absence of a crucial framing element, the identification of responsible actors. A second key condition is the availability of credible evidence. There needs to be undeniable evidence that the government has no control over the forces that commit human rights violations. To invalidate an excuse, there must be evidence that the government has, in fact, control. Again, this is not self-evident. In the cases discussed in Chapters  and , governments claimed to have no control over paramilitary units when, in fact, these same units received crucial encouragement (Philippines) and were partly incorporated in the military’s chain of command (Indonesia). Why then was the excuse effective? A key factor was the lack of availability of information on the links between the military and paramilitary units at that time. As we have discussed in Chapter , in the case of East Timor, the presented evidence on these links initially was circumstantial, and hard evidence emerged late. By that time, excuses had already served their purpose of preventing a thorough discussion of human rights abuses in Aceh and Irian Jaya. International support for Indonesia’s territorial integrity enabled the Indonesian government

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to restrain the work of human rights organizations and to impede the monitoring of human rights abuses. Human rights activists disappeared. As is the case with justifications, excuses will be effective if an actor is credible and events or external authorities confirm claims. We are now in a position to better define the context conditions in more substantial terms. Excuses for human rights violations work in contexts in which state actors have no history of human rights violations or in which key policymakers have a reputation as human rights advocates. The Dili massacre in East Timor in  is a good example. Although specialized circles knew of human rights abuses under Suharto, a more general audience did not. Suharto was thus able to frame the massacre as an aberration, which was honored by major donors who criticized the government, but, in the end, accepted the excuse. It was only in the course of the Suharto government’s unwillingness to account for the disappeared that this excuse lost currency. Regime transitions often represent situations in which the historical record of human rights abuses is frequently erased in the collective memory and states get a second chance. A consequence might often be the rapid demobilization of transnational networks as the major work seems to be done. These developments reinforce each other if the new president is an authority in the human rights area. Here, the Aquino administration is a good case. Her credibility shielded the Philippines from criticism, even as the military supported paramilitary organizations that quickly acquired a record of human rights abuses. Also, many abuses can be publicly attributed to the comprehensive overhaul of domestic structures, further increasing the chance that human rights violations will go unheeded by audiences. When actors get to a point in an encounter where they have to attribute responsibility, excuses seem to invite two further responses, both of which carry some risks. First, advocacy can try to engage in a tedious attempt to make non-state actors responsible, but doing so implies they acknowledge the governance functions of unauthorized paramilitary organizations. Because this further challenges state authority, it poses a dilemma. Therefore, actors will hesitate to respond this way. The other possible response is to delegate responsibility to external enforcement agencies, which assume control and take over security functions. This might strengthen external enforcement, but weakens democratic accountability. Given these two dilemmas, it is unlikely that external actors will pursue that option. In all the cases discussed here, the major aim of human rights advocacy is to establish human rights accountability, that is, to make the government

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accept its responsibility and make it accept that human rights norms should regulate a situation. In other words, the aim is to pull cases from the upperright and lower-left quadrant to the upper-left quadrant of Table .. This brings us to the existence and strength of transnational advocacy. Justifications and excuses will have the desired effect of deflecting mobilization if they are not consistently countered by human rights organizations. In the cases discussed here, the existence and strength of transnational advocacy groups also varied over time, and this partly explains why justifications and excuses proved effective. As the Indonesian case in Chapter  has shown, the dense network of domestic human rights organizations that emerged in the early s proved to be an effective bulwark against the justifications of the Indonesian military that it defended territorial integrity. Building on a structure of developmental NGOs that had emerged in the s, these organizations stretched out to many areas where human rights violations occurred and could provide immediate counter-information to governmental accounts. The diversity of members of the network contributed to its impartiality. The Philippine domestic network, described in Chapter , could capitalize on a dense church network that grew continually in the s. These networks provided continual information and counterclaims that eventually mobilized domestic and international actors, constrained governments, and led to institutional reforms that were unthinkable a couple years earlier. The Aquino government’s ability to excuse violations occurred against the rapid demobilization of a transnational human rights network that had emerged against Marcos authoritarian rule and the disintegration of a domestic network that had been partly taken over by the Communist party of the Philippines. Democratization thus presented special challenges to human rights organizations, forcing them to adapt their strategies and frames. The speed with which human rights organizations in the Philippines, especially domestic ones, could be discredited as mouthpieces of domestic insurgencies and were recategorized as front organizations of the Communist party of the Philippines demonstrates the challenges that democratization presents. What becomes clear is that the type of account a governments offers also determines the strategies of human rights organizations. Excuses can impinge on mobilization if no actor responsibility can be established, but, once human rights organizations find means to do so, mobilization will come around easier because the government has already accepted the definition of the situation. Justifications require more emphasis on getting the facts right to show that the government’s description of the situation is simply wrong. It

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is not violating the rights of people posing a threat to state security, but innocent, or “vulnerable individuals” as Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have put it (Keck and Sikkink: ). In the long term, however, overcoming the human rights versus state security dichotomy will require that actors develop strategies for and emphasize the importance of protecting basic rights of those who might not be innocent and who might continue to present a threat to the state. This continues to be the major challenge. Political Contestation and the Redistribution of Domestic Political Power Constructivist and rational institutionalist approaches to human rights share similar assumptions about the mechanisms through which human rights norms become influential. They both assume that one key mechanism is the mobilization and strengthening of domestic groups that are in line with these international norms. Few analysts have attended to the political dynamics that occur as international pressures lead to political power being redistributed on a domestic level. As this happens, some actors will lose political power, and this implies that there will be political resistance. How do these dynamics explain the influence of international norms? The constructivist transnational advocacy literature, like liberal approaches to international norms, assumes that international pressures affect domestic mobilization positively and in a more or less linear way (Moravcsik ). My empirical studies on the Philippines and Indonesia offer a more differentiated and somewhat more pessimistic perspective, primarily because I found that the effects of political contestation on domestic societal groups were contradictory or cancelled each other out. In addition, the levels of mobilization varied considerably, and, in some cases, human rights norms remained deeply contested on a sub-state or domestic level. Primarily, the case studies confirmed that consistent human rights pressure legitimates those societal groups that are in line with the norms. Conversely, groups not in line with the international norms will be stigmatized. But the devil lies in the details. In the absence of an impartial enforcement agency on an international level, consistent international pressures are hard to generate. Other state governments frequently pursue their own interests and sometimes lack a principled stance, leading to highly selective support of individual political groups. More importantly, justifications also mobilize respective constituencies, raising the potential that societal mobilizations will cancel each other

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out. For example, just as human rights pressures mobilized groups in Irian Jaya, who hoped to alleviate their suffering and who saw self-determination as the solution to continued repression, the calls to secure Indonesia’s unity mobilized nationalist sectors, which feared the breakup of the territorial state. Moreover, international human rights pressures on a state generally tend to increase the mobilization of domestic groups there. This is because human rights norms legitimize political opposition overall, increase freedom of opinion, and allow the opposition to assemble. However, international human rights pressures did not necessarily promote the groups that Western governments felt most comfortable with. In Indonesia in the s, the groups that effectively gained from international mobilization were Islamic groups, and they did not link up with the then-prevailing human rights discourse focusing on political prisoners. Given the Iranian revolution and the concerns of Western governments about similar developments in Indonesia, the Suharto regime could credibly convey that the military was effectively blocking an Islamic turn in Indonesia, despite evidence that the so-called Islamic opposition had substantial support from non-Islamic circles (Anderson ; von der Mehden ). In the Philippines in the early s, the group that gained most from international human rights mobilization was the communist National People’s Army (NPA), and its growth was spurred as the Reagan administration in the United States hesitated to speak up publicly and decisively against human rights abuses. At the same time, Marcos and military circles in the American administration could use this military threat to the government as justification for continuing American support for Marcos. Because of the contradictory effects on mobilization, the domestic context for human rights norms proved to be much stickier than the transnational advocacy literature assumes. A focus on state governments and their strategies of avoiding international pressures misses the fact that human rights norms often remain contested on a societal level, and this contestation provides governments with the rhetorical ammunition they need to stop or block international pressures. Beth Simmons is certainly right when stating that local actors are not “voiceless victims to be rescued by altruistic external political actors. They are agents with some power selectively to choose tools that will help them achieve their rights goals” (Simmons : ). It is an immensely empowering insight. But likewise, agents sometimes perceive that they have to make a choice between human rights and state security. In

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these cases, they are not even victims, but active agents preventing human rights change. On closer inspection, it is less surprising that the domestic context is stickier than the international one. The international audience that transnational advocates target is relatively homogeneous and consists mainly of liberal Western states that promote a liberal understanding of human rights. Once the transnational discourses on political legitimization open up political spaces to discuss human rights violations in target states, the human rights networks are confronted with a very heterogeneous constituency. It has very different understandings of human rights and the relationship between citizens and the state, and it is divided along ideological, ethnic, and religious lines. And domestic groups are often concerned about losing political power at the expense of previously suppressed groups, thus showing less concern for the rights of individuals in those groups. In this context, with a society under international pressure continuing to contest the normative validity of human rights, those norms can have only limited effects. This situation leads authoritarian rulers to take advantage of these domestic divisions. They may submit to demands to improve their human rights practice, but not carry out those promises, as the domestic mobilization is not strong enough to threaten their political base. Political concessions and rhetorical endorsements of human rights become a habitual and largely symbolic practice, but are effectively disconnected from the society itself and had no impact on the human rights situation on the ground. The Marcos regime’s reactions to international pressure from – have been a case in point. Marcos made a series of political concessions that kept the opposition divided. Investigations into human rights abuses, isolated cases of disciplinary action against military perpetrators, judicial review, and a host of legislation designed to tackle human rights abuses indicated the government was sensitive to international pressure, but that pressure had little effect in improving the human rights situation on the ground. A similar phase occurred in Indonesia between  and  when a significant opposition had developed, but was too divided to stand up effectively to Suharto and his military. He could play out either of two sets of demands. The human rights community demanded he stop torture in East Timor and Aceh while the nationalists claimed that any support for suspected separatists would only lead to territorial disintegration. And secularists claimed that any support for suspected Islamists would lead to an Islamic state. For some time, the military managed to play out these societal and political divisions to its

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advantage. Some statistical studies on the correlation between the ratification of human rights treaties and human rights practices have observed patterns of decoupling that might explain this situation (Hafner-Burton, Tsutsui, and Meyer ; Hathaway ). My findings in this book show that decoupling might have domestic sources. It might be a more general phenomenon that occurs when rulers and the political opposition interact in a society that is factionalized along class, ethnic, or religious line and political spaces are not yet robust enough to work out collective goals. The point here is not that particular class ideologies or religions are necessarily incompatible with human rights, but, rather, these cleavages open up opportunities for political manipulation by groups that might ultimately promote their particular preferences. In the next section, I attend to the role that international and domestic human rights organizations play in encounters with governments. International NGOs and Transnational Rule-Making The emerging and growing influence of global human rights organizations provides a challenge to state-centric conceptions of international relations. Their influence has grown rapidly to the point that, today, states certainly cannot be regarded as the only actors in international politics that are responsible for protecting human rights or even the only sources of authority. The reputations that Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists have acquired within a brief period can hardly be understood without considering their moral authority. Amnesty International and other such organizations combine features that make them private authorities. They are increasingly engaged in authoritative decision-making (Cutler ; Sending and Neuman ). They combine expertise in their special area with a transparent application of rules that they use to evaluate the human rights practices of states. As such, they have developed into organizations that, through their very routines, embody all the characteristics of authorities. As Barnett and Finnemore put it, they are powerful and command “deference, not in [their] own right, but because of the values” they claim “to embody and the people” they “claim to serve.” (Barnett and Finnemore : ; Hall ). In her study on Amnesty International, Ann-Marie Clark has shown how the three cardinal rules of that organization to represent only (peaceful) political prisoners, to provide for a geographical representation, and to focus on only specific types of abuses, together with professionalism,

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its accumulation of specialized knowledge, and its routines, all combined to the organization’s authority (Clark ). International human rights organizations—the most important being Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First), and, more recently, Human Rights Watch—are leading the normative development of human rights regimes and have assumed an essential role in monitoring and affecting state practice. International NGOs (INGOs) collect and distribute information on human rights practices and mobilize state actors and international organizations to compel state governments to improve the protection of human rights. They represent petitioners before international judicial and quasi-judicial human rights institutions. They lobby national and international political bodies on human rights issues, and they publicize human rights violations. International lawyer Thomas Buergenthal holds that “some states still try to characterize their national or some international NGOs as subversive institutions or seek to outlaw them for a variety of other reasons, but these efforts are often hampered by the growing political status and influence of the organizations” (Buergenthal : ). A human rights compendium edited by Henry J. Steiner and his colleagues even regards it as inconceivable that “the state of human rights in the world, whatever its shortcomings, could have progressed as much since the Second World War without the spur and inventiveness of NGOs” (Steiner, Alston, and Goodman : ). Thus international human rights organizations must be seen as international actors and authorities on a par with states. But what exactly does this mean for the promotion of human rights? A huge body of literature argues that the growth and expansion of NGOs indicates a redistribution of political authority in spheres not controlled by states (Cutler ; Haufler ; Sell ). We have seen a small glimpse of this when we saw the impact of the claims that Amnesty International, the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights, or the International Commission of Jurists made as compared to those of domestic organizations. Although some of my findings support such a perspective, overall, this study provides a more cautious view. The picture emerging from the case studies presented here suggests that INGOs will continue to be significant. But their influence will not be unconditional. Most importantly, their influence depends on finding solutions the continuing dilemma that governments of insecure states face: That between honoring their human rights commitment and securing the state to protect their citizens. An important aim of this study was to show that transnational dialogues are the political spaces in which solutions to these dilemmas are being

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worked out. In these dialogues, the accounts of governments counted and mattered. This understanding is set against a body of literature that exclusively views accounts as strategic devices that are purposefully employed by states to distract from their human rights practices. For example, while Sonia Cardenas urges scholars to integrate accounts into their theoretical models, she calls them “evasive techniques” that come along with new modes of repression. They are introduced to evade moral shaming and to deceit international audiences (Cardenas : ). The problem with this view is that here, ultimately, the social scientist decides what counts as strategy and what kind of behavior is appropriate. But this research strategy forecloses explorations into the equally important question of why external audiences accept such claims and what this means for our understanding of the conflict over norms in international relations. While it is reasonable to assume that audiences accept claims out of self-interest, the case studies presented here also allow the conclusion that, in many cases, ethical issues motivate actors and that a decision has to be made between state and human security. Transnational advocacy networks developed influence the moment that governments reacted to their allegations. Human rights organizations, like Amnesty International or the International Commission of Jurists, judged the Indonesian and Philippine governments’ behavior according to a model of a state that is obliged to respect the civil and political rights of its citizens. Governments gave accounts of why they were not in a position to do so. What developed was an interaction in which the organizations started to hold each government accountable to its own identity-related account. Even though observers believed that the accounts of governments were rhetoric, they could not evade its logic. They had to honour it as part of their social relationships. Thus, the accounts that governments gave were consequential in a double sense. They provided the starting points for public debates between human rights organizations and the government. They also created a path-dependent process in which specific arguments that had been backed up by norms now dropped out of the debate, and others gained salience in response to external events and media constructions, contributing to the emergence of a shared definition of what was at stake. In sum, even if governments initially defined the situation vis-à-vis their challengers, the human rights organizations and audiences, something else later structured the interaction, the normative context in which their account was embedded. What the accounts actually did was to establish particular identities as part of the encounter in which the account was presented. Thus,

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actors generally used accounts to create role identities for other actors in social situations. During the account-giving situation, governments cast others, human rights organizations and their audiences, in a particular role and thereby conferred upon them the privilege of honoring a particular kind of account, the kind suitable to the role identity conferred and assumed for at least the period of the account (Scott and Lyman : ). Conceived this way, it becomes possible to give considerable agency to the targets of transnational human rights advocacy and to fill this agency with some content. The Philippines under Marcos and Indonesia under Suharto chose the identities of state governments that sought to modernize the state through military-led modernization. This account and the role identities associated with it were valid as long as the regimes delivered the economic development they had promised. Thus, the role identity withstood the symbolic attacks on the legitimacy of the regimes. The Philippines under Aquino and Indonesia’s military after the regime change carried a different role identity, a weak state that did not have effective authority over its paramilitary units. This account had to be accepted temporarily, given the lack of evidence of links between the military and paramilitary organizations. This situation allowed the governments to act in accordance with the rules and norms associated with the specific role identity. So even if actors choose their identity strategically, assume and accept advantageous identities, and refuse roles that are not advantageous in the situation (see also Barnett ; Scott and Lyman : ), once they have chosen an identity, this identity construction also sets the boundary conditions under which it will be valid and accepted. Then, actors with specific political interests can use these conditions to hold their opponents accountable. In sum, the emergence, growth, and expansion of NGOs in international relations have amplified the strength of potentially competing legal regimes. Interest groups increasingly use rights as a resource to mobilize international and domestic constituencies. International law has taken greater effect as these non-governmental actors have used normative prescriptions to articulate political demands and thus transform political preferences into legal claims (Koskenniemi : ; Scheingold ). The important consequence of this finding is that the ability of transnational advocacy to socialize states into human rights compliance will remain limited. But this does not make their activities futile. Their continuing relevance will lie in negotiating identities for actors. In the Philippines, the International Crisis Group attempted to untangle some

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inconsistencies in the fight against terrorism by introducing standards for prosecuting terrorists and reminding the government to distinguish between counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency. The group’s considerable experience with other conflict situations allowed it to negotiate and develop some rules of engagement that the Philippine government and MILF leadership should adhere to. International human rights organizations in the s assumed a similar role in the Philippines when they developed standards of accountability for NPA and tried to make this organization accountable to international law (Chapter ). These activities are important because they contribute to rule-making from below (Santos : ). They are a way of managing compliance under uncertainty. And these local legal solutions might be transplanted or diffused. Thus, the major contribution of these organizations was not necessarily to ensure compliance. Their major role is to continually help states delimit the rules of acceptable behavior. International Human Rights Norms and the Diffusion of Best Practices Despite consistent evidence throughout these chapters that both organizations and governments engage in mimicking and emulation, few attempts have been made to integrate these phenomena into actor-centered explanations of normative diffusion. Diffusion constitutes the core of constructivist theorizing on international norms. Proponents investigate the spatial expansion of specific institutions and policies to gain insights into the ways that practices are adopted. In the human rights area, an important literature focuses on the question whether treaty ratification is the result of an sincere commitment to human rights or an outcome of mimicking and emulation or even strategic behavior (Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui ; Hathaway ). Beth Simmons, for example, provides a systematic analysis allowing her to trace the effects of strategic behavior and localized socialization in the regional clustering of ratification (Simmons : –). The focus of this study on political contestation looks at diffusion as strategy that actors choose to enhance their efficacy in pursuing their goals of convincing international audiences of their claims. This changes the perspective, allowing us to parse out the influence of attempts to copy successful models and strategies during human rights advocacy. Actors constantly learn lessons by observing transnational dialogues over human rights practices. But the lessons each actor learns might produce unintended outcomes during the interaction.

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As successful transnational advocacy campaigns mobilize media attention, make actors’ strategies and tactics highly visible, and reflect on strategies that worked and did not, campaigns also allow other actors to learn. In the case studies, we have seen instances of mimicking on the local level. In the s, human rights activists from Indonesia adopted strategies from Philippine human rights activists to challenge World Bank development projects. In the Philippines, tribespeople, aided by local human rights groups, challenged the rationale of World Bank projects and questioned World Bank support for authoritarian regimes. Indonesian human rights activists successfully copied these strategies to lobby against the Kedung Ombo dam project. These were early experiences of opposition through transnational pressures in which human rights organizations established important grassroots support that would later help them bring down and transform international human rights norms, create important political spaces, and lay the groundwork for more comprehensive mobilization (Eldridge ; Riker ). The human rights and democratization movement of the late s in Indonesia drew important lessons about transnationalizing human rights issues from the democratization movement in the Philippines. In East Timor, church groups assumed a centrality similar to that of the Philippine human rights movement. However, these processes of diffusion are not confined to practices that support human rights. As we have seen, governments learned lessons from human rights campaigns in neighboring countries. In the early s, the Indonesian military under Suharto learned that setting up paramilitary organizations might be a useful strategy to shift responsibility for human rights violations. He learned that lesson from the Philippines, which essentially got away with subcontracted militia violence under the government of Corazon Aquino (–). The strategy then proved extremely useful after President Habibie announced a referendum in East Timor: The Indonesian military activated its long-nurtured network of paramilitary organizations to create the impression of a civil war. Once the strategy succeeded, with the media depicting the situation as a civil war, the military learned to adopt it again in other areas with self-determination movements, such as Aceh and Irian Jaya. Likewise, East Timor became a model for self-determination movements and inspired movements in other countries. In the Philippines, the East Timor experience revived demands for self-determination in Muslim Mindanao. In Thailand, it led to a revival of self-determination in the south. If we extend the spatial dimension of these diffusion processes, we can see similar movements in other countries, including Kosovo, Chechnya, and Tibet. Developments in

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Muslim Mindanao after  were not independent of developments in East Timor at about the same time. Not only did the self-determination movement in East Timor assume the status of a model for other self-determination movements in Indonesia and the Philippines, for many other governments, East Timor, together with Kosovo, provided an international legal precedent. It was one of the first cases in which a self-determination movement proved successful. Even if from an international legal perspective, East Timor had never belonged to Indonesia. For many governments, East Timor held a lesson quite detrimental to human rights advocacy: Articulating human rights concerns is the first step to territorial disintegration. From the political contestation perspective adopted here, copying successful strategies is a rational behavior, but it is not always effective. Imitating strategies and policies from other contexts generally worked when there was agreement that this search for successful models was a collective endeavor aimed at finding the best solution to a problem. Mimicking and learning should generally work when actors reason collectively, for example, about the best institution to deal with human rights violations. But taking over specific tactics and strategies is only likely to work at early stages of the interaction when the media are paying little attention and little publicity surrounds the strategizing of campaigns and counterstrategies. Once the media and external actors start scrutinizing the motivations of speakers, it is much riskier to adopt strategies and tactics from elsewhere. Then, audiences and the media will see such learning as instrumental and transform it into an unfavorable construction of authority, which will likely be penalized in public discourse. Cases in point are Aceh’s independence movement (GAM) in Indonesia, which changed its tactic when there was already considerable international attention on human rights violations in Aceh. GAM sought to increase international attention through deliberate attempts to provoke human rights violations, and it sought to emulate strategies from East Timor’s self-determination movement. This unprecedented change of strategy was soon constructed as self-interested rhetorical action (Schimmelfennig ). GAM would only use human rights instrumentally to achieve its ultimate aim of an independent Aceh (Aspinall ; Drexler ). The Politics of Rights and International Law What will happen if the number of international NGOs and their scope increases, providing ever more opportunities to extend political issues beyond national borders and raise scandals about them? On the other hand,

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what will happen if governments learn over time how to deal effectively with transnational human rights pressures and use rights to counter these moves? A related question arises. Will the increasing codification of human rights on an international level progressively lead to better human rights protection? Here, a significant debate centers around how to strengthen the international human rights regime and harden soft human rights law by setting up predictable enforcement mechanisms that can increase compliance. This raises a question about the future of transnational activism, which I discuss here, focusing on the consequences of ubiquitous international political struggles under the guise of (international) law. International lawyers and political scientists are now significantly divided over the question of whether and to what extent international law exerts restraints on state governments. A strong thread running through the literature is that, to become effective, international law requires more legalization. If actors increasingly use rights as resources and sometimes opportunistically take advantage of the contradictions in international law itself, then the only remedy is a process of constitutionalizing international law. Th is term means that the process of lawmaking, the process of legal adjudication between conflicting rights, and the process of enforcing rights will become more and more linked to legal and democratic procedures (Abbott et al ; Leibfried ). In human rights conflicts, international judges will become the final arbiters, leading to the development of meta-norms for resolving conflicts and more efforts to develop international law. If a hierarchical legal order is established in which international courts, most importantly, the International Court of Justice, assume a critical role in litigation, that will increase the legitimacy of international law and voluntary compliance with it. This argument is supported by evidence drawing on a more strongly legalized Europe that points to the role that litigation and interaction between international and domestic judges has played in the evolution of domestic human rights law (Alter ; Goodman and Jinks ). However, this perspective has prominent critics. International lawyers, among them Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Martti Koskenniemi, Andreas Fischer-Lescano, and Gunther Teubner, argue that international legalization is unlikely to result in a hierarchical legal order. Koskenniemi bridges realists’ perspectives, which conceive of international law as simple rhetoric that all kinds of actors invoke to cheat, and legal perspectives that fully embrace international law as distinctive forms of power that oblige states to obey normative prescriptions. Thus, he develops the idea that international law is a

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hegemonic technique. He starts from the assumption that international law is a “process of articulating political preferences into legal claims that cannot be detached from the conditions of political contestation in which they are made” (Koskenniemi : ). For Koskenniemi, in the process of hegemonic contestation, international actors routinely challenge each other by invoking legal rules and principles on which they have projected meanings that support their preferences and counteract those of their opponents. In law, political struggle is waged on the meaning of such legal words as aggression, self-determination, self-defense, terrorist, or jus cogens, along with questions like whose policy they will include and whose they will oppose. “To think of these struggles as hegemonic is to understand that the objective of the contestants is to make their partial view of that meaning appear as the total view, their preference seem like the universal preference” (Koskenniemi : ). Boaventura de Sousa Santos shares with Koskenniemi the concern for representations of reality and their relation to law. He states that normativity is surely the heavy reality of law. “But law is also imagination, representation, and description of reality. He calls for closer attention to the power dimension involved in legal struggles (Santos : )? These international lawyers see legal pluralism ahead rather than a development toward a hierarchical international legal order. And they map the changing contours of legal pluralism and hybridization of the law. In this process, they recast several elements—traditional norms, national laws and policies, and the standards worked out in international organizations as well as international human rights and other regimes—in a new landscape of what one has called interlegality (Fischer-Lescano and Teubner ; Teubner and Korth ). From this perspective, the very fact that transnational advocacy can mobilize a global public has consequences for international law. The sources of international lawmaking are likely to be diversified. INGOs will be the constitutive forces of an emerging global civil society and will set standards for best practices and processes of diffusion, mimicking, and learning. The transnational public debates about following rules then create normative expectations outside the conventional channels of interstate lawmaking. Moreover, the media will assume a greater role in this process of transnational lawmaking. By condensing public opinion, they contribute to creating behavioral expectations, and they dramatize events, making it difficult for governments to evade the pressure of public moral appeals. NGOs and the mass media both contribute to mobilizing public opinion. They engage in a form of norm-making through a process that has little to do with the

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traditional process of states making public international law. In this process, lawmaking will proceed through the creation of political scandals, selffulfilling prophecies, and constant evocation. The differences between the proponents of a hierarchical international law and the skeptics mentioned here cannot be greater. Where the constitutionalists envision more coherent international law and even the development of a world state (Wendt ), legal pluralists see legal fragmentation. Because legal regimes will be strengthened in specific but not necessarily connected issue areas on a global level, international law will remain inherently fragmented. More importantly, this literature makes an even more radical argument for the development of international law. As the sources of lawmaking are expanded, the creation of international law will extend to transnational actors in civil society who will also become increasingly responsible for enforcing law, as state governments less often establish international law. In this perspective, we will see the emergence of a third category of law, transnational, in addition to domestic and international law. Transnational law is created as actors, dominated by global civil society, codify law. Based on general principles of law, this new type emerges through societal practice. Its application, interpretation, and development are vested in private providers of mechanisms of litigation, and it will only be codified in the form of general principles and rules, standardized treaties, or rules of conduct, which are established by private standardization agencies (Fischer-Lescano and Teubner : ). As this book has suggested, these processes are highly relevant for the human rights area, where non-governmental organizations have started contesting state authority. The conflict between human rights and state security will continue to shape the transnational agenda and it will require creative solutions. This book is but one step to understand this conflict and point to its relevance for international affairs.

Notes

Chapter  . Article . of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Text of the Convention can be found at http://www.ohchr .org/english/law/disappearance-convention.htm. . See the July  special issue of the Journal of Peace Research  ().

Chapter  . As Moravcsik puts it, “Powerful democracies are persuaded for essentially idealistic reasons to coerce others to respect human rights norms.” See also Goodman and Jinks : ; Keck and Sikkink : ; Moravcsik : , . . Especially, constructivists’ focus on the impact of human rights norms on developing states, their initial focus on “hard cases” of “normative transformation,” and the adjunct claim that domestic norms impede the internalization of universal human rights standards have also created some uneasiness among scholars. As Amitav Acharya has remarked, this might reify the view that the “problematic practices” of mostly developing states are being socialized away (Acharya : ; Landolt ). . “The more norm-violating governments accept the validity of international norms, the more they start arguing with their critics over specific accusations” (Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink : ). . For a similar argument, see Krebs and Jackson . . A number of articles focus on real and constructed dichotomies between constructivism and rationalism. For a selection, see Checkel ; Fearon and Wendt ; Finnemore and Sikkink . . See the Web site of the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, www.ohchr.org/english/law. . The European Convention on Human Rights, Preamble, www.hri.org/docs/ ECHR.html#C.Preamble. . The international legal definition of a state goes back to a German international lawyer, Georg Jellinek. This legal definition became institutionalized in the Montevideo Convention of December ,  (Hobe : f).

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. Declaration on Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, UNGA Resolution ,  (as quoted in Zacher : ). . This is also how state functions have now been defined by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (). . To put this differently, the question of “What do I want?” must be transformed into “What can I legitimately want?” . A third motivational part might be added. It contains the elaboration of a “call to arms” and a rationale for action that goes beyond the diagnosis and prognosis (Keck and Sikkink : ; Snow and Benford : f).

Chapter  . Proponents of the thesis in European countries were Richard Löwenthal () and Hans Daalder (). . National Security Council , “US Policy on Indonesia,”  (as cited in Simpson : ). . Telegram  from Singapore to Foreign Office, October , , FO ,  (as cited in Simpson : ). . The organization was originally an association of NGOs backed by the military in  to counter the growing influence of the Communist party of Indonesia. . This analysis thus complements purely domestic explanations that contend that he was removed from office out of domestic concerns. . “Indonesia: News in Brief,” in Facts on File, October , , www.facts.com .proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/Archive/Search/.asp. . “Talking Points for President Ford’s Visit to Indonesia and Meetings with Indonesian President Suharto,” Memo, Department of State, Secret, December , . . “Indonesia Accused by Rights Group,” New York Times, October , . . “January date will follow the date announced by the GOI for release of , political prisoners. Eventual approval of the F- and M- will depend upon demonstration of GOI good faith and credibility in release of prisoners in accordance with announced plans.” Cable to Zbigniew Brzezinski from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance regarding the connection between United States congressional approval for the sale of F- aircraft to Indonesia in relation to Indonesian human rights issues. Cable, Department of State, Secret, November , . . “Initiatives toward Emerging Powers,” Memorandum from Mike Armacost to Tom Thornton, July , . . Memorandum to Zbigniew Brzezinski for Far East, National Security Council, February , . . “Although Mr. Malik, who began political life as a Trotskyist, has largely ceased to be the hope of Indonesian liberals within the military-based regime of President Suharto, a former general, his strong concern over right-wing Moslem strength continues to link him to his former political friends. In a nation that is, at

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least nominally  percent Moslem, it creates a bond between followers and detractors of the regime” (Kamm b). . “Indonesia: Domestic Tensions Deepens,” DIA Defense Intelligence Notice, January , . . Memorandum to Zbigniew Brzezinski for Far East, National Security Council, February , . . Memorandum to Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Council, Weekly Report, February , . . Memorandum to Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Council, Weekly Report, June , . . James Dunn, a defense analyst and consul to East Timor for the Australian government from  to , as quoted in Taylor : . . Much more detailed accounts can be found in Carey ; Dunn ; Ramos-Horta ; Robinson . . For a similar argument, see Simpson . . The official name is Special Committee on Decolonization. It is mandated to monitor and implement the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. . President Eanes appointed a former prime minister, Lurdes Pintassilgo, to work exclusively on the East Timor issue and tried to rally support among European countries and their former colonies (Ramos-Horta : f). . “Initiatives toward Emerging Powers,” Memorandum from Mike Armacost to Tom Thornton, July , . . This had been an official proposal by the Indonesian government, which justified its policy toward East Timor by pointing to the need to reestablish security and order. . Indonesian military officials predicted that “East Timor might become Indonesia’s Cuba, a sanctuary and bridgehead for communist and separatist forces” (Fealy : ). . The Secretary’s : A.M. Staff Meeting, Tuesday, August , , Secret, Minutes, August , , Kissinger Transcripts, KT. . “Presidential Talking Points on Portuguese Timor,” Memorandum for Brent Scowcroft from Kenneth M. Quinn, National Security Council, December , . . Ibid. . Memorandum to Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Aaron from Michael Armacost regarding a potential foreign policy problem if American-made arms were linked to Indonesia’s military occupation of East Timor, Memo, National Security Council, Secret, July , . . “US Position on Indonesian Actions in Portuguese Timor,” National Security Council, Memorandum from Thomas J. Barnes to Brent Scowcroft, December , . . See ETAN’s overview of UN General Assembly Votes on East Timor, http:// www.etan.org/etun/UNvotes.htm, last accessed July , .

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Chapter  . Until the ouster of Marcos in , the Philippines had not ratified one of the international human rights treaties. When the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) was adopted by the UN General Assembly, the Philippines was among the first countries to sign it (on  December ). But it was never ratified under the Marcos government. . The President’s Trip to China, Indonesia, and the Philippines [Briefing of Republican Congressional Leadership, includes Participant List], Confidential, Memorandum of Conversation, December , , f. Kissinger Transcripts, KTO. . Interview with Agnelia Deluna, Task Force Detainees (TFD) of the Philippines, Manila, May , . . Human Rights, Confidential, Airgram, March , ,  pp., PH. . Ibid. . Your Visit to the Philippines, Secret, Briefing Book from Henry A. Kissinger to Gerald R. Ford, November , . PH. . Congressional Interest: Human Rights Hearings, Limited Official Use, Memorandum of Conversation, June , , . PH. . Amnesty International’s Visit to the Philippines, Confidential, Cable, , December , , . Cable by William H. Sullivan, US Embassy Philippines, to United States Department of State, PH. . Amnesty International’s Visit to the Philippines, Confidential, Cable, , December , , . Cable by William H. Sullivan, US Embassy Philippines, to US Department of State, PH. . New York Times, June , . . GOP Response to Amnesty International Report, Limited Official Use, Cable, , June , , PH. . Ibid. . Supreme Court Justice Calls for Lifting of Martial Law, Cable, , July , , PH. . President Marcos Comments on Martial Law and National Assembly, Limited Official Use, Cable, July , . PH. . Ibid. . New York Times, May , , ; New York Times, July , , . . New York Times, May , , . . Subject: Congressional Hearings on AI Report, Confidential, Cable, September , . PH. . Human Rights, Confidential, Cable, January , . PH. . Human Rights Developments, Confidential, Cable, January , , PH. . Observers at Philippine Elections, Confidential, Cable, January , . PH. . Human Rights in the Philippines: A  Perspective, Secret, Cable, September , , PH.

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. Holbrooke Discussions with President and Mrs. Marcos, Secret, Cable, April , , PH. . According to David Newsom, “Suggestions for early and compassionate resolution of Aquino and other cases come from friends—not enemies—of close US-Philippine ties.” Approach to Marcos on Human Rights, Confidential, Cable, , November , , PH . Holbrooke Discussions with President and Mrs. Marcos, Secret, Cable, April , , PH. . Human Rights, Confidential, Cable, November , ,  pp., PH . For example, unlike TFDP, the embassy did not believe that arrests had significantly increased. It agreed with TFDP that disappearances might have increased as a policy of the military to eradicate evidence for torture. Human Rights: Comments on Task Force Detainees Status Report, Confidential, Cable, February , . PH. . Task Force Staffer on Detainees Status Report, Confidential, Cable, February , . . Aquino Trial, Confidential Cable, August , , PH. . Case Study on Human Rights: The Philippines, Confidential, Memorandum, January , , PH. . Vice Presidential Trip to Asia, Secret, Miscellaneous Document Type, , PH. . New York Times, January , ,  . Human Rights: Assistant Secretary Derian’s Visit to the Philippines: Contact with Opposition Personalities and Human Rights Activists, Confidential, Cable, January , , PH. . Case Study on Human Rights: The Philippines, Confidential, Memorandum, January , , PH. . Human Rights in the Philippines: A  Perspective, Secret, Cable, September , , PH. . Human Rights: Public Reaction to Derian Visit, Limited Official Use, Cable, January , , PH . . Congressional Interest: Human Rights Hearings, Limited Official Use, Memorandum of Conversation, June , , , PH. . Editorial, New York Times, February , , IV, . . Human Rights in the Philippines: A  Perspective, Secret, Cable, September , , PH. . Ibid. . Some suggest that human rights criticism directed against the government compelled Marcos to distance himself from the increasingly powerful military. Thus, the creation of the KBL was interpreted as an effort to civilianize the government and distance Marcos from the military. On the other hand, the KBL can also be interpreted as a copy of Indonesia’s GOLKAR, which successfully contested national elections there.

290

Notes to Pages 117–138

Yet, these efforts did not have the same divisive effects on the ruling coalition as in Indonesia in the s, where the military interpreted Suharto’s civilianization of GOLKAR as undermining its own political power position (Machado ). . Polarization Trends, Cable, , Secret, June , , PH. . Activities of the Political Opposition, Confidential, Cable, August , , PH. . Aquino’s Speech to Asia Society in Washington, Confidential Cable, August , , PH. . The political parties were the Liberal Party, the Laban Party, the National Union for Liberation, the Nacionalista Party, the Mindanao Alliance, the Concerned Citizens Aggrupation, Pusyon Bisay, and INA (Neher : ). . However, there also appeared to be a personal component in it, as Ronald Reagan and Ferdinand Marcos had been longtime friends (Karnow ). . For the ideological underpinnings of the Reagan administration’s human rights policy, see, for example, Jacoby , Kirkpatrick . . Rodney Tasker, “Support for a Strongman,” Far Eastern Economic Review, October , , . . Marcos State Visit, Confidential, Cable, July , , PH. . World Bank, Poverty, Basic Needs, and Employment: A Review and Assessment, Confidential first draft, Washington, D.C., January  (as quoted in: Bello, Kinley, and Elinson ). . New York Times, October , , . . See, for example, “KAAKBAY Supports Cory Aquino’s Quest for Freedom and Democracy,” December , ; and BAYAN “Preserve in Correct Struggles, Boycott the Sham Snap Election.” Both are reprinted in Schirmer and Shalom : –. For excellent general overviews over the – period, see Diokno  and Lane . . Timberman, “Unfinished Revolution: The Philippines in ,” .

Chapter  . A ten-minute-long video giving a vivid expression of what happened on that day is now available on YouTube. See www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYdGad-bs. . Pancasila democracy stressed an organic state conception in which the individual is subordinated under the collective. It promoted the unity of the state and a nonconfrontational policy style. . Amnesty International ; Neyer and Protz-Schwarz . . Tapol Bulletin No. , August ; Amnesty International ; Tapol . . “Shultz Urged to Express Concern over East Timor,” Associated Press, July , . . The European Parliament first issued a resolution on East Timor in  (Europäisches Parlament a). Prior to this resolution, the Parliament had issued resolutions on the execution of Communist political prisoners in  and .

Notes to Pages 140–155

291

. “Timor Crackdown Follows Pope’s Visit,” The Guardian, October , . . “Indonesia to Study Amnesty’s Report of East Timor Deaths,” Gazette (Montreal, Quebec), November , . . See, for example, the Indonesian delegate’s statement at the forty-ninth session of the Commission on Human Rights in  (United Nations Economic and Social Council : para –). . “Situation in East Timor,” Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Commission on Human Rights Resolution, /. . Personal communication with David Weissbrodt, Catholic Academy of Weingarten, December , . . Interview with Charles Scheiner, ETAN, New York, March , . . Interview with Rambun, LBH, Jakarta, August . . Interview with Mansour Fakih (Oxfam), Jakarta, August , ; see also Eldridge : f. . Interview with INFID member, Jakarta, May , . . Interview with Bonar Tigor Naipospos, Jakarta, August , . . Interview with Yapusham activists Harry Wibowo, Nur Iman Subono, Liza Hadiz, Jakarta, August , . . UN Commission on Human Rights Resolution /, March , , adopted by a roll call vote of  to , with  abstentions (E/CN.//). . See also “In Rural Java, Death Comes to a Fighter and a Dreamer,” International Herald Tribune, January , . . “The Cemetery Called East Timor,” New York Times, September , . “Fear and Repression Still Rule Area Occupied by Indonesia,” New York Times, April ; . “A Voice, Often Silenced, Tells of East Timor’s Fear,” New York Times, April , . “A Different Message to Jakarta,” New York Times, November , . . “Indonesia Reduces Separatist’s Prison Term,” New York Times, April , . . “Bais ABRI Perlu Restrukturasi,” in Kompas, January , . . Interview with Nur Hassan Wirayuda, Jakarta, August , . . The creation of the commission was based on Presidential Decree No. , Year . It had twenty-five commissioners and a staff limited to twelve. The first commissioners were appointed by President Suharto in December . It was mainly government-funded, which aroused the suspicion of human rights activists. On January , , a branch office of the Komnas HAM was inaugurated in Dili, East Timor. . Interview with Sidney Jones, Director of Asia Watch, New York, March . . U.S. Department of State : Sec. . . Interview with Asmara Nababan, Jakarta, August , . . “Poor Intelligence Blamed for Last Year’s Security Problems,” www.hamline .edu/apakabar/basisdata////.html. . During the s, BAIS had developed into the most powerful agency that exclusively handed its material to the ABRI commander-in-chief, Benny Murdani (Tanter ). BIA was again reorganized in , and its name changed to BAIS again.

292

Notes to Pages 157–166

. R. Hartono (Letjen TNI), “Pengaruh Perkembangan IPTEK Terhadap Aktualisasi Pengabdian Gernasi Pernerus ABRI,” Majalah Ketahanan National  (): – (as quoted in Honna : ). . One of the suspected communists was Petrus Hariyanto. Hariyanto was subsequently adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience because of his non-violent expression of political dissent. In , the EU exerted pressure on the new Indonesian government to release Hariyanto. See Official Journal of the European Communities, .., C /. . “Bisul-bisul setelah pembangunan,” Forum Keadilan, March , : –. . “Sikap Salatiga terhap Liquica,” www.library.ohiou.edu/indopubs////. html. . “Legal Expert Fears Consequences of Liquisa Probe,” Jakarta Post, February , . See also www.hrw.org/reports//Indonesi.htm - P_#P_. . Aspinall claims that HMI’s position was directed toward discrediting the Christian faction within ABRI and strengthening the green (Islamic) faction in the military. This appears to be a plausible account if one focuses on the struggles for power within the military. If this were so, however, it had an unintended effect. The group thereby also joined widespread demands for human rights accountability, thus reinforcing already existing demands. Given the widespread disaffection with the military because of human rights abuses, it might well be that HMI was serious about its demands (Aspinall ). . Unless otherwise stated, the following account is based on Liddle and Mallarangeng . . “Wahono Laments Riot’s Impact on Public,” Jakarta Post, August , , . . “Megawati Camp Blames Soerjadi for Violent Riots,” Jakarta Post, July , , . . Yet, the stark statement against the PDI was mitigated when the same press report quoted a member of one Muslim organization, who admitted the organizations had not prepared the statement themselves, but “the statement had been a fait accompli.” “US Criticizes RI over Assault on Party HQ,” Indonesian Observer, July , . . Interview with Alex Flor, Watch Indonesia! Berlin, January , . . Ummat, December ,  (as quoted in Aspinall : ). Internet forums discussed whether in terms of justice the Tanjung Priok incident of  would not have to be investigated along with the raid on the PDI office. A target of criticism became Amir Santoso, a member of a think tank close to Golkar who had rejected this key Muslim demand in an Indonesian magazine. In his view, the two cases were not directly comparable. “Kegaraman  Juli,” Forum, Edisi no. , September , , . . “Marzuki Denies Any Pressure on Rights Body,” Jakarta Post, August , , . . A recent collection of articles edited by Eva-Lotta Hedman discusses the role of the military in conflicts such as the Malukus, Aceh, and Papua (see Hedman ).

Notes to Pages 167–181

293

. “Riots in Indonesia Sign of People’s Frustration,” Japan Economic Newswire, December , . . “Indonesia: Riots Break out Near Freeport Goldmine,” Greenwire, March , . . “Indonesia ‘Volcano’ of Tension,” South China Morning Post, May , . . Kontras understood itself explicitly as a political organization focusing on the political rather than legal aspects of disappearance (Eklöf : ). Its director Munir was poisoned on a flight to the Netherlands in September  and died. . For example, after the July  incident, a Newsweek report concluded, “The gloomiest forecasters—found at opposite poles of Indonesian politics—see total chaos, economic decline and even the disintegration of the Indonesian nation. Soldiers, some businessmen and even some intellectuals argue that this danger justifies continued authoritarian rule. Democrats argue that only some loosening of the political system can mitigate the risk” (Crackdown : ).

Chapter  . Amnesty International a, b, c, b; Asia Watch a, b; Human Rights Watch ; Lawyers Committee for Human Rights , , ; Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and Asia Watch . . For a view supporting counterinsurgency operations, see Magno and Gregor . For critical discussions of the phenomenon, see Hedman ; van der Kroef ; van der Kroef . . “New Political Situation: Coalition Government is in Place,” Ang Bayan, March  (as quoted in Rocamora : ). . Ang Bayan, April  (as quoted in Rocamora : ). . As Jennifer Franco (: ) has noted, in the long term, this fragmentation of civil society would reinforce the elite democracy and make it harder to build up “a reform-oriented political pole capable of attracting popular support.” . “DDCI Gates’ meeting with President Aquino,” National Security Council Secretariat, July , f. . Ibid. Gates was pleased with the meeting. It suggested “prospects for increased intelligence cooperation and support.” . According to a report by the Asian Commission on Human Rights (: ), “It would be a mistake to characterize Alsa Masa’s subsequent growth as spontaneous. . . . It took the concerted and nurturing attention of the local Philippine Constabulary . . . Lt. Col. Franco M. Calida, to transform what was essentially a small street gang into a significant phenomenon.” . In one case, a thirty-year-old pregnant Filipina was stabbed to death. The assailants slashed open her abdomen and removed the fetus. In another case, a farmer was stabbed repeatedly and then shot. The vigilante force dragged his body down a hill, beheaded him, slashed his body open, removed his liver, and reportedly ate it (Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : xiii).

294

Notes to Pages 182–208

. Philippine Daily Inquirer (Manila), March , , . . Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : xv. . State of the Nation Address of President Corazon C. Aquino, July , , as quoted in Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : . . Radio Veritas, Manila, August , , as reported in FBIS, August , . . Manila Chronicle, September , . . Philippine Daily Inquirer, March , . . Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, “Human Rights Situation in the Philippines,” March , . . As quoted in Lawyers Committee for Human Rights : . . “Right-wing Vigilantes Spreading in Philippines,” New York Times, April , . . Ibid. Member of an Alsa Masa group. . See also “The Philippines Rise of the Vigilantes,” Time, May , . . The Reagan administration’s covert counterinsurgency support for the Philippine military is discussed in detail in Christian Conference on Asia ; Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates . . It propped up demands, as expressed in the Heritage Foundation’s report that the CPP’s “foreign political fronts” needed to be exposed (Fisher : ). . It organized after local insurgents assassinated a former member of Marcos’ Presidential Security guard. By proclaiming itself an anti-communist force, Kuratong Baleleng gained the backing of the military in the area, along with political legitimacy and later de facto immunity from prosecution. . Interview with Alvaro Santurias, Brussels. Interview with Agnelia DeLuna (PAHRA), Manila, Philippines. See also Nemenzo : .

Chapter  . Several publications describe the violence vividly. The most recent and concise one is Robinson . See also Fox and Soares ; McDonald et al. . . For documentation on Irian Jaya’s Act of Free Choice to integrate with Indonesia in , see Simpson a. . See the information provided by the UN on UNAMET at www.un.org/peace/ etimor/UntaetB.htm. . Dan Murphy, “Indonesian Military Looks Set to Sour Independence Plans,” Far Eastern Economic Review, February , . . “Envoy Must Die to ‘Stop Civil War,’” Sydney Morning Herald, March , , . . “Vote on East Timor Rejected: Indonesia Fears Ballot on Independence Could Lead to Civil War,” Boston Globe, January , , A. . “Timorese Leader Wants to Banish ‘Spectre’ of Civil War,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, February , ; “Indonesian Officials Fear Repeat of  Civil War over East Timor Independence,” BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific, February , ; “East Timor Teeters with Civil War,” Toronto Star, February , .

Notes to Pages 208–218

295

. “Bishop Belo Urges Moves to Avert ‘Civil War’ in East Timor,” BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific, March , . . “Armed Militia ‘Frightened and Confused’: East Timor,” Sydney Morning Herald, March , . . United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on East Timor to the Secretary-General (A//-S//), New York: United Nations, . . Around the same time, so-called ninjas emerged, terrorizing individual East Timorese. “Indonesian Soldier Jailed Four Years over East Timor Killings,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, June , . . “Supporters Bashed, Arrested at Protest/Mob Attack on Megawati,” Hobart Mercury, February , . . “Indonesian Military on the Defensive over East Timor Militias,” Agence France Press, February , . . “General Admits Arming Timor Death Squads,” Observer, February , , . . “Human Rights Commission to be formed in East Timor,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, March , . . An international conference in Dublin, Ireland, at the end of February  and a similar conference in Germany considered devising strategies for reframing the public perception of civil war. “Officers Arming Death Squads: Conference Hears Accusations against Indonesian Military,” Irish Times, February , . . “Army Spies the Threat, Says Gusmao,” The Age, March , . . Dan Murphy, “Second Thoughts,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April , ; “Rogue Militias Threatening to Carve Up East Timor,” Sydney Morning Herald, April , . . “Radio Australia: ‘Compelling Evidence’ Indonesian Military Involved in Liquisa Killing,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April , . See O’Rourke : . . “Indonesian Military Promises to Curb Unrest in East Timor,” Associated Press Worldstream, April , ; “Indonesia Says Five Killed in Liquica Shooting,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April , ; “Jakarta Turns a Not-So-Blind Eye,” Australian, April , . . “Military Caught in the Act,” The Age, May , . . “U.S. Warns Indonesia over Political Violence,” New York Times, August , . . Derwin Pereira, “Wiranto Is the Man to Watch,” Straits Times, September , . See O’Rourke : . . “‘I Tried to Build a House of Peace’: Interview with General Wiranto, suspended from cabinet duty pending an investigation into East Timor atrocities,” Times Asia , no. , www.time.com/time/asia/magazine///indonesia.wiranto.html. . In , OPM had briefly attracted international attention during the so-called Lorentzen Affair, the kidnapping of a group of Indonesian and European researchers in Irian Jaya. OPM then internationalized its campaign and even wanted to meet members

296

Notes to Pages 218–223

of the European parliament. See “Indonesia: Forgotten Rebels,” Economist, January , , ; “Irian Kidnappers Demand an End to Local Logging,” Jakarta Post, August , ; “Walhi and Military End Row on Kidnapping Case,” Jakarta Post, August , ; “Indonesia Opposes Separatists’ Planned Visit to European Parliament,” DeutschePresse Agentur, March , . . Human Rights Watch Indonesia, “Human Rights and Pro-Independence Actions in Irian Jaya,” https://.../reports/biak/biak.htm. Watch Indonesia! () West-Papua—Ein langer Weg zu Reformen, Indonesien Information –, http://home.snafu.de/watchin/II___/WPReform.htm. . By –, GAM claimed to have , to , regular and irregular fighters, but was poorly armed. See Ross : , . For a sophisticated argument focusing on the interaction between identity, state action, and elites to explain why GAM emerged at this particular point of time, see Aspinall a. . In October , members of Foreri participated in the first international solidarity group for the people of West Papua. It linked up with Tapol (Great Britain), Watch Indonesia! (Germany), the Foundation for Study & Information on Papua Peoples (the Netherlands), and West Papua Action (Ireland). . “Independence Rally Draws a Million in Aceh Province,” Guardian, November , , www.guardian.co.uk/world//nov//indonesia. . According to a Human Rights Watch report, forty-five civilians were reported killed and more than one hundred wounded after the army opened fire on protestors. While the army claimed they had used only rubber bullets and had fired in self-defense after shots were fired at their troops, hospital sources reported the victims, who ranged in age from seven to sixty, had been shot with lead bullets. Villagers said the army opened fire without warning. Video footage showed soldiers shooting at fleeing protestors. See Crouch a, ; Human Rights Watch . . “Indonesians Warn against Aceh Referendum,” . International Herald Tribune,  November. . “EU supports Indonesia,” Deutsche Presse Agentur, February , , www .library.ohiou.edu/indopubs///.html. . “EU-Indonesia Joint Declaration Luxemburg,” June , , Press Release / (Presse ), www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/ en/er/.en-communiqué%EU-INDONESIA.doc.html. . “European Council of Ministers Press Release, EU-U.S. Summit Queluz,” May , , www.etan.org/et/may/-/eu.htm. “UK Minister Defends Arms Sales to Indonesia,” Guardian, January , , www.guardian.co.uk/world//jan// indonesia.ethicalforeignpolicy. . See also “Not in My Backyard,” Asiaweek (Internet edition), June , ; “Indonesia to Break Up?” Pravda (English Internet edition), February , . . “The Danger of Implosion,” Guardian, January , ; “Indonesia Conflict Triggers Fears of Disintegration,” Guardian, July , .

Notes to Pages 223–228

297

. Background & Updates on the Disappearance and Murder of Jafar Siddiq Hamzah, www.etan.org/news/b/jafar.htm. . “Operating with Impunity,” South China Morning Post, November , . . The International Crisis Group, for example, argued, “Continued engagement in Aceh allows the TNI to portray itself as the only force capable of preventing the disintegration of Indonesia and thereby helps it to preserve its political influence” (International Crisis Group a:iii). . In February , the military announced it had ordered the establishment of , militia forces in Aceh. In December , Papuan human rights organizations claimed the military trained and armed militia forces in Irian Jaya and key individuals who had been instrumental in setting up pro-integration militias in East Timor resurfaced in Irian Jaya. For example, General Mahidin Simbolon, who was involved in the creation of the Gada Paksi in East Timor and served in East Timor during , became Irian Jaya’s provincial military chief in . Human rights activists suspected he was involved in the torture and murder of Theys Eluay, Papua’s Presidium Council leader. . Jakarta Post, February , . . Church Organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations Demand Active Human Rights Policy by German Government and Its EU Partners Toward Indonesia, Watch-Indonesia! Press release, URL: http://home.snafu.de/watchin/MRK.htm. . Letter to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, dated March ,  and signed by Senators Patrick Leahy, James M. Jeffords, Edward M. Kennedy, Paul Wellstone, Dianne Feinstein, Robert G. Torricelli, and Russell D. Feingold. . “Acehnese: Drop Draconian Decree,” Jakarta Post, September , . . Aceh’s military commander, Syarifuddin Tippe, Straits Times, December , . . Jakarta Post, March , . . Associated Press, March , . . “Defense Budget Hike Suspected to Support Deal,” Jakarta Post, September , . . Kompas Cybermedia, May , . . Jakarta Post, May , . See also A. Lin Neumann, “Indonesian Military Hems in Press on Aceh Citizens,” Asian Times Online, July , , http://cpj .org///indonesian-military-hems-in-press-on-aceh-citizens.php. . In a rare display of party opposition to the military approach in Aceh, a representative of the Justice party called on the government to be more open by allowing observers to visit Aceh to observe the operations currently underway. Detikworld, June , . . “Indonesian Army Completes Withdrawal from Aceh as Part of Deal to End -Year-Old Conflict,” Guardian, December , , www.guardian.co.uk/world// dec//indonesia.johnaglionby. . “Crisis Group Says Aceh Progress Is Remarkable,” December , , www .worldwatch.org/node/.

298

Notes to Pages 231–241

Chapter  . Written testimony submitted by Bishop Eliezer M. Pascua, General Secretary, United Church of Christ in the Philippines, before the Senate Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, United States, March , . .  data, see Kreuzer . . Despite their political differences, both MILF and MNLF see themselves as “one people” bound collectively on the basis of a common ancestry, history, society, institutions, territory, and religion. They claim their homeland has been unjustifiably annexed by the Philippine state (McKenna : ). . Two years later, Nur Misuari’s political decline would lead to his retirement as MNLF leader and his downgrading to a chairman emeritus. MILF was led by a Council of  in  (Buendia : f). . The organization operated mainly in the provinces of Lanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, and North Cotabato (Buendia : f). . The parallel with East Timor is discussed in detail by Buendia . MILF leaders regularly declared themselves in solidarity with the people of Chechnya. Chechnya also seemed to fit the analogy because of Moscow’s harsh repression of the self-determination movement under the banner of a struggle against terrorism. See Rene Ciria-Cruz, “Filipino Muslims Fear Chechnya-like Backlash,” JINN, Pacific News, July , , www .pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/./-backlash.html. . “We Are Also Victims,” Businessworld, February , . . Xinhua News Agency, October , . . “US, Philippine Defence Ministers Discuss Cooperation,” TASS, January , . . “No War with MILF But Offensive Starts,” Manila Standard, January , . . “Government Sending Mixed Signals on Mindanao,” Businessworld, February , ; “Ploughshares into Swords,” Newsweek, March , , . “Philippines: Mindanao’s Chance,” Asiaweek, March , . . “Philippines Senate Adopts U.S. Accord. It OKs Joint Military Exercises and Visits by American Vessels,” Seattle Post, May , . . Agence France Press, April , . . “Bomb Blasts Shatter Philippines Cease-fire,” United Press International, May , . . Third state of the nation address by Joseph Estrada, thirteenth president of the Philippines. Opening of the third regular session of the Eleventh Congress, July ,  at Batasang Pambansa, Quezon City, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/ Joseph_Estrada%s_Third_State_of_the_Nation_Address . “Inquirer Mindanao Peace Advocates: Misunderstood, Maligned,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, August , . . “OIC Backs Philippines’ Campaign Against Moslem Insurgency,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, June , . . “Robin Hood im Freien Fall,” Der Spiegel, December , , ; Roque : .

Notes to Pages 241–248

299

. Amando Doronila, “Running Out of Arguments,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, February , . . “Philippines: Manila Denies Estrada-Cohen Meeting to Discuss Mindanao Problem,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, September , . . “Rumours of a Military Coup Sweep Philippines,” The Independent, January , , www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/rumours-of-a-military-coup-sweep -philippines-.html. . “Rumsfeld Vows to Stop ‘Terror’ States,” Agence France Press, June , . . “Philippines: Military Attacks Separatists in South: Other Development,” Facts on File, May , . . “Philippine Senate Inquiry on US Troops,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, January , , http://news.bbc.co.uk//hi/americas/.stm. . “Critics of US Manoeuvres Are ‘Terrorist’ Lovers, Philippine Leader,” Agence France, February , . . “Left-wing Groups to Use ‘People Power’ Anniversary to Protest US CounterTerrorism Drills In Philippines,” Associated Press, February , . . “Peace Mission Accuses Philippine Military of Violating Rights,” Kyodo News Service, March , ; “Church Group Formed to Oppose US Troop Presence in Philippines,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, March , . . “Peace Mission Accuses Philippine Military of Violating Rights,” Kyodo News Service, March , . . Arthur D. Lim and Paulino R. Ersando v. Honorable Executive Secretary as alter ego of Her Excellency Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Honorable Angelo Reyes in his capacity as Secretary of National Defense (G.R. No . April , ), . . American intelligence indicated that Abdurajak Janjalani and Abdul Murad, the Libyan-trained founders of the AFG established in  were indirectly connected to Osama bin Laden. Both had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. In , Abdul Murad was captured in Manila after his apartment had caught fire while he was preparing a bomb. Under extreme duress (Murad was allegedly severely tortured), he gave Philippine security services the password to his computer. The hard disc revealed several terrorist plots in the United States. . Robert D. Kaplan, as quoted in Wilson : f. . “Long-term US Strategy Emerges Out of Philippines,” Christian Science Monitor, July , , ; “US Prowls for China in the Philippines,” Asia Times, February , . . Military success was short-lived, however. Military operations were conducted under favorable conditions. MILF and MNLF stayed away from areas of operations, making it easy to identify AFG members. MNLF had largely demobilized on the island, and neither group wanted to risk confrontation with American forces. This setting changed afterwards, posing new dilemmas for the military (International Crisis Group b: ). . These negotiations helped establish truth regimes in the form of joint monitoring teams to observe cease-fire agreements (Kreuzer ).

300

Notes to Pages 248–251

. “Massive Manhunt Underway in the Philippines for Escaped JI Agent,” Channel NewsAsia, July , ; “Philippines/J-I Escape,” Voice of America News, July , . . “MILF May Join NPA in Fight with Gov’t,” Manila Standard, February , . . “No More Kidnapping or Else,” Businessworld, March , , . . “Philippines Warns Netherlands of Filipino Communist Leaders,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, July , . . “Philippines to Pursue Two-track Strategy against Communist Rebels,” Agence France Press, January , . . It had been declared legal by the Ramos administration through Republic Act  in  after a lengthy and controversial public debate on the topic. “Tag Reds as Terror Group, EU Asked,” BusinessWorld, October , , . . “Philippines to Pursue Two-track Strategy against Communist Rebels,” Agence France Press, January , . . “Government Funds Leftist to Fight Government, Military,” Manila Standard, July , . . The military explicitly mentioned Pamalakaya, a nationwide federation representing fisherfolk; Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), a federation of forty human rights organizations nationwide, including the Task Force Detainees; and Kasama (International Coordinating Committee of the International League of Peoples’ Struggles), headed by Jose Maria Sison, the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines. . In response to Palparan’s red-labeling, Pamalakaya pursued a libel suit against him in . Gerry Albert Corpuz, “Fisherfolk group files P-M Libel Rap vs. Palparan,” Bulatlat VI, no. , July –, , www.bulatlat.com/news/-/--libel.htm. . “Government Funds Leftist to Fight Government, Military,” Manila Standard, July , . . “Philippine President on Campaign to Eradicate Communist Rebels’ Influence,” Philippine Star, July , . . “The Curse on the Philippine Left: Parties Say Candidates Face Intimidation and Even Death,” International Herald Tribune, March , . . Ibid. . “Armed Forces Denies Existence of Leftist Hit List, Ordering Killings,” Businessworld, May , . . “Military Accused in Mindanao Slayings,” International Herald Tribune, September , , . . “Bulatlat.com Special Report on Human Rights,” Bulatlat, November –December , . . Patricio N. Abinales, “Heresies: Sectarian Shakedowns,” University of the Philippines Forum Online Magazine, September–October  (as quoted in Montesano ). . “Philippine President Brands NPA Worst Human Rights Violator,” Xinhua, December , .

Notes to Pages 251–256

301

. “RP Adopts Terror Tag on CPP,” Manila Standard, January , . . Philippine Daily Inquirer, May ,  (as quoted in Amnesty International : footnote ). . EU Council, “Council Decision of  May ” (//EC), Official Journal of the European Union, .., L/. . “State Turns over JoMa Rap Sheets to Dutch,” Manila Standard, July , . . “Philippines: Task Force Usig Cleans Karapatan’s Mass of Dead Activists,” Asian Human Rights Commission, www.ahrchk.net/ahrc-in-news/mainfile .php/ahrcinnews//; Philippine National Police, “About Task Force Usig,” www .pnp.gov.ph/about/content/offices/spl_units/tf_usigupdates/ usig_sept/aboutusig.html. . “Collateral Damage Unavoidable in Anti-Insurgency Fight, Philippine Official,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, June , . . “Another Leftist Leader Shot Dead in Pampanga,” Manila Standard, May , ; “Assassins Kill Another Leader of Militant Philippine Group, Paper,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, May , ; “Philippine Security Chief Says Communist Party Ordered New Purge,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, June , . . “Palparan Faces Melo Panel,” Manila Standard, September , . . “US Reviews Anti-terror Plan,” Manila Standard, December , . . “Philippine Military Plans to Destroy  Communist Guerrilla Fronts In ,” BBC Monitoring, January , . . “Political Killings Traced to Military,” Christian Science Monitor, February , , . . International Herald Tribune, February , . . On March , , the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a public hearing on human rights violations in the Philippines (“Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines: Strategies to End the Violence” ). . “EU Experts Due in Philippines to Help in Human Rights Cases,” Agence France Presse, June , . . “United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Finds That the Military Is Killing Leftist Activists in the Philippines,” ReliefWeb, www.reliefweb.int/rw/ rwb.nsf/dbsid/EGUA-CTAG?OpenDocument. . “CPP Founder Sison Elated at Delisting from EU Terror List,” Inquirer.net, December , , http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/ -/CPP_founder_Sison_elated_at_delisting_from_EU_terror_list. . Statement by Eric G. John, deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, (“Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines: Strategies to End the Violence” ). . “Arroyo Dared to Order Arrest of Palaparan,” GMANews.TV, www.gmanews.tv/ story//Arroyo-dared-to-order-arrest-of-Palparan. . “Some See Indonesia as Weak Link in Anti-terror Chain,” Associated Press Worldstream, July , .

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Abbreviations

ABRI AFP AHRC AI AKSI AMRSP ARMM Apodeti ASEAN ASG ASIET BAIS Bakorstanas BMA CAFGU CBCP CCA CHDF CHR CIA CLUP CNRM CPP CSIS DOM DoS EC ETAN EU

Indonesian Army (Angatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia) Armed Forces of the Philippines Asian Human Rights Commission Amnesty International Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao Associação Popular Democrática Timorense Association of Southeast Asian Nations Abu Sayyaf Group Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor Armed Forces Strategic Intelligence Agency (ABRI Badan Intelijen Strategis) Coordinating Board for Assisting the Consolidation of National Security and Order Bangsa Moro Army Citizen Armed Force Geographical Units Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines Christian Conference of Asia Civilian Homes Defence Forces Commission on Human Rights (Philippines) Central Intelligence Agency Civil Liberties Union Philippines National Council of the Maubere Resistance (Conselho Nacional da Resistência Maubere) Communist Party of the Philippines Centre for Strategic and International Studies Military Area of Operation (Daerah Operasi Militer) Department of State European Community East Timor Action Network European Union

304

FBSI FD FEER FFP FLAG Fretilin GAM GOLKAR GPK GSP HMI HRW IBP ICCPR ICJ ICMI ICSECR IFA IGGI IHT IMET INFID Infight INGO INTERFET IR ITB JI KBL KIPP KKN Komnas-HAM Kopkamtib Kontras Kostrad KPS LABAN

Abbreviations

All-Indonesia Workers Federation (Federasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia) Democratic Forum (Forum Demokrasi) Far Eastern Economic Review Friends of the Filipino People Free Legal Assistance Group Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Frente Revolucionaria Timor Leste Independente) Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) Functional Group Centre (Golongan Karya Pusat) Security Disturbance Movement (Gerakan Pengacau Keamanan) General System of Preferences Himpunan Mahasiswa Indonesia (Indonesian Student Organization) Human Rights Watch Interim National Assembly (Interim Batasang Pambansa) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights International Commission of Jurists Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (Ikatan Cedikiawan Muslim Indonesia) International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights International Forum on Aceh Intergovernmental Group on Indonesia International Herald Tribune International Program for Military Education and Training International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development The Indonesian Front for Human Rights International Non-Governmental Organization International Force in East Timor International Relations Bandung Institute of Technology Jemaah Islamiyah New Society Movement (Kilusan Bagong Lipunan) Independent Election Monitoring Committee Corruption, Collusion, and Nepotism National Human Rights Commission (Komisi Nasional Hak Asasi Manusia) Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence Strategic Reserves Command Commission on Peace and Stability People Power Party (Lakas ng Bayan)

Abbreviations

LBH LCHR LP LPHAM MBA MFP MILF MNLF MPR NAM NDF NGO NP NPA NU NYT OIC OPM OPSUS PAHRA Parmusi PAN PC PDI PGI PIJAR PKI PNI PRD PPP RAM SAC SBSI SIRA SMID TAPOL TFDP TNI

305

Legal Aid Institute (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum) Lawyers Committee on Human Rights Liberal Party (Philippines) Institute for Human Rights (Lembaga Pembela Hak-Hak Asasi Manusia) Military Base Agreement Movement for a Free Philippines Moro Islamic Liberation Front Moro National Liberation Front People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat) Non-Aligned Movement National Democratic Front Non-Governmental Organization Nationalist Party (Nacionalista Party [Philippines]) National People’s Army (Philippines) Resurgence of the Islamic Scholars (Nahdlatul Ulama) New York Times Organization of Islamic Conference Movement for a Free Papua (Organisasi Papua Merdeka) Operasi Khusus Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates Muslim Party (Partai Muslimin) Muslim National Mandate Party Police Constabulary Democratic Party of Indonesia (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia) Indonesian Communion of Churches (Persekutuan Gereja-Gereja di Indonesia) Information Centre and Action Network for Reform Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Komunis Indonesia) Former Nationalist Party (Partai Nasional di Indonesia) People's Democratic Party (Partai Rakyat Demokrasi) United Development Party (Partai Pembangunan Persatuan) Reform the Armed Forces Movement Social Action Center Indonesian Prosperous Workers Union (Serikat Buruh Sejahtera Indonesia) Centre for Information on an Aceh Referendum Student Solidarity for Indonesian Democracy British Campaign for the Release of Indonesian Political Prisoners Task Force Detainees of the Philippines Indonesian National Army (Tentara Nasional Indonesia)

306

UDT UN UNAMET UNIDO UP VFA WCC

Abbreviations

Timorese Democratic Union (Uniao Democrática Timorense) United Nations United Nations Authority Mission to East Timor United Nationalist Democratic Organization University of the Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement () World Council of Churches

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Index

Abinales, Patricio, 251 Abrams, Elliott, 120 ABRI (Indonesia Army [Angatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia]), 155–61; conflicts with PDI, 161, 162–65; containment of political Islam, 158–59; and East Timor movement, 132, 139–40, 145; and effects of human rights advocacy, 155–59; framing strategies to legitimize continued role, 157–59; HMI’s critique of, 160–61, 292n35; human rights violations in Irian Jaya, 161; Islamic audience and anti-communist message/frame, 157–58, 292n31; and the Liquica massacre, 159–61, 212–13; loss of public legitimacy, 159–61; and Muslim-Christian religious dynamics, 160–61, 292n35; opposition to Suharto’s reforms, 156–57; and “security disturbing movements,” 160, 161; and St. Cruz massacre, 145; Suharto’s liquidation of BAIS and restructuring of, 153, 155, 291n29 Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG): and Arroyo’s counter-terrorism policies, 243; and Estrada administration’s counter-terrorism policies, 233, 239–40, 241; kidnappings, 239–40, 241, 243; and Osama bin Laden, 299n30 Aceh self-determination movement, 200–206, 217–28, 297nn39–40; and compared outcomes of Indonesia’s self-determination movements, 205, 228–30; and DOM victims, 218; and East Timor, 200, 201–6, 217–28, 266, 280–81; and GAM, 200, 217–19, 226, 227–28, 230, 281, 296n27; Indonesian nationalism and territorial integrity issues, 220–21, 224– 28; martial law and international condemnation, 226–27; and massacre of civilians at Lhokseumaweh, 220, 296n31; and massacre

of civilians in Krueng Geukeueh, 219; and the 2004 Asian tsunami, 227–28; Wahid government’s report on military abuses, 220 Acharya, Amitav, 266, 285n2 Agrava Board and Aquino assassination, 124 Akhmadi, Heri, 220 AKSI (Action in Solidarity with Indonesia), 146–47 Alatas, Ali, 130, 138, 143, 163, 207 Alkatiri, Mari, 84 Alliance for Popular Democracy (ANP) (Philippines), 191 Alsa Masa in Davao City, 180–81, 182–84, 186, 293nn8–9 Alston, Philip, 231, 253–54 American Convention on Human Rights (1969), 6 American Society of Newspaper Editors, 106 Amnesty International (AI), 20, 146–47, 275–77; and Aceh’s self-determination movement, 227; and Aquino administration, 172, 173, 188; and Arroyo administration, 253; linking Muslim political prisoners to East Timor human rights issues, 136–37; and Marcos’s martial law, 100, 101–6; Nobel Peace Prize, 74; and Philippines, 100, 101–6, 172, 173, 188, 192, 253; reports on East Timor, 132, 134, 135–37; and Suharto’s political prisoner campaign, 55, 67–73, 75–76 Anak ng Gabriela (leftist Philippine organization), 250 Anderson, Benedict, 76–77 Andjaba, Martin, 216 Andrews, David, 213 Ang Bayan (CPP newsletter), 99 Annan, Kofi, 214, 227

338

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Antara (Indonesian newswire), 208 Anti-Martial Law Coalition, 97, 100 Anti-Subversion Law (Indonesia), 130–31, 150, 153, 154, 164 Anwar, Dewi Fortuna, 221 April 6 Liberation Movement (Philippines), 118 Aquino, Benigno “Ninoy”: assassination, 124–25; and IBP elections, 115; opposition to Marcos‘s martial law, 99, 117–18; U.S pressure on Marcos regarding the incarceration of, 108, 114 Aquino, Corazon: attempt to securitize the Philippine democracy, 196–97; credibility and the Aquino mystique, 184–85, 186–87, 198, 270; family of, 99; inauguration and new human rights standards, 171–72, 173–74, 184–85; and Marcos’s snap elections (1985), 127; regime transition and coup attempts against, 177; subcontracted violence and vigilantism, 172–75, 181–84, 192–94. See also Philippines 1986-92 (subcontracted vigilante violence) Armacost, Michael, 85–86, 107 Arroyo, Gloria Macapagal: and American military intervention in Philippines, 243–45, 248–52; and Bush administration, 243; counter-terrorism, 232–33, 242–55; transnational mobilization against human rights violations, 252–55. See also Philippines 1999-2008 (counter-terrorism and human rights) Arroyo, Joker, 179 Ascher Memorandum, 123 Asian financial crisis and Suharto government, 131–32, 165, 167–68 Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), 172–73, 252–53 Asia Watch, 154, 173, 193 Aspinall, Edward, 201–2, 230 Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (AMRSP), 96–97, 102, 106, 123 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 6, 39, 221 Australia, 141, 207 Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA), 161 Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), 236–37 Aventajado, Roberto, 241

BAIS (Armed Forces Strategic Intelligence Body) (Indonesia), 153, 155, 291n29 Bali bombings (2002), 248, 256 Bandung Conference (1955), 59 Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), 79 Bangkok Declaration (1967), 39 Barbero, Carmelo Z., 103 Barnes, Thomas J., 86 Barnett, Michael, 275 Bartu, Peter, 214 Basic Christian Communities, 98 Bautista, J. Virgilio, 185 Bayan Muna (leftist Philippine organization), 249–51 Beeson, Mark, 24, 240 Bello, Walden, 93–94 Belo, Jimenez, 208 Benhabib, Seyla, 263 Bhoutros-Ghali, Bhoutros, 144 BIA (Baden Intelijen) (Indonesia), 154–55, 291n29 bin Laden, Osama, 299n30 Blair government (Great Britain), 227 Bohman, James, 42 Bourne, Peter, 107 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 76, 80 Budiardjo, Carmel, 67, 73, 137 Buergenthal, Thomas, 276 Bunye, Ignacio, 250 Burnham, Martin and Gracia, 243 Buscayno, Bernarbe, 191 Bush, George H. W., 120 Bush, George W., and War on Terror: and Arroyo administration, 243; and Megawati, 202–3, 256 CACA (Citizens Against the Communist Army), 181 Calida, Franco, 182, 186, 293n8 Canatoy, Jaime, 183–84 Cardenas, Sonia, 277 Carrascalao, Mario, 138, 213 Carr Center for Human Rights, 217–18 Carter administration: credibility and human rights policy, 111–12, 120; and East Timor’s self-determination campaign, 85; and Marcos’s Philippines, 93, 107–12, 119–20; and Suharto’s political prisoner/military aid issue, 75, 80, 286n9 Cassese, Antonio, 40

Index Catholic Church: and East Timor’s selfdetermination campaign, 84–85, 135, 146; and Marcos’s declaration of martial law, 95–96, 98 Catholic Relief Services, 84–85 Centre for Information on an Aceh Referendum (SIRA), 219, 227 Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 71, 74 Chayes, Antonia and Abram, 28 Chechnyan self-determination movement, 237, 298n6 Chico River Basin Development Project (Philippines), 122–23 Christian Conference of Asia (CCA), 146 Christians for National Liberation, 98, 99 Christopher, Warren, 109 Citizen Armed Force Geographical Units (CAFGU), 184 Civilian Home Defense Forces (CHDF) (Philippines), 180 Civil Liberties Union of the Philippines (CLUP), 113 Clark, Ann-Marie, 275 Clinton administration and human rights in Indonesia and East Timor, 149, 150, 215 Cohen, Stanley, 189 Cojuangcos (family of Corazon Aquino), 99 Commentary, 188 Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (Kontras [Komisi untuk Orang Hilang dan Tindak Kekerasan]), 167, 293n47 Commission of Investigation into Human Rights Violations in East Timor (KPPHAM), 216 Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP): and Aquino administration, 174–76, 178–80, 187–89, 196–97; and Arroyo administration’s counter-terrorism, 249–53; and Estrada administration’s counter-terrorism, 233; and IBP elections (1978), 115–16; and Marcos administration, 90, 99, 116–17; Ramos administration and legalization of, 195; underground media campaign, 99 Communist political prisoners in Indonesia. See Indonesia’s New Order and Suharto’s campaign against Communist political prisoners

339

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 39 Congress Education Project, 97 constructivist approaches, 6–9, 10–11, 22, 28–34, 257; assumptions about stable interests, 32; and causal mechanisms, 30, 31; cultural structures and states’ motivations, 22, 28–29, 32–33; expectations that norms will have systematic influence on state behavior, 6–9; expected sources of variation to explain outcomes, 31; and institutions as cultural accounts, 29; issue characteristics, 31; and the justification arguments of power holders, 31–32, 285nn2–3; and mobilization, 31; and persuasion by norm entrepreneurs, 30–31, 285n1; and rationalist approaches, 32–33, 34, 272; and social obligation, 32–33; the spiral model of human rights change, 30; on states’ environments as social, 29; and states’ self-interest, 29; studies of INGOs, 29; the vulnerability of target states, 31 Coordinating Committee on Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH), 238 Council on National Resistance in Timor (CNRT), 211, 219 counter-terrorism. See Philippines 1999-2008 (counter-terrorism and human rights) da Costa Lopes, Marthinho, 135, 146 Dadurus Merah Putih (Red and White Typhoon), 211 Daereh Operasi Militer (DOM) (military area of operations), 218 Darul Islam, 78, 79 Darusman, Marzuki, 164 Davenport, Christian, 174 de Araujo, Fernando, 148 Declaration on Friendly Relations (1970), 39 Declaration on Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960), 38–39 Defensor-Santiago, Miriam, 247 Democratic Party of Indonesia (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia [PDI]): ABRI’s conflicts with, 161, 162–65; and July 27 incident, 153–54, 162–65, 292n39; and Megawati, 162; Suharto’s restructuring, 66 Derian, Patricia, 109, 110 de Sousa Santos, Boaventura, 282, 283

340

Index

Detik (Indonesian weekly), 151 Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines (1982), 123 dialogue. See international norms and their contestation in human rights dialogues Diokno, Jose W., 96, 104, 114, 171 Djaelani, General, 141 Djunaidi, Mahbub, 78 Doronila, Amando, 241 Drexler, Elisabeth, 230 Dunn, James, 81 Dureza, Jesus, 242 East Timor Action Network (ETAN), 145–46, 149 East Timor’s struggles for self-determination, 55–56, 81–87, 133–48, 280–81; and aid donors to Indonesia, 142–43; and annexation, 82–83, 84–85; and Catholic Church, 84–85, 135, 146; and domestic human rights NGOs and student activists, 147–48, 154; excuses and human rights advocacy, 212–17; and the Ford administration, 58, 85, 287n24; Fretilin and Democratic Republic of East Timor, 82; Fretilin’s claim to political power (1975 elections), 82; Fretilin’s lack of credibility, 86–87; and Indonesian militias, 206–17; Indonesia’s invasion and occupation, 58, 83–86; and Indonesia’s requests for foreign military aid, 74–75; and Indonesia’s strategic-military importance to the U.S., 56, 81; and international condemnation and scrutiny, 130, 141, 142–45; the KPPHAM report, 216; outcomes and why the campaign did not lead to greater institutional changes, 55, 57–58, 81–82, 84–87; and Portugal, 82, 83, 131, 138, 140, 287n21; the post-referendum dilemma for human rights organizations, 215–16; and public impression of civil war, 207–9, 212, 295n16; the referendum, 199–200, 219, 237, 266; and self-determination movements in Aceh and Irian Jaya, 200, 205–6, 217–30, 266, 280–81; and St. Cruz massacre, 130, 140–45, 154, 168–69, 260, 270; and Suharto’s human rights reforms, 130–32, 141–42, 143, 153–55, 156–57; and Suharto’s information policy, 57–58, 84, 86–87; trial of Fretilin leader Gusmão, 144; the UDT coup, 82; UNAMET and the transition period, 207, 213–15; UN

debate, 83–84, 87; UN resolution censuring Indonesia, 144; and the U.S., 56, 81, 85–86, 215; and WANRA (people’s resistance militias), 207–8, 209 East Timor network of transnational human rights organizations, 133–48; the AI reports (1986-87), 132, 134, 135–37; and Catholic Church, 84–85, 135, 146; Catholic church acting as information channel, 135; the changing international context and East Timor’s struggle, 134; civilian political opposition and international publicity, 139–42; domestic human rights NGOs and student activists, 147–48, 154; and Fretilin strategy of non-violent resistance and civilian complaints, 134–35; international pressures to open East Timor, 137–39; and Muslim political prisoners of conscience, 132, 136–37; non-state actors in the advocacy network, 135; and Portugal, 131, 140; and the St. Cruz massacre, 130, 140–45, 154, 168–69, 260, 270; and the UN, 142–45 Economists with Guns (Simpson), 60–61 Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace, 99 Editor (Indonesian weekly), 151 ELSAM (Indonesian human rights organization), 160 Elsbach, Kimberly, 267 Elster, Jon, 42 Eluay, Theys, 223, 297n40 Emmerson, Donald, 223 Enrile, Juan Ponce, 103–4, 128, 177 Estrada, Joseph: and counter-terrorism, 232–34, 238–42, 249, 255; impeachment process, 241–42; and MILF, 234, 238–42, 249; and VFA with the U.S., 238, 239, 241, 255–56 European Community (EC): and Indonesia’s human rights practices, 130, 141, 149; and the St. Cruz massacre in East Timor, 130, 141 European Convention on Human Rights (1950), 6, 36–37 European Parliament: Committee on Development and Cooperation in Indonesia, 224; and East Timor, 138, 139, 290n6 European Union (EU): declaring Philippine Communist Party as terror organization, 249, 252; and Indonesia’s human rights

Index practices, 149; and self-determination movements in Aceh and Irian Jaya, 222, 223 excuses, 268–72; and contestation of international norms in human rights dialogues, 46, 50, 51, 264, 268–72; and credibility, 269–70; and human rights advocacy in East Timor, 212–17; and match between norms and situation, 269; and outcomes of transnational advocacy in Indonesia, 228–30, 269; and path-dependent processes influencing Indonesian selfdetermination movements, 204–5, 229–30; responses and attendant dilemmas, 270; and subcontracted vigilante violence in Aquino’s Philippines, 175–76, 198, 268–69 Falintil (Fretilin’s military wing), 84, 134, 211 Falk, Richard, 9, 37, 41 Far Eastern Economic Review: and Indonesia’s arrest of SBSI chairman Pakpahan, 150; and Marcos’s Philippines, 121; and public debate over Suharto’s political prisoner issue, 71, 72, 75, 78, 80 Ferrer, Jaime, 182 Fighters for Integration Force (Indonesia), 211–12 Finnemore, Martha, 275 Fischer-Lescano, Andreas, 282 Ford administration: and Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, 58, 85, 287n24; and Marcos’s martial law, 93, 96, 101; and Suharto’s Communist political prisoners, 73 Foreign Affairs, 223 Forum for Aceh, 223 Forum for the Reconciliation of Irian Jaya Society (Foreri), 219, 296n28 frames and the structuring of human rights dialogues, 43–51, 259; accepting a diagnosis but shifting the blame (“excuses”), 46, 50, 51, 264, 268–72; accepting implications and then reframing (“justification”), 45–46, 50–51, 262–72; accepting or rejecting a diagnosis, 45, 264; actors’ competition to frame events, 43–44; actors’ defining and implicating themselves and audiences, 44; credibility of actors, 48; diagnostic parts of frames, 45–47, 50; frame structures producing varying outcomes, 44–45, 286n12; and

341

governments’ principal choices for interacting with human rights organizations, 45–46, 262–72; and mass media, 48–49; and persuasive arguments, 42, 47–48, 259; prognostic parts of frames, 45, 47–48, 50; and sanctions, 51 Franco, Jennifer, 191, 293n5 Fraser, Donald, 100–101 Free Aceh Movement (GAM), 200, 217–19, 226, 227–28, 230, 281, 296n27 Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) (Philippines), 96, 113, 171, 190 Fretilin (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor): credibility problem, 86–87; and Falintil (military wing), 84, 134, 211; Indonesia’s occupation and military campaign against (“encirclement and annihilate”), 84–85; strategy of nonviolent resistance and civilian complaints, 134–35 Friends of the Filipino People (FFP), 97, 100, 188 Friends of Tribal Filipinos, 123 Gadi Paksi militias (Indonesia), 209, 210 Gandinao, Siche Bustamante, 253–54 Gates, Robert, 179 German Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst), 241 Gestapu (“Thirty September Movement”), 60 Al-Ghozi, Fatur Rohman, 248 Golez, Roilo, 244 GOLKAR (Functional Groups Joint Secretariat) (Indonesia), 65–66, 76, 286n4, 289–90n41 Gonzales, Raul, 253 Goodman, Amy, 130 Guardian (Great Britain), 223 Guingona, Teofisto, 243–44, 247 Gusmão, Alexandre “Xanana,” 144, 152, 206–7, 212 Guterres, Eurico, 213 Guterres Lopes, Aniceto, 207–8 Habibie, Baharuddin Jusuf, 156, 168; and East Timorese referendum on self-determination, 206–7, 219, 237; and self-determination movements in Aceh and Irian Jaya, 219 Haig, Alexander M., Jr., 120 Hak Foundation, 207–8

342

Index

Hakim, Lukman, 77 Halilintir (Indonesian militia), 209, 211 Hall, Tony P., 138 Hamid, Syarwan, 160, 162–63 Hariyanto, Petrus, 292n31 Harkin, Tom, 215 Hartono, General, 155, 161 Haseman, John, 155 Hashim, Salamat, 236, 237–38, 247–48 Hathaway, Oona, 26 Hedman, Eva-Lotta, 177, 185 Herera, Trinidad, 108 Heritage Foundation, 188 Hilao, Liliosa, 97 HMI (Himpunan Mahasiswa Indonesia [Indonesian Students Organization]), 77–78, 147, 158, 160–61, 292n35 Holbrooke, Richard, 107–9, 111, 117 Honasan, Gringo, 177 human rights dialogues. See international norms and their contestation in human rights dialogues Human Rights Journal (Indonesian NGO Yapusham), 148 Human Rights Watch/Asia, 20, 146–47, 276; and Aceh’s self-determination movement, 220, 296n31; and Aquino administration’s human rights violations, 173; and Indonesia’s human rights violations, 150, 151, 152, 296n31 Ileto, Rafael, 177, 179 IMET (International Program for Military Education and Training), 149 Index (journal of the Indonesian NGO Yapusham), 148 Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) and Indonesian militias, 211 Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI), 158, 164, 166 Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), 60, 63–64 Indonesian Council for Islamic Propagation, 163 Indonesian Council of Ulemas, 163 Indonesian Forum for Indonesian Development (INFID), 147 Indonesian Human Rights Commission, 210 Indonesian Legal Aid Bureau (LBH), 147, 163 Indonesia’s New Order 1965–78 (militaryled modernization), 53–88; and covert

activities, 59–60, 64; and East Timor’s self-determination campaign, 55–58, 81–87, 280–81; and Indonesian Communist Party, 60, 63–64; invasion of East Timor, 58, 83–86; normative-political context and paradigm of military-led modernization, 53–54, 59–67, 131; popular discontent and student-led Malari riots, 66–67; Suharto and post-coup purges of suspected communists, 60–61, 63–64; Suharto and the Communist political prisoner campaign, 55–57, 67–82; Suharto’s early appeal to human rights, 65; Suharto’s justifications and threat of political Islam, 54–55; Suharto’s reorganization/restructuring of the political system, 65–67; Sukarno and newly independent Indonesia’s relationship with U.S., 59–60, 63–65; and U.S. support for anti-communist efforts, 60, 62–64; and what can be learned from failed advocacy campaigns, 57–58, 87–88 Indonesia’s New Order and East Timor’s self-determination campaign, 55–58, 81–87, 133–48, 280–81; and Carter administration, 85; and Ford administration, 58, 85, 287n24; and Fretilin’s lack of credibility, 86–87; invasion and occupation of East Timor, 58, 83–86; military campaign to wipe out Fretilin, 84–85; political developments and East Timor’s annexation, 82–83; and public debate in the United Nations about East Timor, 83–84, 87; realist explanations for the limited success of transnational advocacy, 56, 81; and Suharto’s information policy, 57–58, 84, 86–87; U.S. failures to criticize Indonesia, 81, 85–86. See also East Timor’s struggles for selfdetermination Indonesia’s New Order and Suharto’s campaign against Communist political prisoners, 55–57, 67–82; and Amnesty International, 55, 67–73, 75–76; arrests of leading Muslim politicians, 78; campaign on behalf of female prisoners, 68–69; and Carter administration, 75, 80, 286n9; and domestic mobilization, 57, 76–80, 88; and Ford administration, 73; government reactions to AI report, 71–73, 75, 78, 80; international criticism and publicity, 68, 73, 75; and issue of foreign aid to Indonesia,

Index 73–75, 286n9; Kopkamtib prison, 64, 68, 69, 70; military crackdown on student protests, 79–80; outcomes, 56, 57, 76, 80–82, 87–88; and Pancasila ideology, 68, 79; and prisoner classification system, 70; prisoner releases, 68, 75, 76–78, 80; problem of fair trials and trial processes, 70; public debate in outside media and press reports, 71, 72, 75, 78, 80; public pressures on Suharto (1975-78), 73–76; redefining what a state government could do, 56–57; and resignation of General Sumitro, 68; and rule of law arguments, 69–70, 72–73; the shifting figures of prisoners (the figure discrepancy), 71–72; and state sovereignty norms, 71; Suharto’s justifications and threat of political Islam, 57, 77–79, 88, 286n12; Suharto’s press crackdown, 79–80; and Tapol, 55, 67, 68, 77 Indonesia’s New Order 1986-98 (transnational advocacy and human rights change), 130–70; and the AI reports on East Timor, 132, 134, 135–37; and AntiSubversion Law, 130–31, 150, 153, 154, 164; and church networks, 146; and Clinton administration, 149, 150; constituent mobilization as key to network success, 152; domestic human rights NGOs and student activists, 147–48; East Timor’s civilian political opposition and international publicity, 139–42; EC and EU human rights forums, 149; evolution of the transnational East Timor network, 133–39; and factors closing off potential pathways for the military, 169–70; government’s handling of dissent and public criticism, 152–55; growth and reorientation of human rights organizations (1991-96), 145–49; and the Indonesia military (ABRI), 155–61; international pressures to open East Timor, 137–39; international scrutiny of Indonesia’s domestic political institutions, 149–52; international scrutiny of Indonesia’s human rights practices, 142–45; July 27 incident and investigation, 153–54, 161–65, 292n39; key norm dynamics and events increasing the appeal of human rights, 159–68; Komnas HAM commission and institutionalizing human rights, 153–55, 164–65, 291n24; the Liquica

343

massacre, 159–61, 212–13; liquidation of BAIS, 153, 155, 291n29; and National Investigating Commission (Djaelani commission), 141–42, 143; norm contestation and the influence of transnational mobilization, 168–70; path-dependence and development of public human rights debates, 169–70; public framing of the 1996-98 riots as spontaneous ethnicreligious clashes, 165–68; the rhetoricpractice gap and the dynamic of reform, 149–52; SBSI strikes and demonstrations, 150–51; and the St. Cruz massacre (1991), 130, 140–45, 147–48, 154, 168–69, 260, 270; Suharto’s changes to military professionalism, 155; Suharto’s human rights reforms, 130–32, 141–42, 143, 153–55, 156–57; Suharto’s resignation and demise of the New Order, 168; three important functions of the emerging structure of transnational governance, 149 Indonesia 1999-2005 (paramilitary violence in East Timor and Indonesia), 199–230, 267, 269; anchoring actions in democratic arguments/securitized democracy, 224–28; churches and human rights organizations reframing public perception of civil war, 212, 295n16; comparing outcomes of transnational advocacy in Indonesia, 201–4, 228–30; and East Timor’s impact on Aceh and Irian Jaya, 200–206, 217–28, 266, 280–81; and excuses, 204–5, 212–17, 228–30, 269; framing public perceptions of civil war, 207–9, 212, 295n16; and independent norm dynamics, 229; international support for Indonesia’s territorial integrity, 202–3, 221–23, 256; the military and paramilitary militias before 1999, 208, 209–12; military’s network of paramilitary units and strategy of deflecting/denying responsibility for violence, 207–9, 210; militias, 206–17; path-dependent processes and outcomes, 204–5, 229–30; the post-vote dilemma for human rights organizations, 215–16; self-determination movement in Aceh, 200–202, 217–28, 297n40; selfdetermination movement in Irian Jaya, 200–206, 217–30, 266; UNAMET and the 5 May agreement for overseeing transition period, 207, 213–15

344

Index

Infight (the Indonesian Front for Human Rights), 147, 148 Interim Batasang Pambansa (IBP) (Philippines), 106, 115 International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), 275–77; and human rights violations in Indonesia, 67; report challenging legitimacy of Marcos‘s martial law, 100, 105–6, 108 International Committee of the Red Cross, 75, 84, 144 International Convention against Torture (1988), 7, 154, 172 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006), 7 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 12–13, 36, 39; and Philippines, 94, 172, 192, 194, 288n1 International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 36 International Criminal Court (ICC), 36 International Crisis Group (ICG), 232, 248, 278–79, 297n39 International Displacement Monitoring Center of the Philippines, 231 International Federation for East Timor (IFET), 145 International Federation of Labor Unions, 151 International Governmental Group on Indonesia (IGGI), 74 International Herald Tribune, 222–23 international human rights law, 35–41, 281–84; and debate over waning of state sovereignty, 9–11; the larger picture of the politics of rights and international law, 281–84; opposing ethical imperative/structural imperative, 37; post-Cold War, 36; post-1948 expansion of the human rights regime, 36–37; post-World War II, 35–37; and regional human rights regime, 36–37; and state security concerns and norms, 37–40 International Labor Organization (ILO) and convention on forced labor, 74 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 122 international norms and human rights change, 1–19, 22, 23–34, 257–84; actorcentered approaches, 22, 32–33; and agenda-setting power, 27; constructivist

perspective, 6–9, 10–11, 22, 28–34, 257, 272; conventional theories of international relations and neglect of normative issues, 5–8; empirical findings and implications, 9, 257–84; excuses, 268–72; general expected variations, 32–33; and history of international human rights law, 35–41; how states and human rights organizations define a situation and choose norms, 11–12; human rights norms vs. state security, 1–19, 35, 37–40, 41–43; implications of learning and diffusion, 279–81; the indeterminate nature of norms, 9; justifications, 28, 31–32, 262–72; larger picture of the politics of rights and international law, 281–84; and litigation, 27–28; logic of consequences/ logic of appropriateness, 32–33; mechanisms of change, 26–28, 30–31, 32–33; and mobilization, 27, 31; motivations for change, 22, 28–29, 32–33; and persuasion by norm entrepreneurs, 30–31, 285n1; and political authority of international NGOs, 275–79; political contestation and the redistribution of domestic political power, 261–62, 272–75; rationalist perspective, 6, 10–11, 22, 23–28, 32–33, 257, 272; realist perspective, 22, 24–25; and social obligations, 32–33; spiral model of human rights change, 30; and state sovereignty, 3, 5–6, 9–11; and states’ self-interest, 25, 29, 32–33; structure-centered approaches, 22, 28–29, 32–33. See also international norms and their contestation in human rights dialogues international norms and their contestation in human rights dialogues, 20–52, 257–84; and actors’ credibility, 48, 269–70; and competing norms of human rights and state security, 1–19, 35, 37–40, 41–43; “decentralized enforcement,” 23; diagnostic frames (alleging human rights violations), 45–47, 50; dialogues and local human rights organizations, 21; display rules of public discourse, 42; and excuses (accepting the diagnosis but shifting the blame), 46, 50, 51, 264, 268–72; frames and the structuring of dialogues, 43–51, 259; and governments’ principal choices, 45–46, 262–72; human rights campaigns as public dialogues, 3–5, 41–51, 258–60; and justifications (accepting

Index the implications and then reframing), 45–46, 50–51, 262–72; and mechanism of social influence (“validity”), 49–50, 259; and mechanisms that enable governments to retain political power, 51; path-dependent discourse, 4–5, 21, 43; and persuasiveness of arguments, 42, 47–48, 259; the prognostic parts of frames, 45, 47–48, 50; public rulemaking as path-dependent process, 4–5; and “rhetorical action,” 42; role of mass media, 48–49; role of publicity, 41; and the securitization of human rights, 47; and social sanctioning (mechanism), 4; and truthfulness, 42 International War Crimes Tribunal, 98 Iranian revolution, 57, 266, 273 Irian Jaya’s self-determination movement, 200–206, 217–30, 266; ABRI and human rights violations, 161; and compared outcomes of transnational advocacy in Indonesia, 201–4, 228–30; East Timor’s impact on, 200, 205–6, 217–28, 266; and Sukarno’s annexation, 200, 218 Islam: ABRI and Muslim-Christian religious dynamics in Indonesia, 160–61, 292n35; AI and Tapol reports linking Muslim political prisoners to East Timor human rights issues, 136–37; Muslim self-determination in Mindanao and domestic challenges to state authority, 234–37; Suharto’s justifications for campaign against Communist political prisoners, 57, 77–79, 88, 286n12 Islamic Front for Democracy and Human Rights in Indonesia (PIJAR), 148 Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), 248 Jenkins, David, 75 John, Eric G., 254 Johnson, John J., 61 Jones, Sidney, 154 July 27 incident (Indonesia), 153–54, 161–65, 292n39 justifications, 262–72; and constructivists, 31–32; and contestation of international norms in human rights dialogues, 45–46, 50–51, 262–72; Marcos’s and martial law, 91–92, 103–6; and norms of sovereignty, 21; and rationalist accounts of state noncompliance, 28; and role of publicity in pressuring governments, 41; Suharto and

345

threat of political Islam, 54–55, 57, 77–79, 88; Suharto’s campaign against political prisoners, 57, 77–79, 88; and world polity norms, 267 Jusuf, Mohammad, 80 Kalaw, Eva, 118 Kalinga tribesman (Philippines), 122–23 Kaplan, Robert D., 246 Karapatan (Philippine human rights organization), 250–51, 252–53 Keck, Margaret, 30, 31, 152, 263, 272 Kelly, James A., 125 Kelman, Herbert, 187 Kennedy administration, 62 Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL [New Society Movement]) (Philippines), 115, 127, 289n41 Kinantar, Romulo, 249–50, 251 Kissinger, Henry, 85, 101 Kivimäki, Timo, 56, 73–74 KKK (Kusog sa Katawan Alang sa Kalinaw [People Power for Peace]), 181 Komnas-HAM (National Human Rights Commission [Komisi Nasional Hak Asasi Manusia]) (Indonesia), 153–54, 156, 291n24; and Aceh’s self-determination movement, 227; establishment, 153–55, 291n24; investigation of July 27 incident, 153–54, 164–65; investigation of Liquica massacre, 160–61 Kompas (Indonesian newspaper), 79, 160 Kopassus (Indonesia’s military intelligence command), 209–10, 211, 223–24 Kopkamtib (Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order), 64, 68, 69, 70 Koskenniemi, Martti, 46, 282–83 Krasner, Stephen, 24–25 Kuratong Baleleng (criminal syndicate), 190, 294n23 LABAN (Lakas ng Bayan [People Power Party]) (Philippines), 115–16, 181 Lagman, Hermon, 108 Laurel, Salvador, 127 Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR), 20, 149–50, 153, 276; and Aquino administration in Philippines, 172, 173, 184–85, 188; reports on Philippine human rights violations, 192

346

Index

League to Uphold Justice (Indonesia), 147 Leahy, Patrick, 203 legal pluralism, 283–84 Legaspi, Eileen C., 185 Legro, Jeffrey, 47 Levy, Marion, 62 Liberal Party (LP) (Philippines), 115 Liem Soei Liong, 148–49 Light-A-Fire Movement (Philippines), 117–18 Liquica massacre (1995), 159–61, 212–13 Lopez, Fernando, 118 LPHAM (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Indonesia [Institute for Human Rights]), 65, 147 Lubis, Mochtar, 67 Macapagal, Diosdado, 104, 118 Macli-ing Dulag, 122 Madjid, Nurcholish, 158–59, 164 Maganto, Romeo, 186 Magno, José, 182 Magsino, Juvy, 251 Majelis Dakwah Indonesia, 158 Malari riots, 66–67 Malaysian Federation, 59 Malik, Adam, 78–79, 286n12 Manglapus, Raul, 97 Mansfield, Mike, 96, 101 Marcos, Ferdinand: the Aquino assassination and changes in American policy toward, 124–26; coup and ousting of, 128; and domestic political opposition, 112–21, 126–28; economic modernization program, 121–24; international norms, U.S. pressure, and domestic reforms, 90–93, 107–12; and the judiciary, 102–3, 104; justifications, 91–92, 103–6; martial law and international challenges to legitimacy of, 91–92, 100–106; martial law declaration, 89–90, 95–100; martial law ended and plans for reform, 106, 119; media and representations of, 110–12; military-led modernization and corporatist development, 90–92, 95; and Reagan administration, 125–26; rejection of AI report, 104–5; U.S. pressures, 93–94, 107–12. See also Philippines 1972-86 (Marcos’s government) Marsinah (Indonesian labor leader), 150 martial law and Marcos’s Philippines, 89–92, 95–106

Masyumi (Indonesian religious political party), 59, 66, 67 McCarthy, John, 208 media and transnational lawmaking, 48–49, 87–88, 283–84; and actors’ persuasive arguments, 48–49; the CPP’s underground media campaign, 99; foreign media pressures and Marcos, 108–12; and Marcos’s declaration of martial law, 99–100; necessity of human rights organizations gaining attention of Western media, 87–88; and Suharto’s Komnas HAM commission, 154; Suharto’s political prisoner campaign and press crackdown, 79–80; Suharto’s political prisoner campaign and public debate about AI report, 71, 72, 75, 78, 80; Suharto’s revocation of publishing licenses of three weekly newspapers, 151 Megawati Sukarnoputri: and Aceh’s selfdetermination movement, 226; and Bush administration’s War on Terror, 203, 256; and Indonesian military’s anti-communist campaign, 157–58; and the PDI, 162 Melo Commission, 253 Mendiola massacre (1987), 179–80 Mercado, Orlando, 238 Metro Manila Crusaders for Peace and Democracy, 186 Meyer, John, 40 Mijares, Primitivo, 100 military-led modernization: and American intelligence community, 61–62; and commitments to civil action and counterinsurgency in developing world, 62; the concept, 61–65; and constructivist approaches calling attention to context, 64–65; early scholarship and research, 61; Indonesia’s New Order and normativepolitical context (1965-78), 53–54, 59–67, 131; and Kennedy administration, 62; Marcos and, 90–91, 92, 95; militaries and organizational rationality, 61–62 Mindanao and Muslim self-determination movements, 231–37; background, 235–36; and East Timor model, 237, 280–81; Estrada’s anti-terrorism posture, 234, 238–42, 249; MILF, 231–42, 247–49; MNLF, 90, 116, 235–37, 298n3, 299n33; Ramos administration and autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao, 236–37

Index Misamis Oriental Farmers Organization, 253–54 Misuari, Nur, 236–37, 298n4 Mitra, Ramon, 118 Mobilizing for Human Rights (Simmons), 27 Mohammad, Gunawan, 148 Mondale, Walter, 80, 109 Monjo, John, 140 Montano, Ramon, 182, 184 Moravcsik, Andrew, 26, 285n1 Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), 231–42, 247–49, 298n3, 299n33; and Arroyo’s counter-terrorism campaign, 247–48; Arroyo’s early negotiations with, 242; and East Timor model for selfdetermination, 237, 280–81; Estrada’s antiterrorism posture against, 234, 238–42, 249; failed memorandum of agreement with Philippine government, 231 Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), 90, 116, 235–37, 298n3, 299n33 Movement for a Free Philippines (MFP), 97 Mu’arif, Syamsul, 226 Muhammadiyah (Indonesia), 163 Muis, Mohammad Noer, 214–15 Munro, Ross, 188 Murad, Abdul, 299n30 Murad, Al Haj, 237–38 Murdani, Benny, 80, 140, 153, 154, 156 Murdiono (Suharto’s state secretary), 141 Murphy, Richard W., 117 Murtopo, Ali, 68, 73, 79 Muskie, Edmund S., 117 Muslim National Mandate Party (PAN), 220–21 Muslim United Development Party of Indonesia (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan [PPP]), 66, 77 Mydans, Seth, 208, 225–26 Nababan, Asmara, 153, 154 Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) (Indonesia), 77, 158, 163, 166, 222 Nairn, Alan, 130 Nakasaka (vigilante group), 182 Nasution, Abdul Harris, 62 Nasution, Adnan Buyung, 67, 77 National Alliance for Democracy (NAD) (Philippines), 181 National Commission on Human Rights (Indonesia), 200

347

National Council of Churches of the Philippines, 99, 192 National Covenant for Freedom (1980) (Philippines), 118–19 National Democratic Front (NDF) (Philippines), 114, 174, 178–80 National Disaster Council, 231 National People’s Army (NPA) (Philippines): Aquino administration and assumed threat to, 174–76, 178–80, 196–97; Arroyo administration and counter-terrorism against, 232–33, 249–53; Estrada administration’s attempts to frame as terrorist, 249; and Marcos government, 90, 116–17, 121, 126, 196; and paramilitary vigilantism, 180–81, 182–84; reports on abuses and socalled sparrow units, 193–94 National Secretariat for Social Action of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), 98 Ndiaye, Bacre Waly, 148 Newson, David, 107–8, 289n24 New York Times: and Carter administration policies in Philippines, 110, 111–12; and Fretilin’s credibility, 86; and House letter to Shultz pressuring Suharto to open East Timor, 138; and Indonesia’s human rights violations in East Timor, 144, 208; and Marcos’s Philippines, 102, 106, 110, 111–12; and self-determination struggles in Aceh and Irian Jaya, 223, 225–26; and Suharto’s concerns about Islamic extremism, 78–79; and Suharto’s political prisoners, 71 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), 138 Nugroho, Heru, 167 Ocampo, Satur, 189 Olaguer, Eduardo, 117 Olalia, Rolando, 191 Operasi Khusus (OPSUS) (Indonesia), 68 Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines (OEF-P), 244 Organization for a Free Papua (Organisasi Papua Merdeka [OPM]), 200, 218, 295n25 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 39 Organization of American States, Charter of, 39 Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC), 236, 237, 240 O’Rourke, Kevin, 212–13, 214

348

Index

Pakpahan, Muchtar, 148, 150–51, 163 Palparan, Jovito, 252, 253, 255 Pamungkas, Sri Bintang, 151, 163–64 Pancasila (Indonesian state ideology), 68, 79, 132, 156, 157, 266, 290n2 Parmusi (Indonesia), 77 Partai Rakyat Demokrasi (People’s Democratic Party [PRD]) (Indonesia), 148, 163–65 Partai Uni Demokrasi Indonesai (PUDI), 163 Partido ng Bayan (PnG) (Philippines), 191 path-dependency: excuses and the outcomes in Indonesian self-determination movements, 204–5, 229–30; and human rights dialogues, 4–5, 21, 43; and Indonesia’s public debates about human rights, 169–70; and public rule-making, 4–5 Pauker, Guy, 61 Pell, Claiborne, 141 Pemuda Ansor, 158 Pemuda Muslim Indonesia, 158 Pentagon Gang, 247 People’s Conference on Human Rights (Philippines), 106 Perez de Cuellar, Javier, 87 Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, 98 Pertamina (Indonesian oil conglomerate), 74 Petition of Fifty, 133, 136 Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA), 181, 192 Philippine Commission on Human Rights, 171, 172, 173, 180, 193–94, 254 Philippine Daily Express, 106 Philippine Daily Inquirer, 241 Philippine International Center for Human Rights, 192 Philippine News, 100 Philippines 1972-86 (Marcos’s government), 89–129, 265; and the American Embassy (DoS), 101, 102, 107–10, 112–13, 117–18, 125– 26, 289n27; and American military bases, 114; Amnesty International and martial law reports, 100, 101–6; the Aquino assassination, 124–26; and Carter administration, 93, 107–12, 119–20; and the Catholic Church, 95–96, 98; coup and ousting of Marcos, 128; detentions of opposition figures, 108, 289n27; domestic church network, 97, 98–99; domestic opposition, 96–99, 112–21, 126–28; factional

infighting in Marcos administration, 127; and Filipino exile community in the U.S., 97–98, 99–100; and Ford administration, 93, 96, 101; and foreign media, 99–100, 108–12; the IBP and elections (1978), 106, 115; the ICJ report challenging martial law, 100, 105–6, 108; international norms and effect on domestic policy, 91–94, 112–29; the judiciary, 102–3, 104; justifications, 91–92, 103–6; liberal opposition, 99, 113–19, 120–21; Marcos’s economic modernization program, 121–24; martial law and international challenges to legitimacy of, 89–92, 96, 100–106; martial law declared and dismantling of democratic institutions, 89–90, 95–100; martial law ended, 106, 119; military-led modernization and corporatist development, 90, 92, 95; the National Covenant for Freedom, 118–19; paramilitary vigilante forces, 180; public representations/perceptions of credibility of actors, 110–12; and Reagan administration, 93–94, 95, 119–20, 125–26; rule of law violations, 102–3; snap elections and Corazon Aquino (1985), 127; and transnational mobilization under an authoritarian regime, 128–29; U.S. pressure on Marcos (1976-80), 93–94, 107–12; World Bank reports, 122, 123 Philippines 1986-92 (subcontracted vigilante violence), 171–98, 268; Alsa Masa in Davao City, 180–81, 182–84, 186, 293nn8–9; and Aquino’s credibility/the Aquino mystique, 184–85, 186–87, 198, 270; Aquino’s denial of responsibility, 181–84; Aquino’s inauguration and new human rights standards, 171–72, 173–74, 184–85; Aquino’s symbolic efforts to separate good/bad vigilantes, 183; and assumed threat of communists and NPA, 174–76, 178–80, 196–97; and attempt to securitize the Philippine democracy, 196–97; the delegitimizing/undermining of the local human rights movement, 184–91, 197–98; excuses, 175–76, 198, 268–69; explanatory factors (state security), 184–87; framing vigilantism under broader theme of democratization, 185–87, 196–97; linking CPP and local human rights organizations, 187–89; and May 1987 congressional elections, 191; and the NPA, 180–81, 182–84, 193–94; the political

Index context, 172–75, 176–80; and process of regime transition, 177–80, 270; and Ramos administration’s reforms, 194–95; red-labeling (labeling of human rights monitors as communists), 189–91; and resurgence of a transnational network and international mobilization, 173, 191–95, 198; and U.S. State Department, 173, 194 Philippines 1999-2008 (counter-terrorism and human rights), 231–56; AFG kidnappings, 239–40, 241, 243; Amnesty International report, 253; Arroyo administration, 232–33, 242–55; and the CPP, 233, 249–53; domestic mobilization against Arroyo, 244–45; Estrada administration, 232–34, 238–42, 249, 255; expansion of counter-terrorism to legal political organizations, 233, 255–56; and internal refugee situation in Muslim-dominated South, 231; international normative influences and counter-terrorism against domestic insurgencies, 232–33; and Muslim selfdetermination in Mindanao, 231–37; and the NPA, 249–51; Ramos administration and Muslim Mindanao, 236–37; recategorizing the communist insurgency as terrorism, 248–53, 300n43; and Spratly Islands dispute, 238; strategic reframing from territorial integrity to counterterrorism, 240–42, 249, 255; Task Force Usig, 252–53; and transnational human rights mobilization, 252–55; UN special rapporteur’s investigation, 253–54; and Visiting Forces Agreement, 238, 239, 241, 244–48, 255–56, 267; war on terror and American military engagement, 243–52 Pinto, Constancio, 140 Poe, Fernando, Jr., 251 “The Politics of Torture” (ABC television), 112 Portugal and East Timor’s struggles for selfdetermination, 82, 83, 131, 138, 140, 287n21 Powell, Catherine, 268 Powell, Colin, 224 Princen, H. C. J., 65 Pronk, Jan, 74 Puersa Masa (Power of the Masses), 181, 182, 184 Pye, Lucian, 53–54, 61

349

Quinn, Kenneth M., 85 Rais, Amien, 220–21 Ramos, Fidel, 124, 127, 128; and Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, 236–37; implementation of human rights reforms, 194–95; and paramilitary vigilantes, 182, 183, 194–95 Ramos-Horta, José, 84, 86 rationalist approaches, 6, 10–11, 22, 23–28, 32–33, 257; actor-centered, 22, 23–24, 32–33; assumptions about norms as rules, 34; casting the debate in terms of purposeful choice and self-interest, 22, 32–33; compliance issues and state reputations, 26–27; and constructivist approaches, 32–33, 34, 272; and the establishment of state human rights regimes, 25–26; expectations regarding the military-strategic importance of Philippines to the U.S., 94; international human rights norms vs. state security, 6, 10–11; justifications for state noncompliance, 28; and mechanisms through which normative prescriptions would affect state behavior, 26–28; and motivations for changes, 32–33; and the persistent gap between treaty ratification and compliance, 26; puzzles of rationalist institutionalism, 25–27; and states‘ self-interest, 22, 25, 32–33 Reagan administration and Marcos‘s Philippines, 93–94, 95, 119–20, 125–26 realist approaches, 22, 24–25; actor-centered, 22, 32–33; casting the debate in terms of power, 22; expectations regarding militarystrategic importance of Philippines to the U.S., 24, 93–94; international human rights norms vs. state security, 5–6; Krasner‘s perspective regarding conflicts between Westphalian and legal sovereignty, 24–25; and pressures faced by rulers to comply with conflicting international norms, 25; and states‘ self-interest and sovereignty, 5–6 Reform of the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) (Philippines), 127 Renetil (East Timorese student organization), 148 Reston, James, 111 Reuter, James, 108 Reyes, Angelo T., 242

350

Index

Reyes, Victor, 108 Risse, Thomas, 30 Robinson, Geoffrey, 269 Romulo, Roberto, 247 Ropp, Stephen, 30 Rosales, Cebu, 98 Roxas, Gerry, 99, 115 Rusmin Nurjadin, 75 Russell Tribunal (International War Crimes Tribunal), 98 Saguisag, Rene, 171 Said, Ali, 153 Salazar, Antonio, 82 Sales, Jessica, 108 Salonga, Jovito, 102, 104, 113, 115, 118 Sani, Chaidir Anwar, 71 Santiago, Michael, 247 Santoso, Amir, 292n41 SBSI (Prosperous Workers Union of Indonesia [Serikat Buruh Sejahtera Indonesia]), 150–51, 157 Schimmelfennig, Frank, 42 securitization: Aquino administration and the Philippine democracy, 196–97; of human rights (and three steps of the securitization process), 47; and Indonesia’s paramilitary violence, 224–28 self-determination, principle of, 37–40. See also Aceh self-determination movement; East Timor’s struggles for self-determination; Irian Jaya’s self-determination movement; Mindanao and Muslim self-determination movements Senturias, Alvaro, 192 Shils, Edward, 61 Shultz, George P., 123–24, 138 Siazon, Domingo, 221, 249 Siddiq Hamzah, Jaffar, 223 Sidel, John, 166, 177 Signs of the Times (AMRSP publication), 97, 102 Sikkink, Kathryn, 9–10, 30, 31, 152, 263, 272 Simbolon, Mahidin, 210, 297n40 Simmons, Beth, 26–27, 36, 273, 279 Simpson, Bradley J., 54, 60–61, 62, 63 Sim, Susan, 215 Sinar Harapan (Indonesian newspaper), 79 Sin, Cardinal Jaime, 98, 99–100, 117, 127 Sison, Jose Maria, 191, 249–50, 251, 252, 254

Slaughter, Ann-Marie, 10 Socialist Party of Indonesia (Partai Sosialis Indonesia [PSI]), 67 Soesastro, Hadi, 138–39 Southern Philippine Council for Peace and Development, 236 Southern Philippines Backgrounder: Terrorism and the Peace Process of 2004 (ICG report), 248 sovereignty, 3, 9–11; realist approaches and states’ self-interest, 5–6; and state behavior with regard to human rights, 10–11; the transformation of, 9–10; Westphalian, 24–25, 37 Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Krasner), 24–25 Spratly Islands dispute, 238 state security concerns and human rights norms, 1–19, 35, 37–43, 51; conflicting norms of, 1–19, 35, 37–40, 41–43; and elements by which a state is defined, 37, 285n8; how states and organizations define a situation and choose between, 11–12; and Indonesia’s military-led modernization, 53–88; and subcontracted violence in Aquino’s Philippines, 184–87 St. Cruz massacre (Dili massacre) (1991), 130, 140–45, 154, 168–69, 260, 270; and aid donors to Indonesia, 142–43; the dispute over victims, 143–44; and domestic human rights NGOs and student activists, 147–48, 154; Indonesia’s diplomatic counterattacks, 143; and international condemnation and scrutiny, 130, 141, 142–45; and National Investigating Commission, 141–42, 143; Suharto’s changes in military professionalism following, 155; and Suharto’s human rights reforms, 130–32, 141–42, 143, 153–55, 156–57; and trial of Fretilin leader Gusmão, 144; UN resolution censuring Indonesia, 144 Steiner, Henry J., 276 Straits Times (Singapore), 215 Student Solidarity for Indonesian Democracy (SMID), 148 Suara Independen (illegal Indonesian news magazine), 166 Subianto Prabowo, 156, 210 Sudomo, Admiral, 80 Sudyadmiko, Budiman, 163, 165 Sugih Arto, 75

Index Suharto: and Carter administration, 75, 80, 286n9; and Communist political prisoner campaign, 55–57, 67–82; and domestic mobilization under Islamic banner, 57, 77–79, 88; early appeal to human rights, 65; establishment of Komnas HAM commission and institutionalization of human rights, 153–55, 291n24; and Ford administration, 73; human rights reforms after St. Cruz massacre, 130–32, 141–42, 143, 153–55, 156–57; information policy and East Timor, 57–58, 84, 86–87; and military-led modernization, 60–61, 63–67; Presidential Decree No. 62 opening East Timor, 139; purges of suspected communists, 60–61, 63–64; reorganization/restructuring of the political system, 65–67; resignation and demise of the New Order, 168 Sukarno: annexation of Irian Jaya, 200, 218; and konfrontasi, 59, 63; and military-led modernization, 59–60, 63–65; nonalignment policy, 59; PKI and 1965 coup attempt against, 60, 63 Sumitro, Lieutenant General, 68 Suny, Ismail, 78 Surjadi, General, 155, 162 Sutarto, Endriartono, 225 Sutomo (journalist), 78 Sutrisno, Try, 140 Syafei, Theo, 146 Tadat, Francisco, 121, 244 Tanada, Wigberto, 244 Tanaka, Kakuei, 66 Tanjung, Akbar, 220–21 Tanjung, Feisel, 155, 156, 160, 162 Tanjung Priok massacre (1984), 136, 292n41 Tapol (British Campaign for the Release of Communist Political Prisoners in Indonesia), 55, 67, 68, 72, 77, 136–37 Tapol Bulletin, 148 Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP), 96–97, 101–2, 113, 123, 148, 173, 188, 289n27 Task Force Usig (Philippines), 252–53 Tavares, Joao da Silva, 207, 209, 211 Teehankee, Claudio, 103 Tempo (Indonesian weekly), 147, 148, 151 territorial integrity, principle of, 38–39; Indonesia and East Timor crisis, 159–61,

351

221–23; and Indonesia’s military operations in Aceh, 220–21, 224–28; and principle of self-determination, 38–39 Teubner, Gunther, 282 Thompson, Alex, 48 Tim Alfa (Indonesian militia), 211 Tolentino, Arturo, 177 Tomuschat, Christian, 39 Tripoli Agreement (1976), 236 2004 Asian tsunami, 227–28 Uhlin, Anders, 147 UN Commission on Human Rights: and East Timor, 137–38, 144; and Indonesia’s political prisoners, 67, 74; and Irian Jaya and Aceh, 224; and the Philippines, 192 United Church of Christ, 99 United Nations Charter (1945), 36 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Manila (1979), 113 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 36 United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), 207, 213–15 United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, 151 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 7, 12–13, 36 U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), 125, 126 U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), 245 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 254, 301n66 U.S. State Department (DoS): and Aquino’s Philippines, 173, 194; Far East Bureau and Indonesian political prisoner situation, 76, 80; and Marcos’s Philippines, 101, 102, 107–10, 112–13, 117–18, 125–26, 289n27; and military-led modernization paradigm (1960s), 53–54, 61 U.S. Subcommittee on International Relations, 73, 100–101 Ver, Fabian, 124, 127 vigilantism. See Philippines 1986-92 (subcontracted vigilante violence) Virata, Cesar, 109 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA): and Arroyo administration, 244–48; and Estrada, 238, 239, 241, 255–56; and Philippine Supreme Court, 245–48, 267

352

Index

von Klinken, Gerry, 166–67 Wahid, Abdurrahman, 158–59, 162, 166, 222, 225–26, 229 Wako, Amos, 144 WALHI (Indonesian environmental group), 163 Wanandi, Jusuf, 71–73 Warouw, Rudolph, 139 Watch Indonesia (German NGO), 164 Weber, Max, 40, 49 Westphalian sovereignty, 24–25, 37 Wilodo, A. S., 225 Wimhurst, David, 214 Wiranto, General, 167, 207, 209–10, 213, 214–16, 218–19

Wismoyo Arismunandar, 156 Wolff, Lester, 101 World Bank, 122–23, 280 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna (1993), 153 World Council of Churches, 67, 99, 146 World Law Congress in Manila (1977), 105–6 World War I, 38 Yapusham (Indonesian NGO), 148 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang, 225, 229 ZOTO (Manila-based slum organization), 108, 122

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank many individuals who have accompanied this book during its path to publication. Writing a book is not only an academic endeavor, but also a personal one. If this book is about the struggle for human rights, it reflects not only an academic interest in explaining human rights change, but also a personal conviction that, in the end, it is the people who count. Various research institutions have either provided funding for the project or kindly supported it with their infrastructure. The German National Research Foundation (DFG) funded the project for four years and enabled extensive field research in Indonesia and the Philippines. The FriedrichNaumann-Foundation in Jakarta not only provided generous office space, but also the personal encouragement that made a months-long research visit in Jakarta a real experience. Here, special thanks go to Rainer Adam, Barbara Matindas, and Agung. The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, the Australian National University in Canberra, and the University of the Philippines in Quezon, Manila, were hosts during various research visits. Finally, the Mershon Center of International and Security Studies at Ohio State University provided generous research funding, office space, and research time to apply the final touches on the manuscript. The advice of many colleagues and our discussions at the Mershon Center helped me to sharpen my thinking on this project’s overall goals. This book relies on interviews with approximately seventy human rights activists, journalists, politicians, and government representatives in the Philippines, Indonesia, the United States, Germany, and Canada. Because many of these individuals were public figures, their statements in these interviews do not differ substantially from their media statements. Whenever possible, I have referred to published statements. On a personal note, a circle of people have shaped my thinking and disposition. Most importantly, my thanks go to Thomas Risse. He has the astonishing ability to find another’s project as exciting as his own, which, at

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many points, provided crucial encouragement to pursue this project to its end. Even more importantly, Thomas has taught me that political science is not only hard work, but also fun, as well as given me the strength to pursue the unconventional and to stick to ideas. His role model has had a lasting influence. Over the last years, Jürgen Rüland has supported my work with enormous patience and trust. He offered me an environment that allowed me to explore a variety of research questions and to expand my professional horizon into domains that would have been difficult to tap elsewhere. He offered much-appreciated encouragement and comments on individual chapters. Hans-Peter Schmitz accompanied this project in its early phase and entered it again in its publication stage. His immensely useful comments on earlier versions of chapters definitely made a difference. Bill Liddle provided the most thoughtful comments on the chapters on Indonesia that I could get. I would extend similar thanks to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript. Their comments on earlier versions provided continuing encouragement to sharpen the overall arguments and provide empirical evidence. Some of them have made a crucial difference in transforming the manuscript into a book. At the University of Pennsylvania Press, I am indebted to Peter Agree, whose support at all stages of the submission and production process was invaluable. Helen Snively not only provided crucial encouragement during a final revision of the book, but ensured that this has become a book that I enjoy reading! I would also like to thank the many individuals who, at various stages, were part of a larger project developing the spiral model of human rights change, and proved to be invaluable sources of inspiration: Tanja Börzel, Andrea Liese, Steve Ropp, Kathryn Sikkink, and Cornelia Ulbert. I also wish to thank the many research assistants who have been associated with this book at various stages. My family and friends have been the most constant and invaluable sources of moral and emotional support. Of the many people who must be mentioned here, my deepest gratitude goes to my son Quirin, who grew up with this book and ensured I never lost sight of the really important things in life. Jan Alber has been a constant in my life for many years and a crucial source of support during that time. Together with the rest of my family, they have accompanied the project for many years and have endured long physical and mental absences during the research and writing stages. This book is dedicated to the many human rights activists I got to know in the process of research and who deeply impressed me with their unshakable

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belief in humanity and human rights, and their passion to carry this struggle through to make the world a better place. Of the many activists I met, Munir stands out as the personality who left the deepest mark. Munir, the founder of the Indonesian human rights organization Kontras, paid the highest possible price for his struggle for human rights in Indonesia. He was poisoned on a flight to the Netherlands in September .