Flashback: Sumatra Places, Indonesia

August 2001
By Michael Ault


"Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few."
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy.



::One::

Twelve of us were tightly wedged in the six-seat, rust-engulfed, mini-van, bouncing along the loosely packed gravel road. Small rocks crackled from under the weight of the deteriorating vehicle. Our current destination was a rain forest village located in the mountains of the military occupied territory known as Aceh in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Images of jade forested hills lined with towering patches of trees overwhelmed my line of vision, filling me with a serene sense of beauty. However, in the recesses of my mind, I kept hearing a voice remind me that several miles to the north of our location, the citizens of Aceh were resisting the Indonesian Military's presence and multinational corporations' dominance. Thoughts of execution style murders, torture, rape, mass graves, and citizen disappearances were silenced as the pockmarked gravel turned to Sumatran potholed dirt.

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