During our time in Banda Aceh, Aceh’s provincial capital, one statement was voiced over and over again. “Go back home and tell Americans good things about Aceh,” people told us. The first time I heard this, I was surprised. It was during a conversation about the implementation of sharia law in Aceh with a man who opposes sharia. The application of sharia in Aceh, a heavily Islamic province that exercises a degree of autonomy from the central government, has drawn world-wide media attention, most of it negative. While such media coverage has damaged Aceh’s reputation, after a week there, it became easy to see beyond the headlines.
As we spent more time in Aceh and spoke with more people, this request – “go back home and tell people good things about Aceh” – was echoed repeatedly, mostly unprompted, by everybody from university professors and students, to former combatants in the province’s separatist movement, to people on the street. After spending several days in Banda Aceh, it became apparent why this was such a popular statement.
In recent history, Aceh has had more than its fair share of setbacks. The province was home to a 30-year-long violent separatist movement, the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). While exact numbers are unknown, thousands of combatants fought the Indonesian military from Aceh’s mountains and jungles, hoping to gain independence from Jakarta and access to revenue from their province’s natural resources. The violence only came to an end with adoption of the Helsinki Agreement in 2005, and reintegration of ex-combatants has since begun.
In December 2004, however, Aceh was hit with the Boxing Day, a tsunami which killed around 160,000 people in the province. In the aftermath of the tsunami, a host of international NGOs came to Aceh to assist with rebuilding efforts, the results of which are clear when looking at the newly built homes around the province, each with a sticker in the window designating which aid agency provided funding. Nevertheless, the damage from the tsunami is still visible. The Islamic university in Aceh is still partly housed in temporary buildings as its original facilities are rebuilt, as is Perambi Indonesia, Aceh’s primary newspaper. And while Aceh’s infrastructure is largely repaired, the threat of unemployment looms as the last of the NGOs pull out.
The latest issue to arise in Aceh is sharia law, which was implemented in Aceh through a series of laws beginning in 2002. It is this development that has cast the most negative light on Aceh. Under Aceh’s sharia law, Muslim dress is mandated for women, unmarried couples are forbidden from showing public displays of affection, and alcohol and gambling are outlawed. To enforce these measures, a sharia police force was established, which has the authority to patrol the province and issue warnings for infractions.
On paper, these factors paint a bleak picture of Aceh. And that was the view we encountered prior to arriving in Aceh. In Jakarta, when we told people we were headed to Aceh, Indonesians and foreigners alike offered responses along the lines of “why would you ever go there?” or “be careful.” Kevin Fogg, an American post-doctoral fellow at the Islamic university in Jakarta, told us to stay away from places outside Banda Aceh even if we were modestly dressed, because rural areas were “iffy for Westerners.” Ulil Abshar Abdalla, the co-founder of a liberal media outlet in Indonesia, told us that Banda Aceh was “like Detroit – poor and deserted.” Even our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook featured a section on sharia law in Aceh, emphasizing that stoning and caning are legal punishments there.
Needless to say, we arrived in Aceh wearing our floor-length skirts and long-sleeved blouses expecting to find an impoverished, Islamist police state. Yet we had fallen victim to the sensationalized accounts of Aceh, as have many other people. Most of what we had heard about Aceh was grossly exaggerated (Banda Aceh may be less developed than other Indonesian cities, but it is a far cry from Detroit) or flat-out wrong (a bill was passed in parliament condoning stoning as a punishment, but the provincial governor refuses to sign it into law). To our surprise, Banda Aceh was a bustling, vibrant city. To be sure, it is clear from spending time in Aceh that the province operates under stricter laws than the rest of Indonesia. Alcohol cannot be found on menus or in stores, billboards tout the importance of sharia, and women dress more modestly than in Jakarta, including remaining covered while swimming. There are also numerous complaints in Aceh about abuses by the sharia police and overly restrictive laws that distort the spirit of Islamic law. But by most measures, the negative accounts of Aceh in the Indonesian and international media are almost universally overblown– and they’re enough to scare many people away from Aceh. (For more about incorrect accounts of Aceh, look for Jeffrey Kaiser and Raffi Friedman’s article in the next issue of the Yale Globalist.)
By the time we had left Aceh, it was clear why nearly everybody we spoke with asked us to go back to America and tell people positive things about Aceh. The GAM movement, the tsunami, and sharia law have combined to create a fair share of problems for Aceh, and the worldwide media has seized on these issues to convince the world that Aceh is not only hostile to visitors, but is a danger to Indonesian and international security . On the contrary, however, I found Aceh to be a place where everybody seems to be trying, in his own way, to do what he thinks is best for Aceh, and that includes dispelling the negative stereotypes swirling around.