BBC
20 May, 2003

No-one admits starting the fires

As the military campaign in Aceh intensifies, East Asia Today's Orlando de Guzman visits the Bireuen district, where more than 50 schools have been torched.

After about five months of peace in the town of Bireuen in Aceh, the children have woken up to find their school totally burned. They pick through pieces of smouldering chalk and charcoal. The roof is gone, all that is left is a blackened concrete shell. It has been a systematic campaign. In the past 24 hours, dozens of schools have gone up in flames in the Bireuen district. One teacher could not believe the sight of his charred classroom. "I am very sad, because my students' learning process will be disturbed," he said.

On Tuesday, hundreds of students in Bireuen were supposed to take their final examinations, but classes across the district have been cancelled. "They want Acehnese people to be stupid, they don't want Acehnese people to be educated," said the headmaster of SMU3 high school in Bireuen, which was burned last night. Both Gam and the Indonesian army have blamed each other for these acts.

The Acehnese civilians are paying a high price for the conflict

The school burnings appear to be carried out systematically, with three schools in one small area going up in flames in the space of an hour.

Local people try and put out the flames with small buckets of water, but they are beaten back by the heat. There is nothing much they can do, except offer prayers for the building.

But people here feel that the school burnings will continue around Bireuen and around Aceh. Nobody really knows who the arsonists are - or perhaps people are too afraid to say.