Aug 14, 2007, 7:27 GMT
Jakarta - Indonesian police were investigating 'missing flags' incidents in Aceh province as the country prepared to celebrate its 62nd independence day, a senior police spokesman said Tuesday.
Hundreds of flags hung ahead of Friday's national holiday went missing in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, Lhokseumawe, and other towns and villages.
'We are currently investigating the incidents although we can't deny the possibility it was done by ex-GAM members,' National Police spokesman Sisno Adiwinoto, referring to the now-defunct rebel group Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
'Until then, we still consider this as a case of common theft,' he said.
Aceh, an oil-and-gas-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra Island, was witness to a brutal 29-year conflict between the Indonesian military and GAM guerrillas that killed as many as 20,000 people, mostly civilians.
The sides signed a peace agreement in August 2005, just months after the 2004 Asian Tsunami killed 177,000 people in Aceh alone.
The peace has held, with GAM disarming in exchange for amnesty and forming a political movement to contest local elections. In the first such ballot in December 2006, former rebel member Irwandi Yusuf became the province's first-ever directly elected governor.
However, tensions and mistrust between Indonesian nationalists and former GAM members remains strong. The province has witnessed at least four unexplained grenade attacks on the homes of ex-GAM officials as well as government and police offices, stoking fears an unknown group is trying to sabotage the peace because former rebels are now in office.
Widodo A.S., the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs in Jakarta, was openly angry about the flag thefts, and local military commanders in Aceh threatened to 'shoot on sight' any flag thieves.
In years past, Indonesian soldiers and police would order residents at gunpoint to purchase and hang the red-and-white Indonesian flag on their homes, cars and motorcycles in the run-up to the August 17 anniversary of independence from Dutch colonial rule.
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