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Hasan Muhammad di Tiro, M.S,
M.A A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
, LL.D, Ph.D. (25 September 1925 – 3 June 2010), born Hasan Bin Leube Muhammad, was the founder of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), an organisation which attempted to separate
Aceh Aceh ( ), officially the Aceh Province ( ace, Nanggroë Acèh; id, Provinsi Aceh) is the westernmost province of Indonesia. It is located on the northernmost of Sumatra island, with Banda Aceh being its capital and largest city. Granted a s ...
from
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
from the 1970s. It surrendered its separatist goals and agreed to disarm as agreed to in the
Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...
peace deal of 2005. He was the maternal great-grandson of
Tengku Cik di Tiro Muhammad Saman (1836 – 21 January 1891), better known as Teungku Chik di Tiro (usually spelt Cik di Tiro in Indonesia), was an Acehnese guerrilla fighter. On 6 November 1973 he was declared a National Hero of Indonesia. Biography Di Tiro was ...
, an Indonesian national hero who was killed fighting the Dutch in 1891. In 2010 he obtained his Indonesian citizenship back shortly before his death.


Background

Coming from a prominent family, from village of Tiro ( Pidie Regency), di Tiro studied in the modernist schools of Daud Beure'eh's PUSA organisation from 1938 and through the Japanese occupation and was a leader of the PUSA Scouts by 1945. He was active as a Pesindo (Socialist Youth) leader in the 'social revolution' against Aceh's ruling aristocratic uleebalangs in December 1945. Then a passionate advocate of identifying Aceh's history with Indonesia's nationalist struggle, he studied further in the Indonesian revolutionary capital, Yogyakarta, and authored two books in defence of this view. He then continued his studies in
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
, where he did part-time work for Indonesian Mission to the United Nations. While a student in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
in 1953, he declared himself the "foreign minister" of the rebellious Darul Islam movement, which in
Aceh Aceh ( ), officially the Aceh Province ( ace, Nanggroë Acèh; id, Provinsi Aceh) is the westernmost province of Indonesia. It is located on the northernmost of Sumatra island, with Banda Aceh being its capital and largest city. Granted a s ...
was led by Daud Bereueh. Due to this action, he was immediately stripped of his Indonesian citizenship, causing him to be imprisoned for a few months on Ellis Island as an illegal alien. The Darul Islam rebellion in
Aceh Aceh ( ), officially the Aceh Province ( ace, Nanggroë Acèh; id, Provinsi Aceh) is the westernmost province of Indonesia. It is located on the northernmost of Sumatra island, with Banda Aceh being its capital and largest city. Granted a s ...
itself ended in a peace deal in 1962. Under the peace deal Aceh was granted nominal autonomy.


Creating GAM

Di Tiro re-appeared in Aceh in 1974, where he applied for a pipeline contract in the new Mobil Oil gas plant to be built in Lhokseumawe area. He was outbid by Bechtel, in a tender process in which di Tiro thought the central government had too much control. It has been claimed that, as result of this loss and the death of his brother due to what he considered to be deliberate neglect by a doctor of Javanese ethnicity, di Tiro began organising a separatist movement using his old Darul Islam contacts. He declared his organisation as the Aceh Sumatra National Liberation Front, better known as the Free Aceh Movement ("Gerakan Aceh Merdeka") on 4 December 1976. Amongst its goals was the total independence of Aceh from Indonesia. Di Tiro chose independence as one of GAM's goals instead of autonomy due to his focus on Aceh's pre-colonial history as an independent state. The ASNLF was distinct from the former Darul Islam rebellion which sought to overthrow the secular Pancasila ideology of Indonesia and create a pan-Indonesian Islamic state based on sharia, if with a high degree of autonomy for Aceh within such a state. In his "Declaration of Independence", he questioned Indonesia's right to exist as it was a multi-cultural state based on the Dutch colonial empire and consisted of numerous prior states and multitudes of ethnicities with little else in common. As such, di Tiro believed that the Acehnese people should restore the pre-colonial state of Aceh and should be separate from the "fraudulent" state of Indonesia. Due to this new focus on Aceh's history and distinct ethnic identity, some of GAM's activities involved attacking transmigrants, particularly those who worked with the Indonesian army, in an effort to restore Acehnese land to Acehnese people. Ethnic Javanese transmigrants were among those most frequently targeted, due to what were often their close links to the Indonesian army. GAM's principal military activities, however, involved guerrilla attacks against Indonesian soldiers and police. In 1977, after leading a GAM attack in which an American engineer was killed and another American and South Korean engineer injured, Hasan Tiro was hunted by Indonesian military. He was shot in the leg in a military ambush, and fled to
Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
. From 1980, di Tiro lived in Stockholm, Sweden and had Swedish citizenship. For most of this period Zaini Abdullah, who became governor of Aceh in June 2012, was one of his closest Acehnese colleagues in Sweden. After the
tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater exp ...
in December 2004, the GAM and the Indonesian government agreed to a peace treaty which was signed in Helsinki in August 2005. Under the terms of the peace treaty, which were accepted by GAM's political leadership and endorsed by di Tiro, expanded autonomy was to be provided for Aceh. Shortly afterwards, a new Law on the Governing of Aceh was passed by the national parliament in Jakarta to support the implementation of the peace treaty. In October 2008, after 30 years of exile, di Tiro returned to Aceh. During the course of the conflict, on three separate occasions the Indonesian government mistakenly declared that Hasan di Tiro had died.


Return to Aceh

Hasan di Tiro returned to Aceh after 30 years of self-imposed exile on 11 October 2008. As a consequence of previous strokes, he was too frail to deliver his own speech at his welcome rally and did not play any active role in Aceh's ongoing political process at the time. He stayed for two weeks before returning to Sweden. A year later in October 2009 he again returned to Aceh and stayed there until his death. On 2 June 2010 he regained his Indonesian citizenship after living for years with a Swedish passport. He died the following day of
multiple organ dysfunction syndrome Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) is altered organ function in an acutely ill patient requiring medical intervention to achieve homeostasis. Although Irwin and Rippe cautioned in 2005 that the use of "multiple organ failure" or "multis ...
in a
Banda Aceh Banda Aceh ( Acehnese: ''Banda Acèh'', Jawoë: كوتا بند اچيه) is the capital and largest city in the province of Aceh, Indonesia. It is located on the island of Sumatra and has an elevation of . The city covers an area of and had ...
hospital.


References


Further reading


The Price of Freedom: The Unfinished Diary of Tengku Hasan di Tiro

The Legal Status of Acheh-Sumatra under International Law


See also

* Insurgency in Aceh {{DEFAULTSORT:Tiro, Hasan Di 1925 births 2010 deaths Acehnese people Asian royalty Deaths from multiple organ failure Indonesian Muslims Politicians from Aceh Columbia University alumni Naturalized citizens of Sweden Indonesian expatriates in Sweden Free Aceh Movement members People from Pidie Regency