article about controversial arms trade with indonesia. as far as i can remember, the deal was brokered with the conservative government, including a clause preventing use of these arms for internal aggression. straw obviously couldn't care less now, possibly taking advantage out of the fact that 'it was the last government who got into this relation'. was trying to find a guardian analysis on this from about a year ago, to no avail.

"The legality of Britain's arms sales to Israel and Indonesia is to be challenged in the courts on the grounds that they breach stated government policy, the Guardian has learned.

Bringing an unprecedented action, lawyers for human rights groups will tell the high court that the sales violate the government's criteria for export licences.

They argue that the assurances of the Indonesian authorities that the arms would not be used for internal repression, and by Israel that they would not be used in the Occupied Territories, have proved hollow."

[...]

"The British government has failed to admit that British weapons were being used in Aceh and is ignoring human rights violations," he said yesterday. He said British Hawk jets and Scorpion light tanks had been seen in Aceh province, where rebel forces are fighting for independence."

[...]

"In the latest operation to crush the Free Aceh Movement (Gam) in Sumatra, 40,000 heavily armed soldiers have pushed the rebels into the jungle-covered hills.

The death toll, officially put at about 1,600 since President Megawati Sukarnoputri declared martial law in May, is impossible to assess because there is a de facto ban on foreign media, and local journalists are strongly intimidated into what the military describes as "patriotic" reporting."



"From 1998 to 2001, the USA, the UK, and France earned more income from arms sales to developing countries than they gave in aid."