Activists fear that Indonesia is returning to the dark days when army-backed youth groups unleashed their terror, without impunity, on the armed forces' critics, in the wake of an attack on the office of a key human rights group that condemned the military operations in Aceh.

Kontras, the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence, came under attack on May 27 when one hundred members of the Pemuda Panca Marga or Youth Wing of Army Veterans, wearing camouflage uniforms, appeared outside the office, yelling for human rights activist Munir to come out.

Munir, one of Indonesia's foremost human rights activists who founded Kontras in late 1997, was not in.

Instead Ori Rachman, a member of Kontras' executive board, came out to meet the mob. When he appeared, the mob shouted: "Sing Indonesia Raya (the national anthem)."

They wanted him to show his support for the unitary state of Indonesia, supporting the military and the government's position that Aceh cannot be allowed to be independent, especially after East Timor became a separate nation after a 1999 vote.