ExxonMobil is not going to escape the fact that it has to answer for Indonesian human rights crimes occurring in the 1990s. That decision came from a US Appeals Court on 17 January, after the world’s biggest energy company attempted to dismiss a lawsuit brought by 11 Indonesian citizens.

The alleged crimes came when Mobil was opening the Arun gas fields in joint development with the Suharto government. At the time, Suharto’s regime was deploying brutal methods to put down a separatist movement in the Aceh region on the northern tip of the Sumatra Island.

The lawsuit contends that Suharto agreed to provide army troops during the development, and that Mobil provided logistical and material support to the troops. Troops used the company’s facilities and equipment to “interrogate, torture and murder Acehnese civilians suspected of engaging in separatist activities,” the lawsuit states. Following Suharto’s forced leave from office, independent investigation teams did find several mass graves connected with the human rights atrocities.

The lawsuit is legitimate in US courts because of the Alien Tort Claims Act, a 216-year-old American statute that allows persons from other countries to hold accountable, either American citizens or US-based corporations, when violations of international law are committed outside of the US.

ExxonMobil filed a review of the case in the US Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, after a US Federal District Court denied a prior request for dismissal.

This American court case has special significance inside Indonesia. Under a negotiated autonomy agreement implemented last year for Aceh, the Indonesian government has pledged to establish a special court by July 2007 to hear the thousands of human rights cases that have been pending after 30 years of regional strife on Sumatra.