While the United States government looks the other way, Indonesia continues to use its U.S. weapons and its U.S.-trained soldiers to bully groups of its citizens in outlying parts of the sprawling island country. The bullying extends to outsiders, including Americans, who are trying to help them.

The latest such trouble is a flare-up in a 27-year-old civil war in the district of Aceh, at the north end of the island of Sumatra. Last week, the U.S.-based Indonesia Human Rights Network called on the Indonesian government to stop harassing and intimidating human-rights workers in Aceh and reporters covering the war-torn region.

An American reporter, William Nessen, the only journalist to spend time with the rebel Free Movement since Indonesia renewed warfare in mid-May, is resisting efforts by the Indonesian military to arrest and interrogate him. He has been writing for The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Independent in London. He fears a fate like that of an Indonesian television cameraman, Mohamad Jamal, who was kidnapped the day the latest military operations began. His body was found in a river on June 17, bound, gagged with duct tape and with a noose around his neck.

Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has written to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri asking assurance of Mr. Nessen’s safe passage out of the country. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders have sent similar letters.

Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission says human rights workers have been subject to arbitrary arrest. Last month, an organized mob of 100 thugs attacked the Jakarta office and staff of the Commission for Disappearances and Victims of Violence because of the organization’s criticism of government actions in Aceh.

This week, 90 human rights organizations, peace groups and arms-trade opponents around the world called for an international military embargo on Indonesia. Their statement called for a suspension of all cooperation with Indonesian military and police special forces, plus an immediate end to the military operations in Aceh and West Papua. The groups complained that weapons from their own countries are being used against civilians in Aceh. They cited Hawk jets and Scorpion tanks from Great Britain, OV-10 Bronco counter-insurgency planes and F-16 fighters from the United States, warships from Germany, and French and Russian-made armored vehicles.

The current violence began May 19, when the Indonesian government declared martial law and sent in hundreds of troops that attacked civilians as well as the Free Aceh Movement, an armed pro-independence force.

Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, tried unsuccessfully in January to restrict further operation of the U.S. International Military Education and Training program in Indonesia. His proposed amendment, opposed by the Bush administration, was defeated 61 to 36. Indonesia faces no foreign security threat. The United States should not train its armed forces for this sort of domestic political repression.