During almost thirty years, the region of Aceh was affected by a conflict involving the Indonesian government – mainly represented by its military forces (TNI) – and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM). The GAM had been fighting against the TNI in what was called the Aceh Insurgency from 1976 until the a peaceful agreement, the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), was signed in 2005. Control over the revenue from the Arun gas fields, which had been granted exclusively to ExxonMobil by the Indonesian government from early on, was a key factor of the formation of the insurgency movement (GAM) in 1976 and had remained a prominent issue throughout the Aceh conflict.

In 2001, the International Labor Rights Fund brought a civil case to the US Federal Court on behalf of a group of eleven villagers from Aceh against ExxonMobil Corporation, claiming that the company should be held responsible for its complicity in human rights violations committed by Indonesian military forces (TNI), mandated to protect ExxonMobil's operations in the area. The human rights abuses included torture, rape and killings. The claims were filed under the US Alien Tort Statute (ATS). The plaintiff victims alleged that the Company had contracted national security forces (TNI) to secure its operations in Aceh and thereby aided and abetted human rights violations committed in and around the Arun gas plant. The villagers claimed that the TNI had been receiving financial payments and that material support (weapons, etc.) as well as land and facilities were provided by ExxonMobil, which were then used by the TNI to interrogate, torture and murder civilians suspected of separatist activities.

A long legal battle followed and is still going on in 2014. During the latest developments, ExxonMobil has filed a motion with the Court of Appeals on 8 August 2011 in order to rehear the case en banc, as the Court of Appeals had reversed a former district court's dismissal of the case on 30 September 2009, finding that a corporation should not be immune from its liability under the Alien Tort Claims Act and remanding the lawsuit to the lower court.