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Timor PM slams UN on war
criminals
By Jill Jolliffe
DILI - The prime minister of the Democratic
Republic of East Timor, which celebrates one year of
independence next Tuesday, has said he is determined to
bring to justice Indonesian officers who committed war
crimes in the territory.
In an exclusive
interview with Asia Times Online, Prime Minister Mari
Alkatiri also accused the United Nations of trying to
wash its hands of human-rights prosecutions.
"Crimes against humanity must be judged ... and
the international community has primary responsibility,"
the prime minister said, adding: "We cannot just ignore
crimes against humanity, which are the gravest of
crimes, yet take petty thieves to court. It would be a
travesty of justice."
His statements clarified
the East Timorese government's position after a row in
February over the indictment of former Indonesian
defense chief General Wiranto by prosecutors from Dili's
Serious Crimes Unit (SCU). He was accused of various
counts of murder, deportation and persecution as crimes
against humanity, with six other senior military
officers and the former governor of East Timor.
The charges arose from the violence unleashed by
East Timorese militia units and coordinated by the
Indonesian army during the 1999 referendum on
independence. An estimated 1,500 people were killed and
entire villages torched, with about 250,000 people
deported to West Timor.
When the indictments
were announced, Wiranto stated that the SCU, which was
set up by UN Security Council Resolution 1272 of 1999
and is staffed by UN personnel, was "not a
representative of the UN for international tribunal
affairs". He claimed it had no authority outside East
Timor, a view echoed by Indonesian Foreign Minister
Hassan Wirayuda.
Human-rights advocates in Dili
were shocked when Kamalesh Sharma, the UN secretary
general's representative, issued a statement that
appeared to back this view. It said: "While indictments
are prepared by international staff, they are issued
under the legal authority of the Timorese prosecutor
general. The United Nations does not have any legal
authority to issue indictments."
Alkatiri, who
is a former law lecturer, has now lashed out at this
stand, saying: "We cannot accept this ... I don't know
what the UN's game is, but it should assume
responsibility."
He added that Sharma and other
senior UN officials had discussed the charges with him
shortly before they were announced. He said the SCU had
been established by the Security Council and remains
accountable to it, even though since independence last
May the unit has also been answerable to the East
Timorese government.
The issue was further
complicated by separate visits to Jakarta soon after by
East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao and Foreign
Minister Jose Ramos Horta. Both leaders stated there
that the East Timorese government did not intend to
press the prosecutions, because good relations with
Indonesia were overriding.
Prime Minister
Alkatiri said in the interview that the statements did
not represent his government's policy, but stressed that
President Gusmao - who does not have executive powers -
is entitled to a personal opinion.
He dealt
tactfully with his foreign minister's statements. "I'm
the prime minister," he said, "and I'm not contradicting
him, but I think what he meant to say was that it's not
the government that's accusing the generals, but the
court, which is independent."
He also refused to
dwell specifically on the case of General Wiranto. "I'm
not going to mention names," he said, "... but all
crimes must be judged. It happened in Bosnia and in all
other such cases ... This is not to say we're
persecuting Indonesian generals or officers."
Alkatiri said his newly independent government
places the highest store on its relationship with
Indonesia, as a regime that broke with the Suharto
dictatorship, and that the prosecutions were "in its own
interest".
Since it began work in 1999, the SCU
has obtained arrest warrants for 247 individuals accused
of human-rights violations, of whom 169 remain at large
in Indonesia. Although the Indonesian government
promised to cooperate with UN prosecutors, President
Megawati Sukarnoputri's government has refused to hand
over suspects for trial in Dili.
Under UN
resolutions, Jakarta can also try perpetrators before
its Ad Hoc Tribunal on Timor, but human-rights observers
see it as having little credibility. It has freed most
Indonesian officers who have appeared before it and
given light sentences to others.
East Timor
became a member of the international police organization
Interpol last October, and has formally requested
additional arrest warrants from it for accused
Indonesian officers.
Government prosecutor
Longuinhos Monteiro said 11 warrant requests are being
processed by Interpol, involving three middle-ranking
Indonesian officers and eight Timorese-born members of
the Indonesian army. If granted, the accused men will be
declared fugitives from international justice and police
forces belonging to Interpol can arrest them if they
travel outside Indonesia.
An informed source in
Dili said that Siri Frigaard, who headed the SCU at the
time, argued with Sharma's office over the Wiranto
indictment. With Monteiro, she refused a request to take
the indictment off UN letterhead.
Frigaard quit
her post last month to return to Norway as deputy head
of the National Crime Investigation and Intelligence
Agency, after supervising an impressive range of
indictments against perpetrators of some of the worst
massacres of 1999.
Since her departure, Monteiro
has complained of continuing attempts by the UN to put a
brake on prosecutions. "I was taught by international
lawyers and academics on the importance of the
separation of powers. Those same people are now trying
to politically influence prosecutions, as the UN did in
the Wiranto indictment," he said.
(©2003 Asia
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