WASHINGTON - Saturday's dismissal by a Jakarta
appeals court of all pending cases against Indonesians
indicted for crimes against humanity committed in East
Timor five years ago may bolster efforts by US lawmakers
to halt the George W Bush administration's normalization
of ties with the Indonesian armed forces (TNI).
The judicial action is also likely to fuel
demands by human-rights organizations for the United
Nations to create an international tribunal to bring to
justice those responsible for the TNI-backed rampage
that resulted in the killing of as many as 1,500
Timorese and the destruction of the newly independent
country's infrastructure.
The mayhem followed a
plebiscite in which an overwhelming majority of the East
Timorese population voted in favor of independence from
Indonesia, which invaded the former Portuguese colony in
1975 and annexed it the following year. As much as a
third of the population died or was killed in the five
years that followed the invasion.
A UN-backed
multinational force headed by Australia intervened after
the violence that followed the plebiscite and helped
establish an UN administration that oversaw a
transitional period to independence, which took effect
15 months ago.
"Saturday's decisions show that
courts in Indonesia are simply not independent and are
incapable of rendering justice for the atrocities
committed in East Timor," said Brad Adams, director of
the Asia division of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
"Indonesia has given the international community
no choice but to initiate a justice mechanism for these
appalling crimes, which took place in full view of the
world in 1999," he added.
HRW was one of six
international human-rights groups, including Amnesty
International, the Coalition for International Justice
and the Open Society Justice Initiative, that sent a
letter to UN secretary general Kofi Annan in late June
urging him to immediately appoint an International
Commission of Experts to recommend how best to ensure
that "those responsible for such violence be brought to
justice", as demanded by the UN Security Council
resolution that authorized the Australian-led
intervention.
The decision by the Jakarta
appeals court, which overturned the convictions of four
high-ranking Indonesian military and security officials
and reduced by half the 10-year sentence of a notorious
TNI-backed militia that led the post-plebiscite
violence, comes at a critical moment in the evolution of
US policy toward the TNI.
As the world's most
populous Muslim country, and one with radical Islamists
reportedly linked to al-Qaeda, Indonesia has been seen
as a key ally in the Bush administration's "war on
terrorism" since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New
York and the Pentagon, and Washington has made little
secret of its desire to end the break in ties between
the TNI and the Pentagon that were suspended after the
events in East Timor.
But Congress refused to go
along with normalizing military ties in the absence of
clear evidence that the TNI, very much a law unto itself
under the Suharto dictatorship, was subject to civilian
control and had cooperated fully with efforts to bring
to justice those in its ranks who were responsible for
the violence in East Timor as well as the 2002 murder of
two US schoolteachers in West Papua.
That,
indeed, was the official policy of the US government as
recently as the end of 2002, when the US ambassador in
Jakarta, Ralph Boyce, told the government there that
full restoration of military ties, including eligibility
for credits for buying US weapons (foreign military
financing, or FMF) and for participation in
international military education and training programs
would not be possible "until there is justice for the
serious human-rights violations committed in East Timor
and elsewhere".
Nonetheless, Washington has
moved in recent months toward full normalization. In
addition to providing millions of dollars in security
assistance and training, the Pentagon last month
announced the resumption of the bilateral defense
dialogue (BDD)with the TNI that had been cut off after
the violence in East Timor.
In addition, the
State Department recently told Congressional staff that
it intended to reinstate Indonesia's eligibility for FMF
next year, according to knowledgeable sources on Capitol
Hill.
In a letter to Pentagon chief Donald
Rumsfeld last week, even before the appeals court issued
its decision, a bipartisan group of 65 lawmakers said
they were "surprised and disappointed to learn" that the
BDD is scheduled to reconvene and urged him to
reconsider his decision, particularly in light of
reports of new abuses by the TNI in West Papua and Aceh
province, a restive gas-producing region that has been
under a state of siege for some 15 months.
"The
TNI has successfully evaded accountability for its
well-documented crimes against humanity and war crimes
in East Timor, and there has been little progress in
improving human-rights practices in Indonesia," the
group, which is headed by Republicans Tom Tancredo and
Chris Smith and Democrat Lane Evans, wrote.
"Additionally, the TNI continues its brutal tactics in
Aceh, Papua and elsewhere, [and] there are reports that
[it] has extensive connections to the terror group
Laskar Jihnad," it added.
"We believe that a
resumption of the dialogue at this time would go against
the strong posture Congress and the executive branch
took in the late 1990s to severely limit military
assistance, joint exercises and exchanges with the TNI
until human-rights issues were addressed."
The
appeals court decision is likely to strengthen that
sentiment.
HRW noted that the four acquitted
officials are Major General Rachmat Damiri, who was
commander of the military region that included East
Timor and has more recently overseen the
counter-insurgency campaign in Aceh; Colonel Nur Muis,
who was TNI's commander in East Timor; former police
chief Hulman Gultom; and former Dili military commander
Lieutenant-Colonel Soedjarwo. All had been found guilty
by the ad hoc Human Rights Court in Jakarta for crimes
against humanity, which Indonesia created largely to
preempt the creation of an international tribunal on
East Timor.
Damiri and Muis were also indicted
in February 2003 on three counts of crimes against
humanity by the UN Serious Crimes Unit (SCU) in a joint
indictment with East Timorese authorities in Dili, the
capital of the new country. But the Indonesian
government has refused to recognize that tribunal or
extradite anyone to East Timor.
The result of
Saturday's decision is not only that no senior
Indonesian military official will be held accountable
for crimes committed by the TNI and client militia in
East Timor, but that the only two people who will have
been successfully prosecuted are Timorese - the militia
leader whose sentence was halved, and the former
governor of the province.
"The results of these
cases show that Indonesia remains committed to the
fiction that the violence in East Timor was carried out
only by East Timorese," said Adams. "The well-documented
reality is that the violence was planned and
orchestrated by the Indonesia military. The judicial
games in Jakarta cannot alter these facts."
HRW
called for the UN and key members, including the US,
Australia, Japan and the European Union countries to
move quickly in creating the commission of experts that
would be empowered to review the judicial processes in
both Jakarta and Dili and propose an international
tribunal.
"The international community must
fulfill its promises of justice to the East Timorese
people," said John M Miller, a spokesman for the US
branch of the East Timor Action Network. "The UN-backed
SCU in Dili has issued a large number of highly credible
indictments of senior Indonesian officials. They must
not be allowed to rot in some file drawer in Dili."
The SCU has so far filed 83 indictments that
accuse 373 individuals. Some 279 of them, including the
former TNI commander and recent presidential candidate
Wiranto, are currently at large in Indonesia.
