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A push-start for
justice for East
Timor
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - Indonesia's hope of emerging as
a force for democracy in Southeast Asia faces a
reality check in regard to its stance on justice -
especially justice for victims of human-rights
violations in East Timor.
A United Nations
panel of judges put Jakarta on the spot this week
in a report submitted to the UN Security Council.
The three-member Commission of Experts says
Indonesia's security forces and militia leaders
involved in gross human-rights violation in East
Timor in 1999 must be put on trial.
The
commission has given the Indonesian government of
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono six months to
deliver, prosecuting the perpetrators of crimes
against humanity in a special tribunal with "a
team of international judicial and legal experts,
preferably from the Asian region".
If that
were to fail, the UN commission urged the Security
Council to create an "international criminal
tribunal for Timore-Leste [East Timor] to be
located in a third state".
The
commission's recommendations come after it found
the attempts Indonesia has made to try 21 people
charged with war crimes "manifestly inadequate",
noting that the trials revealed "scant respect for
or conformity to relevant international
standards".
The commission's scathing
critique of Indonesia's attitude toward justice -
or lack thereof - hardly surprises human-rights
groups. Most of the Indonesian governments that
followed the fall of president Suharto in 1998
appeared uninterested in going after those
military and militia men who terrorized the people
of East Timor in 1999.
"Previous
presidents have shown little enthusiasm to
prosecute those responsible for organizing the
violence in 1999," John Miller, spokesman for East
Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN), a New
York-based human rights lobby, told Inter Press
Service. He noted that the only exception was
former president Abdurrahman Wahid, who apologized
for the occupation of East Timor.
The
commission, which was set up early this year by UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan, came after leading
human-rights groups began a campaign for the world
body to send an international team of jurists in
response to Indonesian courts letting key suspects
wanted for crimes against humanity get away. Among
those who have benefited from Indonesia's cavalier
attitude toward justice are Major General Adam
Damiri, who was in charge of the country's
military operations in East Timor at the time of
the 1999 independence referendum, and General
Wiranto, the former Indonesian military commander
who made an unsuccessful run as a presidential
candidate.
The crimes against humanity
occurred before and after the people of East Timor
voted in a UN-sponsored referendum for
independence from Jakarta in August 1999. Thugs
and members of the militia, with the blessings of
Indonesian troops, went on a rampage and killed
close to 1,400 people, destroyed buildings and
much of the infrastructure, and forcefully drove
out about 250,000 people.
Before the
terror, Indonesia had occupied the former
Portuguese colony with brutal force since 1975. An
estimated 200,000 Timorese, nearly a third of its
population, died as a result of bombings, killings
and starvation during the Indonesian occupation of
the area on the eastern end of this archipelago
that Jakarta considered its province.
But
the leaders of East Timor's separatist struggle,
both on the military and political front, have
appeared more keen to mend fences with their
former occupier and giant neighbor since the
nation gained independence in May 2002. Evidence
of this is the weight both Dili and Jakarta are
throwing behind a Commission of Truth and
Friendship as a way of healing the political
wounds.
"This attitude of the East
Timorese leaders poses a snag in the call for an
international tribunal," said Withaya
Sucharithanarugse, an Indonesia expert at the
Institute of Asian Studies at Bangkok's
Chulalongkorn University. East Timorese President
Xanana Gusmao has said "he is not interested in
having a tribunal", Withaya told IPS. "If the
president of East Timor is not seeking redress,
then that raises questions about how much support
there will be for the tribunal."
Gusmao, a
former guerrilla leader, has the support of
another equally notable personality to go down the
road of friendship and stability with Indonesia
rather than seek justice for the atrocities of the
past. He is Jose Ramos Horta, a Nobel Peace
laureate and Indonesia's foreign minister.
It is an attitude that is increasingly at
odds with what the people want, said ETAN
spokesman Miller. "The East Timorese victims and
public would prefer trials. They know the truth
already. "We have always believed that a strong
relationship with Jakarta must be built on
justice," he added. "I think pressure will build
over time. Internal critics of the government's
stance will certainly feel strengthened in their
pursuit of genuine justice."
(Inter Press
Service) |
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