Asia Times: Probe into human rights violations in E Timor endorsed



	November 19, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Probe into human rights violations in E Timor endorsed
By Jim Wurst

UNITED NATIONS - The UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has endorsed the decision of the UN Human Rights Commission to send a team to East Timor to investigate human rights violations. The ECOSOC vote was 27-10 with 11 abstentions. Indonesia and all its Asian neighbors on the 53-member council voted against the decision.

The vote was to endorse the creation of an international commission to investigate abuses which might ''constitute breaches of international humanitarian law.'' The debate on the issue this week was dominated by complaints of procedural irregularities. Indonesia's ambassador Makarim Wibisono said the original Human Rights Commission meeting that called for the inquiry was ''legally defective.''

The decision was immediately welcomed by Timorese leader Jose Ramos-Horta, who declared: ''There has to be an assignment of responsibility to the military people who destroyed our country.'' At the UN headquarters to accept an award from the Hague Appeal for Peace, Ramos-Horta said, ''The important thing now is not the tone, but that the mission goes ahead.''

The team, headed by Sonia Picado of Costa Rica, is scheduled to leave for East Timor this weekend. Its mandate is to investigate the period from January 1999, when it was decided to hold a referendum on the future of East Timor, through to the voting on August 30 and subsequent attacks on civilians by Indonesian army-backed militias, after voters opted for independence.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, called for a commission of inquiry at a special session of the Human Rights Commission in September. She said at the time there was ''overwhelming evidence that East Timor has seen a deliberate, vicious and systematic campaign of gross violations of human rights [and] an international commission of inquiry into the violations must be established so that those responsible are brought to justice.''

The UN estimates that 500,000 of Timor's population of 890,000 were effected by the violence. The UN mission, however, will not visit West Timor, the Indonesian province, where up to 200,000 East Timorese refugees were forced to flee. Last week, three UN human rights officials characterized as ''devastating'' the evidence that widespread acts of murder, rape, torture and other violations had occured in East Timor.

Ramos-Horta, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 with Bishop Carlos Bello, was clear in distinguishing between the political and military leadership of Indonesia. He called the newly-elected president of Indonesia, Wahid, ''the most decent human being in Indonesia today.'' On the other hand, ''the military is responsible and must be held accountable for the sake of East Timor but also for the sake of democracy in Indonesia,'' he added. Ramos-Horta and Xanana Gusmao, the leader of the Timorese resistance, will meet Wahid in Jakarta on November 30.

The UN's new representative in East Timor, Under-Secretary General Sergio Vieira de Mello, arrived in Dili Tuesday. He will head the UN Mission in East Timor (Unamet) which the Security Council established on October 25. Unamet will have military, police, governance and humanitarian components.

The UN's Office for Humanitarian Affairs , meanwhile, has issued an appeal for $199 million through June 2000 to meet urgent humanitarian needs.

Shepard Forman, a conflict resolution specialist at New York University, said there are three urgent humanitarian issues:

''First, Indonesia needs to be convinced of the wisdom of cooperating, allowing the East Timorese in West Timor and elsewhere in Indonesia to freely exercise their right of return and to open safe land corridors between the refugee camps in West Timor and East Timorese sanctuaries. ''Secondly, the Indonesian authorities and their surrogates need to be held accountable, individual by individual, for those who have disappeared. President Wahid has promised his cooperation. We need to make certain that promise is fulfilled. ''Finally,'' Forman told an audience at Yale Divinity School, ''there is a very real risk that the good will the humanitarians have built up will quickly be squandered if the situation on the ground does not improve rapidly for the East Timorese.''

(Inter Press Service)

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©1999 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.