Posted on 16-2-2002

Freedom without justice in East Timor?
CCET statement from oneworld.org

As independence day — 20 May — approaches for East Timor, Christian
organisations and churches are calling for the prosecution of perpetrators
of human rights abuses in the territory under the Indonesian occupation.
CATHERINE SCOTT reports.

On 14 January this year Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri approved
18 judges who will serve on an ad hoc human rights court to be set up in
Jakarta. The court will try cases arising from the army-orchestrated mayhem
that followed East Timor's 1999 ‘popular consultation’ in which the
majority opted for independence from Indonesia.

Yet with the approach of independence day, 20 May, doubts remain that those
chiefly responsible for the crimes against humanity - Indonesia's top
generals - will have been held to account.

The Indonesian president, under pressure from the military to sweep the
whole issue under the carpet, has dragged her feet for more than two years
since her own human rights commission came up with a list of 23 suspects
for investigation. The list was subsequently whittled down to just 18, and
excluded General Wiranto, armed forces chief at the time. In the meantime
the guilty generals have been promoted and moved to trouble spots such as
West Papua and Aceh, where they continue to allow abuses against local
resistance movements.

East Timorese human rights defenders are skeptical that the new court will
deliver justice. The incidents that it can address have been limited to the
period from April to September 1999 and just three of East Timor's 13
districts. The military role in the 1999 atrocities will therefore not be
fully investigated, and convictions are unlikely to reflect the seriousness
of what happened.

An international support network of Christian groups and churches at the
Twelfth Christian Consultation on East Timor, held in Antwerp from 7-9
December, joined its voice to a mounting international campaign and called
for Indonesia to set a deadline of July 2002, after which an international
tribunal should be set up to deliver justice. This would allow the East
Timorese a chance to move on from the events of the Indonesian occupation.

A statement from the groups participating in the consultation made the
following recommendations to UN bodies:

1) There should be a deadline for the full prosecution of perpetrators
named in the Komnas Ham Investigation of January 2000, and laws duly
enforced. We consider that the UN should state a deadline of July 2002 for
this to have been achieved.

2) The international community should, as a matter of urgency, ensure that
the Serious Crimes Unit in East Timor has all the resources in terms of
personnel and equipment in order to complete its work efficiently. This
would include specialist advisors, technical experts, access to
information, including from classified sources, and IT. There should be
contingency plans for the granting of protection of key witnesses,
including the provision of asylum as and when necessary, and specialists in
crimes such as rape and sexual abuse.

3) The East Timorese judicial system should be properly resourced by the
international community including its non-legal functions such as
translation facilities, administrative support, transportation, etc.

4) We welcome the establishment of the Reception, Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, and trust that its work will complement and reinforce the work
of the judiciary and the serious crimes unit, rather than place additional
burdens upon it.

5) The international community should continue all of the above support
well beyond 20 May 2002 Independence Day.

6) The Indonesian government authorities should compensate East Timor as
well as individual citizens, for all damage and loss of life inflicted by
its armed forces and proxies since the beginning of 1999.

7) The remaining militias in West Timor must now be effectively disarmed
and prosecuted if necessary, so that potential future cross-border
destabilisation is averted. This will enable the remaining refugees to
return to East Timor if they so wish. In addition, all remaining armed
groups within East Timor should now be fully disarmed.