Timor Leste's past: Let it be or bare it all?<\/p>\n
John McBeth
\nThe Straits Times
\nAsia News Network\/Singapore<\/p>\n
It was five years ago. Sitting at the kitchen table in a
\nsmall, nondescript house on Dili's sun-baked foreshore, the soon-
\nto-be president of Timor Leste was talking about the future.<\/p>\n
\"If you really want peace, if you really want stability, you
\nhave to put everything behind you,\" said Xanana Gusmao, who led
\nthe leftist Revolutionary Front of Independent Timor-Leste
\n(Fretilin) resistance forces against Indonesian rule. \"If not you
\nwill live under a trauma, the ghosts of the past. You can't see
\nthe future.\"<\/p>\n
Gusmao has known the pain of repression more than most. But in
\nthe face of criticism from human rights groups and thousands of
\nhis brutalized countrymen, he has stuck stubbornly to that creed
\nof reconciliation.<\/p>\n
That is why he has been reluctant so far to release the 2,500-
\npage report of Timor Leste's independent Reception, Truth and
\nReconciliation Commission (CAVR) on crimes against humanity
\ncommitted by all sides during Indonesia's 24-year occupation of
\nthen-East Timor.<\/p>\n
Contrast that with CAVR chairman Aniceto Guterres Lopes, the
\nquietly-spoken son of a former right-wing Timorese Democratic
\nUnion (UDT) member, whose forewarned family had moved safely
\nacross the border into West Timor at the time of the 1975
\nIndonesian invasion.<\/p>\n
Lopes, who earned his law degree at Bali's Udayana University,
\nsaid that while he did not lose any family members to violence
\nduring those 24 years and was never physically abused himself, he
\nstill considered himself a \"victim of the right to self-
\ndetermination\".<\/p>\n
Still, it seems ironic somehow that while Gusmao the guerrilla
\nfighter wants to bury the past and make up with his former enemy,
\nthe 38-year-old lawyer is intent on keeping faith with history
\nand with those who suffered at the hands of the Indonesian
\nmilitary.<\/p>\n
\"The report was not made just for the current government or
\nparliament,\" he said in a recent interview with The Straits Times
\nin Jakarta, where he was attending a meeting of the Indonesia-
\nTimor Leste Truth and Friendship Commission (TFC). \"The report
\nand everything in it was made to guarantee our future.\"<\/p>\n
The TFC is struggling to make itself relevant in the face of
\nwidespread skepticism that it is merely there to whitewash the
\npast.<\/p>\n
\"There's no binding clause that requires the government to
\nimplement the recommendations,\" he said, referring to provisions
\nwhich call for everything from the extradition of Indonesian
\nmilitary officers to further international sanctions if justice
\nis not served.<\/p>\n
\"It depends a lot on the way politics evolves. The important
\nthing is to have the political will, otherwise the
\nrecommendations will remain nothing more than that -- just
\nrecommendations,\" he pointed out.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Lopes appears to be as frustrated as anyone that
\nGusmao continues to sit on the fruits of the commission's three
\nyears of work which, together with two roomfuls of supporting
\ndocuments, is destined to become the country's historic record of
\na period most East Timorese are trying to forget, if not forgive.
\nLopes is also dismissive of the president's public criticism of
\nthe report and its recommendations as being excessively
\nidealistic.<\/p>\n
\"If the president thinks the report is idealistic or not
\nrealistic or beyond the government's capability to implement,
\nthen that is a political problem,\" said Lopes, a native of the
\nborder district of Bobonaro, where the Indonesian troops had made
\ntheir initial thrust.<\/p>\n
\"But it is not impossible that the government following the
\nnext elections will decide to implement the recommendations. We
\ndid our job, we produced the report and we made those
\nrecommendations in our capacity as commissioners.<\/p>\n
\"We did not produce the report because of political
\nmotivations or in response to political dynamics. It was
\nimportant that we had to think about how to manage the
\nexpectations of all concerned, in particular the victims. We
\ndidn't do this to please some people, but to keep faith with the
\nmandate that was given to us. If some people find the
\nrecommendations too idealistic and impossible to implement, then
\nperhaps they should just accept them first and then explain why
\nthey can't be implemented.\"<\/p>\n
By all accounts, the task of questioning Timorese and taking
\nstatements about their harrowing experiences has been a cathartic
\nexperience. I was given an insight into all this by the CAVR's
\nlegal adviser, Australian barrister Pat Burgess, when he gave me
\na guided tour last year of the same prison on the outskirts of
\nDili where political prisoners had been detained.<\/p>\n
Much of what he told me then of their mistreatment is there in
\nthe report, though his job was mainly to help bring about
\nreconciliation among the Timorese.<\/p>\n
The experiences under the harsh Indonesian regime were still
\nfresh in many minds. But so too was the bitterness over the civil
\nwar which erupted between Fretilin and the UDT before the
\nIndonesian invasion, tinged this time with guilt that went far
\nbeyond the senseless loss of 3,000 lives.<\/p>\n
It was that conflict which gave the Indonesians the gilt-edged
\ninvitation to invade and prevent a supposedly nascent communist
\nregime from taking root in the heart of a region already
\ntransformed by dramatic events in Indochina.<\/p>\n
Burgess, who formerly headed the United Nations Transitional
\nAuthority in East Timor's (Untaet) human rights unit, talked of
\nthe tears that flowed at village reconciliation sessions as
\npeople unburdened themselves of things they had not talked about
\nin 25 years.<\/p>\n
Lopes and his panel were not immune to the same emotions. He
\nsaid that when the 36 commissioners got down to reading some of
\nthe more stark chapters in the final draft of their report, \"we
\nwere all so traumatized that the meeting had to be adjourned
\ntemporarily because we were all crying\".<\/p>\n
It was the same with the CAVR's 500-strong staff. \"Perhaps
\nthis can help explain the debate over the report's idealism,\"
\nsaid Lopes, speaking in Indonesian.<\/p>\n
\"This doesn't mean the commissioners cannot be impartial. It
\njust means they have feelings. But conscience is not the only
\nconsideration, there are other factors too, including political
\nrealities. So it is naive for people to think of us as
\nunrealistic or inconsiderate of the national interest.<\/p>\n
\"The commission's two major objectives were the search for the
\ntruth and the effort at reconciliation. In the process of
\nbringing families together, we obtained information from them.
\nFrom that data, we crosschecked and analyzed to produce a
\nconclusion. I don't think there is any binding clause that
\nrequires the government to implement the recommendations. It
\ndepends a lot on the evolving politics.\"<\/p>\n
Lopes added that it is difficult to gauge the degree of
\nbitterness that the Timorese still feel towards the Indonesian
\nmilitary. \"The year 1999 and this year are quite different,\" he
\nnoted. \"Likewise the events of the past.\"<\/p>\n
Gusmao, now the elder statesman, appears willing to let all
\nthat go in the interests of securing the country's future. But
\nfor Lopes, it is simply a matter of listening to the voices.<\/p>\n
\"We had a mechanism in which everyone we interviewed was given
\nthe opportunity to convey their expectations -- and that is why
\nwe felt the need to make the recommendations we did.\"<\/p>",
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