What of truth commission for East Timor?<\/p>\n
Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam<\/p>\n
Indonesia has asked East Timor to initiate a joint-commission
\nof truth and reconciliation to resolve the issue of the violence
\nduring and after the United Nations-organized vote in East Timor
\nin 1999.<\/p>\n
With some 1,500 deaths, a capital destroyed, hundreds of
\nthousands forcibly deported and 17 of only 18 defendants
\nacquitted (one more has an appeal pending), the crimes against
\nhumanity allegedly committed by the Army and its proxies, have
\napparently been completed with total impunity. But who, then, is
\nresponsible for the mayhem?<\/p>\n
During Dili's final observance of Indonesian Independence Day
\non Aug. 17, 1999, then governor Jose Abilio Osorio Soares proudly
\nannounced before UN diplomats and community leaders that East
\nTimor would continue to celebrate the day because he believed the
\ncountry would remain part of Indonesia. As he spoke, violence was
\nsweeping the country, and in the hall, this writer recalls, some
\ncivil servants whispered to each other with a sense of disbelief.
\nThey were right: A few weeks later, the majority (79 percent) of
\nthe people voted for independence.<\/p>\n
Yet the governor knew better. Abilio must have been aware of
\nlocal anxieties and the upcoming danger, for example, what the
\nsoldiers and militiamen would do when defeat eventually came --
\nthe "morning after (the vote)" problem had by then become an
\ninternational concern. Pro-Jakarta militiamen said the
\nadministration authorized them to set up check points along the
\nmain roads and ports soon after the vote -- indicating that, far
\nfrom rogue elements fighting in a "civil war", the violence had
\ninvolved some planning.<\/p>\n
When Abilio was finally acquitted by the court, law experts
\nwarned that the verdict could endanger Indonesia's position in
\nthe international community, as the trials have been widely seen
\nas a sham to avoid an international tribunal.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Gen. Wiranto's adviser, Muladi, welcomed it as a step
\nto avert international criticism that only military men were
\nfreed from punishment, while Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda
\nregretted it, saying it would "erode the credibility of the
\nrights tribunal".<\/p>\n
In other words, rather than reflecting on the unjust treatment
\nof the victims, Jakarta was concerned about the image of the
\nmilitary and the rights trials -- the two institutions most
\nresponsible for impunity, whose credibility was thus at stake.<\/p>\n
A negative, possibly devastating, judgment could be the
\noutcome if the expert commission initiated by the UN secretary-
\ngeneral -- instead of Jakarta's proposed truth commission -- is
\nallowed to probe the way Jakarta handled the case.<\/p>\n
One expert who witnessed and researched the case is Professor
\nGeoffrey Robinson of the University of California. The Canadian
\nIndonesianist was a political adviser of UN Mission in East timor
\n(UNAMET), which organized East Timor's referendum. His report to
\nthe United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human
\nRights in Geneva, East Timor 1999, Crimes against Humanity was
\nfor years suppressed, but is soon to be published.<\/p>\n
"In both 1965 (left-wing massacres) and 1999 (E. Timor),"
\nRobinson told Radio Netherlands recently, "the Army was directly
\ninvolved in organizing the killings. People talked of the 1999
\ncase as if it was just the work of some rogue elements, but it's
\nclear that the Army was involved in mobilizing their own soldiers
\nto take part in the crimes. The 1999 case was in front of the
\ninternational community, that's the big difference ...<\/p>\n
It's not easy, however, to explain how the massacres, rampage
\nand rapes were organized. Robinson said, "What I think happened
\nwas that several Indonesian Military (TNI) officers and other
\nofficers in Jakarta spelled out a general strategy to mobilize
\nthe militia groups and to use terror and violence in order to
\nintimidate people and to punish them. And within that strategy,
\nas you went down the command, there were more specific ideas
\nabout what to do. So, yes, there was planning at some level, a
\ngeneral strategy, but that doesn't mean that a particular
\nindividual planned a particular massacre. There is no smoking
\ngun ... but the links between the formal Army commands and the
\nmilitia groups are well documented.<\/p>\n
"That doesn't change the level of responsibility", Robinson
\ninsisted. For "the line of responsibility is only partly informal
\nand some of the formal lines of command were still operating ...
\nProbably the Army's Special Forces (Kopassus) had a separate,
\nparallel command, controlling certain activities separately from
\nthe formal territorial lines of command". This conclusion is
\nparallel to UN investigator James Dunn's report of Feb. 2001.<\/p>\n
Mass murderers like to ensure and measure their success.
\nHitler did it at the special Wansee conference and the Khmer
\nRouge kept lists of victims that went into meticulous detail. Not
\nso in the Timor case. But there were documents of a contingency
\nplan to transport people, which according to Dili's Yayasan Hak
\nsuggests a preceding scorched-earth plan. This was the directive
\nfrom the Office of the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal
\nand Security Affairs for the Army and police district commanders
\nin Dili.<\/p>\n
All these point to the use of Army infrastructure and other
\nnetworks to operate the militia groups. Examples abound -- like
\nattacks on churches in Liquisa and Suai and on Carrascalao's
\nhouse.<\/p>\n
The planning apparently involved the TNI headquarters, Army
\nStrategic Reserves Command (Kostrad), Kopassus and the Armed
\nForce's Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS), but also key
\nmembers of President BJ Habibie's Cabinet. One was the defense
\nminister and TNI chief Gen. Wiranto, who let his soldiers do what
\nthey did -- a very serious omission. But at a higher level the
\ncoordinating minister Gen. ret. Feisal Tanjung played a key role
\nas he chaired a team, known by its acronym TP4OKTT, which
\nincluded ministers of home and foreign affairs, of defense,
\njustice and the BAIS chief. According to Robinson, it is this
\ngroup that formulated the general strategy.<\/p>\n
The Indonesia-East Timor Truth Commission is yet to spell out
\nits aim and modus operandi. However, being a truth commission, it
\nwill have -- if any -- limited judicial power. To resolve the
\nissue, a truly credible court -- a hybrid or international
\ntribunal -- should precede such a commission, check the above
\nfindings, and let justice take its course.<\/p>\n
The writer is a journalist with Radio Netherlands, Amsterdam.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/what-of-truth-commission-for-east-timor-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }