E. Timor amnesty is injustice: NGO
E. Timor amnesty is injustice: NGO
Agencies
The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch on Saturday urged East
Timor's parliament to exclude serious human rights crimes from a
general amnesty bill that proposes to pardon culprits in the
country's 1999 bloodbath.
"The law could undermine the work of Timorese and
international bodies investigating and prosecuting the grave
abuses that took place in East Timor during the country's 1999
referendum on independence from Indonesia," said the human rights
advocate group in a press statement made available in Jakarta.
The bill, introduced in parliament last week, is part of the
government's efforts to reconcile with the past and move forward
as the country prepares to celebrate the second anniversary of
its independence May 20.
"It is bitterly ironic to mark East Timor's second anniversary
of nationhood by undermining justice for the most serious crimes
that accompanied the country's independence," said Charmain
Mohamed, East Timor researcher for Human Rights Watch.
"There can't be reconciliation without judicial accountability
for violations of basic international human rights," she added.
In a United Nations-backed referendum in August 1999, the East
Timorese voted for separation from Indonesia, unleashing a wave
of murder and mayhem blamed on pro-Jakarta militias which the
Indonesian military did little to prevent.
More than 1,000 were killed and 500,000 were forced to flee in
the anarchy, which had to be quelled by a UN peace-keeping force.
A UN-created Special Panel for Serious Crimes in East Timor
has indicted among others four Indonesian generals, including
retired Gen. Wiranto who is now a presidential candidate, for
committing "serious crimes" in the 1999 incidents.
He was then defense minister and military commander-in-chief.
Also, the Dili-based Judicial System Monitoring Program -- an
independent group working since 2001 to monitor the new nation's
justice system -- said that the law, if applied, "will grant
impunity to high-level economic crimes such as bribery and fraud
committed."