East Timor rights trial needs int'l pressure
East Timor rights trial needs int'l pressure
Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Activists have urged the international community to ensure that
justice is served against all perpetrators of the gross human
rights violations in East Timor, now that hopes for a fair trial
have evaporated.
The cases, in which 15 Indonesian Military (TNI) officers are
implicated, seem to have been forgotten, especially after the
recent United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR)
decision to drop them from its agenda.
However, rights activist Hendardi said there was still a
chance for justice, if the international community would pursue
the cases through an international tribunal.
"It is the responsibility of the international community to
ensure that justice is upheld in these cases. It will be
difficult to rely on domestic pressure," Hendardi said on
Tuesday.
The UNHCHR is only one of the possible means for settling the
cases, because the opportunity still remains for these cases to
be brought to the international tribunal at The Hague, he said.
Hendardi explained that there were certain criteria that the
Indonesian ad hoc human rights tribunal should adhere to in order
to keep the UN from interfering.
"The domestic court should abide by international standards,
be impartial and independent and hand down appropriate
punishment. Should we fail to comply, there is always a chance
that these cases will go to the international tribunal," he said.
Indonesia has come under the international spotlight for its
alleged involvement in human rights violations that marked East
Timor's independence from the country in 1999.
Many international inquiries were launched by the UN and other
human rights watchdogs into these violations in the years since,
but no satisfactory results have been achieved.
Indonesia insisted on settling the case domestically by
establishing an ad hoc human rights tribunal, which has now
acquitted most of the defendants, and those found guilty were
only given light sentences.
Although the result has drawn criticism both from the national
and international communities, the only "punishment" Indonesia
has received regarding the East Timor atrocities has come from
the United States, which has maintained a military embargo on
Indonesia since 1999.
Even the East Timorese government has chosen to put the issue
of the human rights violations behind it, for the sake of
establishing good ties with Indonesia.
A member of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas
HAM), Salahuddin Wahid, agreed that other avenues should be
pursued to make sure that justice is upheld in the East Timor
human rights cases.
"However, we have to prevent any attempt to bring these cases
to an international tribunal by improving our own trial system
instead," Salahuddin suggested on Wednesday.
He admitted that currently, the defense's arguments and legal
processes in the East Timor cases was far from satisfying, but
said that this was the only platform for dealing with the East
Timor human rights violations.
"We do need international pressure, but will not open the
possibility for an international tribunal," Salahuddin remarked.
Earlier, noted lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis said that despite the
unsatisfactory legal efforts against the alleged perpetrators of
human rights violations in East Timor, the move to ensure that
the law was enforced should continue.
He reminded that no citizen was above the law, and that
impunity should be stopped.
Hendardi pointed to several examples of human rights abuses in
Rwanda and Serbia, in which the UN chose to step into the legal
process and brought the cases to the international tribunal at
The Hague.
"There is still a chance for justice to be upheld in the East
Timor mayhem. I believe the picture of the legal process of these
cases is not as gloomy as many people have thought," he said.