Ever illusive justice

Ever illusive justice

Many Indonesian officials and legal experts have gone up in
arms after hearing the news on Tuesday that East Timor has
indicted seven top Indonesian Military (TNI) officers on charges
of crimes against humanity. The typical official response was
that since East Timor has no authority to issue such an
indictment, Jakarta would ignore the summonses issued for the
Army generals.

Experts in international laws backed the government's stance.
Besides lacking the authority to indict, they pointed to the
absence of an extradition treaty between Indonesia and East Timor
as a reason for not complying, even if Jakarta had wanted to.

Their arguments, therefore, rests largely on legal
technicalities. But can they seriously maintain a similar posture
from the point of justice? Can Indonesia ignore the call for
cooperation from a neighboring country to help uphold justice?

The seven TNI officers and a top civil servant are wanted by
East Timor for their alleged roles in the mayhem that erupted
there in the last weeks before the territory broke away from
Indonesia in October of 1999.

Hundreds if not thousands of people were murdered, and more
than 200,000 East Timorese were forced to leave their homes after
it became apparent that the pro-Indonesian forces were losing the
UN-sponsored vote on self-determination to the pro-independence
camp in early September, 1999.

While most of the atrocities were blamed on pro-Indonesian
militias, there have been suggestions that the TNI, which was in
charge of security in East Timor at the time, played a part in
instigating the violence.

This part about the TNI role was never clear, and this is what
the newly formed independent East Timor state is trying to
establish by issuing indictments against the TNI officers.

Heading the list is Gen. (ret) Wiranto, the TNI chief in 1999,
making him the man most responsible for the security, as well as
the safety of the people, in East Timor at the time.

Indonesia managed to evade international wrath over what
happened in East Timor in 1999 when it promised to bring those
TNI officers responsible for the mayhem to court. But as time
passes, it becomes clear that the Human Rights Court established
to hear the cases has failed in its job, which is to uphold
justice. Wiranto was never put on trial, and most of the officers
tried by the court were either acquitted or let off lightly.

Now with the trials of the East Timor mayhem reaching the
final stages, it is clear that Indonesia has failed to meet its
responsibilities as a member of the international community in
upholding justice. These trials, held in Jakarta, failed to
answer the single most important question: Who was, or were,
responsible for the atrocities? And consequently, to this day and
after so many trials, we have not seen anyone in Jakarta being
punished for those heinous crimes.

With the Human Rights Court in Indonesia failing to meet even
the basic expectations to uphold justice, it should come as no
surprise that Dili has now moved to indict the seven TNI
officers. And given that the East Timor administration receives
advisory assistance from the United Nations, it is also clear
that the international community, as well as the East Timorese
people, will not rest in their quest for justice.

It is not just the East Timorese who are finding that justice
is an elusive thing in Indonesia. Many Indonesians craving for
justice have also come across a thick brickwall. There are just
simply too many issues of human right violations committed by the
state and the military in the past, most notably in Aceh, Papua
and here in Jakarta, that have not been addressed by the court.
East Timorese must count themselves lucky because they have the
international community behind them in constantly putting the
pressure on the Indonesian government to act.

When Indonesia decided to let go of East Timor through the
referendum in 1999, it was with the strong expectation that it
would remove, once and for all, a controversial international
issue that had been "a pebble in the shoe", to use the expression
popularly used by officials then, for more than two decades.

More than three years has now passed, and it seems that this
"pebble" is still bugging Indonesia. We know that we have
ourselves to blame. We can run, but we cannot hide. Sooner or
later, we have to come to terms with the fact that Indonesia was
responsible for the 1999 mayhem in East Timor, and that some
people in the TNI should be held accountable.

If not the Human Rights court in Jakarta, this will happen in
a court in Dili, or in The Hague, where the International Court
of Justice resides. The choice is Indonesia's alone to make.