House urges the government to improve record in East Timor

JAKARTA (JP): A committee of the House of Representatives (DPR) urged the government yesterday to improve the human rights condition in East Timor in order to find a comprehensive solution to the problems in the country's youngest province.

"Efforts to completely solve the East Timor issue should at least be projected to a more fundamental improvement and repair of the human rights situation in East Timor," the Inter- Parliamentary Cooperation Committee said at a plenary meeting.

The committee report was read by Salvador J. Ximenes Soares, a legislator who hails from East Timor.

Soares said the government should listen to the voices and aspirations of the province's formal and informal leaders as well as the people, rather than pay too much attention to foreign opinions. "The East Timor problems which emerge abroad are reflections of what is happening in East Timor."

There should be better coordination between government agencies in handling the province, especially concerns on East Timor which arise in international forums, he added.

Soares said he joined the Indonesian delegation to this year's UN's Human Rights Commission conference in Geneva where East Timor was also discussed. "Repeated accusations of human rights violations in East Timor do little service to Indonesia's image."

The DPR committee once again reminded the government of the need to determine the whereabouts or the fate of 56 people who were officially declared missing after the bloody riot in Dili, the capital of East Timor, on Nov. 12, 1991 when troops clashed with demonstrators.

Cooperation

The government determined that around 50 people were killed in the riot while the rest were said to be missing.

Soares said the central government, the East Timor Provincial government and the Indonesia-Portugal Friendship Association (LPPI) should intensify their cooperation to avoid the emergence of new problems which could ruin Indonesia's struggle for international recognition of East Timor's integration.

Such cooperation is important especially in regard to the planned visit by Baere W. Ndiaye, a specialist on issues of torture, to East Timor next month, adding that the visit could serve as a turning point for Indonesia on East Timor.

He said that the invitation given to Ndiaye should be coupled with efforts to conduct dialogs with international NGOs such as Amnesty International and Asia Watch in order to reach similar perceptions and build mutual trust.

"There will be a time when those international NGOs will be given the chance to visit East Timor so that we can show them that the human rights situation in East Timor is not as bad as what has been described abroad," he said.

Soares told the House that the Indonesian delegation and the European Union have reached an agreement that Indonesia would take the necessary steps to release the people punished in relation to the Dili massacre. (par)