House urges the government to improve record in East Timor
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)