Implications of the Liquisa tragedy

Implications of the Liquisa tragedy

A military council is probing the deaths of six people in the Liquisa regency in East Timor on Jan. 12. Law expert T. Mulya Lubis examines the issue from both national and international points of view.

JAKARTA (JP): What actually happened in Liquisa? Newspaper reports say that six East Timorese, suspected to be sympathizers of the Fretilin rebel movement, were killed in an ambush. Tragically, one of them was a village chief who, on the previous day, had visited the local subdistrict office.

In the aftermath, the military, including the chief of the Udayana Military Command and the Armed Forces commander, stated that none of the military personnel had violated policy in this incident. Military procedure was said to have been strictly followed. All enemies who pose a danger should be overcome. This is just the way the military rules work. In a war, the choice is very limited: To kill or to be killed.

The question is, was there really a war situation in Liquisa? Was the incident so serious that resorting to bullets was necessary? Was there sufficient reason to believe that they had close ties with the rebels? Was there no other less violent way to enforce security and order?

We certainly do not know precisely everything that took place there. The official report differs from the unofficial version, not to mention the reports from foreign mass media. Which one should we believe?

The Liquisa incident was different from the November 1991 Dili incident. The scale was smaller. However, the Liquisa incident was nonetheless a case of violation of human rights: the right to live and the right to differ in opinion. Therefore, it stands to reason that many regret that the incident happened in the first place. Have we failed to learn a lesson from the Dili incident?

The main point is, the Liquisa case should be resolved in an open manner and in accordance to the law. In this context, the results of the fact-finding team from our National Commission on Human Rights and the Officers' Honor Council will bear a very important meaning.

We are grateful that the commission has underlined its finding that human rights were violated through torture followed by shooting that led to the demise of those six people in Liquisa. It has acknowledged that the hitherto "security and order" approach was misinterpreted. This report is an encouraging one and is proof that the commission has not been acting as a public relations agent for the government.

The fact that the conclusion of that report is different from earlier military findings should not alarm us since the two bodies obviously have different points of view. This does not mean that the commission's report will be useless or treated merely as additional information. Every one of us, including the Armed Forces, should respect the commission's report.

Failure to do so will result in the loss of credibility of the commission and its raison d'etre.

There is no need to question the significance of the reports of the commission and the military. Both of those bodies owe it to history to prove their own independence and integrity. If they fail to report the facts, or if they hide anything from the public, no future national fact-finding team will earn the trust of the public -- either domestic or international. What will happen then is that we will have to yield to international demands for the assignment of an international fact-finding team or a UN special rapporteur to investigate cases such as this one. Should this happen, the big stride forward of establishing the National Investigation Commission for the Dili incident in 1991 will become totally meaningless.

It is therefore reassuring that there is reason to believe that the human rights commission is treating the Liquisa case with the utmost effort.

Another no less important task for the Officers' Honor Council, or a court of law, is to follow up on all of the findings gathered hitherto. We hope that justice can be done, and that there will be no political engineering. We hope that freedom of the court and the due process of law will be fully guaranteed, so that any flaws in the 1993 court proceedings in the trial of rebel leader Alexandre Xanana Gusmao will not repeat themselves.

It appeared unjust to give Xanana limited time to read his own defense statement only to have the text widely distributed by Amnesty International later on. It seemed that his right to the best legal counsel and attorney of his own choice was restricted. The impression was that Xanana was assisted in finding an attorney considered to have sufficient knowledge of violations of the due process of law. In other words, it seems the appointed attorney could not have been expected to provide an optimal defense on behalf of his client.

We hope that all of these allegations were wrong, although it has not been easy to forget about the assumptions altogether, particularly after the filing of the request for clemency for and on behalf of Xanana.

All of this may seem trivial but in this era of globalization a trivial issue can easily snowball and become a major problem, particularly when it has something to do with human lives. In addition, our image as a nation could be ruined if we fail to follow the due process of law. Therefore, great courage and a strong political will are required now in settling the Liquisa case. If indeed there is no guilty party found in the incident, the basis for determining this should be completely disclosed to the public. If a guilty party can be pinpointed, that party should be sentenced according to the law.

If the impact of this particular incident forces us to re- evaluate our policy on East Timor, so be it. We should realize that such a review would never be a sin in the eyes of history.

The writer is a noted human rights activist and a Jakarta- based corporate lawyer.