On East Timor issue
I thank John Hargreaves for his comments East Timor issue published in The Jakarta Post May 2 on my article (UN statement good deal for RI, April 25). He is correct in asserting that the UN Commission on Human Rights is not the forum to settle the East Timor question.
Mr. Hargreaves suggests that the talks to settle the political status of East Timor include the participation of East Timorese. This is not a new idea.
I remind him, first of all, that it is internationally accepted that the East Timor issue is strictly a problem between Indonesia and Portugal, and as such the attempt to solve it involve only these two parties, namely the foreign ministers (and senior officials) of the governments of Indonesia and Portugal, which are mediated by the UN secretary-general.
There was actually an attempt to include East Timorese "representatives" in the negotiation before it started in 1983, but both governments agreed to drop this idea because they realized it was a non-starter, for they could not agree on who these "representatives" would be.
The present negotiating arrangement, which is internationally endorsed, has of course severely irritated self-important personalities, such as Jose Ramos-Horta, who insist on taking part in it. However, Indonesian East Timorese have made it clear that they are not interested in negotiating with Portugal, for decolonization has been completed and diplomatic negotiation is now the business of Jakarta. There is no prospect whatsoever that Indonesian East Timorese would ever be interested in negotiating the political status of East Timor with Jose Ramos-Horta, whose political and moral credibility was forever shattered in the eyes of integrationists.
The Indonesian government's policy toward anti-integrationists is not as rigid as Mr. Hargreaves suggests. The government has been firm, and it has to be, on those who terrorize and commit violence and destroy public property, but the government has also given amnesty to separatists on many occasions.
More significantly, Indonesian East Timorese have been willing to reconcile with East Timorese of different political persuasions. Ambassador Lopes Da Cruz, with the full support of the government, started this reconciliation process with Dr. Abilio Araujo in 1993 in London.
The UN secretary-general then picked up the idea to create the All Inclusive Intra East Timorese Dialog (AIETD), which includes Jose Ramos-Horta and some members of his group. The Indonesian East Timorese see the AIETD as a continuation of the reconciliation process, and also as a confidence-building measure to help improve the atmosphere for the tripartite talks. At no time, however, is the AIETD intended to be a forum for the East Timorese to negotiate the political status of East Timor.
On human rights, I fully agree with Mr. Hargreaves on the importance of this issue, and of the need to address it in a nonpolitical and nonpropagandistic way.
But I also think that in East Timor, human rights is not the cause of the problem, but rather the symptom of a conflict which exploded 22 years ago, the residue of which continues to linger today.
We are striving to heal this conflict, but on this point I think Mr. Hargreaves is being too hard on Indonesia and too soft on Portugal. To many Indonesians, and especially to East Timorese, Portugal today is behaving no different than its predecessors did 23 years ago, by pursuing a divisive policy toward the East Timorese, by choosing sides, and encouraging conflict rather soothing it.
Portugal's support for the Congress of Resistance, held in Lisbon last April, attests to this. Ultimately, the key to improving human rights does not lie in, as Mr. Hargreaves suggest, "constant and vigorous monitoring by non-governmental human rights organizations", but in the political will of Portugal and the separatist groups within and outside East Timor to de-escalate conflict, reverse radicalization and halt militancy -- all of which are on the rise. Failure to do this would only imperil human rights in East Timor.
DINO PATTI DJALAL
Jakarta