Pro-tribunal groups greet UN envoys in E. Timor

Pro-tribunal groups greet UN envoys in E. Timor

Reuters, Dili

United Nations experts tasked with reviewing the prosecution of human rights abuses surrounding East Timor's 1999 vote for independence arrived in Dili on Tuesday to calls for an international tribunal.

About 100 East Timorese students and activists rallied at the airport as the three legal experts landed, saying a joint truth commission planned by Dili and Jakarta would not deliver justice to the victims of Indonesian military-backed militias.

Last month, Indonesia and East Timor launched a joint truth commission in hopes of putting behind them a 1999 rampage in which the militias slaughtered about 1,000 East Timorese.

The move was also an effort to head off a parallel initiative by the United Nations.

But UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan went ahead and appointed an Indian judge, a Japanese law professor and a Fijian lawyer, to conduct a separate review, which Indonesia has dismissed as redundant.

"In the government, there are officials who have issued statements to the victims so that they forget 1999," said protest leader Xisto Cosantos.

Banners said: "We need justice" and "Bring the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity to the international tribunal."

Keen to improve relations with its bigger neighbor, the government of East Timor has rejected an international court.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former army general, is due to make an official visit to Dili on Friday.

Mainly Catholic East Timor finally became independent in May 2002 after two-and-a-half years of UN administration and nearly a quarter of a century of rule from Jakarta.

An Indonesian special human rights court has convicted six of 18 Indonesian military and police officers charged in connection with the violence, but five convictions were later overturned and an appeal of the sixth is pending.