Rights abusers should be executed: East Timor leader
Rights abusers should be executed: East Timor leader
Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Independent Indonesian legal experts lamented on Thursday the
ad hoc human rights court's verdict against former pro-Jakarta
militia leader Eurico Guterres, saying the sentence was too
lenient for such a crime against humanity charged against him.
Ifdhal Kasim of the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy
(ELSAM) said on Thursday that the panel of judges should have
considered such an extraordinary crime the common enemy of people
across the world.
"Giving Eurico a minimum sentence and allowing him to roam
free, totally neglects the gravity of the crime," Ifdhal said.
In a statement released earlier in the day, ELSAM said the
judges had again failed to set a good precedence for human rights
trials in the future.
The whole process of the landmark trials for atrocities
committed in East Timor had so far shown that they were unable to
protect or uphold human rights violations in the country, it
said.
ELSAM also regretted the fact that only civilians (of East
Timorese origin) had so far been convicted in the trial. Eurico
was the second defendant after former East Timor governor Abilio
Soares was handed three years, while all the military and police
officers tried so far were acquitted of all charges.
"The judges restricted themselves to the weak charges built by
prosecutors who perceived the East Timor mayhem as a mere
communal conflict. The court has allowed anyone connected to a
state institution to be exonerated and cleared of any
involvement," it said.
On Wednesday, the court sentenced Eurico to 10 years in jail
for his role in a massacre at the home of East Timor pro-
independence leader Manuel Carrascalao in Dili three years ago.
Previously, the same court sentenced Abilio to three years in
jail due to his failure to stop massive killing, as well as arson
attacks across the region following a vote for independence in
1999.
In a statement to the Portuguese news agency, Lusa, about the
court decision, Carrascalao, whose teenage son was killed in the
attack, said that human rights criminals should be given a death
sentence.
"I strongly lament that criminals like these have not been
executed. They killed innocents who have not done anything
wrong," he said. "Those unfortunate people, like my 16-year-old
son and the 17 other refugees, had not done anything wrong to
anyone."
Separately, Topo Susanto of the University of Indonesia said
that the implementation of the Law No. 26/1999 on Human Rights
Tribunal had so far reflected the brotherhood among security
personnel and the courts, instead of efforts to uphold human
rights.
"Looking back to the past, the law was born under
international pressure and the demand for reform. All of these,
of course, made political motives dominate the whole process at
the House of Representatives, but failed to provide grounds that
the gross human rights violations in East Timor had a strong
relation with the government policy at that time," Topo said.
He further said that any effort to review the law would be
fruitless, because lawmakers and members of the judiciary in the
country could not care less about the people's aspirations.