Rights groups laud UN move on RI war crimes tribunal
Rights groups laud UN move on RI war crimes tribunal
Agencies, Jakarta
Human rights groups on Tuesday hailed a United Nations panel recommendation that an international tribunal be formed to try Indonesian military officers accused of violence in East Timor in 1999 and attacks on the United Nations mission there.
"We agree with the UN's Commission of Experts that continued strong international involvement is essential to ensure that impunity does not prevail for the ... crimes of Indonesia's security forces in East Timor," John M. Miller of the New York- based East Timor and Indonesia Action Network told the Associated Press.
The panel submitted its 160-page report to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recently.
Though the report was exclusively for Annan, the details of the recommendations of the panel were published in the Australia's The Age (The Sunday Age) on June 19, 2005.
Indonesian government is yet to officially respond to the report.
The panel was appointed by Annan in February to evaluate Indonesia's attempts to punish those responsible for the violence that erupted in East Timor after it voted to break free from Indonesia in a UN-organized referendum in 1999.
The panel's findings will concern Washington, which has been trying to re-establish contacts with Indonesia's military, claiming that the force is being reformed by Indonesia's new democratically elected government. Military ties were cut in 1999 by then-President Bill Clinton in the wake of the events in East Timor.
The independence ballot sparked a rampage by pro-Indonesian militias that left hundreds of people dead. The bloodshed only ended with the arrival of peacekeeping troops.
Later the same year, three international staffers - including an American - were murdered by a militia gang in the Indonesian half of Timor island where they were helping refugees from East Timor.
The five-judge commission examined the UN-initiated prosecutions in East Timor and a series of human rights trials in Jakarta, both of which failed to hold any higher-level perpetrators accountable.
In their report, the experts -- Justice Prafullachandra Bhagwati of India, Professor Yozo Yokota of Japan and Shaista Shameem of Fiji -- determined that Jakarta's efforts to secure justice had been "manifestly inadequate."
They recommended that Indonesia must be given six months to prepare credible trials. If it does not comply, the UN should invoke its charter to set up an international war crimes court for East Timor.
"For the past five years, the Indonesian government has taken every opportunity to obstruct justice," Miller said. "We are skeptical that Indonesia will in the near term hold credible trials or engage cooperatively with a continued serious crimes process in East Timor."
The International Center for Transitional Justice also expressed "strong support" for the panel's recommendations.
Earlier this month, the New York-based group, which assists countries pursuing accountability for past atrocities, issued a report entitled Justice Abandoned? about the Indonesian government's alleged efforts to circumvent the judicial process.