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.