Suspects in East Timor case to be questioned
JAKARTA (JP): The 19 suspects accused of human rights violations during last year's violence in East Timor are expected to face the first round of questioning next week.
Attorney General's Office spokesman Yushar Yahya said a summons will be sent on Tuesday. This should give them enough time to come to Jakarta to face questioning by the joint team set up by the Office to investigate the case, Yushar added.
"Many suspects currently reside far away from Jakarta. The questioning is expected to be held on Monday, with all the 19 suspects being questioned by the 64-member team on the same day," Yushar told journalists at his office.
The 19 suspects consisting of military officers, government officials and civilians, were deemed responsible for five specific incidents before and after the Aug. 30 ballot last year, which is the time frame being focused on by the Attorney General's Office.
Conspicuously missing, however, were former Indonesia Military chief Gen. (ret) Wiranto, former intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Zacky Anwar Makarim and Jakarta-backed militia leader Eurico Guterres who were all implicated in an earlier rights inquiry report.
Meanwhile, later on Monday, a gathering of organizations which supported wide-ranging regional autonomy in East Timor urged investigators to also question parties responsible for safeguarding and guaranteeing security during the United Nations (UN)-sponsored direct ballot.
Uni Timor Aswain chief Domingos Soares said at least three parties should be also be accountable for occurrences during the campaign and after the ballot, namely the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) members in the Commission for Peace and Stability (KPS), the National Police and the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET).
"If there were gun fights, Komnas HAM members should also be blamed for not disarming the people before the ballot. And to be fair, we have to admit that both the pro-integration and pro- independence supporters are implicated in the terror and violence," Soares told The Jakarta Post.
Soares also demanded that the government probe incidents which erupted soon after Portugal left the territory in 1975 and led to a civil war.
"The clashes made the region insecure which then led to the ballot. So those incidents should be included in the probe to get a fair solution in the human rights abuse case," he added.
However, Soares said, the government is on the right track with its determination to solve the case according to the law and without any help from the international community.
"If we use an international tribunal for the case, it means we have shifted a legal problem to a political one. And that's a bad precedence," he said.
Commenting on the ballot which voted overwhelmingly to reject the offer of wide-ranging autonomy within Indonesia, Soares still maintained that there was evidence that the results had been engineered.
Soares said his group would initiate an internal meeting of Timorese, called Timorese Biti Bot (huge mat) for a reconciliation and a discussion to find the best solution of ending the conflict among themselves.
"We don't need any sponsor for the meeting, even from the international community. We will use our own customs and traditions to solve the problems." (bby)