UN official admits crime hard to handle in East Timor
UN official admits crime hard to handle in East Timor
DILI (AP): Crime is on the rise in East Timor, still
recovering from the lawlessness that followed its break with
Indonesia, and an international police commander said on Tuesday
his force is being overwhelmed.
"We are worried about the increasing level of violence that
the staff are encountering on a daily basis," said Graeme Cairns,
commander of the UN civilian police in the capital, Dili.
Cairns says his force faces an uphill battle against criminals
because they do not have the numbers it would take to combat
rising crime.
The number of murders, rapes and robberies has been on the
increase since tens of thousands of refugees streamed into Dili
in the aftermath of the Indonesian withdrawal, he said.
Officers were threatened on a popular beach near Dili recently
when a man accused of belonging to a pro-Indonesia militia gang
was attacked by a group of toughs.
Soldiers of the international peacekeeping force were forced
to shoot into the air to disperse the attackers.
Pro-Indonesia militias are blamed for the violence and
destruction in East Timor that followed the Aug. 30 referendum in
which the overwhelming majority voted for independence. Indonesia
invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975.
When international peacekeepers arrived on Sept. 20 to restore
order, most militiamen fled to neighboring West Timor.
The UN mission guiding East Timor to independence plans to
bring in 1,640 international police in to keep order. So far,
only 260 have arrived.
"We normally work in pairs, and on more than one occasion
we've had a patrol arrive at a confrontation that involves a
hundred people with weapons," Cairns said.
Even aside from the difficulty of protecting the public,
officers themselves face the danger of attack, mainly from large
groups of unemployed young men preying on civilians, Cairns said.
"It hasn't reached the stage yet where our officers have been
seriously assaulted, but it's changing," he said.
The United Nations is working to reconstruct a functioning
judiciary system. It effectively collapsed after the exodus of
all Indonesian civil servants.
The Transitional Judicial Service Commission is scheduled to
appoint on Wednesday two investigative judges, two prosecutors, a
panel of three criminal law judges and a panel of three civil law
judges.
"We won't have a jury system," said Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, the
UN's principal legal advisor. "The previous Indonesian court
system ... simply had professional judges (and) we intend to
continue this system."