'World has no trust in rights trials'
Kurniawan Hari and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The recent indictment of several Indonesian military officers in East Timor shows that the international community has no trust in either the ongoing human rights trial or the country's judiciary, a noted rights activist says.
Sholahuddin Wahid, deputy chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), said on Wednesday that the suspicion stemmed from the poor performance of the human rights tribunal, which had acquitted most of military and police officials prosecuted for gross human rights violations in East Timor in 1999.
A total of 18 military and police personnel, including three Army generals, and civilians were brought to trial for their role in the bloodshed in the run-up to, during, after the United Nations-sponsored referendum, in which the East Timorese people voted to break away from Indonesia in 1999.
The rampage, perpetrated by thousands of pro-Jakarta militias, claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed almost 80 percent of buildings and infrastructure there. It also drove some 250,000 East Timorese into West Timor, where they lived in squalid makeshift refugee camps. Most of them, however, have returned to East Timor.
The human rights court has acquitted most of the defendants despite international calls to bring to justice those responsible for the violence.
Sholahuddin said the human rights court was part of the country's judiciary, which is notorious for corruption and unfairness.
"Our judicial system is far from satisfactory, but that's what we have," he said, suggesting that East Timor should wait for the results of the human rights trial here.
East Timor, Indonesia's former 27th province, had charged, among others, former TNI chief Gen. (Ret) Wiranto, Lt. Gen. Kiki Syahnakri, Maj. Gen. Zaky Anwar Makarim, and Maj. Gen. Adam Damiri, with crimes against humanity and asked Indonesia to repatriate those implicated in the violence.
Sholahuddin said the fact that prosecutors failed to bring Wiranto, who had been considered by some to be the person most responsible for the violence, to justice showed that Indonesia was unable to administer justice.
"But, maybe the international community would remain suspicious even if Wiranto went to trial as well," he said.
In 2001, the House of Representatives said the human rights trial was needed to prevent international intervention in the East Timor case.
House Deputy Speaker Soetardjo Suryoguritno said then that the case should be solved immediately in order to prevent intervention by outsiders.
On Wednesday, the House's defense and foreign affairs commission threw its support behind Wiranto, saying that an indictment by prosecutors in East Timor was simply a political maneuver to discredit Indonesia.
The commission suggested that all parties respect the ad hoc court specifically organized to try perpetrators of human rights abuse in East Timor.
The meeting also recommended the government pay more attention to the East Timor issue and proposed the formation of a small team to assess the case.
"The commission rejects any attempts to make (the legal case of) the human rights abuse into a political issue, mainly an indictment of Pak Wiranto and his associates," commission deputy chairman Effendy Choirie said, summarizing a more than three-hour long hearing with former defense minister and former chief of the armed forces Gen. (ret) Wiranto, former minister of foreign affairs Ali Alatas, and former legal adviser for the military Natabaya.
The hearing was held apparently to respond to the indictment by East Timor prosecutors of Wiranto for gross human rights violations after East Timor's break away from Indonesia.
During the meeting, Wiranto insisted that there was no thought, intention, plan, or even action to decimate East Timor.