'World has no trust in rights trials'
'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.