http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20070501.F05
Timor Leste 1999 or, how to sell lies
The Jakarta Post, Opinion and Editorial - May 01, 2007
Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam
The horrendous crimes committed in East Timor in 1999 continue to
haunt Indonesia. Just as the third round of the Joint Indonesia-Timor
Leste Commission for Truth and Friendship (CTF) was about to begin,
the United Nations sent a message of disapproval about the CTF's idea
of offering amnesty in exchange of the revealing of the truth by the
perpetrators.
That was the reason the UN chose not to send the former head of
UNAMET, Ian Martins, to testify before the commission; earlier, the
UN
has proposed that a commission of experts review the case. The sense
of injustice and troubled conscience about the lies surrounding the
matter has long been shared by victims, journalists and observers,
who
suffered or witnessed the carnage.
Asked about the meaning of the UN's letter, the CTF co-chairman,
Benjamin Mangkoedilaga, said he respected the UN's position, but
added
that he considered the UN's official letter to reflect Martins'
attitude, rather than the UN's as an institution. Yet, he expressed
pride that the UN had responded to the CTF's invitation, and hoped
the
ex-UNAMET chief would reconsider his refusal to attend the hearing.
Benjamin's contradictory statement ("a UN letter", but representing a
person, rather than the organization) is a conspicuous expression of
uneasiness in addressing the question of accountability for the
violence perpetrated by some of his country's institutions.
After all, Dili was sent back to "Year Zero" within a week, compared
to Cambodia under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, when the
same process was "achieved" within two years. It marked the end of
Indonesia's decades-long illegal occupation of its tiny neighbor.
About 1,400 victims were killed (including three journalists),
hundreds of thousands persecuted and deported to the west, women
raped, and the country's basic infrastructure destroyed as Indonesian
troops prepared to leave the country.
A number of generals, officials and militiamen were indicted, yet all
but one were released.
Impunity reigns. Now, almost a decade later, neither Indonesia nor
Timor Leste wants to even touch the issue. Unlike in the recent past,
the international community has decided to treat the matter as a
bilateral affair between the two countries -- in marked contrast to
the Bosnia-Hercegovina case in the 1990s, which led to U.S. bombing
and the ongoing international tribunal on the ex-Yugoslavia, which
prosecutes and punishes the authors and perpetrators of the violence.
In other words, the entire outcome is being dictated by geopolitics.
Not justice, but the geopolitics of inequality in international
relationships has decided to permit impunity, regardless of the
victims. The CTF, too, is a product of this.
Worse still, the crimes of 1999 were artificially separated from the
gross human rights violations that preceded them, despite the fact
that the 1999 events could only occur as a result of a decades-long
brutal military occupation.
The September mayhem obviously was just the tip of the iceberg. The
great crimes of the 1970s -- the invasion, Matebian annihilation,
Kraras killings, to mention but a few -- have been extensively
described by no less than eight thousand East Timorese and published
by the UN-commissioned CAVR.
Neither Jakarta, Dili nor the UN Security Council was willing to
respond to the report, which could have opened the way toward some
sort of internationally recognized tribunal. The geopolitical dictate
has turned into a big-states conspiracy to avoid an international
tribunal on East Timor.
Yet neither the UN nor, for that matter, Portugal, are innocent. The
roots of the matter go back to the May 5 New York Agreement. Since
the
occupied country of East Timor was defined as one of a "non-self
governing territory", all Indonesia had to do in 1999 was to return
to
the status-quo-ante.
This means that while Indonesia would have remained sovereign in East
Timor, it would allow the UN to hold a "popular consultation" (an
euphemism for a referendum) in order to resolve the final status of
the territory.
As a result, the entire responsibility for the security was
entrusted,
not to a UN force, but to the Indonesian security apparatus, i.e.,
the
Police, which was previously part of the armed forces (ABRI) and by
then, certainly in East Timor, was under the command of the Army. All
the UN and Portugal contributed was the Commission of Peace and
Stability (KPS), which was to preside over the maintenance of peace
and stability.
However, the reality in East Timor throughout May to September 1999
contradicted all aspects of this. The Army, in effect, instructed the
Police to turned a blind eye to militia violence. I was able to leave
Dili on Sept. 6, while the group of Indonesian observers I belonged
to
were forced to wander around the country to seek refuge while
continuing to be under threat.
There were abundant witnesses to the killings and deportations by
Army-sponsored militias, which were only made possible as extra
troops
and militiamen arrived Sept. 4, the day the UN announced the
pro-independence victory.
Crucially, the members of the KPS, which was supposed to monitor the
situation, had left the country even earlier. While UNAMET staff were
held hostage, Benjamin, who was a KPS member, admitted that he left
on
Sept. 3, while other members and officials, including Djoko
Soegijanto, B.N. Marbun, Koesparmono Irsan and Dino Pati Djalal,
departed on Sept. 1. "What could we do? We were instructed by the
military authorities to leave the country!" Benjamin honestly
admitted.
How could the military order officials and journalists to leave Timor
only a few days before the carnage started when they, at the same
time, argued, as they always did, that the violence was a result of
uncontrolled "civil war"?
In other words, it was all part of the plan and the game. And the
game
was from the outset shaped by political engineering, dubious
assumptions and myths to justify the aggression, occupation and
atrocities, which ranged from the mid-1975 attacks by "Timorese
volunteers", a "civil war" among East Timorese that supposedly
continued until 1999, and the many proclamations of integration by a
tiny minority of pro-Jakarta Timorese, which culminated in the 1976
East Timor Integration Law.
These shameful lies also need to be looked at. While truth and
friendship are necessary and important for both Indonesia and Timor
Leste, a real friendship should not be based on lies to cover the
truth and perpetuate the impunity.
The writer is a journalist with Radio Netherlands.
