Former foes Indonesia, East Timor set up joint human
rights body
Indonesia and its former province East Timor on Wednesday set up
a joint panel to investigate crimes by Indonesian forces during
East Timor's violent break from Jakarta in 1999. Activists accused
Indonesia of circumventing any U.N. probe into the violence.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his East Timorese counterpart
Xanana Gusmao signed the agreement setting up the Commission of
Truth and Friendship (CTF) during a ceremony at Jakarta's presidential
palace.
The body will consist of lawyers and human rights figures from
both nations. It will issue a report describing the cause of the
bloodshed, but will not recommend legal action against those responsible.
It is due to start work on Aug. 10, but there was no date slated
for it to end.
"Today Indonesia and East Timor embark on an agreement toward
building a better future and to ensure the tragedy of the past is
not repeated," Gusmao said.
Vengeful Indonesian forces and their militia proxies killed nearly
2,000 people in the aftermath off a U.N.-organized plebiscite in
1999 that ended Indonesia's 24-year occupation of the half-island
nation. About half of East Timor's 700,000 people were forced to
flee their homes during the bloodshed, which only ended with the
arrival of peacekeeping troops.
In response to international pressure, Indonesian courts charged
18 people, most of them police and military officers, for their
role in human rights crimes in Timor, but 12 of them were subsequently
acquitted. Four others had their sentences overturned on appeal,
and the remaining two have appealed their cases, which are pending.
East Timor says it wants to focus on cooperation with Jakarta,
and is no longer interested in pursuing war crimes cases that might
"destabilize" its massive neighbor, where the military
retains significant political clout.
Wednesday's establishment of the commission comes on the heels
of an announcement by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that he
was appointing a separate commission of experts to review Jakarta's
prosecutions for war crimes and explain why a 1999 Security Council
resolution to try those responsible for the bloodshed failed.
It is unclear whether Indonesia will cooperate with the U.N. body,
which consists of legal experts from India, Japan and Fiji.
In answer to a question on the U.N. body, Yudhoyono _ himself a
former general who once served in East Timor _ said he believed
the "CTF is the best and most visible framework to solve the
problems between East Timor and Indonesia."
Human rights groups want the United Nations to oversee an international
tribunal for East Timor like those in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
They said the latest move was a blatant attempt to absolve Indonesia's
generals of responsibility for crimes in East Timor.
"The truth of what happened is well-established: Indonesian
political and military officials ... committed hundreds of murders
and other major crimes in a systematic campaign to terrorize and
destroy East Timor," said John Miller of the New York-based
East Timor Action Network.
In Dili, Jose Luis Oliviera, chairman of the Foundation of Human
Right and Justice said the new commission would hamper efforts to
achieve justice.
"I think this is a bad development," he said. "This
commission will divert the search for justice by absolving the perpetrators
of their crimes."
