Praying for justice
South China Morning Post
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
The barefoot children were scrambling up the bougainvillea bushes to
gather
fresh clusters of the flowers - the only bright spot in the dry, dusty
and
still-devastated landscape of the East Timorese town of Memo.
Just across the river bed is Indonesian-controlled West Timor, and across
this border Indonesian-backed militia forced tens of thousands of East
Timorese who voted for independence just over two years ago.
On August 27, 1999, three days before the ballot, an organised and armed
mob
of 400 militia arrived in Memo. Eyewitnesses are still not sure who threw
the
first stone, but independent observers agree the conflict was planned
by
pro-Indonesian groups to intimidate the pro-independence population. By
the
end of that day, two locals were shot dead and most homes in the town
burned
to the ground.
In one of the first of the ceremonies which have been taking place across
East Timor recently - and will continue this week - the people of Memo
commemorated the tragedy of two years ago with a special church service
and
procession to the graves of the victims. Memories do not fade here but
are
sustained and participated in by all - including the children collecting
the
bougainvillea offerings.
It was moving. The church bell tolled, teenagers readied themselves for
the
choir, mothers breast-fed their babies and some worshippers knelt alone
outside, wanting to hoard their private store of grief.
Father Lazarus Mau, who, curiously, is of Indonesian stock, has tended
this
flock for 10 years. He exhorted the overflowing church to give thanks
for
those still alive and said: "Through such tragedies we achieved our
national
liberation."
Although independence is on its way and a successful democratic election
has
been accomplished, the East Timorese have yet to see much sign of the
justice
promised when the United Nations bandwagon came to town.
The mobs who trashed Memo, for example, are camped in West Timor. The
case is
a minor one by East Timorese standards and is not on the list of prioritised
massacres at the UN's Serious Crimes Unit.
At the larger town of Maliana nearby, much more destruction and murder
took
place in a systematic process led by Indonesian-backed militias. Two years
on, the town remains a wasteland of wrecked buildings and shattered lives.
No
prosecutions have taken place. No one is in jail for what they did here.
"People don't express disappointment as such, but they strongly
hope
prosecutions will happen," said Lazarus dos Santos, from the Maliana
branch
of Yayasan Hak, a leading local human-rights organisation.
"People are not interested in revenge but in a legal process. If
it takes two
or three months or two or three years, it's OK. But ever since Untaet
[the
United Nations Transitional Administration of East Timor] has been here,
we
see their progress rate has been very slow.
"The people here still don't have a true sense of what Untaet is
doing for
them, and Untaet does not communicate well to the people," he said.
It's easy to slam the UN administration for failing to move faster on
prosecutions for the gross crimes against East Timor's people. But it
would
be hard to summarise the many impediments facing a justice process here.
The first question is where to start - with the entire Indonesian occupation
of East Timor, the period leading up to the 1999 ballot, or only the
viciousness inflicted after it? And how to start? Should it be through
the
mass import of a foreign legal system replete with experienced judges
and
lawyers, or should priority be put on building an East Timorese judiciary?
The Serious Crimes Unit has decided on 10 priority cases and has 30
investigators compiling evidence of major incidents of mass murder, forced
deportation, rape and torture. So far, 31 indictments have been issued
against 50 individuals for serious crimes. Thirteen cases have been completed
at trial-court level, resulting in 11 convictions. Of four planned district
courts, just the Dili District Court in the capital is functioning properly,
with two international and one East Timorese judge.
There also are six indictments charging 26 individuals with crimes against
humanity. One trial of 10 people accused of crimes against humanity in
the
Los Palos massacre - the September 25, 1999, killings of two nuns, four
male
clergy, an Indonesian journalist and a teenage girl - was started just
nine
months after formation of the Serious Crimes Unit, which is a record compared
with the performance of the international tribunals set up for the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
But that is all. A comprehensive report by Amnesty International in July
this
year concludes that "law and order is now barely being maintained,
justice is
not being administered effectively, and the human rights of the East Timorese
people cannot be guaranteed".
It strongly criticises efforts to establish an East Timorese judiciary,
saying what exists is still "fragile". It details cases of direct
political
interference in legal processes, which remain unpunished. It highlights
the
weaknesses of the UN's civilian police contingent - which one diplomat
described as "a pig's breakfast" - and notes that existing courts
and
investigators' offices lack basic facilities such as pen and paper.
It says the rights of suspects to fair trial have been lost as they languish
for months in detention without charges being filed.
"The slow pace and questionable quality of its work has resulted
in a loss of
confidence among the East Timorese in Untaet's ability or will to bring
perpetrators to justice," the report says.
Investigation units in far-flung areas of East Timor are seriously
under-staffed, a detailed database of alleged crimes has yet to be completed,
witnesses are dead or still stuck in West Timor, and it is always possible
to
find UN staff focused more on their daily allowances and car rights than
on
pursuing difficult and dangerous roads to justice for the East Timorese.
Only the presence of many dedicated individuals, especially in the districts
outside Dili and many of them on volunteer terms, has sustained the faith
of
some East Timorese that justice will eventually prevail. Against odds
ranging
from lack of transport to the obfuscation of UN bureaucracy, such individuals
have continued to compile cases, secure opportunities for testimony and
to
input them into the UN system.
"There's no question we have to tighten up our management and our
whole
approach," said Dennis McNamara, the UN's Deputy Transitional Administrator
in East Timor.
He arrived just over a month ago and sees one of his key goals to be
a
wide-ranging revamp of the justice ministry. He wants to give new impetus
and
priority to the entire issue of justice and human rights in East Timor.
He is
also overseeing the panel involved in setting up a Reception, Truth and
Reconciliation Commission which will mesh traditional village-level
reconciliation methods for lesser crimes with referral of serious crimes
to
the judicial process.
He is devising what he calls a "justice package" to list the
personnel and
equipment urgently needed to make serious progress with the serious crimes.
This package will be taken to donors, to beg for lawyers willing to work
for
less than usual, and for money specifically targeted towards justice and
not
just to the bottomless pit of UN bureaucracy.
He has a difficult task ahead, not least in inspiring his own staff at
the
Serious Crimes Unit and elsewhere in the UN. Some remember the Fisk Report,
an earlier internal attempt to tackle management problems at the unit.
Confidentiality had been promised so that details of where the process
was
going wrong could be collected. But confidentiality was blown.
Only one of the staff who gave information still has a job, and all those
at
the top of the administration named as impediments to justice kept their
jobs.
Mr McNamara said the Fisk Report was one of the first things he read
and that
he was focusing on implementing its recommendations - hoping to persuade
embittered investigators to trust him to get it right this time. Management
changes were already under way.
"It's long-term stuff. There is no quick fix. Training a local judiciary
is a
massive process. And you're right, it is partly our fault in that we didn't
prioritise it enough," Mr McNamara said.
But what of the larger picture? How does East Timor heal its wounds and
move
on? If president-in-waiting Xanana Gusmao is to be believed, the way forward
is to focus more on reconciliation than on justice. Many of his people
disagree. Widows and children of the dead want the perpetrators brought
to
trial and are happy to leave reconciliation till later.
But Mr Xanana wants to bring his people home from West Timor, where militia
bosses are awaiting signs of soft treatment before letting the groups
they
control to return home across the border. Meetings between Mr Xanana and
militia bosses, facilitated by senior Untaet staff, are geared to getting
these men home regardless of their crimes - and that political compromise
will inevitably compromise some victims' hopes for justice.
"But we've got to prioritise justice," Mr McNamara said. "It's
the glue that
holds post-conflict situations together."
Vaudine England (vaudine@scmp.com) is the Post's Jakarta correspondent.