The Christian Science Monitor
Friday, February 15, 2002
Indonesia slowly investigates Dutch journalist's death
Indonesian prosecutors will send a team to East Timor to gather evidence
about the 1999 violence.
By Simon Montlake | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
JAKARTA, INDONESIA - After years of glacial progress, Indonesia has revived
a stalled judicial probe into the murder of Dutch journalist Sander
Thoenes, who was shot dead in East Timor in September 1999, allegedly
by a
vengeful Indonesian Army unit.
State prosecutors said yesterday that they will send a team to East Timor
in the next two weeks to gather more evidence and talk to potential
witnesses to the murder.
The move is in response to international pressure on Indonesia to solve
the
murder of Mr. Thoenes - who wrote for the Financial Times and this
newspaper - and uncover other atrocities committed in East Timor in the
months during a controversial August 1999 referendum
"I can't imagine the Army wants to see its people on trial..., and
the
president is reluctant to draw the ire of the Army," says Juwono
Sudarsono,
Indonesia's former defense minister.
Dutch diplomats have pressed Jakarta for more than two years to investigate
the death of Thoenes. Indonesia's apparent reluctance to bring the killers
to justice has also strained relations between Jakarta and donor countries
in the European Union, say European diplomats.
Another key factor is the need to restore military ties with the US after
Congress banned military aid and training for Indonesian troops to
reprimand the Army for its role in the East Timor bloodshed. US officials
say prosecutions of Thoenes's case and of other such atrocities could
persuade Congress to lift the ban.
Some US military officials worry that this ban is now hampering the hunt
for terrorist networks in Indonesia. Speaking to reporters in Singapore
on
Jan. 29, Adm. Dennis Blair, chief of the US Pacific Command, said Indonesia
lacked resources to fight terrorism and needed US help. "There are
modest
things that we can do now, but certainly we could be much more effective
if
we had a fuller relationship, which we do hope would be available as the
Indonesian armed forces make progress," he said.
Indonesia has promised to conduct its own hearings into the bloodshed,
rather than submit to an international human rights tribunal. So far,
prosecutors have named 19 people, including three Army officers, as
suspects in the East Timor violence.
Diplomats say the tacit admittance of possible Army involvement in the
killing of Thoenes is a "breakthrough." "It's something
we can build on,"
says a Western official who knows the case.
However, pinpointing the Army's role in the bloodshed will be difficult.
Army generals insist that the violence in East Timor was spontaneous
and
involved only 'rogue soldiers' and civilian militiamen. By contrast, UN
officials who organized the 1999 referendum say Indonesia planned and
executed a campaign of intimidation to undermine the vote and keep control
of its province.
The court is restricted in its jurisdiction to cover only abuses that
took
place in three East Timor districts in April and September 1999, even
though violence was widespread in the run-up to the ballot. Critics say
this excludes several notorious massacres in which the Army allegedly
played a role.
That makes the evidence found in a Dutch investigation a powerful tool
for
the prosecution. It points the finger at Indonesian troops acting on orders
to "kill and destroy." Given the court's limited reach, the
Thoenes case
may be the best hope of bringing Army commanders to justice, say diplomats.
"It's the only [case] that falls within the jurisdiction of the court
that
directly implicates the military," says the Western diplomat.
Until now, Indonesia has refused to use the report's findings and
reportedly tried to drop the case for lack of evidence. H.S. Dillon, who
was part of an Indonesian human rights commission team that investigated
the murder in 1999, says this backpedaling reflects a desire to avoid
confronting the country's powerful Army. "The prosecutors were never
eager
to prosecute any [accused] Army officers," he says. "They have
nothing to
gain and everything to lose."
Observers say the Army is using its political muscle to keep ranking
officers off the conviction sheet. Another worry is that President Megawati
Sukarnoputri, who took office last July with military backing, has so
far
shown little enthusiasm for punishing human-rights abuses committed by
Indonesian soldiers. The Dutch report concluded that members of Indonesia's
Battalion 745 - an Army unit that has since been disbanded - killed Thoenes
Sept. 21 on a road outside Dili. A subsequent Monitor investigation
revealed that a Battalion officer, only hours after Thoenes's death, told
the soldiers to keep quiet about that and other incidents. "Don't
even tell
your wives," he said.