East Timor
East Timor Action Network Applauds Lawsuit Against Indonesian General, ETAN ~ March 29
General Lumintang Trained by the U.S., by Allan Nairn ~ March 29
To Rebuild, East Timor Needs the Help of American Catholics, By Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, Dili
UNHCR Warns Against Early Stop of Humanitarian Aid, UNHCR ~ March 30, 2000
NGOs Urge Strongest Resolution on Timor to Human Rights Commission ~ March 24, 2000
Deadline For Refugees Gives Rise To Starvation Fear, By Sonny Inbaraj ~ March 24
Ramos-Horta Issues Statement On Refugees, Prosecutions, Military Ties ~ March 23, 2000
Noose Is Tightening on Generals Invoved in Timor Violence, Tapol ~ March 17, 2000
Wiranto Could Go On Trial in Three Months, Suara Pembaruan ~ March 17, 2000
Elections Possible Next Year, Says UN, Sydney Morning Herald, by Mark Dodd ~ March 16, 2000
East Timor And Australia's Oily Politics, Mike Head, World Socialist Web Site ~ March 14, 2000
TAPOL Hails President Wahid For Supporting a Judicial Probe Into the 1965/66 Massacre ~ March 14, 2000
U.N. Seizes Weapons Smuggled From Indonesia, Japan Economic Newswire ~ March 14, 2000
Wahid Orders Disarming of Militias, Lusa ~ March 14, 2000
Court Told of Militia Leader's Gun-Dealing, by Karen Polglaze, AAP ~ March 14, 2000
Indonesia To Summon Generals, Steps Up Timor Probe, Reuters ~ March 14, 2000
Militia Elusive But UN Says Their Time Nearly Up, by Mark Dodd, Sydney Morning Herald ~ March 10, 2000
East Timor Operation Facing a Military Crisis in Australia, By Sonny Inbaraj ~ March 10, 2000
Saying It By Numbers: Mummy, Where Are You? by Mark Dodd, Sydney Morning Herald ~ March 9, 2000
Peace Keepers Capture Militia Member, UNTAET Briefing ~ March 9, 2000
Militias Pose Serious Threat to East Timor Refugees, Daniel Coney, Associated Press ~ March 9, 2000
Militia Disinformation Campaign Targets West Timor Refugees, Lusa, March 8, 2000
TNI Signature On Border Raids, Mark Dodd, Sydney Morning Herald ~ March 7, 2000
The Portuguese Connection, by Eric Wright ~ March 7, 2000
Troops on Alert as Shootings Delay Return to Normal Life, Sydney Morning Herald ~ March 7, 2000
Jobless and Hungry But Full of Hope, By Kanis Dursin ~ March 6, 2000
Timorese Search for Truth About 'Disappeared', South China Morning Post, by Joanna Jolly ~ March 3, 2000
East Timor Must Avoid Becoming Another Cambodia, TIME Asia online/Asia Buzz, by Terry McCarthy ~ March 3, 2000
Reunion of Divided East Timor Families to Resume This Week, Agence France-Presse ~ March 3, 2000
Interfet's Exit Has Militia On Warpath, The Australian, by Michael Ware ~ February 29, 2000
East Timor Ire At Coffee Tax, Australian Financial Review, by Wilson da Silva ~ February 29, 2000
Former Militia Members Targeted Amid the Devastation, AAP, by John Martinkus ~ February 29, 2000
West Timor People Urging Govt to Review Timor Gap Treaty, Antara, March 1, 2000
East Timorese Refugees in Indonesia, Refugees International ~ 25/02/00
Unresolved Problems, Liem Soei Liong, TOPAL ~ 25/02/00
ETAN Opposes Continued Training in Violation of Ongoing Ban on Military Ties With Indonesia, East Timor Action Network ~ 25/02/00
East Timorese Trapped in West Timor, By TOPAL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign ~ February 2000
Military Training Resumes Quietly, Washington Post ~ February 21, 2000
Legislators Hail Gus Dur's Move to Suspend Wiranto, Jakarta Post ~ February 15, 2000
Indonesian Team Standing by to Explore Rights Abuses, Agence France-Presse ~ February 15, 2000
Retired General Criticizes Plan to Pardon Wiranto, Indonesian Observer ~ February 15, 2000
Australia Hands East Timor Peace Mission to Portugal, Australian Broadcasting Corporation ~ February 15, 2000
Leader of Notorious Militia Gang Faces Execution, South China Morning Post ~ February 15, 2000
Workers Strike at Floating Hotels Housing UN Staff, Agence France Presse ~ February 14, 2000
Timor’s Horta sees Internet Future for Timor, Reuters by Chris Johnson ~ February 14, 2000
Journalists Harassed in West Timor, Committee to Protect Journalists ~ February 14, 2000
Statement on the International Human Rights Tribunal for East Timor, Free East Timor! Japan Coalition, Amnesty International Japan Section, East Timor People's Peace Relief Project ~ February 14, 2000
Submission to UN Commission of Inquiry into Crimes Committed by Indonesian Military, Timor Aid ~ February 14, 2000
Western Intelligence Hampering Portugal's Timor Effort, Minister Says, RDP Antena 1 Radio ~ February 11, 2000
Soares Sanctioned Murder: Militia Chief, Sydney Morning Herald by LINDSAY MURDOCH ~ February 11, 2000
Exiled Timorese Militia Sells Arms to Ambon Fighters, South China Morning Post by JOANNA JOLLY ~ February 10, 2000
Conclusive Proof TNI Planned Reign of Terror, The Independent by Richard Lloyd Parry, Feb. 7, 2000
Wiranto Responsible for Timor Atrocities, say Gusmao, Ramos-Horta, AFP ~ February 7, 2000
A Note on the Conduct of International NGOs and UN Institutions in Post-referendum Timor Lorosa’e HAK ~ February 7, 2000
Will Wahid Tackle Indonesia’s Terror Machine? The Age by SCOTT BURCHILL ~ February 4, 2000
Making Up For the Timidity of the Past, By Anil Netto ~ Malaysia, Feb. 10, 2000
All the Help A New Nation Can Get, By Prangtip Daorueng ~ February 6, 2000
Full Text of Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on East Timor ~ February 2, 2000
Brereton on Defence Intelligence Leaks and Australian Lies, Laurie Brereton MP, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs ~ November 25, 1999
Indonesia's Wahid Close To Confronting Wiranto, by Nayan Chanda, John McBeth and Dan Murphy ~ January 28, 2000
Coroner: Indonesian Military Shot Dutch Journalist In East Timor, Associated Press ~ January 28, 2000
Timor Rights Investigators Implicate Wiranto In Report, Associated Press ~ January 28, 2000
New Information Reveals Moves Behind Timor Vote, ABC, PM News ~ January 28, 2000
The Investigative Commission on Human Rights Violation Says 200 People, Including Scores of High-Ranking Military Officials, Involved in the East Timor Atrocities, Indonesian Observer ~ January 28, 2000
Timor's Losers Gather to Decide Whether to Go Home or Not, AFP ~ January 28, 2000
UN Police Expect to Find 60 Bodies in Timor Grave, Reuters ~ January 27, 2000
Pressure for International Tribunal Grows, by Sonny Inbaraj, IPS ~ January 27, 2000
United National Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET): Briefing 26 Jan 2000
Indonesia’s Draft Law on Human Rights Court Will Protect Generals From Justice, Tapol, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign ~ January 24, 2000
Soeharto Forces ‘Building Timor-style Militias’ in West Papua, by Andrew Kilvert, Sydney Morning Herald ~ January 21, 2000
Lombok Violence Spurred on by Suharto’s Supporters: Wahid, Australian Broadcasting Commission ~ Jamuary 21, 2000
East Timor’s First Tetun Paper Hits The Streets!, Lalenok, Editor-in-chief: Virgilio da Silva Guterres ~ January 24, 2000
Language, Currency a Sore Point For New Nation, IPS by Sonny Inbaraj ~ January 24, 2000
Fear Rules Journey Home For E Timorese, The Age by Tom Fawthrop ~ January 24, 2000
Indonesia Campaigns Against UN Court for E. Timor, Reuters by Jonathan Wright ~ January 24, 2000
Jakarta Setting Stage For Army Prosecutions, International Herald Tribune by Michael Richardson ~ January 24, 2000
Government-Sanctioned Commission on Human Rights Violations (KPP HAM) Likely to Verify the Alleged Involvement of the Indonesian Military (TNI) in the Post-Ballot Violence, Jakata Post ~ January 24, 2000
Indonesian Lieutenant-Colonel, Mannurung, Allowing Militia Attacks, AAP NEWSFEED by John Martinkus ~ January 24, 2000
Horta Accuses Indonesian Military of State Terrorism Campaign!, Sydney Morning Herald by John Martinkus ~ January 24, 2000
Timorese Leader Accuses Indonesian Army of Destabilization Campaign, Portuguese Radio on January 20, 2000
UK Minister Defends Arms Sales to Indonesia, The Guardian, by John Aglionby ~ January 20, 2000
Marzuki to Meet UN Officials about East Timor Tribunal, Jakarta Post ~ January 20, 2000
Border Clashes Continue In East Timor Enclave, Associated Press ~ January 20, 2000
Quarter of Refugee Children in West Timor Malnourished, UNCIEF ~ January 20, 2000
Bring the East Timorese Home, A Fact Sheet (East Timor Action Network)
East Timorese To Return or Resettle - In Days? Refugees Daily ~ January 20, 2000
UNHCR Suspends Returns in Tense Areas, Refugees Daily ~ January 19, 2000
Militia Members Returning? UNHCR Press Briefing Note ~ January 14, 2000
Returning Militants Attacked, Refugees Daily ~ January 14, 2000
Deal To Help East Timorese Return, Refugees Daily ~ January 13, 2000
More East Timorese Returning - UN, Refugees Daily ~ January 12, 2000
Mass Information Campaign Working, UNHCR Press Briefing Note ~ January 11, 2000
Press For East Timorese Returns, Refugees Daily ~ January 5, 2000
Militias Impeding East Timorese Returnees, Refugees Daily ~ January 4, 2000
A Grassroots International Report ~ Refugees: The Other Side of the Crisis in East Timor by Martha Thompson
East Timorese Return Slowly, Refugees Daily ~ December 31, 1999
East Timorese Asked to Choose Nationality, Refugees Daily ~ December 28, 1999
Reporters Sans Frontières Calls on Indonesia to Charge Military Over Killing of Journalists, November 30, 1999
The Call for Referendum in Aceh, November 17, 1999
Notes on the Indonesian Military and the New Government by John Roosa, November 3, 1999
The International Federation for East Timor's Letter to the Members of the U.N. Security Council October 21, 1999
PRESS CONFERENCE ON EAST TIMOR BY XANANA GUSMAO AND JOSE RAMOS HORTA 28 September 1999
JOURNALIST ALLAN NAIRN TO RETURN TO THE U.S. THURSDAY September 28, 1999
EAST TIMORESE LEADERS IN WASHINGTON, DC, WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY September 27, 1999
Testimony of the International Federation for East Timor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights September 24, 1999
IFET Says Timor Violence Predictable; Calls for Prosecution of All of Those Responsible September 23, 1999
Refugees could be forcibly relocated, warn rights groups September 22, 1999
DETAINED AMERICAN JOURNALIST ALLAN NAIRN FACES IMPRISONMENT September 16, 1999
Media Release - Death List; Refugees Slaughtered; Bombers leaving West Timor September 16, 1999
Timor Starving to Death September 11, 1999
The Total Annihilation of East Timorese Society, Culture and Property Is Taking Place September 10, 1999
Advance Copy of Article on US Complicity in Timor to Appear in the Nation on September 27, 1999
International Observers Evacuated from East Timor as Violence Escalates September 7, 1999
EAST TIMOR VOTES OVERWHELMINGLY FOR INDEPENDENCE; Paramilitaries Still Rampage Uncontrolled September 6, 1999
Militia Attack the Foundation for Legal and Human Rights (Yayasan HAK) Office September 6, 1999
Situation in Dili deteriorates by the hour. Shooting throughout the night. Reports of many killings of men, women and children (September 6, 1999)
As Mass Killing in East Timor Ensues, American Observers Remain in Dili September 5, 1999
DILI PRESS CONFERENCE ON LINKS AMONG THE EAST TIMOR MILITIAS, TNI/ABRI (THE INDONESIAN ARMED FORCES), AND THE U.S. GOVERNMENT September 5, 1999
International Red Cross Office has been Completely Bestroyed by Militia Groups September 4, 1999
East Timor's Bloodiest Traditions by Aniceto Guterres Lopes (Op-Ed in the New York Times May 5, 1999)
Report from Yayasan HAK received from Fortilos
The Militia Started Their Action Again, and Victims Fell in Dili
GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER (an article from the Nation)
Indonesian Government Recruits Members of Pro-Intergration Militia Into Civilian Defense Force
Militia Attack Village and Terrorize Family of Leading Human Right Activist
THE REFUGEE PROBLEM IN EAST TIMOR
Foreign Minister Ali Alatas has Refused to Allow Reconciliation Meeting in Australia
The Death Toll Continues to Rise
LICENSE TO KILL IN EAST TIMOR (an article from the Nation.
JOINT STATEMENTHUMANITARIAN ORGANISATIONS IN EAST TIMOR
Press conference by José Ramos-Horta, April 23 1999 at UN Correspondents
Association, New York, NY (Near verbatim transcript by Charlie Scheiner and John M. Miller, East Timor Action Network/U.S)
UPDATE ON PARAMILITARY VIOLENCE April 22, 1999
Yayasan HAK: The True Story of A East Timor Victim
Militia attacks against East Timorese planned for Jakarta Too
PROVOKATOR DARI DILI MASUK JAKARTA
Pro-integration militia's brutal attacks in Dili, East Timor, on Saturday, April 17, 1999
Update situation in East Timor
East Timor Network Condemns Killings, Calls for U.S., UN Action
Xanana Statement on East Timor
News re the situation in Liquisa on 7 April 1999.
Yayasan HAK: INTERIM REPORT LIQUISA MASSACRE, 05 - 07 APRIL 1999
US Congress Pressures Albright on East Timor massacre
Violence and Terror Will Ruin a Peaceful Resolution to the East Timorese
Problem: Indonesian Groups Statement on East Timor Massacre
Yayasan Hak Report on East Timor Pro-integration Militias
FALINTIL RESUMES THEIR MISSION IN DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF EAST TIMOR - APRIL 5, 1999
East Timor Action Network Applauds Lawsuit Against Indonesian General
ETAN ~ March 29
The East Timor Action Network (ETAN) applauds the filing of a lawsuit against Indonesian General Johny Lumintang for his role in devastating human rights abuses in East Timor. Lumintang, who was the Vice Chief of Staff of the Indonesian Army, was served notice of the lawsuit late this afternoon at Dulles International Airport.
"All available avenues must be used to bring justice for East Timor," said John M. Miller of ETAN. "Lawsuits like this one can help insure that those responsible for last year's devastation of East Timor are called to account, while putting future rights abusers on notice."
The suit was filed on behalf of a mother whose son was killed, a man who was beaten and shot in the foot which had to be amputated, and a man whose father was injured and brother killed. The plaintiffs also had their property destroyed or were forced from their homes in the aftermath of the August 30, 1999 vote on East Timor's independence. The lawsuit was filed by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), and DC-based James Klimaski.
"The suit here is especially necessary because the U.N. has put an international tribunal on hold, and Indonesia's Attorney General has stated that he plans to focus his efforts on a mere handful of the best known incidents and a small number of Indonesian military commanders."
Legal papers filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday cite a telegram signed by Lumintang and sent to the regional military head Major General Adam Damiri and other commanders just hours before the agreement to conduct the plebiscite was signed at the United Nations on May 5. The telegram ordered the commanders to plan a crackdown should the East Timorese vote in favor of independence. This was to include "a plan to move to the rear/evacuate if the second option independence is chosen." Soon after the vote, such a plan was put into action and hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes.
The suit also cites a June 1999 army manual, also signed by Lumintang, which states that Kopassus intelligence operatives were to be trained in propaganda, kidnapping, terror, agitation, sabotage, infiltration, undercover operations, wiretapping, photographic intelligence and psychological operations. Kopassus operatives were involved in the kidnapping of East Timorese independence activists prior to and after the independence vote.
In 1994, CCR successfully sued Major-General Sintong Panjaitan for his role in a 1991 massacre in Dili, East Timor in which more than 270 Timorese were gunned down. U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris ordered the general to pay $4 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages to Helen Todd, the mother of Kamal Bamadhaj, the only non-East Timorese killed that day.
The Lumintang lawsuit, like the Panjaitan case, is based in part on the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 which allows anyone, citizen or not, to sue for acts committed outside the United States "in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." The 1992 Torture Victim Protection Act restates the 1789 law and applies it to torture victims. Lawsuits can only go forward if the defendant is served legal papers while in the U.S. The plaintiffs wish to remain anonymous at this time because East Timor remains subject to Indonesian military and militia attacks.
A U.N. Commission of Inquiry in a report issued earlier this year concluded that the Indonesian military was involved in systematic human right violations before and after the vote. An Indonesian government investigation reached similar conclusions saying it found evidence "that a planned, systematic and massive scorched-earth campaign was launched" and that among the perpetrators were "those who held responsibility for national security policy, including but not limited to, high-level military officials who actively or passively were involved in these crimes."
END
General Lumintang Trained by the U.S.
by Allan Nairn ~ March 29
Months after helping to design and implement a campaign of violence against East Timor, Indonesian General Johny Lumintang is in the United States. Lumintang, who last summer issued a secret Red Beret (Kopassus) terror manual, is a US trainee who has long been favored by Washington policy makers. In 1989 Lumintang was brought to the United States for an International Defense Management course under the Pentagon's IMET (International Military Education and Training) program (Lumintang was IMET student #23294). In following years Lumintang assumed command of two military campaigns -- occupied East Timor and West Papua [Irian Jaya] -- based on the systematic
torture, killing, and abduction of civilians.
Under Lumintang's command in West Papua (1996), Kopassus massacred civilians after descending from a helicopter illegally painted with international Red Cross markings.
In May of 1998 Lumintang shared command of "security" in Jakarta during anti-Chinese riots that -- according to diplomats and human rights groups -- the army itself helped to organize.
On June 30, 1999 Lumintang personally authorized and signed a secret Kopassus covert action manual ("Buku Petunjuk Pembinaan Sandhi Yudha") that calls for preparing Kopassus forces in the "tactic and technique" of "terror," "kidnapping," "sabotage," "undercover," "infiltration," "wiretapping," and similar measures.
The handbook is, according to senior Indonesian armed forces officials, still in use in Indonesia and is at this moment being applied in the Kopassus terror campaigns in West Papua and Aceh, and in undercover provocateur operations in Ambon and Kalimantan.
The terror handbook has come to light because of its use in occupied East Timor during the 1999 armed forces/militia campaign of arson, murder, rape, abduction, and assassination ( A copy of the book was found in an abandoned army base by Yayasan Hak, an East Timorese human rights and legal aid group).
Lumintang has long been a close protege of US military intelligence, and has been promoted by the Pentagon and State Department as a leading Indonesian "moderate."
Kopassus itself has received extensive training under the Pentagon's JCET (Joint Combined Exchange and Training) program in tactics including demolitions,surveillance, "advanced sniper technique," air, sea, and ground assault and "psychological operations." The JCET training was suspended in 1998 after a public and Congressional outcry, but the Pentagon is pushing to renew it on the grounds that under leaders like Lumintang, the armed forces are reforming themselves and deserve new US weapons and know-how.
In fact, it is popular pressure that has forced Jakarta's army into slow retreat, and as the Lumintang case illustrates, armed forces repression is systematic. The use of terror against civilians is written deep into TNI (Indonesian Armed Forces) doctrine and is assumed by senior commanders as their basic tactic and technique.
If it is true in some sense that Lumintang really is a "moderate" in TNI, then that only illustrates the extent to which this is a truly terrorist organization. As Vice Chief of Staff for the Army -- and also as a former on-the-ground East Timor commander -- Lumintang played a leading role in the shaping of Timor militia policy. On the day that the UN agreement for the Timor referendum was finalized (May 5, 1999), Lumintang sent a telegraphed order to commanders for the Timor zone directing them to prepare a "security plan" including "repressive/coercive measures," as well as a military-planned "exodus" if the Timorese voted for independence. As an army personnel chief he also helped send his former aide -- Gen. Kiki Syhanakrie -- to Timor to assume command of the final stage of the scorched earth operation.
When I was a prisoner in Gen. Kiki's Dili headquarters (his command had been re-named The Committee for the Restoration of Peace and Stability), I could see the Aitarak militias on-base, going out to stage their raids. They were directed by Kopassus officers, some uniformed, some plainclothes, as well as by intelligence and operations officers from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Police.
Gen. Lumintang was one of the senior officers who gave them their marching orders. Those officers -- and their foreign accomplices -- should be prosecuted for their crimes. The civil suit by victims of the Timor terror cannot put Lumintang in prison. But it can help the US public begin to catch up with a discussion already underway in today's Indonesia and in newly liberated East Timor. The question is whether senior public officials should be allowed to sponsor murder.
Award-winning journalist and human rights activist Allan Nairn was the last foreign reporter in Dili, East Timor, prior to the arrival of the international peace-keeping force. On September 14, as the Indonesian destruction of Dili was culminating, Indonesian military forces arrested him on the streets of Dili. He was held in detention for six days and threatened with charges that could have landed him in jail for 10 years. The Indonesian government finally deported him to Singapore. On a previous trip to East Timor while on assignment for The New Yorker magazine, Nairn had his skull fractured by Indonesian troops while covering the November 12, 1991 Santa Cruz massacre. He is currently writing a book on U.S.-Indonesia military relations.
END
To rebuild, East Timor needs the help of American Catholics
By Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, Dili, East Timor
I have visited the United States several times, and have enjoyed the hospitality and solidarity of American Catholics, who have shown great sympathy for my Church and people. Now, more than ever before, we urgently need direct American help.
It may seem distant now, but violence in East Timor was seen by television viewers throughout the world last August and September. During that time, so much of my native land, a mountainous island territory about the size of Connecticut, was cruelly destroyed. Many hundreds of people, including priests, nuns, seminarians and other church workers, were murdered without pity, others were maimed. An untold number remain missing. Most of the country was devastated: my own home and chapel were burned, as were the diocesan offices in the capital.
Nonetheless, in light of the terrible suffering that struck East Timor and the painful losses that still afflict it, a bishop and the Church have no special status. And, without doubt, it was the people at large who suffered the most, with as many as 90 percent displaced. Tens of thousands lost their homes and livelihoods and what little property they had. When my home was attacked, dozens taking refuge there were killed or injured without mercy. Hundreds of thousands were forcibly driven across the border with West Timor, the Indonesian side of the island, where about 100,000 East Timorese remain in squalid refugee camps where people have been terrorized. In East Timor itself, many families remain separated. Parents search for children, children search for parents, seemingly without end.
Why did this happen, and who is responsible? The rampage of last September in particular was orchestrated by Indonesian army elements and militias under their control to reverse the result of the August 30 United Nations-sponsored election, in which nearly 80 percent of registered voters rejected Indonesian rule. It was hardly surprising that people voted as they did: at least one third of our population of 700,000 had perished from the combined effects of Indonesia's 24-year occupation. Neither was it surprising, in view of this history, that Indonesian forces brazenly tried to overturn the will of the people. Despite months of warnings and reports of mounting violence, only after East Timor was aflame before the eyes of the world did the international community bring decisive pressure to bear on the Indonesian military.
This might not have happened were it not for strong efforts by the Holy See, the U.S. Catholic Bishops and others of good will. Even so, soon after the entry of international peace keepers in late September, many say East Timor disappeared from public view, at
least as far as television is concerned. Indeed, to people from far away, it may have seemed as if the crisis had come to an end.
Indonesian forces finally withdrew from East Timor in late October. But nearly six months later, reconstruction of our martyred land is barely visible. Even now, supplies to rebuild have not yet arrived in many if not most places: I hope the United States can help, both in terms of material support and in using its influence with the United Nations.
Though the United Nations is present in East Timor in large numbers, they have made comparatively few jobs available for East Timorese people, even though most are without work: a special effort must be made to include them.
To rebuild in peace, families must be united. But for this to happen, all those in refugee camps in West Timor and elsewhere who want to return to East Timor must be allowed to do so. At the same time, militia members now in West Timor cannot be permitted to resume their violent activities under any circumstances. Elements of the Indonesian army should be convinced to stop supporting the militias and allow people to freely return to East Timor. Further pressure on the Indonesian army from Washington is needed.
As of now, however, all is not yet secure. There have been numerous border attacks in recent weeks by militias who could not continue to operate without the support of the Indonesian army. Some of those who returned to East Timor during this time were found to be carrying firearms and grenades, which were confiscated by United Nations troops. But the fact that they had such weapons was a sign that some elements of the Indonesian military intend to continue to promote violence in East Timor. Indonesia badly needs the good will of Washington if it is to receive the billions of dollars in international bank loans that it needs. Therefore, the United States influence should be used to prevent a new outbreak of violence in East Timor.
Will the United States use this influence? Without the influence and solidarity efforts of American Catholics, it is unlikely that Indonesian troops would have withdrawn from East Timor at all. To rebuild, and to do so, in peace, the help of our American brothers and sisters in Christ is needed.
Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, apostolic adminstrator of Dili, East Timor, is the only Catholic bishop ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in 1975 in a move never recognized by the Vatican or United Nations. More than 200,000 East Timorese were killed or died from famine or disease during Indonesia's often brutal rule. Bishop Belo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for being an unflinching defender of his martyred people. In his first major international statement since last August's vote for independence, he writes exclusively for The Florida Catholic©.
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UNHCR Warns Against Early Stop of Humanitarian Aid
UNHCR ~ March 30, 2000
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) today warned against Indonesia's plans to cut off relief aid to East Timorese refugees in West Timor after March 31.
The Indonesian government has given East Timorese until the end of this month to decide whether they want to go back to East Timor or remain in Indonesia, threatening to stop providing aid to East Timorese refugees living in some 200 encampments in West Timor.
"We appreciate Indonesia's efforts to date to help East Timorese refugees, but we are concerned that an early discontinuation of assistance will have a negative impact on the well-being of the refugees and on the repatriation programme, postponing a solution to the crisis," said Francois Fouinat - UNHCR's Geneva-based official in charge of Asia.
A memorandum of understanding signed between the Indonesian government and UNHCR on 14 October 1999, gave Indonesia overall responsibility for the safety and care of East Timorese refugees.
Since the announcement of the deadline earlier this moth, UNHCR has called on the authorities to be flexible and allow for voluntary repatriation to continue.
During a recent trip to Indonesia, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner Soren Jessen-Petersen told Jakarta UNHCR would continue to support government plans to help those wishing to return to East Timor or those who want to settle in Indonesia, but he urged Indonesia to give the people more time to decide.
Since 8 October 1999, more than 156,000 refugees have returned to East Timor under a UNHCR voluntary repatriation programme supported by the International Organisation for Migration. The World Food Programme and non-governmental organisations also joined UNHCR in providing emergency and relief assistance to the refugees. Up to 95,000 East Timorese remain in West Timor. UNHCR estimates that a significant number may still decide to return to East Timor.
END
NGOs Urge Strongest Resolution on Timor to Human Rights Commission
Prime Minister Antonio Guterres
Portugal
March 23, 2000
Your Excellency,
the Prime Minister of the Portuguese Republic, Antonio Guterres,
We are writing to urge you to use your government's current role as President of the European Union to achieve the strongest possible outcome in favor of justice and freedom for East Timor from the upcoming meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Indonesian President Wahid's promise to allow the safe return of the East Timorese in West Timor camps and to end military support for the militias will materialize only if compelling international measures are immediately adopted. These people taken hostage now face the danger that on March 31 Indonesia will deny them access to humanitarian assistance and will initiate their relocation within Indonesia. Given the prevalence of disease and malnutrition in the West Timor camps, this represents the danger of large-scale loss of life, in addition to the hundreds of people who have already succumbed in these camps.
We urge you to bring forth this most fundamental matter in Geneva, and to ensure that the outcome of the meeting will be forceful enough to resolve this matter urgently and once and for all. All East Timorese in West Timor and elsewhere in Indonesia must receive immediate humanitarian assistance and be given the chance to freely choose to return to Timor Lorosae. We ask you to ensure that all camps are quickly placed under direct UNHCR authority.An increase in UNHCR and IOM personnel is required. This increase is only short term but must be large to be effective. The Indonesian military must be compelled to stop providing weapons to the militia who harass and coerce their hostages in West Timor, and to block militia access to the camps. Indonesia must place militia leaders under arrest pending human rights trials.
The integrity of the Timor Lorosae territory is not yet secure. Several recent incursions have occurred of heavily armed and trained men from West Timor into Timor Lorosae, including killings and shooting at UN aircraft.
Participation or collaboration by Indonesian military in cross-border attacks must be vehemently protested and stopped. We urge you to support Jose Ramos-Horta's recent calls for a European Union freeze of weapons sales to Indonesia. Additionally, the UN must be prepared to resolve the problem of securing the border if incursions continue. UNTAET officials have stated the impossibility of securing the border under current conditions.
We now come to the subject of accountability. Here we distinguish two different periods. First, the period covered by the mandates of the UN Commission of Inquiry and the Indonesian Human Rights Commission, that is, following President Habibie's January 1999 announcement that he would consider a popular consultation in East Timor. Second, the period from the 1975 Indonesian invasion until January 1999. Concerning the first period, both commissions have produced strong reports of their initial findings.
Those people who in these reports are alleged responsible for systematic breaches of international humanitarian law (a category which may include genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes) must be brought to trial and receive appropriate sentences.
The investigation of the crimes in the first period starting 1975, during which an estimated one-third of the East Timorese population perished, including the gathering of evidence of systematic breaches of international humanitarian law, must be initiated by the UN. Crimes during this extensive period were of the gravest nature and cannot be forgotten to focus solely on the 1999 period.
These are necessary conditions to set the ground for democracy in Timor Lorosae as well as Indonesia, and to allow the possibility for normal relations between the two neighboring countries and between the pro-integration and pro-independence Timorese. Unless justice is served, we may expect that revenge will take its place for years to come, making peace and prosperity unlikely to succeed in Timor Lorosae. And unless justice is served, the entire population of Timor Lorosae will be denied the only possible relief available for the unimaginable trauma they have been collectively subjected to during 25 years of the worst kinds of abuses known to humankind.
The inquiry team of the Indonesian Human Rights Commission has produced a strong report of their initial findings concerning the crimes against humanity committed in East Timor that followed the 1999 UN referendum, and has our admiration and praise. The findings of both the Indonesian team and the UN Commission of Inquiry on East Timor deserve to be presented in a fair court, where appropriate sentences will be issued for those found guilty and where witnesses will feel safe to testify.
The establishment of an international tribunal for these crimes was proposed in September by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, and suggested by three UN Special Rapporteurs in their December report. The UN Commission of Inquiry on East Timor (established by the UN Secretary general upon request of the UN Commission on Human Rights) also concluded in its January report that an international tribunal should be established.
The only conceivable possibility for avoiding an international tribunal would be if Indonesia succeeds in conducting fair trials within the country very soon. Given the evidence that the crimes committed in East Timor were commanded from the highest levels of the Indonesian military and government, that some of the accused remain in powerful positions today, and further, given the lack of independence and the corruption prevalent in the Indonesian judicial system, we have serious reservations that fair trials can be conducted in Indonesia.
Despite our reservations, the recently introduced new Indonesian Draft Law represents a very positive development -- in particular the establishment of Ad Hoc human rights courts to try past crimes -- that may allow for some hope to emerge for the possibility of fair Indonesian trials. The democratizing steps represented by the Draft Law and by the Indonesian Human Rights Commission conducting such valuable work taken seriously by the Indonesian government came about in response to international pressure for an international tribunal.
Mr. Prime Minister, we respectfully ask that Portugal take the lead in pushing the UN to prepare itself for an international tribunal for the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in East Timor since the Indonesian invasion in 1975. Trying the crimes committed in 1999 alone is not sufficient. Concerning 1999, the UN should be urged to implement the recommendations of its own Commission of Inquiry and, as a first step, establish an international investigation and prosecution body. Preparations for an international tribunal must continue. Delegation to Indonesian trials can only occur if Indonesia does succeed in establishing truly fair trials itself, while the responsibility for ensuring that justice for East Timor is served remains with the UN.
The UN investigation of crimes -- including the gathering of testimonies and physical evidence -- must proceed and be extended back to the entire period following the 1975 Indonesian invasion.
The UN Secretary General should be asked to make public what criteria will be used to evaluate the Indonesian trials; in particular, what is meant by meeting "international standards," and the UN should offer technical assistance to these trials. Indonesian compliance with these international standards must be absolute and must be continually monitored by the UN. In particular, the pardoning of sentences such as the pre-announced pardon by President Wahid of General Wiranto, is unacceptable. President Wahid must be required to affirm the Indonesian government's commitment to implementing sentences issued on any person.
The failure by Indonesia to absolutely comply with any one of these international standards should lead to promptly resuming an international trial under UN auspices.
With our Best Regards,
Australians for a Free East Timor (AFET) - Australia
Christians in Solidarity with East Timor (CSET) - Australia
Comissao para os Direitos do Povo Maubere (CDPM) - Portugal
East Timor Action Network / United States (ETAN/US) - U.S.
East Timor Human Rights Centre (ETHRC) - Australia/East Timor
East Timor International Support Centre (ETISC) - Australia
East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign (ETISC) - Ireland
Gesellschaft fuer Bedrohten Voelker, e.V. (GFBV) - Germany
International Platform of Jurists for East Timor (IPJET)
Norwegian Cooperation Council for East Timor and Indonesia (NOCETI) - Norway
Swedish East Timor Committee (SETC) - Sweden
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign - Great Britain
VVV East Timor (VVVET) - The Netherlands
Cc: His Excellency, the President of the Portuguese Republic, Jorge Sampaio
For more information please contact John at East Timor Action Network
END
DEADLINE FOR REFUGEES GIVES RISE TO STARVATION FEAR
By Sonny Inbaraj
DARWIN, Australia, Mar. 24 (IPS) -- There is fear that tens of thousands of East Timorese refugees still languishing in West Timor could face starvation as the deadline fast approaches before Indonesia cuts off all aid to the camps.
Indonesian authorities in West Timor have said that after March 31, feeding and caring for the refugees will be the responsibility of the international community. In the meantime Jakarta wants the refugees to decide whether to return to East Timor or opt for permanent resettlement in Indonesia.
On Wednesday Indonesia's human rights minister Hasballah Saad warned about a looming humanitarian disaster for the East Timorese refugees if the government halted food distributions next week.
"Indonesia gave warning that as of April 1, it will stop the food distributions," said Saad who toured refugee camps in and around Kupang, West Timor last weekend. "Very soon the food distribution will stop. If it does it will be a very big problem."
East Timor's Nobel Peace Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta called the situation of East Timorese refugees in Indonesia "a criminal matter," and urged the international community to help return them home fast.
"International aid workers must be sent in to the camps, to shine the light of international attention on what our people are facing on a daily basis," he said.
Up till now the camps in West Timor -- which are government-run camps, not U.N. refugee camps - have been receiving medical aid, some water supplies and rice in partnership with major aid programs from U.N. agencies and international organizations.
About 260,000 people were either deported to West Timor or fled there to escape the militia violence in East Timor which erupted after the announcement, on Sept. 4, of the UN-sponsored Aug 30 referendum. The outcome of the poll favored East Timor's separation from Indonesia by an overwhelming 78.5 per cent, against 21.5 per cent opting to remain with Indonesia but with broad autonomy.
More than 140,000 East Timorese have returned from the camps in West Timor, but with intimidation by militias still rife, more than 100,000 remain, including the families of militias and former employees of the Indonesian military and civil service who would prefer to remain permanently under Jakarta's rule.
"There is still intimidation going on (in West Timor). On Monday we had a convoy and there was a militia who stoned the convoy smashing the windscreen of one of the aid vehicles," said UNHCR's public information officer Fernando del Mundo who returned recently from West Timor.
"The militias are still active in two camps," he told IPS.
In recent cases, UNHCR staff members themselves have been the target of militia violence. UNHCR has been denied unrestrained access to refugee camps in West Timor, and their efforts to extract refugees from the camps and return them to East Timor are often done under extremely risky circumstances.
In late February a convoy of trucks, transporting 1,000 refugees and UNHCR officials was attacked by militias. As a result, one truck was damaged, and only 179 refugees were eventually repatriated.
"The basic problem is, these people (militia) are allowed to do whatever they are doing. They are allowed to harass. They are allowed to intimidate. That is the issue," Jessen-Peterson, U.N. Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees, said recently.
Similarly, while the International Red Cross has been able to conduct humanitarian operations in East and West Timor, they too have been largely unable to gain access to refugee camps in West Timor, rife with malnutrition and disease.
Sari Kendar, a Unicef representative in the West Timor border town of Atambua said the world body was paying special attention to deadly malaria. She said Unicef had not expected malaria to strike.
"The number of medical doctors is inadequate and the increasing incidences of malaria were unmonitored," she said.
UNHCR, according to del Mundo, expects that of the reported over 100,000 people in West Timor about 50,000 want to go back to East Timor. "These people still haven't gone back to East Timor because they're still ambivalent about conditions back home besides fearing the militias," said del Mundo.
Humanitarian workers are troubled by reports that militias, in particular the Union of Timor Warriors (UNTAS), a pro-integration umbrella group, are placing advertisements in newspapers to scare refugees from returning to East Timor.
One recent advertisement suggested that those who return to East Timor will be doused in gasoline and burned alive. Others threaten torture and shooting. Although UNHCR has attempted to refute these advertisements, many refugees in West Timor do not believe the counter-ads.
A Jakarta Post article on March 19 quoted Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare and Poverty Eradication Basri Hasanuddin as saying some 10,000 East Timorese repatriated by international agencies have returned to neighboring West Timor over the past month.
The Indonesian minister told the paper East Timorese were streaming back to refugee camps in Indonesia because of uncertainties at home, including food shortages.
But del Mundo, who was at the East Timor-Indonesia border last weekend, said there was no evidence of such large numbers of people coming back into West Timor. "We are seeking clarification from the Indonesian government on when this happened and over what period of time."
On the contrary, del Mundo said the number of refugees returning from West Timor has been rising in the last several weeks. "On Monday 450 people crossed the border overland, yesterday some 800 people returned, 500 of whom left Kupang aboard a ship."
The Portugal-based East Timor Observatory, however, said there is still strong concern that not enough refugees are returning home fast enough with the Indonesian deadline just a week away.
"The average repatriation rate was 2,100 per day between Oct. 8 and the end of November. However, the rate fell sharply in December to 400 per day," said the Observatory in a briefing paper circulated to aid agencies.
"The most likely explanation for the drop, according to aid workers, is that most of the early returnees had been living in places to which international agencies had access (through civil and religious organizations), while the others had to get out of the 'refugee camps' that were controlled by militias opposed to the repatriation process," said the monitoring group.
END
Ramos-Horta Issues Statement On Refugees, Prosecutions, Military Ties
March 23, 2000
Calling the situation of East Timorese refugees in Indonesia "a criminal matter," East Timorese Nobel Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta urged their speedy return. He said that all but the commanders responsible for ongoing military and militia terror are welcome to return. These leaders must be called to account, and the international community "must take strong measures at all levels to put the Indonesian military in check."
In a statement issued today, Ramos-Horta also praised Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid's efforts at reconciliation with East Timor and urged the international community to support democracy in Indonesia. "By suspending all military ties with that brutal military, the ... world will not only help stop the terror in West Timor, they will also strengthen the civilian government... [and] bring closer the day when the people of Indonesia can finally live in peace, free from military repression."
Ramos-Horta called on the international community to push forward with its own tribunal, while supporting Indonesia's efforts to investigate and prosecute some of those responsible "for the nightmare of destruction East Timor has witnessed since 1975." He said, "such a tribunal would guarantee justice is served against the masterminds of genocide in the Indonesian military high command if Indonesia cannot meet standard international norms of due process." He urged the international community to clarify the standards that Indonesia must satisfy for credible prosecutions.
Ramos-Horta, vice president of the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), said East Timorese are welcome to return "including those who collaborated with Indonesia... The CNRT will accept no reprisals against any of them. This is their country."
He urged an intensive short-term increase in personnel in West Timor "to help with accompaniment of civilians. International aid workers must be sent in to the camps, to shine the light of international attention on what our people are facing on a daily basis."
Jose Ramos-Horta shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize.
Following Is The Text Of the Statement by 1996 Nobel Peace Prize Co-Laureate José Ramos-Horta
The National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) is deeply concerned about the dire situation still facing those East Timorese in militia and military-controlled camps in West Timor.
More than a month ago, West Timor officials stated that nearly 500 East Timorese, including 310 children, have died due to inadequate sanitation and medical care in the camps. Sanitation and access to medical treatment in the camps is practically nonexistent. Attacks and intimidation by militia and military are an ongoing reality. Access by international aid groups to the refugees is extremely limited, and there have been many militia attacks on aid workers. That this situation continues six months after these East Timorese were driven into forced exile is a criminal matter that must be remedied immediately.
The propaganda being spread through the camps by hard liners in the Indonesian military and their militia lackeys about violence in East Timor is making repatriation efforts much more difficult. We are committed to working together with the Indonesian government to explain to our East Timorese brothers and sisters that they can return safely, including those who collaborated with Indonesia.
Those thousands who voted for autonomy with Indonesia and those militia members who collaborated with the Indonesian Army can feel safe returning to their homeland. The CNRT will accept no reprisals against any of them. This is their country, they belong here and all of us -- the resistance, the pro-autonomy groups -- must meet halfway, bury the past, consolidate peace and rebuild this country.
However, there can be no tolerance for militia leadership that continues to oversee terror campaigns in West Timor, or cross-border and against Oecussi in East Timor. Those responsible for such premeditated savagery must be arrested immediately. Very recently, international peacekeepers near the border between East and West Timor came under fire from Indonesian military-backed militias four times in 24 hours. More recently, a cross-border raid into East Timor by either militias or military (in too many cases they are one and the same) killed one East Timorese civilian; a UN military spokesman said, "further harassment and killing of innocent locals could very well take place."
We are relieved that at long last a militia boss in West Timor, Moko Soares, was arrested, but we are concerned over the nature of and authority over his pending trial in West Timor. More of those in the militia leadership that are still ordering attacks must be brought to trial, and their bosses in the Indonesian military should be called to account as well. If the Indonesian authorities in West Timor can, in the arrogant double speak of the Suharto era, say our people in the camps need to decide whether or not they will come home by the end of March, certainly the rest of the world can tell those authorities that the military thugs calling the shots need to decide to cut loose the militias this week.
In East Timor we are beginning, with UNTAET, to establish our own judicial system, which will soon be ready to try those in East Timor arrested for militia or criminal violence. But, our brothers and sisters will have a harder time practicing forgiveness here in East Timor if they know justice is not being served at the highest levels of power, through trials of those in the Indonesian military who are responsible for the nightmare of destruction East Timor has witnessed since 1975. This is also the only way to send a signal once and for all that the international community will not tolerate ongoing military aggression against innocent East Timorese civilians. For this reason, while we support the process of investigation and trials underway in Indonesia we also encourage the international community to push forward with support for a tribunal. Such a tribunal would guarantee justice served against the masterminds of genocide in the Indonesian military high command if Indonesia cannot meet standard international norms of due process. The international community should clarify these standards now, and focus particular attention on the credibility of judicial personnel, witness protection, and military cooperation, and it should not allow selective immunity from prosecution.
We were extremely grateful that President Wahid took the bold step of coming to East Timor and reaching out his hand in reconciliation. This gesture of goodwill, in which he acknowledged with regret the destruction of our country by the Indonesian military, was not taken lightly by the East Timorese people. Nor will we forget that President Wahid supported our right to self-determination in the Suharto years. We are also grateful for his promise that Indonesian military support for the militia in West Timor will end, and look forward to seeing it fulfilled.
The international community must support the pro-democracy movement and the civilian government in Indonesia by taking strong measures at all levels to put the Indonesian military in check. By suspending all military ties with that brutal military, the great countries of the world not only help stop the terror in West Timor, they also strengthen the civilian government of our friend Abdurrahman Wahid, and bring closer the day when the people of Indonesia can finally live in peace, free from military repression and the draconian "dual-function" that maintains it. We are grateful for current restrictions and call for their continuation, until Indonesia is truly under civilian control, as well as fulfilling its commitments to legal accountability and the return of our people.
To help speed the return home of our fellow East Timorese still in West Timor, we ask for an intensive short-term increase in personnel to help with accompaniment of civilians. International aid workers must be sent into the camps, to shine the light of international attention once more on what our people are facing on a daily basis.
I thank you for your urgent attention to these vital matters.
José Ramos-Horta
1996 Nobel Peace Prize co-Laureate
Vice-President, National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT)
March 22,2000
END
Noose Is Tightening on Generals Invoved in Timor Violence
Tapol ~ March 17, 2000
JAKARTA - The team set up by the Attorney General Marzuki Darusman to examine the document prepared by the Special Investigation Commission (KPP HAM), has now completed its work and has decided that all the recommendations made by the KPP HAM are acceptable. This means that the investigations will now enter the next stage, namely interrogating possible witnesses or suspects. The Attorney General himself will coordinated the interrogation team.
On the basis of the findings of the team of 19 persons, the Attorney General has confirmed that the KPP HAM document has been accepted in its entirety, said Soehandoyo, head of public relations of the Attorney General's office. 'The recommendations made by the KPP HAM are regarded as being a sufficient basis for the interrogations to proceed.
The Attorney General will now appoint an interrogation team which will include prosecutors, and elements from the police and the military police and he has agreed to a suggestion that a team of experts should be set up to make proposals about how the interrogators should proceed.
"We hope that the interrogation team will be formed within two weeks,' said Soehandoyo, on behalf of the Attorney General's office.
He told the press he was not yet in a position to say who might be summoned as suspects. It will be for the team of interrogators to decide.
The Attorney General recently told the press that all the names recommended for consideration as suspects by the KPP HAM would be summoned and questioned. Among the armed forces senior officers mentioned by the KPP HAM is General Wiranto.
END
Wiranto Could Go On Trial in Three Months
Suara Pembaruan ~ March 17, 2000
JAKARTA - After attending a plenary session of the DPR Monday, the Minister for Law and Legislation, Yusril Izha Mahendra said that Wiranto could go on trial in three months, once the draft law on a Human Rights Court has been enacted by the parliament.
He said that although the KPP HAM, the investigation commission which had conducted investigations into abuses in East Timor, carried out its work on the strength of a presidential decree which has now been revoked by parliament, investigations into the crimes which will be carried out by the attorney-general's office could go ahead even though that decree was no longer in force.
He confirmed that the attorney general would have to wait until the new human rights court law has been enacted in order to go ahead with the trial of Wiranto. 'We want this to go ahead fast so that everything is ready in three months,' said Yusril, adding that the draft bill will be presented to parliament next week.
Such a trial would use an ad hoc provision (in the law) which can be triggered at the request of parliament, and which would have retroactive powers. He said it would be possible to deviate from the nullum delictum principle if there is a political decision and this is indeed the wish of the people. Yusril also said that alongside the draft bill on a human rights court, the government will also submit to parliament a draft bill on a truth and reconciliation commission.
The court established under the new law will be a permanent court, not an ad hoc court but the draft law provides for the human rights court to function also as an ad hoc court. This was the compromise that had been reached in the final draft of the law - the ninth draft - because there had been objections from some sides over introducing retroactivity which contradicts the principle of nullem delictum, namely that a law cannot be retroactive.
END
Elections Possible Next Year, Says UN
Sydney Morning Herald, by Mark Dodd ~ March 16, 2000
DILI - East Timor is likely to have a United Nations-supervised election next year to appoint its first democratically elected parliament, the UN's chief administrator for the territory says.
Expressing a note of exasperation at the slow pace of reconstruction, Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello, the head of UNTAET [United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor], said he wished he had a magic wand to translate donor pledges into instant public works projects.
While East Timor remained in a state of emergency, demands for political milestones that would lead the UN-administered territory to independence were not being ignored, he said.
Mr Vieira de Mello said that while it was preferable to focus on reconstruction and building a civil administration, "one cannot hold the political horses for too long".
"Perhaps after the CNRT [National Council for Timorese Resistance] congress in August, the time may be ripe for us to begin a very broad consultation with East Timorese civil society on what the Constitution of East Timor should look like," he said.
"We should let this grow out of an East Timorese process of reflection at all levels, going all the way down to traditional chiefs in the remotest villages of this country."
By early next year the transition would shift to a second phase, including the drafting of a constitution, regulations governing the formation of political parties, and an electoral law.
"I'm sure elections must take place in 2001," Mr Vieira de Mello said. "Would these be elections for a constituent assembly, as I presently believe should be the case?
"All of these questions are still premature, but that's how I see things unfolding from August or September this year, with elections possibly taking place in the middle of the year 2001."
He said that next week he would sign into effect a regulation establishing the long-delayed Civil Service Commission, responsible for the filling of up to 7,000 jobs.
He said 12,500 East Timorese had applied so far to enlist in a new police force, whose recruits will begin training on March 27 at a UN-run police academy.
The UNTAET chief said that while the security situation remained stable in the Oecussi enclave following last month's arrest of the militia leader Moko Soares, he remained very concerned about recent cross-border attacks by pro-Jakarta militia.
"President [Abdurrahman] Wahid was here only two weeks ago and I think on the security front developments have been very disappointing," he said, referring to pledges by the Indonesian President that he would crack down on the militias.
Mr Vieira de Mello confirmed that on Monday UNTAET and the CNRT had held their first talks on the future role of some 1,000 armed Falintil independence fighters.
He admitted conditions at their cantonment in Aileu were "ghastly" and promised immediate UN help to improve food supplies and sanitation. The meeting did not resolve the question of Falantil's future, but did cover several options, Mr Vieira de Mello said.
The independence leader Mr Jose Ramos Horta was a little more forthright. He said the CNRT had decided that, given the security situation and the legacy of the post-ballot violence, East Timor required a small, well-armed indigenous security force, whether it was police, army or a French-style gendarmerie, and the UNTAET mandate should, if necessary, be revised to include such a role for Falintil.
END
East Timor And Australia's Oily Politics
Mike Head, World Socialist Web Site ~ March 14, 2000
Among the most revealing aspects of recent events in East Timor has been the almost complete silence in Australian media and political circles about the two agreements signed by the Australian government last month to secure control over the multi-billion dollar oil and natural gas reserves beneath the Timor Sea.
One had to scour the newspapers for the barest references to the two treaties, tucked away in other stories. No headlines, photographs or commentary greeted either signing ceremony. In the first, on February 10, the Australian representative in Timor and UN Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET) chief Sergio Viera de Mello initialled a new Timor Gap Treaty to replace the one that the Hawke Labor government signed with the Suharto regime in 1989. Under the new treaty, the UN has simply supplanted Indonesia as Australia's partner in the Timor Sea Zone of Cooperation.
For the second ceremony on February 29, de Mello was joined by Australian Resources Minister Nick Minchin to sign the so-called Perth Agreement. It clears the way for a $1.4 billion project in the Bayu-Undan field, which is about 500 kilometres north-west of Darwin, capital of Australia's Northern Territory, and 250 km south of Suai in East Timor. Led by the US oil company, Phillips Petroleum, a US-Australian-Japanese-British consortium now has permission to exploit the huge field, which is expected to yield up to 400 million barrels of liquefied petroleum gas. The royalties and taxation revenues will be split between Australia and UNTAET.
The scant mention of the treaties was in stark contrast to 1989 when members of Hawke's cabinet signed the Timor Gap Treaty with their Indonesian counterparts in a champagne ceremony on board a VIP jet flying above the Timor Sea. That event was celebrated with film footage, editorials and front-page headlines.
Why the reticence about the Howard government's successful efforts to secure a dominant stake in the Timor Gap? Because the scramble for oil and gas undermines the government's claims to have sent thousands of troops to East Timor last September for purely humanitarian purposes. It suggests that, in relation to Timor, the old adage applies: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Much has altered since 1989, but one thing has not—the central pillar of Australian policy has remained the siphoning off of the lion's share of the resources under the sea between Timor and Australia.
Officially, Australian policy has shifted from being the West's most ardent defender of the Indonesian regime and its annexation of East Timor, to championing the right of the Timorese people to self-determination. Yet even the form of the Timor treaties highlights the colonial character of the new arrangements. The signatory for East Timor was the UN Administrator, who currently holds complete power over the former Portuguese colony. The treaties will legally bind any incoming East Timorese government. As for the Timorese masses, in whose name Australia has intervened, they have had no say in the arrangements whatsoever.
All in all, the Timor operation has provided an object lesson in the modus operandi of the new “ethical” foreign policy proclaimed by the Western powers as the basis for their interventions into Yugoslavia and Timor last year. Under the pretext of a sudden concern for the lives and well-being of refugees and the oppressed, a new colonialism has emerged, driven entirely by corporate and government appetites for oil and gas revenues, as well as other natural resources, cheap labour, new markets and strategic advantages.
While silence greeted the treaty signings, considerable fanfare was afforded to another event. On February 23, the Australian-led International Force in East Timor (Interfet) officially lowered its flag in Dili, the East Timorese capital, and formally transferred power to UN troops. Speaking at the farewell ceremony, the Australian commander, Major-General Peter Cosgrove, declared that after 157 days Interfet had accomplished its mission. “Peace and security” had largely been restored, he said. Moreover, Interfet had proven that “not all armies are oppressive instruments of an unwelcome administration”.
There was more than a coincidence of timing, however, between Interfet's departure and the signing of the two Timor Gap documents. When Cosgrove and 4,000 Australian military personnel were sent to East Timor last September their real mission was to protect Australian corporate and strategic interests. That was the mission that was largely completed with the Perth Agreement.
In fact, the operation was a continuation of three decades in which Australia's grip over the Timor Gap has been achieved over the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Timorese people. In the first place, in 1965-66 the Australian political, military and intelligence establishment gave full support to General Suharto's bloody coup in Indonesia and backed his dictatorship as a bulwark against the socialist and national liberation struggles in South-East Asia.
Then in 1974-75 the Labor government of Gough Whitlam gave Suharto unmistakable signals—and Whitlam's personal assurances at two summits—that his junta could invade East Timor with impunity. At least 200,000 Timorese people died as a result, through massacres and hunger. Timor's oil, first explored in the late 1960s, became a critical factor. Whitlam's ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott summed up Canberra's attitude in a diplomatic cable, advising the Labor government that a Timor Gap Treaty “could be more readily negotiated with Indonesia than with Portugal or independent Portuguese Timor”.
These aspirations came to fruition in the 1989 treaty. In return for Indonesia's signature, Australia became the only Western country to extend formal or de jure recognition to East Timor's incorporation as Indonesia's 27th province. Just two years later, while feeling obliged to express regret at the loss of life, the Hawke government endorsed the Suharto regime's blatant cover-up of the 1991 Dili massacre, in which more than 200 unarmed protestors were gunned down by Indonesian troops.
Brought to office in 1996, the Howard government maintained the alliance with the Indonesian regime as long as it possibly could. Throughout most of 1999 it steadfastly defended the Indonesian military's claims that it would ensure the safety of the Timorese people in the lead-up to the autonomy ballot of August 30. After the ballot produced an overwhelming vote for secession, Howard's government quickly reversed its position and campaigned for an Australian-led multinational force to occupy the territory. Cynically, Howard argued that the bloodbath in East Timor had reached such proportions that Australia had to immediately intervene.
Leaked intelligence documents have proven that Australian security forces had reliable reports from aid workers, telecommunications surveillance and other sources as early as November 1998 that the Indonesian generals were arming and backing the militias who were slaughtering whole villages. Howard and his ministers insisted publicly that any military involvement was the work of “rogue elements” outside the control of president Habibie and armed forces commander General Wiranto.
As a direct result of this complicity, the military-organised rampage continued, reaching a climax in the days after the ballot. Towns were devastated, 400,000 people—half the population—were forced to flee their homes, and thousands were killed. Most of the damage was done before the Australian troops arrived. They largely policed an already destroyed country.
This is the true record of official Australian policy in East Timor. At every turning point—from 1974-75 to 1989 and 1999-2000—the guiding principle has been oil and strategic interests. With the breakup of the Suharto regime in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis, an adjustment ultimately had to be made but the shift had no more to do with humanitarian concern than the previous policy.
General Cosgrove was not alone in claiming that his army had a uniquely humane role. His farewell speech echoed the sentiments of the entire political establishment—the Liberals, Nationals, Labor Party, Democrats and Greens—who all supported the intervention.
Even more significantly, it paralleled the claim of the “left” and radical milieu that demanded military intervention. As media commentators noted at the time, “troops out” activists of the Vietnam War era became champions of “troops in”. Their support for the dispatch of the Australian military helped to dampen disquiet and cut off avenues for the expression of any opposition. Along with the Howard government and the other parties, they bear equal responsibility for the outcome.
END
TAPOL Hails President Wahid For Supporting a Judicial Probe Into the 1965/66 Massacre
March 14, 2000
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign, is profoundly moved by the announcement made today by President Abdurrahman Wahid, or Gus Dur as he is popularly known, supporting a judicial probe into the massacre of hundreds of thousands of alleged communists in 1965 and 1966.
TAPOL hails this as a major step towards enabling the people of Indonesia, in particular the younger generation, to face up to the horrific events that followed General Suharto's seizure of power in 1965 as hundreds of thousands of defenceless people were slaughtered in villages and towns across the country, especially in Central and East Java, Bali and North Sumatra.
The killings began in the latter part of October 1965 when Suharto ordered members of the elite corps, then known as RPKAD, now called Kopassus, to go out and persecute, arrest and eliminate anyone suspected of being communists or communist sympathisers. As President Wahid courageously acknowledges, many members of his own party, the Nahdatul Ulama, were recruited, trained and armed by the troops to join in the bloodletting.
Nor should it be forgotten that the western powers, including the US and British governments, did nothing to halt the bloodletting and indeed covertly helped the killers by supplying weapons and intelligence. They gleefully welcomed the destruction of the Indonesian communist party and the ousting of President Sukarno which paved the way for lucrative economic ties, trade and investment with resource-rich Indonesia and a new relationship with a country that was now under a dictatorship of unprecedented ruthelessness.
The 1965/66 massacre paved the way for Suharto to consolidate his power throughout the country and create a system of repression that held the country in its grip until the dictator was forced to resign in May 1998.
Carmel Budiardjo, director of TAPOL who spent three years in prison without charge or trial from 1968 - 1971, said: 'At a time when many groups in Indonesia are pressing for numerous human rights abuses and killings to be investigated, it is important to realise that all those targeted - imprisoned, torture, killed - during the 33 years of the Suharto New Order were victims of the same repressive machinery which Suharto created, built on the bones of the victims of the 1965/1966 massacre. It is important that President Wahid has added his voice to these demands by calling for a probe into this massacre, in the face of possible opposition from circles within the army and other groups in Indonesian society who still bear deep, irrational grudges against the Indonesian communist party and the leftwing movement which was decimated by Suharto's killer thugs.'
Budiardjo plans to visit Indonesia shortly, now that she is no longer blacklisted, and hopes to have an opportunity to convey her thanks personally to Gus Dur for this important decision.
END
U.N. Seizes Weapons Smuggled From Indonesia
Japan Economic Newswire ~ March 14, 2000
DILI - The United Nations peacekeeping force in East Timor has confiscated a number of weapons smuggled by ship from Indonesia's West Timor and detained at least five people, a U.N. spokesman said Friday.
Manoel de Almeida, spokesman of the U.N. Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), told a press conference the weapons were confiscated Thursday from a ship carrying refugees returning to East Timor.
"The ship carried 386 returnees from Kupang and upon arrival in Dili as the baggage was being unloaded and passengers started disembarking, customs officers conducted a routine search of one of the passengers and discovered two hand grenades," de Almeida said.
The grenades were concealed in a cassette player. The passenger was detained and handed over to U.N. civilian police, he said.
Following the discovery, the custom officers conducted a search of all the baggage on the ship, and found three weapons, several packages of air gun pellets, and a bundle of bayonets, de Almeida said.
"The confiscated weapons were handed over to U.N. peacekeeping personnel and four other individuals were detained for questioning by civpol (civilian police)," he said.
The discovery, he said, has prompted the U.N. border control service to conduct a search of the baggage on all ships bringing back returnees from West Timor. By Friday the number of such returning refugees had reached 150,194.
"Body searches may be carried out if it is deemed warranted," de Almeida said.
In a related development, Lt. Col. Brynjar Nymo, chief spokesman for the peacekeeping forces, said their presence in the Ermera District town of Atsabe in the central part of the territory "will remain high and patrols and checkpoints throughout the area will continue." Troops from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Portugal are taking part in the operation, he said.
The level of alertness along the East Timor border with West Timor has been increased from "medium" to "high", following a series of cross-border incursions and attacks on people in West Timor by pro-Indonesia militias.
The attacks have claimed at least one life, that of a villager.
"Yesterday (Thursday), members of the militia were spotted by the peacekeeping forces, but the distance, the difficult terrain and the bad weather prevented the peacekeeping forces from making physical contact or positively identifying the group," Nymo told reporters.
Based on observations in Atsabe, however, the group consisted of 15 males, wore dark clothes, and all of them were carrying weapons, he said.
According to Nymo, the pro-Jakarta militias are very active in isolated areas of the entire western part of East Timor and the Ermera district in the central part, driving unarmed civilians into hiding.
END
Wahid Orders Disarming of Militias
Lusa ~ March 14, 2000
Dili - Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid ordered his military Friday to disarm anti-independence East Timorese militias and take other "necessary actions" to keep them from attacking the territory, Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab announced in Jakarta.
"The president is very preoccupied and unhappy and immediately contacted the defense minister" on the issue, Shihab said, after meeting with a senior delegation from Dili’s UN administration and peacekeeping force.
"We can’t continue to tolerate such incidences [sic], and those responsible must get a strong warning and, if needed, face the corresponding legal sanctions", he added, saying he was citing the president.
The apparently stiffened stance against militias based in Indonesian West Timor came after "strong protests" and demands for action in Jakarta by the commander of East Timor’s peacekeeping force, Gen. Jaime de los Santos, and the UN administration’s director of political affairs, Peter Galbraith.
The two men, dispatched to Jakarta by UNTAET chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello, were also to meet Friday with Defense Minister Adm. Widodo Adisucipito, before travelling to West Timor for talks with Indonesia’s regional military commander.
UNTAET’s initiative came after militias launched more than 10 attacks against villages and UN peacekeeping positions from West Timor bases during the past two weeks.
In a related development, one militia leader returned Thursday to East Timor on an exploratory visit of reconciliation.
Considered a "moderate" among anti-independence forces, Juanico Belo, chief of the Saka militia group which was active in eastern Baucau, held talks in Dili Thursday with Vieira de Mello and local officials, including independence leader Xanana Gusmao, who had arranged the visit.
END
Court Told of Militia Leader's Gun-Dealing
by Karen Polglaze, AAP ~ March 14, 2000
JAKARTA, March 6 AAP - East Timor's most wanted militia leader listened impassively today as a West Timor court heard about his alleged gun-dealing.
Laurentino "Moko" Soares, commander of the Saukunar militia, appeared before the Kefamenanu District Court to answer charges that he had sold a rifle and ammunition to a cattle farmer.
Despite Soares's leadership of the militia believed to be involved in a massacre of more than 40 people in the enclave of Oecussi in the wake of the East Timor independence vote last August, and in shooting at Australian troops in January, no charges related to these incidents have been brought against him.
Soares was arrested near Kefamenanu on February 7 after he allegedly sold a gun and bullets to Lukas Anunu Asuuh in a deal unrelated to the violence in East Timor.
Kefamenanu chief prosecutor I Ketut Artana (I Ketut Artana) said Asuuh, the sole witness in today's hour-long court session, had told Judge Kamaruddin Simanjuntak and the two other members of the judicial panel that the transaction had occurred.
"The witness admitted he bought a gun and some ammunition from Moko, who considers himself as a middleman," Artana told AAP.
"The prosecutor in the court told me Moko Soares seemed impassive and just listened to the questioning of the witness."
Artana said Soares had been charged with a breach of the 1951 emergency laws. The offence carried a maximum penalty of death and a minimum of one day in jail.
The prosecution would decide what penalty to ask for after all witnesses had been heard, Artana said.
"Two or three more court sessions will be needed to decide what kind of penalty Moko should have," he said.
"The session adjourned until next Monday, when a witness from the Indonesian military and some others will be summoned."
Soares has reportedly been living in Kefamenanu, 15 kilometres south of West Timor's border with the East Timor enclave of Oecussi, since soldiers from the United Nations intervention force in East Timor (Interfet) gained control of Oecussi.
Securing the border there was one of the