RIGHTS-EAST TIMOR: Bloodbath in the Making?

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 2 1999 (IPS) - With violence worsening in East Timor after Monday’s self-determination vote, the United Nations once again finds itself under-equipped and unable to prevent a crisis.

The flaws of the UN approach in East Timor were laid bare barely 48 hours after voting when pro-Indonesia militias went on a rampage outside the main UN compound in Dili, killing at least two people, setting several nearby houses ablaze and pelting rocks at the UN headquarters.

UN staffers were able to provide protection to some 300 East Timorese who had fled from the militias; but the UN Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) – which currently boasts roughly 270 unarmed police and is dependent on Indonesia for security – has been unable to do much more than fend for itself.

The current President of the UN Security Council, Peter van Walsum of the Netherlands, quickly “condemned in the strongest terms the violence in Dili.” The 15-nation Council, however, has been unwilling to do more to halt the growing violence.

Chinese Ambassador Shen Guofang said that, although some Council members called for armed peacekeepers to be considered, Beijing would not want any such step to be taken without Indonesia’s agreement. But Indonesia, which occupied East Timor in 1975 and has been accused of arming the militias blamed for the recent violence, was unlikely to accept any UN peacekeepers.

Indonesian police, meanwhile appeared to be doing little to stop the latest violence in East Timor.

As a result, the United Nations now faced the same dilemma in East Timor that it encountered in Sierra Leone, Bosnia- Hercegovina, Angola and countless other war zones: how to forestall a conflict that it predicted, when it lacked the means to do so.

The Security Council last week authorised UNAMET to deploy as many as 460 civilian police and 300 military liaison officers. Yet those unarmed forces are only supposed to coordinate security matters with Indonesia and train an East Timorese police force – not to maintain security themselves.

As a result, UN staffers in East Timor can only stand and watch as hundreds of people are caught up in post-ballot violence.

The situation is not unique. As one European diplomat told IPS, “It’s not so hard to see why this is happening. How many countries did anything when the violence started again in Angola?”

UN peacekeepers withdrew from Angola earlier this year, and the world body stood on the sidelines as renewed civil warfare began to taking the lives of an estimated 200 Angolans daily.

A number of factors have tied the United Nations’ hands in East Timor.

On the one hand, many countries clearly lack the appetite to deploy peacekeepers in hostile circumstances. More crucially, the May 5 peace accords between Indonesia and Portugal, which paved the way for the Aug. 30 self-determination vote, committed the United Nations to respecting Indonesia’s responsibility for providing security before and after the ballot.

If UN peacekeepers were to be deployed in Indonesia now, one UN official said on condition of anonymity, Jakarta could determine that action to be a violation of the May 5 agreement.

If the United Nations waits for Indonesia to endorse the results of the self-determination vote in a special session of the People’s Consultative Assembly, it may not be until November before UN peacekeepers are dispatched – by which time fighting may have spread.

Some Council diplomats argued this week that the United Nations must proceed with contingency planning to avert a deterioration in East Timor. “We must be prepared to take action when it’s going to be needed,” said British Ambassador John Weston.

Portuguese Ambassador Antonio Monteiro has urged the Council to take stiffer action against the militias and their backers if the violence persists, but Indonesia’s allies – including China – could veto any tough measures.

The US government has limited its own pressure to muted warnings to Jakarta to crack down on the violence. State Department spokesman Phil Reeker said in Washington Wednesday that Indonesia had yet to “fulfill adequately” its responsibilities to provide security and maintain order.

“We urge Indonesian authorities to accept their responsibility and to take immediate action that ends, once and for all, the activities of the pro-integration militias and to arrest those disturbing order, terrorizing the populace and disrupting the UN process,” Reeker said.

“Indonesia’s international reputation will suffer if it fails to abide by its commitments.”

Several UN officials warned privately that the tension between the militias, who favour continued Indonesian rule over East Timor with a wide degree of autonomy, and the pro-independence movement could increase after the result of the ballot was known in a few days time.

If, as expected, a majority of East Timorese opt for independence instead of autonomy, the pro-Indonesia militias were expected to step up their attacks.

Australian troops – expected to form the rump of an advance UN presence – are standing by in case of further violence, but they may lack the authority to step in if the militias refuse to accept a pro-independence vote.

That, too, is nothing new: Hundreds of UN peacekeepers waited for months to be deployed to Rwanda during that country’s 1994 genocide, with some troops lacking equipment and logistics and US- donated armoured personnel carriers held up because they hadn’t been painted.

“We don’t trust the United Nations,” one Rwandan rebel official, Claude Dusaidi, said at the time. “It moves too slow.”

Still, East Timor’s people are hoping the looming crisis can be prevented.

“The United Nations cannot be forced to pack up and leave by a gang of thugs,” Timorese pro-independence leader Jose Ramos Horta said last month, adding that the world body’s credibility would be at stake.