Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights

EAST TIMOR: No Justice for Victims of 1999 Killings

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, May 25 2008 (IPS) - Those responsible for violence related to the 1999 referendum on independence in East Timor – in which more than 1,000 people are believed to have died – are not expected to face justice, according to a leading expert.

"It’s rather unlikely that the perpetrators of the abuses in 1999 are now going to actually face what they deserve to face or be brought to justice," says George Quinn, an expert on Indonesian and East Timorese affairs at the Australian National University.

The release last month from an Indonesian jail of Eurico Guterres, the former head of the feared Aitarak militia – a pro-Indonesia group based in Dili – means that all 18 people charged over the 1999 referendum related violence are now free.

"The excesses of our struggle were not something we wanted, but something we couldn’t avoid," said Guterres upon his release in early April. The United Nations says around 1,000 people died during the violence, while Indonesia puts the figure at 100.

Guterres had originally been sentenced to 10 years jail in 2002 by an Indonesian court specially convened to try those believed to be behind the violence and which side-stepped foreign calls for an international tribunal.

Despite being found guilty in 2002 of leading an attack on the house of prominent local politician, Manuel Carrascalao – in which around 13 people were killed, including Carrascalao’s 19-year-old son – in April 1999, Guterres avoided incarceration until 2006 when his appeal was rejected.

But according to a judge involved in acquitting Guterres, Joko Sarwoko, the former militia boss did not have "structural command" of Aitarak and therefore "could not be held responsible for the violence".

However, an Australian journalist, John Martinkus – who lived in Dili from 1998 and was the only foreign journalist resident in the capital during the lead-up to the August 1999 referendum – writes in his book, ‘A Dirty Little War’, that he has viewed footage taken by Australian filmmaker Carmela Baranowska which clearly shows Guterres ordering his men to attack pro-independence supporters.

With Indonesian troops directing proceedings, Martinkus says that following a rally, the militia turned their attention to Carrascalao’s house, resulting in the deaths over which Guterres has now been cleared.

Martinkus told IPS that attention on the post-referendum violence overlooks the violence that had preceded it. "We’re not looking at a spasm of violence after the referendum, we’re looking at an entire year of violence. All throughout the year (1999) you had massacres."

He says that the period of March and April – prior to the arrival of the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), whose job it was to organise and conduct the referendum – was the worst.

"There were killings pretty much every day in Dili. It was almost like in the afternoon, between 1pm and 4pm, something would happen. And there would be Eurico’s men involved," recalls Martinkus.

He says that the Aitarak militia was responsible for daily intimidation. Road blocks and the torching of houses were common.

Martinkus argues that the pro-Indonesian militias were part of an overall Indonesian strategy to influence the vote in favour of East Timorese accepting the proposal that East Timor become a special autonomous region within Indonesia.

The Australian met Guterres "almost on a daily basis" throughout 1999. The Indonesians "wanted someone who was supposedly charismatic to be able to front up to the press and say he represented Timorese who wanted to stay with Indonesia," says Martinkus.

Following the referendum – in which almost 80 percent of voters rejected the proposed special autonomy, leading to Indonesia’s withdrawal and eventual independence for East Timor in 2002 – Guterres continued to terrorise the local population.

"After the ballot it was Eurico’s men running around, telling everybody they had to leave or they would be killed," says Martinkus, who describes the scale of the sacking of Dili after the vote as "massive."

He says it is "remarkable" that Guterres has now been released from prison.

"To let him off is to basically thumb their noses at any concept of any kind of justice for what happened in 1999," Martinkus told IPS.

It is a sentiment also expressed by Quinn. "The fact that 18 out of 18 (tried) are now free doesn’t say much for the quality of justice in Indonesia," he says.

Quinn does not expect the East Timorese government to aggressively pursue the issue. "I think that in East Timor there is a strong feeling, especially among the Prime Minister (Xanana Gusmao) and his followers, that good relations with Indonesia and reconciliation have at least as much importance, and perhaps more, as the pursuit of these criminals," he told IPS.

Last month, East Timor’s President Jose Ramos Horta called on the Indonesian military to admit responsibility for the violence. "Although we don’t want to point fingers, although we don’t want anybody to go to jail" the officers should admit their guilt and apologise, Ramos Horta said.

Quinn says that "there has been already quite an extraordinary rapprochement taking place between East Timor and Indonesia."

He cites the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) – a joint Indonesian-East Timorese commission established in 2005 to investigate human rights abuses committed during Indonesia’s 25-year occupation of the former Portuguese colony, the final report of which is expected to be released this week – whose mandate does not include the power to prosecute, as an example of East Timor wanting better relations with its neighbour.

Quinn argues that East Timor’s economic dependence on Indonesia and the large expatriate community in Indonesia are also factors in its desire to smooth relations with Jakarta.

However, the Catholic Church and the opposition Fretilin party are among those opposing this policy.

According to Quinn, the dominant view is that those who were killed "are going to be sacrificed, not only in the interests of better relations with Indonesia, but also because there are quite a few powerful people in East Timor who think ‘well, we won, therefore that is our justice.’"