LAKSAMANA.Net, April 16, 2004 10:00 PM
The East Timor 'Scapegoat'
Laksamana.Net - East Timor's former governor Abilio Soares, facing three years in jail
over the 1999 carnage in the territory, says he has been made a scapegoat for the
Indonesian military.
"If possible, someone has to be sacrificed and I was chosen to be the scapegoat…
Justice in this country is reserved for powerful people and people who have money,"
he was quoted as saying Friday (16/4/04) by Agence France-Presse.
The ethnic East Timorese was convicted in August 2002 by Indonesia's special
human rights court of allowing massacres to take place in East Timor in the period
surrounding the territory's August 1999 independence referendum.
At the time of his sentencing he claimed he was made a scapegoat for the military.
Despite his three-year jail sentence, he has remained free pending an appeal. But the
Supreme Court on April 8 rejected his appeal.
Soares was the first of 18 defendants to be tried by the human rights court, which
ended up acquitting 11 members of the security forces and one civilian.
The six convicted over the carnage were: Soares; former militia leader Eurico Guterres
(10 years in jail); former Dili Military Command chief Lieutenant Colonel Soedjarwo
(five years); former Dili Police chief Hulman Gultom (three years); former East Timor
Military Command chief Brigadier General Noer Muis (five years); and former East
Timor Military chief Major General Adam Damiri (three years).
All six are still free, although the Attorney General's Office has said Soares will be
jailed once it receives a copy of the Supreme Court's ruling.
"The Supreme Court verdict is final. It must be executed despite any further legal
moves by the defendant or his lawyers," Attorney General's Office spokesman Kemas
Yahya Rahman said recently.
Soares, speaking at a press conference in Jakarta, insisted he was innocent. "I feel I
am being sacrificed for the interests of people who were responsible for security in
East Timor at the time," he was quoted as saying by AFP.
He said those being protected included Indonesia's former military chief Wiranto, who
was never brought to court over the violence, although an East Timor tribunal later
indicted him for crimes against humanity.
The Indonesian military and its militia proxies had unleashed carnage in East Timor in
an effort to intimidate locals not to vote for secession. Massacres and devastating
looting and arson attacks continued until after the arrival of a UN-sanctioned
international peacekeeping force in September 1999.
In response to international pressure to bring those accused of responsibility for the
carnage to justice, Indonesia established its special human rights court to hear cases
against the 18 defendants.
Human rights activists said the trials were a sham and complained that several senior
generals suspected of masterminding the carnage were never tried.
Hendardi, executive director of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights
Association, last week criticized the judiciary for putting the blame on Soares and
acquitting more powerful suspects.
"What is going on? Both the police and military were responsible for security back
then," he was quoted as saying by The Jakarta Post daily.
Amnesty Criticizes UN
Amnesty International on Thursday accused the United Nations of not doing enough
to bring Indonesian officers to justice for the atrocities in East Timor.
The London-based human rights watchdog, in a joint report with East Timor's
non-governmental Judicial System Monitoring Program, said the UN Security Council
should consider setting up an international criminal tribunal.
"While the UN is dragging its feet, those responsible for grave crimes in Timor Leste
[East Timor] are free and in many cases are in active military or police service," the
report said.
"It is therefore no surprise that the patterns, if not the scale, of violations witnessed in
Timor Leste have since been repeated elsewhere in Indonesia," it added.
The report said Indonesia's human rights court was "fundamentally flawed" because it
had failed to prosecute all of those responsible for the violence.
East Timor has indicted 369 suspects but more than 75% of them are in Indonesia,
which refuses to hand anyone over for trial.
Indonesia Defends Record
The government has strongly denied that it failed to prosecute those responsible for
the East Timor carnage.
Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said Indonesia would not
accept the proposal for an international criminal tribunal.
"Of course there are shortcomings in our national tribunal system. But it's not as if it's
in such a flawed state, that you want to go the international tribunal route,” he was
quoted as saying by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"If, and it's a big if, we were to go the international tribunal route - perhaps it can
deliver the type of justice that people are looking for - but what beneficial impact would
that have on democratization in Indonesia, on democratization in Timor Leste?
Because it is as if we are contracting out what should be our responsibility,” he said.
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