INDONESIA

Virtual Truth Commission

1950's

George McT Kahin & Audrey R. Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia, New York: The New Press, 1995; 318 pages. Reviewed in U. S. Policy / Indonesia. "George Kahin was personally acquainted with most of the key players in Indonesian politics during the 1950s, and he...exposes the covert policy of Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers in Indonesia during the 1950s.

1965 Coup

History of U. S. Military Interventions: INDONESIA/1965/Command operation/Million killed in CIA- assisted army coup. S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

Civic action. The covert U.S. aid and training was mostly innocuous-sounding "civic action," which is generally thought to mean building roads, staffing health clinics and performing other "hearts-and-minds" activities with civilians. But "civic action" also provided cover in Indonesia, as in the Philippines and Vietnam, for psy-war. The secret U.S.-Indonesian military connections paid off for Washington when a political crisis erupted the next summer and fall, threatening Sukarno's government. To counter Indonesia's powerful Communist Party, known as the PKI, the army's Red Berets organized the slaughter of thousands of men, women and children. So many bodies were dumped into the rivers of East Java that they ran red with blood. In a classic psy-war tactic, the bloated carcasses also served as a political warning to villages down river. "To make sure they didn't sink, the carcasses were deliberately tied to, or impaled on, bamboo stakes," wrote eyewitness Pipit Rochijat. "And the departure of corpses from the Kediri region down the Brantas achieved its golden age when bodies were stacked on rafts over which the PKI banner proudly flew." [See Rochijat's "Am I PKI or Non-PKI?" Indonesia, Oct. 1985.] Peter Dale Scott, "Two Indonesias, Two Americas", June 9, 1998, site 1 or site 2 The Consortium for Independent Journalism, a paid subscription service.

Martens, Robert J., formerly a political officer in the U. S. Embassy, referring to 1965 coup events. "I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment." Martens described how U. S. diplomats and CIA officers provided up to 5000 names to Indonesian Army death squads in 1965, and checked them off as they were killed or captured. Kathy Kadane, reporter who interviewed Martens; article was in San Francisco Examiner (5/20/90) and Washington Post (5/21/90). Michael Wines of the New York Times did a damage control effort (7/12/90) which caused this story to die down. U. S. Policy / Indonesia. This is one of 90 files from Public Information Research, non-profit publisher of NameBase
that are organized by subject category.

The events of 1965-1966, dismissed at the time by the world's media as an 'abortive Communist coup,' are still hotly disputed, and appear suspicious by any reasonable standard -- the whole thing could have been set up by the CIA. U. S. Policy / Indonesia

The coup of 1965 was described in a CIA study: "In terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murd3ers during the Second World War, and teh Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s." U. S. Policy / Indonesia

Kadane's story provoked a telling response from Washington Post senior editorial writer Stephen S. Rosenfeld. He accepted the fact that American officials had assisted "this fearsome slaughter," but then justified the killings. Rosenfeld argued that the massacre "was and still is widely regarded as the grim but earned fate of a conspiratorial revolutionary party that represented the same communist juggernaut that was on the march in Vietnam." In a column entitled, "Indonesia 1965: The Year of Living Cynically?" Rosenfeld reasoned that "either the army would get the communists or the communists would get the army, it was thought: Indonesia was a domino, and the PKI's demise kept it standing in the free world. ... Though the means were grievously tainted, we -- the fastidious among us as well as the hard-headed and cynical -- can be said to have enjoyed the fruits in the geopolitical stability of that important part of Asia, in the revolution that never happened." [WP, July 13, 1990] Peter Dale Scott, "Two Indonesias, Two Americas", June 9, 1998, The Consortium for Independent Journalism.

1981

A Catholic missionary provided an eyewitness account of one search-and-destroy mission in East Timor in 1981. "We saw with our own eyes the massacre of the people who were surrendering: all dead, even women and children, even the littlest ones. ... Not even pregnant women were spared: they were cut open. .... They did what they had done to small children the previous year, grabbing them by the legs and smashing their heads against rocks. ... The comments of Indonesian officers reveal the moral character of this army: 'We did the same thing [in 1965] in Java, in Borneo, in the Celebes, in Irian Jaya, and it worked." [See A. Barbedo de Magalhaes, East Timor: Land of Hope.] The references to the success of the 1965 slaughter were not unusual. In Timor: A People Betrayed, author James Dunn noted that "on the Indonesian side, there have been many reports that many soldiers viewed their operation as a further phase in the ongoing campaign to suppress communism that had followed the events of September 1965." Classic psy-war and pacification strategies were followed to the hilt in East Timor. The Indonesians put on display corpses and the heads of their victims. Timorese also were herded into government-controlled camps before permanent relocation in "resettlement villages" far from their original homes. Peter Dale Scott, "Two Indonesias, Two Americas", June 9, 1998, site 1 or The Consortium for Independent Journalism

1989

In 1989 Lt. Gen. Johny 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. Alain Nairn, "General Lumintang Trained by the U. S., March 29, 2000.

1991

Indonesia/East Timor. Massacre at Santa Cruz, 1991. Involved Kopassus troops headed by US-trained commanders Prabowo Subianto (son in law of General Suharto) and Kiki Syahnakri, who was appointed as martial law administer for East Timor in 1999. 270 peaceful protestors, many of them schoolchildren, were murdered by Kopassus shock troops as they paraded through Dili. Trucks were seen dumping bodies in the sea. Led to Congressional action curtailing aid to Indonesia. "US trained butchers of Timor", The Guardian, London. Cited by The Drudge Report, September 19, 1999.

1992

1992 -- responding to continuing violations of human rights in East Timor by the Indonesian military, Congress banned all funds for training assistance to Indonesia under the Pentagon's International Military Education and Training (IMET) program and new weapons sales under the Foreign Military Sales program. However, the Pentagon continued to fund training for Indonesian special forces under the Joint Combined Exchange and Training (JCET) program. IMET pays for Indonesians to come to the U.S. for training whereas JCET training is performed in the designated "recipient" country. The "fundamental requirement" for any JCET mission is that U.S. troops "derive the majority of benefits from the training as opposed to the host country." Twenty-eight JCET exercises have been conducted with Indonesian troops since 1992. While JCET activities in Indonesia do not violate U.S. laws, they do seem to contradict the intent of Congress to cut off military support to Indonesian forces until their human rights record improves. What incensed some in Congress is that the Indonesian unit training with U.S. troops under JCET is the same one accused of many recent human rights violations - including the deaths of the six students. Colonel Daniel M. Smith, USA [Ret], Director of Operations, Center for Defense Information, U.S. Military Support for Indonesia: "Engagement" Gone Awry? Weekly Defense Monitor Volume 2, Issue 21 May 28,1998

1996

1996. Under Lt. Gen. Johny Lumintang's command in West Papua (1996), Kopassus massacred civilians after descending from a helicopter illegally painted with international Red Cross markings. Alain Nairn, "General Lumintang Trained by the U. S., March 29, 2000.

Indonesia, 1996. 10 exercises under secret "Iron Balance" training program involved 376 US personnel and 838 Indonesians or "loyal" timorese. Undated prospectus describes mission of the progarm to "develop, organize, equip, train, advise and direct indigenous militaries.' The scale was small, to offer concentrated 'significant special training', which would create 'self-sufficient small units.' The prospectus does not use the word militias, but the description would fit the East Timorese militias. "US trained butchers of Timor", The Guardian, London. Cited by The Drudge Report, September 19, 1999.

1998 Events

Prabowo, Lt. Gen. son-in-law of ex-President Suharto. In charge of KOPASSUS Group 4, which participated in disappearances of Indonesian dissidents. Group 4 (commanded by Col. Chaiwaran) was in close and friendly liaison with U. S. intelligence (DIA attache Col. Charles McFetridge) at the time, and had been trained by U. S. intelligence. While Prabowo was noted for relishing torture, U. S. Defense Secretary William Cohen praised Kopassus' 'very impressive...discipline." 'Our Men in Jakarta' by Allan Nairn, 30 May 1998; also 'A-INFOS NEWS SERVICE

Allan Nairn releases Pentagon documents revealing ongoing U. S. training of the Indonesian KOPASSUS and other Indonesian military forces responsible for severe human rights abuses. More
U. S. Trained Indonesian Army units with formal links to U. S. intelligence disappear more than a dozen Indonesian pro-democracy activists in May 1998. More
McFetridge., Col. Charles. U. S. Defense Intelligence Agency attache in Jakarta, May 1998.'Our Men in Jakarta' by Allan Nairn, 30 May 1998

Kopassus was built up by Pentagon with more than 24 JCET exercise.'Our Men in Jakarta' by Allan Nairn, 30 May 1998

On March 9, 1998, BIA, the intelligence unit of the Indonesian army ABRI, picked up nine labor activists who were calling for an increase in the minimum wage, some of whom were then tortured. BIA staged a series of break-ins and ransackings at the offices of labor, student and women's organizations. In East Timor, BIA's new tactic is breaking the hips of prisoners. 'Our Men in Jakarta' by Allan Nairn, 30 May 1998

Yosfiah, Lt. Gen. Yunus, Indonesian Army (ABRI) implicated in 1975 mruder of five foreign journalists in East Timor, information minister in post-Suharto government, 1998. 'Our Men in Jakarta' by Allan Nairn, 30 May 1998

March, 1998, Haryanto Taslam, Megawati Sukarno's chief field organizer, run off the road and taken to a torture center under the control of BIA, with participation from KOPASSUS Group 4. Situation known to Colonel McFetridge of the D.I.A. and to the embassy C.I.A. station. 'Our Men in Jakarta' by Allan Nairn, 30 May 1998

Congress found that its 1992 prohibition against training the Indonesian army over its atrocities in East Timor was circumvented as well. In March 1998, Congress learned that the Pentagon had continued to train the Indonesian army unit, the Kopassus Red Berets, that had led many of the massacres over the past 35 years and was blamed for kidnapping and torturing political dissidents earlier this year. [WP, May 23, 1998] A Defense Department official stated that the training program was to "gain influence with successive generations of Indonesia officers." [NYT, March 17, 1998] U.S. Green Berets taught Kopassus such tactics as "advanced sniper techniques, military operations in urban terrain, psychological techniques [and] close quarters combat." [See statement by reporter Allan Nairn, May 9, 1998.] At the time, Kopassus was headed by Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto, a U.S.-trained officer who graduated at the top of his class at Fort Benning, Ga. Prabowo was linked directly to orders to kill 20 civilians in East Timor in 1989. [See The Nation, March 30, 1998.] He was sacked on May 22. Peter Dale Scott, "Two Indonesias, Two Americas", June 9, 1998, The Consortium for Independent Journalism

May, 1998. Lt. Gen. Johny 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. Alain Nairn, "General Lumintang Trained by the U. S., March 29, 2000.

1998. US suspends JCET(Joint Combined Exchange and Training) training with Indonesia which had provided Kopassus extensive training in tactics including demolitions, surveillance, "advanced sniper technique," air, sea, and ground assault and "psychological operations." Training was suspended in 1998 after a public and Congressional outcry. Alain Nairn, "General Lumintang Trained by the U. S., March 29, 2000.

Defense Aide to the New Indonesian Leader Responsible for Timor Massacre. Source: East Timor International Support Center, 6.22.98

Former General, Commander of Forces that Killed 271, Evades $14 Million Judgment From U.S. Court In Lawsuit By Victim's Family. CCR New York, 19/06/98 - Today attorneys from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) called on the State Department to help seek the recovery of a $14 million federal court judgment from Sintong Panjaitan, an aide to Indonesian president Habibie. General Panjaitan, who oversaw the 1991 massacre of 271 East Timorese and their supporters during a memorial service in Dili, was the defendant in a human rights suit brought by CCR.

CCR attorney Michael Ratner, one of the attorneys who won the judgment against Panjaitan, said the State Department should let the Indonesian government know it is unacceptable to let "a mass murderer" continue as a high government official: "One way for the U.S. to show its commitment to enforcing human rights law and the authority of our own courts is by requiring Indonesia to pay this judgment. It is intolerable for U.S. taxpayers to bail out Indonesia while a high government official ignores the rule of U.S. law." Ratner also noted that the appointment of Panjaitan makes its "unlikely that the human rights situation in East Timor will improve or that it will be granted self-determination." According to the Jakarta Post, Panjaitan was appointed as a defense and security aide to Habibie in May.

The mother of one of the victims of the massacre, whose son was a Malaysian citizen named Kamal Badmadhaj, brought the lawsuit charging Panjaitan with responsibility for her son's death. The General was served with the suit in 1992 after he visited Boston. On October 27th, 1994 after a hearing, a federal court judge awarded Helen Todd $14 million for the wrongful death of Badmadhaj. Panjaitan, who fled the U.S. and did not contest the suit, is alleged to have laughed when he heard news of the court's decision, dismissing the verdict as a "joke."

In court testimony, witnesses to the Dili massacre, including U.S. journalist Allan Nairn, who barely escaped with his life, described how the Indonesian military methodically mowed down rows of peaceful mourners who had gathered at a local catholic church. Nairn described the massacre as a "orderly, systematic, killing operation." Panjaitan was in charge of those troops.

Badmadhaj, a student at New South Wales University, had been visiting East Timor as a translator and human rights observer. Helen Todd came to the US to testify at the evidentiary hearing where she tearfully stated: "I'm the only plaintiff because I'm the only one of the 271 families that can bring this suit without endangering my other children." When informed of Panjaitan's appointment she said: "I am disappointed that the new President's reportedly more open stance on East Timor is not expressing itself in action. But I am not surprised. I see no real change yet in the system in relation to East Timor and several members of the new Cabinet are complicit in the Dili massacre and other abuses in East Timor."

Todd's suit, Todd v. Panjaitan, is one of several ground-breaking international human rights cases brought by CCR since 1980. In that year Center lawyers persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to permit suits seeking damages for acts of torture committed abroad to be adjudicated in U.S. Courts. In the Todd suit, Ratner's co-counsels were Beth Stephens and Jennie Green of CCR and the Boston-based firm of Kaplan, O'Sullivan & Friedman.

US downplays appointment of officer tied to East Timor killings, by John M. Miller, Media & Outreach Coordinator, East Timor Action Network, Jun 22, 1998

WASHINGTON, June 19 (AFP) - The United States downplayed Friday the appointment to a senior post of an Indonesian officer tied to the 1991 massacre in East Timor, saying the move will not affect bilateral ties. President B.J. Habibie has chosen Sintong Panjaitan to be a senior military adviser even though a US court has ordered the retired lieutenant general to pay 14 million dollars in damages for his involvement in the violence in East Timor.
"We don't expect that this particular person's role as a personal adviser to the president should affect bilateral relations," said State Department spokesman James Rubin. The State Department noted that Panjaitan would play an advisory role as opposed to holding a cabinet post.
The New York Times quoted Indonesian reports Friday as saying that Panjaitan, who has had a long association with Habibie, was appointed to the post of "expert on security and defense." Panjaitan oversaw troops who carried out the November 1991 [action] in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony seized by Indonesia in 1975 and annexed a year later.
A court in Boston in 1994 ordered Panjaitan to pay 14 million dollars in damages to the mother of a 20-year-old New Zealand man who was killed in the violence. Panjaitan never appeared in court to answer to the charges.
The State Department also said there was no treaty between Indonesia and the United States to enforce the judgment in US federal district court against the retired army general.

"Civic Mission" and Counter-Insurgency

In July 1998, the Indonesian military "ABRI" instituted a changed strategy to protect a different image of the post-Suharto armed forces:
the decision to withdraw a thousand troops from East Timor and replace them with army doctors, teachers and engineers,
the decision to withdrawn 'non-organic' troops from Aceh, leaving security there in the hands of the territorial troops and the ulamas, the local administration and informal leaders, and
the announcement that new troops drafted into Irian Jaya (West Papua) will not be armed but will be equipped with spades, hoes and other agricultural equipment.

These changes are seen as a response to "revelations about bestialities perpetrated by the armed forces in all parts of the country, particularly in the so-called Red Alert or 'rawan' areas like West Papua, Aceh and East Timor. "All the signs are that ABRI is now returning to its pre-1965 strategy of Civic Mission, which it undertook with the encouragement of Washington.
Civic Mission was a policy of entering the countryside to perform functions such as road-building, digging wells, assisting local communities in agricultural production, in other words performing what would appear to be innocent, non-combative functions with which no one could disagree. The task in those days of course was to counteract the role of the communist party, the PKI, and its mass organisations, in particular the peasants union, the BTI, both of which had won enormous following in the Indonesian countryside, particular in parts of Java, Bali and North Sumatra.
One could argue against what ABRI now plans to do at the level of the exposing the futility of, say, sending doctors and teachers to East Timor, even, according to one report, sending medical personnel to provide 'counselling' to traumatised East Timorese. It is widely known that Timorese, especially women, have a deeply ingrained mistrust of Indonesian doctors and hospitals with stories abounding of forced sterilisation, mysterious deaths of young children in hospitals and so on. As for 'counselling', the very idea of army officers trained as psychologists counselling East Timorese is ludicrous. And why should Timorese look to the army to supply teachers, only to reinforce the indoctrination of Timorese with the state ideology or teach Indonesian history through the eyes of the power-holders while disrgarding East Timor's own history?
But the more fundamental point is that Civic Mission is not a legitimate task for the armed forces. As in the early 1960s, Civic Mission is a strategy aimed at intelligence gathering, a form of counter-insurgency that is now being foisted on people in these three regions while continuing to do everyhing possible to destroy the liberation struggles.
Source: Carmel Budiardjo, "ABRI gives itself a facelift - reviving its Civic Mission" TAPOL Comment, 9 August, 1998. Email to tapol@gn.apc.org

1999 Events

Legislation to End US Military Training

In 1999 Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Lane Evans (D-IL), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) introduced the "International Military Training Transparency and Accountability Act" -- HR 1063 -- which would ban most military training to Indonesia because of ongoing human rights violations, including the brutal invasion December 7,1975, and the formal but illegal integration of East Timor the following July as Indonesia's 27th proviince. According to human rights groups and the Catholic Church, more than 200,000 people -- one-third of the pre-invasion population -- have been killed by the Indonesian occupation forces. The Indonesian military continues to brutalize the people of Indonesia and occupied East Timor. This bill will close loopholes that have allowed the Pentagon to continue training militaries even when Congress had banned them from the International Military Education and Training (IMET) and similar programs. Last spring, it was disclosed that the Pentagon continued ongoing training of some of Indonesia's most notorious military units through the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, combat training Congress thought it had banned after the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor when it cut off IMET. Seeking support for the bill from their colleagues, a bipartisan group of Congressmembers wrote: "The executive branch must understand that when Congress says to halt military assistance to murderers, torturers, and thugs, we mean what we say."

Lawrence Summers, U. S. Treasury Secretary in 1999, wrote "The East Asian Miracle", in which he urges governments to 'insulate' themselves from 'pluralist pressures' and to suppress trade unions. "This became a primary Kopassus role during the years of training by the United States." Source: Deborah Sklar, Amnesty International country expert for EastTimor. "US trained butchers of Timor", The Guardian, London. Cited by The Drudge Report, September 19, 1999.
May, 1999. As Vice Chief of Staff for the Army -- and also as a former on-the-ground East Timor commander -- Lt. Gen. 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. Alain Nairn, "General Lumintang Trained by the U. S., March 29, 2000.
On June 30, 1999 Lt. Gen. 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 (April, 2000) being applied in the Kopassus terror campaigns in West Papua and Aceh, and in undercover provocateur operations in Ambon and Kalimantan.Alain Nairn, "General Lumintang Trained by the U. S., March 29, 2000.
August-September, 1999. Lt. Gen. Johny Lumintang's terror handbook used 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). Alain Nairn, "General Lumintang Trained by the U. S., March 29, 2000.

Iron Balance -- Code name for US program, hidden from legislators and the public after Congress curbed schooling of Indonesia's army after the 1991 massacre. Principally trained Kopassus. Kopassus is elite force with bloody history, more rigorously trained by the US than any other Indonesian unit. "Kopassus was built up with American expertise despite US awarenesss of its role in the genocide of about 200,000 people in the years after the invasion of East Timor in 1975, and in a strong of massacres an disappearances since the bloodbath. Amnesty Internation describes Kopassus as 'responsible for some of the worst human rights violations in Indonesia's history." "US trained butchers of Timor", The Guardian, London. Cited by The Drudge Report, September 19, 1999.

Subianto, General Prabowo. Son in law of former Indonesian dictator Suharto. U. S. trained commander of Kopassus. Tied to East Timor slaughter in Kraras (1983), and Santa Cruz (1991). "US trained butchers of Timor", The Guardian, London. Cited by The Drudge Report, September 19, 1999.

Syahnakri, General Kiki. Indonesian Governor of East Timor and mentor of General Prabowo Subianto. Kopassus Commander, Tied to East Timor slaughter in Kraras (1983), and Santa Cruz (1991). "US trained butchers of Timor", The Guardian, London. Cited by The Drudge Report, September 19, 1999.
Blair, Admiral Dennis, US Commander in Chief of the Pacific. Failed mission to Indonesia to meet with General Wiranto, April 8, 1999, with a mission to tell Wiranto "that the time had come to shut the militias down (in East Timor) illustrates tendency of US military to operate independently of US foreign policy. Two days previously, militias had committed a horrific machete massacre at the Catholic hurch in Liquica, Timor, where some of the victims' flesh was reportedly stuck to the walls of the church and a pastor's house. "But Admiral Blair, fully briefed on Liquica, quickly made clear at the meeting with Wiranto that hw was there to reassure the TNI chief. When State Department discovered Admiral Blair's failure, an 'eyes only' cable was dispatched to Ambassador Stapleton Roy in Jakarta indicating that Blair's actions were unacceptable. A corrective phone call was arranged between Blair and Wiranto in which once again Blair failed to tell Wiranto to shut the militias down. Alan Nairn, "US Complicity in Timor," The Nation, September 27, 1999.
Inquiry unravels Indonesian plot to destroy East Timor, seeks Wiranto. DILI, East Timor, Nov 20 (AFP) - Indonesia's top military brass plotted the systematic destruction of East Timor and the murder of all independence leaders should the territory vote to break from Jakarta, the country's own human rights investigators said Saturday. Naming the former commander of Indonesia's armed forces, General Wiranto, as topping their list for interrogation, the inquiry panel alleged the military's complete collusion in the campaign of murder, rape and looting by anti-independence militia which swept the territory in September. The inquiry, which is independent of the government, has powers of subpoena which can be enforced by the police and has been touted by the Indonesian government as its official investigation. Jakarta has rejected a similar United Nations inquiry. Albert Hasibuan, chairman of the Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights Abuses in East Timor, told reporters in the capital Dili that plans for the destruction of East Timor were made during a meeting in Dili between Indonesian military intelligence and the militia. "In that meeting it was instructed then that if the result of the referendum in East Timor was (to) be free then they must destroy all the buildings and kill all the pro-independence leaders," Hasibuan said. Indonesian General Zaki Anwar Makarim attended the meeting, he said. He is also being sought for questioning, along with General Adam Damiri, who was the regional commander overseeing East Timor, said Hasibuan. Wiranto was commander of the Indonesian armed forces during the violence. Other senior military officers were also expected to be among those called by the panel. "It will be a long list," Hasibuan said. "These names, I think will be on the list to be called by us and interrogated." Commission member and noted lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis also said: "Human rights abuses in East Timor have been done in a brutal, blatant, gross and systematic way. "There's been a collusion between the militia, TNI (Indonesian armed forces) and the police in every human rights abuse." The special nine-member commission was established by the independent Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) on September 22 and has until the end of the year to complete its work. Hasibuan said his allegations were in part based on testimony from a former militia member now in the Portuguese enclave of Macau. The United Nations, rights groups and witness accounts have all accused Indonesian security forces of orchestrating and taking part in the violence. Hasibuan said the commission would have to speak to President Abdurrahman Wahid to seek permission for Wiranto to be called as the general is now the minister for politics and security affairs. Zaki is now based at the military headquarters in Jakarta, while Damiri remains head of the Bali-based Udayana military command which used to oversee security in East Timor, though he is due to be transferred. The commissioners gave other examples of evidence they said indicated links between the military and the militia. A witness told the commission that General Syafrie Syamsuddin, former Jakarta military commander, was present during the September attack on the compound of Nobel peace laureate Bishop Carlos Belo, Hasibuan said. He said that during a trip to the southern town of Suai on Saturday a witness identified Lieutenant Sugito and other armed forces members as being involved in a massacre of hundreds of refugees and priests at a church compound in Suai. "He saw the killing of the three priests with his own eyes and also the killing of hundreds of people ... brought by military trucks to another place that he doesn't know," he said. On Friday the commissioners met a militia member in Los Palos town who said he was under instruction from the military when he attacked nine people, Lubis said. "There will be a human rights court which up until now has not been created but I think in the near future, next year, it will be set up," he added. "All of us are committed to investigate, committed to bring justice." A separate United Nations human rights inquiry team is to arrive in East Timor Wednesday.

2000 Events
April, 2000. The Pentagon is now (April 2000) pushing to renew it on the grounds that under leaders like Lt. Gen. Johny Lumintang, the armed forces are reforming themselves and deserve new US weapons and know-how.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." Alain Nairn, "General Lumintang Trained by the U. S., March 29, 2000.

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