INDONESIA

Virtual Truth Commission

1975
In 1975, with the Portuguese colonial government in disarray and left-win Fretilin guerrilas appearing to have the upper hand, Indonesia invaded East Timor shortly after a visit to Indoneisa by Henry Kissinger. In 1976, Indonesia declared East Timor to be its 26th province. 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, The Consortium for Independent Journalism

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

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

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

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 project 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

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 East Timor. "US trained butchers of Timor", The Guardian, London. Cited by The Drudge Report, September 19, 1999.

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.
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.
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.
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.

Virtual Truth Commission: Telling the Truth for a Better America
Home Page | Multinationals | Countries | Countries #2 | Names | Dates | Topics | Allies
Chile | Colombia | East Timor | El Salvador | Guatemala | Haiti | Honduras
Indonesia | Iraq | Mexico | United States | Uruguay
Sign Guestbook | View Guestbook | Translation Service

This site is the endeavor of one person. As he finds them, links to published material on the web are provided by country, date, and name. This will start small but hopefully increase in usefulness over time. Others are encouraged to start similar web sites. Plagiarize anything from these pages that you wish; the more sites that contain this material, the more it will enter into public consciousness and make a positive difference for change.
Contact Jack Day, Webmaster

Updated September 25, 1999
This page hosted by Get your own, Free Homepage