Jon Lamb
The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) in East Timor has completed its report documenting human rights violations that took place under 24-year-long Indonesian military (TNI) occupation. The 2000-page report, which is the culmination of three years' work by the CAVR, was handed to East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao on October 31, who will in turn present it to the parliament on November 28.
The finalisation of the CAVR report came amid renewed tensions on East Timor's border with Indonesia. Some 200 Indonesian villagers crossed the border on October 15, watched by TNI personnel and Indonesian police, and injured two East Timorese border police.
The TNI unit currently responsible for border security, Battalion 745, was accused by the East Timor-based United Nations Serious Crime Unit of conducting serious human rights abuses in East Timor in 1999, including mass murder, torture and mutilation.
East Timorese foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta and other East Timorese leaders have played down the October 15 border incident, as has Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer.
The October 28 Australian reported that Horta said the incident did not reflect the "official attitude of the TNI leadership". However, it also reported Horta's public denial "that a spate border clashes around the enclave were linked to former pro-Indonesian militia, directly contradicting East Timor's national security chief, Ricardo Ribeiro, and his own complaints to the UN mission in Dili.
"A UN diplomatic cable obtained by the Australian cited a furious Mr Horta blaming the violence on former anti-independence militia and Indonesian troops."
The October 28 Australian also noted that the CAVR report "does not provide guarantees of legal justice for thousands of [East] Timorese victims of [Indonesian] army-backed militia violence".
Justice for the victims of the TNI occupation, particularly its campaign of violence around the period of the September 1999 independence referendum, is a major concern for large numbers of East Timorese. There has been simmering discontent and criticism over the failure to bring to account any of the higher ranking Indonesian officers responsible for creating and directing the pro-integration militia gangs that went on a killing spree after the referendum.
There is growing anger and frustration among many victims and East Timorese human rights groups over what they perceive to be an unwillingness by Gusmao and Horta to push for an international human rights tribunal.
From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.
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