Dublin – UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, will start a three day visit to East Timor tomorrow to monitor developments there since last year's unrest. Although it's gone from the headlines there is continuing violence if obviously not at the same levels as after last year's independence vote. Earlier in the week, for example, a UN peacekeeper from New Zealand was killed by the militias and his ears cut off as bounty.
Australian, Dr. Andrew MacNaughton, has been to East Timor many times. He's investigated the militia and their links with the Indonesian army. He began by telling me about the situation there at the moment.
MacNaughton: The problem has continued along the border with West Timor. The main problem is that elements within the Indonesian army are continuing to arm and train militias to create instability along the border and to terrorise and intimidate the people that they are still holding in camps in West Timor. There are about a hundred thousand of them still in West Timor and tension has flared up recently on the border with the shooting of an New Zealand peacekeeper, allegedly by Indonesian army backed militias, although who knows it could have actually been Indonesian troops themselves. And the Australian troops that are part of the peacekeeping force have just retaliated and shot two alleged, intruding, Indonesian backed militias. One wonders could they even be Indonesian troops. So there is a very tense situation continuing on the border.
Presenter: And how much strength do these militia have? How many of them are there?
MacNaughton: Based on what was going on in West Timor last September there's probably ten to twenty thousand, but their strength comes from the backing of the Indonesian Armed forces who are literally the hand inside the glove. They are the people who are funnelling money to these people. They are the people who are providing weapons, including automatic weapons. They are training. They are providing the situation in which these people can continue to act with impunity when the Indonesian government has signed agreements and given promises to the international community for eighteen months that they would disarm and disband these people. For eighteen months they've been making a mockery of their agreements with the world. These militias are virtually part and parcel of the Indonesian Armed Forces. They are an extension of the Indonesian Armed Forces. They can't be thought of as something independent of the Indonesian Armed Forces. So in a sense what's going on is one branch of Indonesian state policy, because the army of Indonesia are an integral part of the state.
Presenter: Is there anything that the international community can and indeed should be doing about this at the moment, because, as I said, this is not something that features in the news in the way it would have nine or ten months ago?
MacNaughton: Yes. I'd absolutely agree. It's just below the surface of news-worthiness, but the underlying problems remain and the underlying bad faith by the Indonesian army remains. What I would say is the world community, in particular governments like Ireland, should do everything they can to clip the wings of the Indonesian military. This means there should be no European Union sale of arms, there should be no training, there should be no funding. Any money that could be misdirected, laundered and put to use in funding this kind of war against the East Timorese or the trouble the Indonesian army is formenting in other areas of the archepelago should be looked at very closely and should be not supplied. The world has to stop supplying the arms, the training or the money that can be misused by the Indonesian Armed Forces in East Timor or in other parts of Indonesia.
Presenter: And given the events of last year when eventually the international peacekeeping forces did go in, what do the militia hope to achieve?
MacNaughton: It's a good question. Again I don't think that it's the militia. This is a policy of some if not all the leadership of the Indonesian armed forces. Were the Indonesian Armed Forces to want the activities of the militias to stop, they could stop them like that [he clicks his fingers] in one day. And in fact Wiranto, who was then the head of the military and the defence minister, said to Jose Ramos Horta before the ballot in East Timor, "I could stop the militias in twenty four hours."
Presenter: And in the meantime while we're talking about things being forgotten, the forgotten victims in all of this must be the refugees in West Timor?
MacNaughton: Yeah. Absolutely. I've just come from the US where a delegation of people had done a tour of the camps just recently and they reaffirmed that, almost everyone agrees, there's at least one hundred thousand people still there. And you've got to remember that the overall population of East Timor is only about nine hundred thousand people so it's twelve percent or more of their people held outside. They are more or less, in some cases, hostages. They were taken out by force against their will. They are being held under the control of the militias who are under the guidance of the Indonesian army. Many of whom, we've heard sixty percent at least, would like to go back. The returning group that I spoke to recently said that many more want to go back.
Presenter: What's stopping them going back then?
MacNaughton: They are intimidated. Inside these camps, controlling these people, live the militias and, of course, supplying the money and the weapons to the militias are the Indonesian military. You must remember that a lot of the people who were taken out were women and children so they don't really have the independence or wherewithal. They're easily intimidated and they don't have the capacity to get up and leave. They're very poor people and most of them, the reports we have, live in horrendous conditions.
They want to return to East Timor. They are being intimidated and they are also subject to disinformation. Militias have been printing newspapers with logos that look like United Nations logos, but, of course, it's not. It's propaganda. And they're saying, "If you go back to East Timor, everything's terrible." Well, of course, the reality is they're under much more danger under the control of the Indonesian army, but there is a very coordinated disinformation campaign being run and we believe the Indonesian military intelligence is behind this.