Jakarta – Defence lawyers Monday slammed Indonesia's new human rights court as a tool of foreign powers as the trial resumed of five army and police officers accused of gross human rights violations in East Timor in 1999.
For the second week running, uniformed fellow officers packed into the public gallery as a show of support for the accused. Outside, about 100 supporters of notorious pro-Jakarta militia chief Eurico Guterres shouted support for the Indonesian military and police actions in East Timor.
Four middle-ranking army officers and one police officer are accused of failing to prevent a massacre in a church at Suai in Covalima district on September 6, 1999. Some 27 people were killed.
In the dock are Colonel Herman Sedyono, former Covalima district chief; Colonel Lilik Kushardianto, the former district military commander in Covalima; Major Ahmad Syamsuddin, head of the general staff of the Covalima military command; and Captain Sugito, former Suai town military commander. Also on trial is Adjunct Senior Commissioner Gatot Subiyaktoro, former Covalima district police chief.
A total of 18 military, police, militia and civilian officials including Guterres are due eventually to face trial in the rights court over the army-backed attacks by pro-Jakarta militias against independence supporters in April and September 1999.
A statement, read out in turn by defence lawyers, argued the rights court had no authority to hear the case. They said some of the charges were criminal charges and not gross violations of human rights, that the court had no jurisdiction over East Timor and that it was set up through a flawed regulation that violates the constitution.
The same arguments have been used by defence lawyers in cases heard separately by the rights court, in which former East Timor governor Abilio Jose Osorio Soares and former East Timor police chief Timbul Silaen are defendants.
"It is very tragic that today the public is forced to watch a trial 'of the vanquished'," the defence statement said, describing the court as the tool of larger nations which conspired with Indonesians. It said the trial was based only on the result of investigations by foreigners. "What is being stated by the prosecutors is no more that a product which has only had its package replaced with a local brand."
The lawyers also argued the East Timor violence was not the doing of Indonesian security personnel or official policy but resulted from "the legacy of latent enmity within an ethnic group for over 20 years." They said the violence was purely between East Timorese from opposing camps – pro-Indonesia and pro-independence. Defence lawyers also said the violence was sparked off by alleged fraud in the United Nations-organised independence ballot on August 30, 1999.
Militiamen organised by senior Jakarta officials waged a campaign of intimidation before East Timor's vote to split from Indonesia and a "scorched earth" revenge campaign afterwards. They killed hundreds of people, torched towns and forced more than 250,000 people into Indonesian-ruled West Timor after the vote.
Jakarta has come under strong international pressure to punish the atrocities but international rights groups are sceptical that the rights court will deliver justice. The case was adjourned to April 2. Neither defendant is in custody.