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UN offers assistance to set up East Timor tribunal

Source
South China Morning Post - November 24, 2000

Vaudine England, Jakarta – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, yesterday offered to help Indonesia set up a special court to hear cases against suspects accused of atrocities in East Timor last year.

Mrs Robinson discussed preparations for the trials, scheduled for next year, with Indonesian Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman. "We discussed the detailed steps that will be taken for the training of judges, and also for the prosecution and defence and for the necessary steps ... for trial of perpetrators of human rights violations," she said.

Mrs Robinson, who ended a two-day visit to Indonesia, said the trials would be a major test of Indonesian democracy. "And that is my responsibility as High Commissioner – to help Indonesia to meet this serious challenge," Mrs Robinson said.

The Attorney-General said the prosecution of the 22 suspects, some of them Indonesian military personnel and government officials, could start as early as January. "We are ready to prosecute. We are just waiting for the [human rights] court to be established," Mr Marzuki said.

Fifteen months have passed since Indonesian generals helped East Timorese militia gangs to lay waste to the territory, which had just chosen independence. Most rights activists are deeply frustrated by the lack of progress in getting anyone behind bars for the massacres and destruction.

Indonesia has named 22 suspects in the violence, but former armed forces chief General Wiranto and other key figures will avoid prosecution.

Legislation has been provided for an ad hoc rights court specifically to try those accused of forming, training and inciting East Timor's gangs, and it is awaiting the presidential signature. The question is whether Indonesia has the will and capability of bringing its own rights violators to book.

Mrs Robinson has said that a failure by Indonesia's own judiciary to secure justice in the East Timor case would cause the holding of an international war crimes tribunal instead.

Indonesia's armed forces have successfully created enough nationalist fervour to produce strong public resistance against any efforts by Mrs Robinson and other foreigners to lecture Indonesia on its rights record.

The meeting was a key part of a busy two days spent by Mrs Robinson in Indonesia. She first attended the annual workshop of Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission (Komnasham), held in Surabaya. She said there that she was ready to co-operate with anyone in securing convictions of senior generals.

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