Catharine Munro, Jakarta – A major international think-tank has attacked Indonesia's human rights tribunal on East Timor, saying the military's version of events is being reinforced by prosecutors.
In a detailed analysis of the trials being held in Jakarta, the International Crisis Group yesterday called on the international community not to renew military ties with Indonesia in light of the trials.
"In the sloppiness of their work, the prosecutors have not only helped the defendants, they have trivialised the whole concept of crimes against humanity," said ICG's Indonesia program director Sidney Jones.
Following East Timor's vote for independence in August 1999, about 1000 people were killed and most of East Timor's infrastructure destroyed by militia groups, who were aided and abetted by the Indonesian military.
The Indonesian military has always claimed the violence was the work of anti-independence groups based in East Timor.
But the ransacking of the province led to the cutting of military ties with the US and Australia, and Indonesia has since been under heavy international pressure to bring perpetrators to justice before the ties are fully restored.
More recently, US administration officials have spoken in favour of closer links with Indonesia's military as part of its international campaign against terrorism.
The ICG, whose president is former foreign minister Gareth Evans, said legal restrictions on renewing military ties with Indonesia should remain.
"To waive those restrictions would be to reward an incompetent or obstructionist prosecution and a dissembling officer corps," the ICG's Jakarta office said.
"It would also undermine those within Indonesia's political elite and civil society who have been pressing for accountability as an essential aspect of military reform."
To date, international human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the Judicial System Monitoring Program (JSMP) in East Timor have stopped short of criticising the content of the Indonesian prosecution.
"We want to see the whole trial before we make official comments," said the JSMP's Christian Ranheim.
Amnesty and JSMP, the only international group which has a permanent observer at the trials, has already criticised the structure of Indonesia's human rights tribunal.
They have said that it would be impossible to test allegations that the Indonesian military had planned and executed the sacking of East Timor after its vote for independence in 1999 because the tribunal only had a mandate to examine cases that occurred in certain months of that year.
They have also criticised the lack of experience of the tribunal's judges, their poor salaries and problems with the tribunal's structure.
The ICG said the judges' performance to date had "exceeded expectations" because they had rejected the military's legal arguments and applied international human rights law.
"Rather the problem, as revealed in court documents obtained by ICG, is with the limited mandate of the ad hoc court and the very weak way in which the indictments have been drawn up and presented by the prosecution," the report said.