The Indonesian government made only half-hearted attempts during the year to hold accountable those responsible for TNI abuses in East Timor. Human rights defenders inside and outside the country called for an international tribunal in light of the failures of the Indonesian justice system.
On January 12, 2002, President Megawati Sukarnoputri appointed eighteen non-career judges to sit on the Indonesian ad hoc human rights court for East Timor. Twenty-four prosecutors were inducted on February 8. The office of the attorney general issued the first charges against seven individuals on February 21.
The court tried the former East Timorese governor, Abilio Osorio Soares, for crimes against humanity under Indonesian Law 26/2000. Prosecutors charged Soares with responsibility for widespread and systematic human rights violations perpetrated by subordinates under his effective control. The incidents cited in his indictment included the Liquica Church massacre of April 6, 1999, the attack and killings at Manuel Carrascalao's house in Dili on April 17, 1999, the September 1999 Suai Church massacre, and the September 1999 attack on Bishop Belo's house.
Former East Timor police chief, Brigadier General Timbul Silaen, faced similar charges of crimes against humanity. In addition to incidents listed in Soares' indictment, the court charged Silaen in connection with an attack on the UNAMET office in Liquica in September 1999.
Five other men went on trial together for the Suai Church massacre: former district administrator of Suai, Herman Sudyono; former Suai district military commander, Lieutenant Colonel Lili Kusardiyanto; former chief-of-staff of Suai district military command, Captain Ahmad Syamsudin; former Suai military sector commander, Sugito; and former chief of police in Suai, Lieutenant Colonel Gatot Subiaktoro.
Trials commenced in March, after government regulations on witness protection and victim compensation were settled. Despite concerns about the implementation of the witness protection programs and at least one allegation of intimidation, four East Timorese witnesses traveled to Jakarta and gave testimony. Not one UN staff member was called to testify.
Announced on August 14, 2002, the first verdicts from the trials triggered widespread international and domestic criticism. Abilio Soares was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to three years of imprisonment, well below the legal minimum of ten years and the ten-and-a-half years requested by the prosecution. The other defendants, named above, were acquitted. In November Colonel Timbul Silaen was promoted to the rank of one-star inspector general and became security assistant to National Police Chief Dai Bachtiar.
The outcomes of the trials had been expected. Although the judges had not allowed the trials to be derailed, a presidential decision limiting the mandate for the tribunals to a handful of cases that occurred in April and September 1999 hindered the prosecution. Most significantly, the prosecutors failed to reveal in court the role of the military and Indonesian officials in organizing and arming militia groups and in orchestrating the violence.
The prosecutors' indictments were weak. They charged defendants with "failure to act," rather than organizing and perpetrating atrocities. By portraying the 1999 violence in East Timor as a civil disturbance, rather than a systematic and widespread terror campaign, the indictments made it more difficult to establish crimes against humanity.
On January 19, 2002, the sentences of three persons convicted of killing three international UNHCR staff members in West Timor on September 6, 2000, were increased from ten-to-fifteen months to five-to-seven years, after international outcry over the leniency of the initial sentences.
On March 7, Yacobus Bere was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison for the July 2000 murder of a New Zealand peacekeeping force soldier, Private Manning. On March 20, the Central Jakarta District Court acquitted three other men, tried separately for involvement in the murder.
On January 1, 2002, the Indonesian government ceased humanitarian assistance to East Timorese refugees in West Timor. The cessation of aid spurred many refugees to return to East Timor in March and April, as post-harvest stockpiles of food began to run out; and malnutrition, diarrhea, and malaria increased. Indonesia's announcement that it would end repatriation incentives at the end of August also prompted refugees to return, with an estimated ten thousand refugees crossing the border to East Timor in July and August.
An estimated thirty thousand refugees remained in West Timor at this writing. UNHCR announced in May that the UN Refugee Convention would cease to apply to all East Timorese remaining in Indonesia at the end of December 2002, though individuals still retained their right to appeal this cessation of status.
The issue of missing and separated East Timorese children in Indonesia remained unresolved. UNHCR and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) made slow progress on an estimated 1,500 reported cases, with little help from the government of Indonesia.
While some reunifications occurred from West to East Timor, children in other parts of Indonesia became increasingly isolated after three years of separation.
Most well-known were the cases of almost two hundred East Timorese children taken to orphanages in Central Java by Octavio Soares, brother of former East Timor Governor Abilio Soares. Their status remained unclear. Requests for reunification of the children by the parents, UNHCR, and the IRC were met with hostile resistance from Octavio.