The pathetic performance of Jakarta's special human rights court dealing with atrocities perpetrated by the military and its militia proxies in East Timor in 1999 will no doubt inspire the notoriously corrupt and brutal Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI) to act with virtual impunity in Aceh province, where troops are waging a campaign to destroy separatist rebels.
Senior generals unleashed carnage in East Timor in the months surrounding the territory's vote for independence on August 30, 1999, in a referendum organized by the United Nations.
The Indonesian military and its militia proxies staged a series of often deadly attacks on independence supporters in an effort to intimidate locals not to vote for secession. Massacres and devastating looting and arson attacks continued until after the arrival of a UN-sanctioned international peacekeeping force in September.
In response to international pressure to bring those accused of responsibility for the carnage to justice, Indonesia established its special human rights court to hear cases against 18 defendants.
Human rights activists immediately complained that several senior generals suspected of masterminding the carnage were not on the list. Activists now say the court is a sham because it has acquitted 12 members of the security forces and a civilian.
Only five defendants have been found guilty and sentenced to jail terms ranging from three to 10 years, although all faced the death penalty. All of them remain free pending lengthy appeal processes. Meanwhile, pro-democracy activists are being thrown in jail for defacing pictures of President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
The last remaining defendant in the East Timor trials is Major General Adam Damiri, who was regional military chief at the time of the mayhem. He has skipped his last four trial sessions, ostensibly due to his involvement in the ongoing Aceh offensive.
He is charged with crimes against humanity for failing to prevent his troops and pro-Indonesia militiamen from killing dozens of people in several massacres.
Damiri now appears set to walk free, after the prosecutor handling the case against him said Thursday he had dropped the charges due to a lack of evidence.
Chief prosecutor Sarani Hozie claimed he had not been pressured to drop the case. "This is purely my own decision," he was quoted as saying by state news agency Antara. The court will reconvene on July 1 to hear a statement from Damiri and then decide whether to proceed with the "trial".
Hendardi, head of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association, has said the results of the East Timor trials would make the military behave more arrogantly in Aceh.
Blame the UN
Although Damiri has generally been reluctant to appear in court this year, he has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. When his trial commenced in July 2002, he said: "I understand the charges but I categorically reject all of them. I was not on the ground [at the time of the violence]."
Testifying earlier at the trials of other suspects, he blamed the post-referendum carnage on the now defunct United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (Unamet). "Many irregularities done by Unamet were not processed legally and this is one of the reasons for the riots," he said in May 2002. "So it was the irregularities done by Unamet that triggered the riots after the ballot," he added.
In April 2002, Damiri said that Unamet's decision to speed up the announcement of the referendum result from September 7 to September 4 sparked anger among pro-Indonesian East Timorese, who felt the UN had cheated them.
"Rather than giving a positive response to the report by the pro-Jakarta group over the cheating by Unamet, they [Unamet] decided to move forward the announcement of the results from September 7 to September 4," he said.
He singled out Unamet chairman Ian Martin as the person responsible for making the early announcement that 78.5% of East Timorese had voted to secede from Indonesia.
Damiri also accused Unamet of not hiring pro-Jakarta East Timorese. "Unamet treated the pro-Jakarta East Timorese unfairly by recruiting only pro-independence people as its local staffers. This, of course, affected the ballot process," he said.
A former Unamet worker now based in Jakarta says the claims of "irregularities" in the referendum are nonsense. "We had at least two pro-Jakarta guys working with us in one area and there's no way that they or anyone else could have done anything to cheat, because there were at least a dozen checks and balances to ensure the votes were legitimate," he told Laksamana.net.