Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Ashlee Betteridge – The Armed Forces on Tuesday shrugged off a former soldier's statement that Indonesian military forces killed the so-called Balibo Five and burned their bodies to conceal evidence the military was active in that area.

Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Christian Zebua said that, for them, it was not proper to remember past incidents, moreover, many people could have many different interpretations over the case. "We also have our own documentation over what happened in East Timor," Zebua said.

Asked whether the military was willing to apologize over the incident, Zebua said the case was closed. "We don't think like that [to apologize]. The problem is over. It's just an old memory," Zebua said.

However, such an attitude was slammed by Komnas HAM commissioner Yoseph Adi Prasetyo, or Stanley, saying that past human rights abuses could not be resolved by simply forgetting them.

"A statement like 'just forget it' can be aired by one side only, moreover by someone who is alleged to have conducted the killing," Stanley said. "For the victims, it is not over because they haven't found a clear perspective from which to see the matter."

Gatot Purwanto, a witness to the deaths of five journalists at Balibo in 1975, told Tempo magazine that a plainclothes unit of Indonesian troops advancing into East Timor in October 1975 – well before Jakarta officially invaded the country in December – admitted the journalists were killed to conceal the invasion from the world.

He claimed that the advancing troops had found the five journalists alive inside a house, but after shots came from the direction of the house, soldiers reacted by spraying it with gunfire, he said. The journalists were later found dead inside. Determined to keep the presence of the marauding military unit unknown, the soldiers burned the bodies.

But the widow of one of the Balibo Five journalists has labeled a his account of events "contradictory" and still maintains that Jakarta officials ordered the "bloody murder" of the Australians in East Timor in 1975 to cover up Indonesia's invasion.

"[Purwanto] seems to be trying to clear his conscience," Shirley Shackleton, the widow of Channel 7 journalist Greg Shackleton, told ABC Radio on Tuesday.

"He says on the one hand they didn't die in crossfire, but then later on he says 'Oh we shot them because shots came from behind them,' but there was no-one there shooting," she said.

In a separate interview on Tuesday with the Fairfax Radio Network, Shackleton said that she welcomed the admission from Purwanto as a "milestone... another nail in the coffin of lies," but that it would not provide closure.

"You don't get closure from things like that," Shackleton said. "Closure is just a new age gobbledegook word, what it really means is 'Please, I can't stand your grief, go away,'?" she said.