Back Road Reckoning: Justice in East Timor
Trowbridge, Erin
AUGUST 30, 1999, should have been a day of celebration for the people of East Timor. In a referendum in which more than 98 percent of the eligible voters cast their ballots, 78 percent voted for...
...UNTAET's mandate was to help create a government that could be handed over to East Timor and simultaneously to train people by developing an East Timorese professional class that had been willfully neglected for hundreds of years...
...Once they were cleared for travel by the doctor, they were handed small cups of fresh water and lunches of nasi goring, a popular rice dish, wrapped in paper As soon as they had run the registration gamut, the refugees milled about the parking lot center, talking and laughing with the family members they would soon leave behind...
...Retribution, whether through violence, shunning, or seizing land and livestock, is—despite the UN's best efforts—common...
...He was told that if he tried to help, he would be killed...
...But according to journalists, East Timorese independence activists, and UN officials, the people of East Timor did not want to wait...
...The crimes included murder and torture as DISSENT / Winter 2002 n I I I EAST TIMOR crimes against humanity and the forced deportation and persecution of population...
...His hair was unevenly cut...
...In a unanimous resolution , the Security Council agreed to send 280 civilian police officers to advise the Indonesian police and fifty military liaison officers to work with the TNI...
...They will have to answer for what they did...
...For a brief moment the militia pulled back and waited...
...On August 30, the polls opened and the people voted...
...Guterres has a pin on his cap with an image of his hero, East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmão...
...In the beginning, when it was more like forty thousand people returning by land and sea each month, the boat was packed," said David John who has been in East Timor with IOM since October 1999...
...They followed riverbeds and paths cut through the mountainous terrain for the Indonesian army...
...Militia and members of the Indonesian army (TNI) continue to intimidate, threaten and attack the displaced East Timorese with total impunity...
...It's hard to justify running a boat that costs sixty thousand dollars a month to rent and six thousand dollars a day to do these runs, when you've got so few people," said one senior IOM official...
...Goats and chicken abound, as do bicycles and furniture, bird cages, and rolls of sheet metal, wicker baskets and plastic tarps, refrigerators and bathtubs, swayback pigs and bony, ragged dogs...
...On November 28, 1975, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor—known as Fretilinan anticolonial, Marxist-based nationalist party, declared independence after four hundred years of colonial rule...
...We sneaked them into the transports anyway...
...More than two hundred people were killed...
...They have not been recovered...
...With the aim of leaving nothing but scorched earth, the pro-Indonesia militias of East Timor, with the support of the Indonesian army, began their rampage across the country...
...We knew what would happen if we stayed...
...On June 18, at a press conference in Dili, Martin said that tens of thousands of East Timorese had already been forced from their homes...
...We planned on having forty investigators...
...I am happy with the way things are going in that they are going...
...The GDP per capita is $230, less than that of Chad...
...Call your Xanana...
...She says she has given all this information to the investigators...
...He wanted the judges to know that he was being threatened back in Los Palos...
...He felt powerless and afraid...
...Access to clean water was available to only half the households and sanitation to even fewer...
...Now, for them, it is a question not only of returning to a land where they may be perceived as collaborators, but also, a matter of money...
...We've had to learn to deal with what we have here," said Oyvind Olsen, chief of the Special Crimes Investigation Unit, who formerly worked for the International Tribunal in Rwanda...
...We discussed postponing the trial, but the defendants had already been sitting in custody for two years...
...There have been few cases, though, of people who returned and then faced danger so great that they wanted to leave...
...A nun who climbed out of the bus after it had been shot up with twenty-one bullets was killed as she knelt in prayer...
...Although Indonesia's annexation of East Timor was never recognized by the United Nations, the occupation was carried on and the world seemingly forgot about the people living in this hostile occupied land...
...One woman's husband was shot as she stood in the next room asking what was happening...
...In Suai, a tropical haven just a few miles away from the southern coast of East Timor, hundreds of people ran to the church, thinking they'd be safe there...
...He would like to go back, he said, but he was waiting until it was safe...
...Hundreds did, and most stayed there for days...
...Most would be women and children, though, coming back on their own while the men waited in camps for reports back on whether or not it was safe to return...
...Free-roaming swayback pigs ate and rested in the town's irrigation canals...
...Overall, 75 percent of the population was displaced...
...The justice that everyone calls for throughout East Timor was being played out, and it was impossible to feel good about it...
...At night, observers could see hundreds of small campfires dotting the mountainside where people waited until it was safe to come back down...
...Now go report to your I 10 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 beloved Xanana, report to your UN, report to Bishop Belo...
...Throughout East Timor, few bodies have...
...He watched for a few minutes as the men beat Evaristo with an iron bar...
...In the weeks after the vote, the black-shirted militia methodically destroyed crops, stole farmers' tools, killed livestock, and set fire to DISSENT / Winter 2002 n I O I EAST TIMOR most of the nation's buildings...
...In the end, they decided that the UN would monitor the elections and, in a decision that was to end in disaster, the Indonesian military would guarantee East Timor's safety...
...In 1998, the entire crop of East Timorese coffee—which is "organically" grown because of a lack of access to chemicals and fertilizers—went to Starbucks...
...In Rwanda and Yugoslavia, they have fifty people investigating each crime...
...We'd be better off paying for them to return in another manner and concentrating our efforts on other issues...
...There must be justice...
...Driving through the mountainous countryside one can see that the industry is still small and family run...
...He said he came often to the registration center...
...They don't understand that we're a small country...
...When the shooting and burning began in Maliana, people were told, as part of UN protocol, to report to the police station...
...But to date it has done nothing...
...The judges—an East Timorese, a Brazilian, and a Burundian—spoke in English to the witnesses and defendants, then waited as their questions were translated into Tetum...
...In the afternoon session I attended at the Serious Crimes Court, Moses Lopes testified against Joni Marques and several other members of Team Alfa for the murder of Evaristo Lopes, his close friend, on April 21, 1999...
...The Assembly had three months to draw up a Constitution that would be East Timor's blueprint for the future...
...The former leader, Xanana Gusmao, who was jailed in Jakarta for nine years and who is regarded as a political prisoner as noble as Nelson Mandela, even came out of retirement...
...The last night we were there, we were convinced we would die, they were firing on us, they were burning things down...
...We weren't going to leave them to be killed...
...There was throughout the city the sweet, pulpy stench of garbage, waste, and rot...
...They killed my husband and two of my children and they burned down my home, then they made me go to West Timor, to Indonesia...
...Many are owed pensions for years of service to Indonesia as policemen, drivers, postal employees, or military personnel...
...In these decades, though, the independence fighters kept fighting the occupying forces, and by the end of the nineties, international human rights activists and journalists were denouncing the occupation...
...They can go ahead and negotiate the return of the men who stood and watched as others killed my husband and burned my house," said Rosarinha Munis...
...EAST TIMOR is a tiny place, half an island at the far eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago...
...Several polling stations were shut down for a few hours, and after the polls had closed a local UN worker was stabbed to death...
...Representatives of Fretilin, the political party born in the mountains out of rebellion against colonial rule, won fifty-five seats of the Assembly, the most for any party...
...I ask though that I be given the chance to hit these men...
...In the summer of 2001 a team of UN, Australian, and private sector experts determined that offshore oil and gas fields— which until independence were owned by Indonesia and Australia—belonged in fact to East Timor...
...There are frequent reports from returning refugees that the East Timorese in the SATGAS-run camps are harassed and intimidated...
...Reports from journalists and UNHCR officials working around the ports of West Timor and in Jakarta are that men with indictments against them in East Timor's Serious Crimes Court walk about freely...
...If they had any fears, if they were former militia who might face retribution back home, they were urged to be up-front...
...The people negotiating with Indonesia and with Habibie knew that the offer for a referendum on independence was hanging by a thread...
...The ten men faced the three judges...
...Before the slaughter stopped, more than fifty villagers had been hacked to death...
...Finally, they entered and began shooting...
...The narrow, pot-holed streets of Dili were lined with the burned-out remnants of homes...
...People scrambled off their transports and then watched and shouted out as their goods were tossed off the backs of the trucks In the registration center, their names were checked against the list of people pre-registered with SATGAS...
...A teenage boy named Hipolito stood away from the crowd...
...0 N OCTOBER 25, 1999, the United Nations Security Council established the United Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor as the "integrated, multi-dimensional peace-keeping operation fully responsible for the administration of East Timor" It marks the first time the UN has ever run an entire country...
...The idea was to leave no place for people to gather or take refuge...
...Muhammed Hussein, who works with UNHCR in Maliana, said that many of the returning refugees have been hesitant to come back because they have heard that there may be more violence in East Timor...
...It was the most recognizable party, the one most associated with East Timor's fight for freedom...
...It also shows how difficult it is, after a disaster such as happened in East Timor, for the United Nations, or any international agency, to pick up the pieces...
...Coffee has already proved to be a money maker...
...In the courtroom, there are very few questions asked about who planned, who orchestrated...
...Many of the people still maintaining refugee status in West Timor worked with the Indonesians in one way or another...
...They were told there is terrible poverty and little chance of getting work...
...According to a United Nations assessment, "Building Blocks for a Nation," two hundred thousand people fled or were pushed across the border into refugee camps in West Timor, the Indonesian half of the island...
...For days, militiamen and Kopassos soldiers, the Indonesian Special Security Forces, drove back and forth in front of the church compound firing into the crowds...
...The ubiquitous yellow Mitsubishi mini-dumptrucks, small enough to manipulate the torn-up roads, were hired out to haul the bodies across the border into West Timor, where they were 102 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 dumped, most likely, into the sea...
...Virtually every morning began with lawyers having to hammer out exactly how the evidence and testimony introduced was to be handled...
...When the time came and it was safe, people just wanted to get back...
...The physical destruction of the country was immense-70 percent of houses were destroyed, as were 77 percent of all health facilities and 95 percent of the schools...
...All public services collapsed...
...Everyone in the courtroom wore earphones for simultaneous translation...
...Some, perhaps, were low-level militia...
...Everywhere in the mountainous terrain, there are signs of remembrance...
...Still, the accused—the ones looking for reconciliation in the communities that they in some way helped destroy—have to answer to the thousands of women and children who have been widowed and orphaned...
...But the greatest challenge facing Gusmao or whoever wins the presidency of East Timor will be figuring out how to deal with those who have committed crimes—often heinous ones— against their neighbors...
...In April 1974, Portugal's "carnation revolution" caused tremendous political upheaval and the viability of maintaining East Timor as a colony was finally reconsidered...
...His throat had been cut, his hands and legs tied, his body beaten...
...Issues of trade, economics, language, land, law, and governance were all on the table when East Timor held a vote to elect a Constitutional Assembly...
...A couple of trips ago, we hauled back an entire restaurant...
...In one town, invading militiamen had filled an irrigation ditch with concrete...
...They took note of who came out...
...There he was seen as a traitor...
...In the parking lot, though, the mood was light...
...On the day the trial was originally set to end, the court was hearing the testimony of only the third of the scheduled seventy-three witnesses...
...IndoEAST TIMOR nesia, though, is not paying up, and IOM got word that unless the pensions came through, most of the people wouldn't be returning...
...Domingos Da Silva, who did a quick oral medical check-up...
...He listened as Team Alfa decided whom to target...
...In the weeks before the election, parades of trucks, cars, buses, and dump trucks filled with men, women, and children whirred through towns, Fretilin flags flying, chants ringing out, and fists in the air...
...A scathing Amnesty International report called "East Timor: Justice Past, Present and Future" was issued in August 2001...
...But that was it...
...A public defender stood and made a speech about Falantil's cold-blooded killers and his client's need to protect himself...
...This goes right up to the top...
...But in September 2000, three UN workers were killed in Atambua, a border town in West Timor, and since then West Timor has been declared off-limits for UN staff...
...The World Bank has pegged the annual budget for East Timor at sixty-five million dollars...
...He urged "all elements and political tendencies in East Timor to refrain from any resort to force and to cooperate with the United Nations...
...Passports were stamped with a very matter-of-fact "Authorization to Enter—UNTAET...
...WO DAYS after I arrived in Dili, I was invited to join officials from the International Organization for Migration (TOM) and UNHCR on a trip to pick up a group of about five hundred people who were ready to return to East Timor...
...Many expected violence, and in the weeks leading up to election day, peacekeeping troops stationed throughout East Timor admitted that they were heightening their patrols, setting up roadblocks, and keeping a close eye on all movement back and forth across the border...
...It was Fretilin's military arm, Falantil, that waged a guerrilla war first against the Portuguese then against the Indonesians...
...In terms of a legal system, the skeleton is there but the meat isn't...
...There is, however, no denying the dire poverty East Timor faces for the time being...
...Eurrico Guterres, the man who ran the militia in East Timor, is rumored to be living well in Jakarta...
...The men I saw observing the departures sneered when I asked if they spoke English or Portuguese...
...On September 8, at night, after they killed my husband," said Filomena Fereira da Silva, "after they killed many and hauled the bodies away, Ernesto Metan [a known militia member] came in and said, 'Now the law is in Indonesia, not East Timor...
...On May 5, 1999, when the three parties finally reached an agreement, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, voiced his concern about the increase in violence throughout East Timor...
...There are, of course, instances in which a man returns, is taken to meet with the village council, sent home, and later that day beaten...
...The East Timorese independence movement retreated back up into the mountains...
...The long, white, pillared government building that belonged first to Portugal and then to Indonesia now flew a UN flag and boasted an enormous sign reading "UNTAET HQ...
...They were also told they might be killed either leaving East Timor or coming into Indonesia...
...In the days just after the vote, with every hour there was in increase in violence...
...Roofs, windows, and doors were gone...
...Fearing that Indonesia might never offer the same opportunity again and having waited so long, the people of East Timor said they were ready for a referendum...
...I lost two children and my husband...
...The young men were there as wellwishers, they told me...
...Things are going much slower than planned, and to be honest, I think that a lot of the problems we're seeing here are teething problems," said Stuart Alford, the prosecutor...
...When I traveled to East Timor in the summer of 2001, the UN presence was visible everywhere...
...The militia wouldn't let the local staff members leave with us when we finally got clearance to retreat to Dili...
...Initially the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) managed the camps throughout the Indonesian half of the island...
...The Patricia Anne Hutong, an old Australian survey ship rented out to the IOM, sailed all night from Dili to Kupang, the West Timor port on the opposite end of the island...
...In traditional militia strongholds like Same, a village in the mountainous western region, one man wore a T-shirt saying "Autonomy Yes," referring to 1999's proautonomous movement that advocated allegiance to Indonesia...
...They are solemn memorials for those who disappeared or died in 1999...
...The Indonesian police insisted all was well...
...They wore dirty jeans and T-shirts and sat on black, metal-framed, vinyl-backed chairs...
...Once the towns were razed, they worked their way out into the surrounding countryside and mountains...
...Photographs: John Stanmeyer/VII 106 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 EAST TIMOR DISSENT / Winter 2002 n 107 EAST TIMOR who still insist that the massacre and burning of East Timor were carried out by independent militia groups with no official support from the Indonesian military...
...UNCHR representatives meet regularly with SATGAS staff to get updates on the status of the people in the camps...
...This is stuff traditionally laid out well before...
...According to statistics issued by the United Nations Development Program, more than half the population lives on less than one dollar a day, and two-thirds of the women are illiterate...
...The law is here...
...I don't think it was possible to do it differently...
...For the first witness called by the prosecution to testify about the killing of Evaristo Lopes, the translation was such that more often than not, the witness had to ask for the question to be repeated...
...Human rights activists consider the campaign of forced evacuations the clearest sign that the devastation of East Timor was methodical and not the haphazard, spontaneous outrage of a few unorganized militia groups...
...I studied his back as he listened to a witness described the moments before the witness's friend was killed...
...East Timor's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a controversial but popular initiative, has attempted to merge international concepts of justice with local traditions and punitive practices, but it is reserved for smaller crimes, putting the power into the hands of the community, and often into the hands of the very people who were left without homes or family...
...He cited evidence that campaigning by pro-autonomy groups had been supported by the TNI...
...It was dark, and he could not always see who was wielding the bar...
...Although most of the fields are not scheduled to commercially produce until 2003, it is expected that the industry will be a three hundred million dollar annual profit maker...
...As long as the refugees are in the camps, the militia and members of the Indonesian Army who carried out the massacre have bargaining chips to negotiate lesser charges and more lenient sentences...
...It was clear that few, if any, of the people on the witness stand or in the defendants' chairs had ever been in a courtroom before...
...Others say that there must be more than a laissez-faire approach to justice if UNTAET is EAST TIMOR to consider its mission here a success...
...I arrived in East Timor in July 2001, two years after the massacre, and I could still see the devastation...
...There must be justice, she says, but this is not it...
...In August 2001, nearly sixty thousand people, or 30 percent of those who initially fled East Timor, were still living in the camps...
...Indonesia denies this...
...I don't think there was any way the violence of 1999 could have been avoided in these circumstances...
...The trial was conducted in English...
...In addition, the laws that are being applied in East Timor are not always consistent with international human rights standards...
...On September 16, Indonesia—faced with growing international pressure to stop the butchery that it had unleashed—conceded the necessity of a UN force to restore order in East Timor...
...In Indonesia, human rights [violations] are not punishable under our Constitution...
...Leaving the back road court house that day, leaving behind the frustrated judges, ambivalent defendants, and tentative witnesses, it seemed to me that justice, if it comes at all, will come fitfully to the people of East Timor...
...The unit has come under fire for being severely understaffed and for not providing the sort of training, facilities, and technical expertise that ensures that the cases that do make it to trial are fair and need not be retried at a later date...
...He asked the judges if they could write a letter on his behalf...
...They were charged with killing thirteen people, including nine clergy who were traveling outside of Los Palos...
...Moses said they went after Evaristo because of his long hair, a style associated with Fretilin supporters...
...Many are waiting for Indonesia to make good on its promise to prosecute the perpetrators of crimes against humanity living and working there...
...It was not, however, a decision Jakarta was prepared to accept...
...In the killing fields of the countryside, it was worse...
...At the village level, in local councils, conditions for return and punishment are meted out for people who did not commit crimes against humanity but who did support, in some way, the destruction wreaked by the militia...
...The report said that "the necessary measures have not been taken with the result that law and order is now barely being maintained, justice is not being administered effectively and the human rights of the East Timorese people cannot be guaranteed...
...Five days later, the first United Nation multinational troops, led by Australian forces, landed in Dili...
...108 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 After the registration room, the people moved on to sit momentarily with Dr...
...The militia told everyone in town that if we stayed we would be killed," said Bosarinha Munis in Maliana, a town near the border of West Timor...
...Everyone who entered the courtroom did so as I did, in a whirl of dust that settled thickly on the chairs and desks...
...We knew the implications...
...Today, crosses stand throughout the countryside, testament to the Catholicism left over from centuries of Portuguese rule...
...The violence on August 30 was tame compared to all that had come before...
...Marques and the nine men sitting with him, the other men from Team Alfa, were being tried together for the crimes they committed between April 21 and September 27, 1999...
...IOM officials knew before the ship left Dili that the five hundred refugees they expected might not all show up...
...I understand the process of reconciliation...
...In Maliana, Filomena Feirera da Silva calmly lists the names of the men who came to her house, the men who threatened her husband in prison, the men who watched as he was killed, the men and women who burned the houses around Maliana...
...Some say that, with the oil prospects in the Timor Sea, this number is too conservative...
...Our critics say we are taking too much time, but we cannot be directed by public demand...
...The people heading the unit worked in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, but they don't understand East Timor...
...The militia and Indonesians who intimidate the refugees have plenty of motive for doing so...
...Even through the Second World War, when Japanese soldiers invaded and occupied the island, which is strategically positioned only a few hundred miles north of Australia, the Portuguese took to the mountains and fought to get their land back...
...Today, hundreds of grave markers are piled up as a memorial just a few feet away from the doors of the church...
...The court was not air-conditioned, and in the afternoons, the fans did little to break the dry, tropical heat...
...Everyone involved in the process behind the May 5 agreements knows that had the United Nations demanded that it be allowed to deploy organized military units here, to protect its staff and East Timor's population, Indonesia would have said no and the referendum would have been off," said Sergio Viera De Mello, administrator of the United Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET...
...The opinions expressed in this article are hers and not those of the United Nations...
...Only a handful of spectators even bothered coming to the trial, although it was open to the public...
...At the time of the referendum there were approximately eighteen thousand militia, most of whom were foot soldiers loyal to Indonesia and prepared to follow whatever orders they were given, regardless of the consequences for the East Timorese...
...More than two hundred thousand people were displaced in the three weeks that followed the referendum...
...This half of the island was the main Portuguese holdout in Indonesia during the centuries that the vast spray of islands—thirteen thousand in total—was colonized by the Dutch...
...At this point they've been away for two years, they've accumulated things...
...At the end of the day, Annan confidently described the vote as "an expression by the East Timorese of their will as to their future" and urged all East Timorese groups to "exercise the utmost restraint and patience in the post-balloting period...
...Witnesses and defendants were unsure where to stand, whom to address, and what I I2, n DISSENT / Winter 2002 EAST TIMOR "testimony" meant...
...Everyone, that is, except the defendants, who by and large left the earphones dangling around their necks and nudged one another smiling, gesturing back and forth, or simply staring out the windows...
...At this rate and with this mediocrity, it is impossible to reach the high level officials...
...WHEREAS IN villages throughout the land the truth commission is helping to mete out ad-hoc punishments, a much bigger issue of justice is stalled in Dili and Jakarta, where the UN plays a much bigger role...
...Some East Timorese leaders, including Jose Ramos Horta, co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, suggested postponing the elections and waiting until some of the dust had settled...
...After what happened in 1999, there cannot be independence without justice...
...It was not an answer that sounded very convincing to me, and I could not help thinking how slight the rewards for his testimony against men accused of brutal murders had been...
...I want to hit them with my own hands...
...Everyone knew who did what...
...Piles of stones, too, mark the ground where people fell...
...He said he was scared...
...There were rumors that 1999 would be repeated and speculation that everything would again go up in flames...
...I don't know if I can accept it...
...WHEN IT CLAIMED East Timor as its twenty-seventh province, Indonesia assumed control over a severely underdeveloped country...
...A senior UN official, willing to speak only on condition of anonymity, said he has very little faith that Indonesia will follow through on its promise to bring the Indonesian and East Timorese accused to trial...
...On June 1, 1999, Martin declared, "An end to all violence is essential for a fair campaign and ballot...
...To feel that, I want to use my hands...
...There was no government, no official language or currency, no system of law, no media, no shops or schools...
...Young men who had just registered to return shuffled away from the group, heads down...
...104 n DISSENT / Winter 2002 If Annan had any inkling of the bloodbath that was to follow, he never let on...
...The punishment, for example, for one man who burned down a house was to rebuild that family's home plus help to build a school in town...
...Moses was in the car when Team Alfa stopped it and ordered him, Evaristo, and two other friends out...
...Saddled with an economy wrecked by the Asian financial crisis, vast governmental corruption and cronyism, and growing international criticism of the occupation of East Timor, Habibie called for a popular referendum to decide East Timor's fate...
...We didn't know if they would kill us there, but when they told us to go, they had knives...
...Nonetheless, the violence continued to escalate...
...In the end, nobody was killed, nothing was burned, and a Constitutional Assembly was peacefully elected...
...UNAMET was now forced to deal with the chaos caused by pro-autonomy militia and the Indonesian armed forces...
...People ran from their homes, or were forced from their homes, across the border with very little...
...It was an enormous task...
...It is home to only eight hundred thousand people...
...In the course of the day, the parking lot filled with dozens of buses and trucks, dumptrucks, and flatbeds stacked precariously high with plastic chairs, mattresses, bicycles, sacks of rice, and batik-covered bundles of clothing...
...The sun glared down on the vast parking lot at the heart of the Fatuloli registration center outside of Kupang, where the refugees gathered to officially register for return...
...A group of men gathered outside of the registration center...
...Portugal began the process of decolonization...
...For the next twenty-four years, Indonesia ruled with terror and an iron fist...
...These are the first recorded photographs of Indonesian police killing an East Timorese, taken four days before East Timor's vote for independence from Indonesia...
...Four days later, the lull of peace was shattered when the results of the referendum were announced...
...According to the UN country report, in the first month after the invasion, sixty thousand East Timorese were killed, and after that, the death toll continued climbing...
...He did not, he told the judges, realize he would have to stand all day...
...The camps are run by Satuan Tugan (SATGAS), the Indonesian task force assigned to address refugee issues...
...If they ask me, I say just let me put my hands on them...
...We have sixteen...
...He wanted to join the local police force, but the families of the defendants were making that hard for him...
...By July 22, two hundred voter-registration DISSENT / Winter 2002 n 103 EAST TIMOR centers had been opened, and within ten days, more than one-fourth of the population had registered...
...The land and the crops, which in 1998 garnered nearly twenty million dollars, have not been fully recovered since the burnings of 1999...
...The militia had taken over the town and we were unarmed and unprepared...
...All told, the 1975 invasion, annexation, and repression that followed left, directly or indirectly, more than two hundred thousand East Timorese dead...
...The Serious Crimes Unit of the Office of the Prosecutor General was established to oversee the investigation and prosecution of these crimes...
...Indonesia backed the militia, supplied them with guns, trained them, prepared a systematic strategy for leaving East Timor burned to the ground," he said...
...She says she doesn't have faith that justice will come from the current proceedings...
...Piles of belongings overflowed on the boat's main deck into the cabins and halls below deck...
...On June 11, the UN Security Council established the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) to run through the end of August...
...The fear of communism in the West and its spread through the East gave Indonesia an excuse to invade the island, annex the territory, and nip in the bud any separatist movements that may have been spawned by East Timor's brief independence...
...We knew it was coming," said David Savage, a civilian police officer from Australia who was in Maliana with the UN as an electoral monitor at the time of the referendum...
...But when it comes to economic prospects, oil is the pillow on which East Timor's dreams ultimately rest...
...The resolution stated that the Indonesian government was to be responsible for the "maintenance of peace and security in East Timor, the integrity of the ballot and for the security of international staff and observers...
...The UN, Indonesia, and Portugal, acting on East Timor's behalf, began to hammer out the details of how the referendum would be held, what the process would look like, and who would be responsible for what...
...The UN, its officials made clear, was only in East Timor to ensure that people could vote in a secret, free, and fair election...
...They were told they would be looked out for...
...ISAW EVEN greater reason for skepticism just off a dirty, Dili road, where East Timor's first trial for crimes against humanity was taking place...
...Later, at the docks, as they boarded the boat, there would be tearful good-byes...
...Nine days later, and only EAST TIMOR hours after meeting with U. S. President Gerald Ford and U.S...
...DISSENT / Winter 2002 n 113...
...I don't think that community knowledge is being used...
...Moses said he was worried about going home, he was worried East Timor might be forgotten, and that somehow the fighting would come again...
...The UN strategy for East Timor's development has been to build a modest economy— based on rice, coffee, fisheries and oil—supplemented by strategic international aid...
...Charred black streaks stretching out from the windows curled up the sides of houses...
...But every little step is a battle, and frankly we're using the only Serious Crimes Court in the country to discuss how evidence will be handled once admitted...
...Most of the men, said one UN source, know they are in for a beating when they return and accept it...
...Joni Marques, the leader of a Los Palos-based militia group called Team Alfa, had already confessed his guilt to charges of crimes against humanity...
...There are black iron crosses, simple wooden ones, crosses made from dried earth...
...The Special Crimes Unit isn't looking at that period in 1999 for what it was—a systematic massacre," said Joaquim Fonseca of Yayasan Hak, the East Timorese Foundation for Law Human Rights and Justice...
...As the session ended, the prosecutor promised to look into his allegations...
...Later, as the session was about to end, he asked if he could be heard again...
...Meanwhile, reports of harassment and beatings were coming from every part of the country...
...Special registration plans had to be developed for the thousands of East Timorese who had already been forced from their homes...
...Goats, chickens, dogs, sheep and cows were tied with flimsy rope to trees, fences, or whatever was standing...
...The pale blue UN flag waved in the dry wind in front of Komodo Airport in Dili welcoming international guests...
...They burned, raped, displaced, and murdered unchecked until, on September 20, a UN peacekeeping force was finally allowed to go in The violence never reached genocidal proportions, but what happened there in the space of twenty-one days was nonetheless devastating...
...Serious crimes" have been defined by the UN as those crimes against humanity committed between January 1999 and October 25, 1999...
...Often, by the time the answer was given, it was clear that the question or the answer, or both, had been mistranslated...
...The only other way to get these criminals is for the United Nations Security Council to call for an International Tribunal...
...At the end of 1999, East Timor was a strange land," according to a report issued by Timor Aid in 2000...
...The report called the forced deportations a deliberate policy by the TNI...
...Fatuloli is a former exhibition center...
...Traffic lights hung hollow and askew...
...The judicial system is only partially established and what does exist is fragile...
...I called my family to say I wasn't sure I'd see them again...
...Members of the fledgling judiciary lack the necessary training and support and are vulnerable to political pressure, including through threats and intimidation...
...But, according to the UN, nearly 70 percent of the remaining refugee population is being held hostage as "human shields" by the militia, who are active in the camps...
...It is an issue on which the UN's mission in East Timor will inevitably be judged, and, in the summer of 2001, things were not going well...
...A man played with his toddler son while his wife, who would be going with the child onto the boat, watched quietly...
...These days it's packed with fewer people but with a lot more possessions...
...Because this is the first big trial, we're laying the precedents to be used later...
...That is all that will be left in East Timor.' I want them to know they were wrong...
...We heard gunfire, the houses were being burned...
...When Portugal pulled out quickly and without looking back, little infrastructure was left behind...
...As with Russia's Chechnya and China's Tibet, I'm skeptical...
...For Moses, testifying was exhausting...
...People were chased from their houses, children were killed in front of their families...
...Five days later, on September 4, when the results of the election were announced, forces opposed to independence set about delivering a devastating punishment...
...UN personnel are not allowed into West Timor without advance security clearance, and then, only for a limited time span...
...His client, with the earphones off, missed the entire exchange...
...I was told that some may have been pro-Indonesian, pro-autonomy supporters...
...We are having a difficult time in Indonesia," Chalief Akbar, Head of Political Affairs for the Indonesian Mission in East Timor, has acknowledged...
...The ship arrived as dawn broke, with a team of transport specialists, field officers, doctors, and translators...
...There, justice for the hundreds of people charged with crimes against humanity is coming about at a much slower pace, if at all, and raising enormous doubts among those who believe true independence can only be realized when the men who organized and led the killings in 1999 are punished...
...but even in the station, they were subjected to beatings and rapes...
...In the weeks that followed, more than twelve hundred people were massacred and thousands of women were beaten and raped...
...On the roadside, groups of men pry the bean from the pulpy fruit, tossing the shells aside...
...At the time, Annan pointedly noted the assurances given by Habibie that his government would fulfill effectively its "responsibility for law and order and the protection of all civilians...
...Indonesia, he pointed out, "is not going to commit harikari here...
...If] the UN or Portugal pushed it too far, the thread would break and the window of opportunity would close and never open again...
...In the weeks that followed, as the UN established its presence in East Timor under the leadership of Ian Martin, the special representative of the secretary-general, it emphasized its neutrality in press releases and speeches...
...There were not, however, enough David Savages to go around in 1999...
...Some people have reported that they were told by the Indonesians that they would be beaten by their neighbors if they returned...
...The only possessions not allowed on the Patricia Anne are cars, cows, and water buffalo...
...He said that in the camp he heard that it is still dangerous to go back to East Timor, that if he were to return after having spent almost two years in West Timor people would suspect that he was with the militia and he would be beaten, perhaps killed...
...In late September 1999, Amnesty International reported, "Independence activists are being hunted down at checkpoints, on boats and in house-to-house searches...
...They were asked by East Timorese UNHCR officers speaking in Tetum, the national language, if they expected any difficulties upon arrival in East Timor...
...It takes years to get to trial...
...The' N has not only had to deal with this crisis but do so with very limited access to and no control over the refugee camps in West Timor...
...This turned out to be the case...
...In the countryside and villages, they had torn the roofs off buildings...
...Few sensations are as unsettling as sitting inches behind a murderer...
...Jose Teixeira, from East Timor's Department for Economic Affairs, estimates that with national support the coffee industry can reap fifty million dollars annually...
...He sat down...
...In a referendum in which more than 98 percent of the eligible voters cast their ballots, 78 percent voted for independence from Indonesia, throwing off twenty-four years of occupation...
...The public defenders spoke a combination of English, Portuguese, Tetum, and Bahasa Indonesia...
...It boasted a giant Suharto billboard showing the ousted president smiling coolly, his black bhaji hat carefully perched atop his head...
...Most observers expect that come April 2002, Gusmao will be the president of fully independent East Timor...
...The man was dressed in jeans and a camouflage T-shirt that read "SNIPER—If You Run You'll Only Die Tired...
...She says nothing has come of it...
...Evaristo Lopes's body was found soon after in a paddy field...
...Tell him he can be president for dirt and stones...
...Some buildings had only the barest reminder of their former infrastructure— a wall here, half a floor there...
...Responses were given then translated back into English...
...The cases most often decided are those of low-level militia, frequently men forced to join DISSENT / Winter 2002 n 1 0 9 EAST TIMOR the militia under threat, who helped to burn and ransack towns once communities had fled...
...The judge reminded the public defender that to rise and raise an objection required him to object to something...
...She currently works for the United Nations Development Program as a communications consultant and wrote this piece while on a leave of absence...
...They told us we could either go alone or stay with them...
...In Dili, white Land Cruisers painted with bold UNblue acronyms were ubiquitous...
...World Bank officials say that for the time being it is better to be safe than sorry...
...In total, only 179 people—and their thousands of kilos of belongings— came aboard the Patricia Anne...
...We have to develop the legal framework and train judges to prosecute what have been deemed 'crimes against humanity.' It could take years...
...By 1999, only seven lawyers were indigenous...
...But an even bigger problem—and a sadder one in terms of its toll on families—is the refugee crisis...
...Desperate to keep its island nation intact, Indonesia had little need to worry about world opinion on the matter, until 1998, when, after the ousting of President Suharto, B. J. Habibie assumed the presidency...
...In 1975, when Portugal left, there were only three East Timorese doctors...
...Not only was the country physically plundered and raped, but also, no former structure existed EAST TIMOR which could be used as a base for rebuilding...
...ERIN TROWBRIDGE is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Earth Times, and on National Public Radio...
...Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Indonesia's President Suharto authorized Indonesian troops to invade East Timor...
...0 N AUGUST 30, 2001, two years to the date of the last vote, the people again went to the polls...
...Nobody talks about this on the record, least of all the Indonesians, DISSENT / Winter 2002 •I05 EAST TIMOR Bernardino Guterres runs, barefoot and carrying two stones (which he was using to defend himself from the militia—not the police) and his plastic flip flops, while the Indonesian police chase him...
...He said one man told the members of Team Alfa to take Evaristo up to the compound for a "haircut...
...Along the beaten roads, young girls sit outside their homes on blankets covered with beans being dried in the sun...
...UNHCR officials say that militia frequently show up to keep tabs on who's going back...
...They were reminded that UNHCR was there to help them, not prosecute them...
Vol. 49 • January 2002 • No. 1
