East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta has called on his people to accept that Indonesians who committed human rights abuses against them will never be tried, so the nation can move forward.
The oil-rich country could escape from poverty only if it was stable, and for that it needed good relations with Indonesia, its giant neighbor and former occupier, Ramos-Horta said in an interview.
The president predicted a surge in world oil prices could lead to the standard of living in East Timor one day rivaling Australia’s, with a per capita income of more than US$30,000 a year.
But it would not happen unless the country was stable, Ramos-Horta said, adding that he would be “stupid” to call for an international tribunal on past wrongs.
“We have to understand the new Indonesia and remember that the Indonesian army was not defeated in East Timor,” he said. “They left because the leaders in Indonesia ordered them to leave.”
“I sympathize with them and I would never stab them in the back by pushing for an international tribunal that would embarrass Indonesia and wreck the relationship,” Ramos-Horta said.
Last week on the Indonesian island of Bali, Ramos-Horta and his Indonesian counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono received a joint report by the two countries into the violence that marred East Timor’s 1999 vote for independence.
Although it concluded that Indonesian soldiers and government officials played a role in the violence, it has been widely criticized as allowing those responsible to escape criminal trials.
Asked if the perpetrators would never be tried, Ramos-Horta said: “I would say maybe so. We just have to be faithful to God, to the international community and to the new Indonesia.”
“Let’s take care of those who are alive, the wounded, the widows, the orphans,” Ramos-Horta said.
“Honor the dead. Remember them always, but we have to take care of those that are alive and to do that we cannot pursue the path of revenge, of confrontation with Indonesia,” he said.
“We are not unique,” he said, drawing comparisons with Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony like East Timor, where he said, 1 million people were killed in a post-independence civil war but the former combatants later worked together.
East Timor’s oil revenues from the Timor Sea were already around US$200 million a month, he said, and the per capita annual income would already be more than US$4,000 a year.
“The question mark is whether we will be able to transmit that into wealth for the people,” he said.
Many Timorese remain mired in poverty and Ramos-Horta said the challenge was to find ways to ensure that changed.
Although the rise in world oil prices could be a long-term boon, in the short term ordinary Timorese were suffering like poor people elsewhere from the resulting rise in food prices.
A particular priority was to improve the training of the East Timor Defense Force, he said. Tensions within the tiny army sparked a new wave of violence in 2006.
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