People who committed war crimes in East Timor during Indonesia’s 1975 to 1999 occupation are going unpunished because of a loophole in the country’s penal code, Amnesty International said yesterday.
East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta has rejected pressure from the UN and rights groups such as London-based Amnesty to prosecute war crimes suspects, saying such trials are not in the country’s interests.
But Amnesty again called on Dili to stop giving amnesties to war criminals and agree to the establishment of an international tribunal to provide justice to the victims.
“Survivors of decades of human rights violations in Timor-Leste are demanding justice and reparations, but the authorities’ routine use of amnesties, pardons and similar measures has created a culture of impunity,” Amnesty researcher Isabelle Arradon said in a statement.
Arradon helped research an Amnesty report released yesterday about the culture of impunity in East Timor, or Timor-Leste as it is formally known, entitled Timor-Leste: Justice in the Shadow.
“The authorities in Timor-Leste are compromising on justice to seek peace — but trading away justice for such serious crimes only undermines the rule of law, and cannot resolve the trauma of the past,” Arradon said.
Amnesty says the legal loophole is the absence of a ban on amnesties, while the penal code also lacks provisions on cooperation with the International Criminal Court.
Indonesia ended its brutal 34-year military occupation of East Timor in 1999 after granting the former Portuguese colony a referendum on independence, which resulted in an overwhelming vote to split from Jakarta. More than 100,000 East Timorese were killed or starved to death during the occupation, and the weeks surrounding the referendum were marred by crimes against humanity committed by Indonesian forces and their militia proxies.
East Timor and Indonesia formed a truth and reconciliation commission, which lay the blame for such crimes squarely at the feet of the Indonesian military, but few of the perpetrators have faced justice.
Ramos-Horta says justice must be weighed against the fledgling democracy’s economic and political destiny as the tiny neighbor of Indonesia.
The president pardoned and freed militia leader Joni Marques in 2008 after his 33-year sentence for crimes against humanity was substantially reduced. Dili also sent militia leader Maternus Bere to Indonesia before he faced trial over alleged massacres of civilians in 1999.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS