Skip to main content

No one to blame for East Timor abuses


It is official: no one was responsible for human rights abuses that occurred around the 1999 East Timor referendum in which more than 1,000 people reportedly died. In defeat in the referendum, Indonesia was a sore loser. For several weeks mobs rampaged through Dili, even attacking the residences of priests. The only person in jail for those crimes, Eurico Guterres, who has friends and supporters in high places in Jakarta, was released a few days ago from Cipinang prison. The Supreme Court overturned his sentence on appeal. He was met by a crowd of supporters to whom he clenched his fist and cried "Merdeka!" His release is just in time for next year's general elections.

Seeing that he is a national hero of sorts and a party member, it might just be that when the next parliament is formed after elections, we will see him sitting among the lawmakers in Senayan as one of the House's celebrities. In the meantime, he might follow the trend of celebrity politicians turning their talents to acting. If he does it might just start a trend of flag-waving patriotic kitsch in television soaps. His rugged features might be a nice change from the pale faces of the stars of the upper-class melodramas that look like they have been pasted with whitening cosmetics since they were born. Many people would much rather watch the ham acting of a few disgraced ministers and fighters like Guterres, than sit through a silly ghost story of the kind that have been polluting television for a while now. Eventually schoolchildren in Indonesia might be able to learn from their books that absolutely no human rights abuses happened around the East Timor referendum. This would complete the narrative repeated by the Indonesian powers that be who say we never annexed East Timor; rather Indonesia was invited to storm into the country. East Timor did not actually want independence; it chose independence in the referendum because of false promises offered by the United Nations and Australia. The continuing troubles there are proof that East Timor was always better off being part of Indonesia. The current heavy Australian military presence there is proof that Australia has its secret agenda on the one hand, while on the other hand the tiny war-torn country cannot survive on its own. All the allegations against the Indonesian government, military and militias were fabricated; stories made up by the West, which harbors evil designs for our country. With schools here spending at least an hour a week on military-style marching and standing at attention and singing the national anthem and other patriotic songs, we can assume that over time, the idea that those who annexed East Timor and brutally tried to keep it were heroes will become the only accepted version of events.

To be honest Guterres' conviction was never fair. He should never have had to go to jail on his own. He had his masters high up among the Indonesian military command. How could a militia thug be solely responsible for mayhem that involved the regular military? How could everyone escape justice when the violence was captured by international news cameras? Everyone indicted for crimes against humanity in East Timor has now been acquitted. As there is no one guilty, it easily goes that there were no crimes. After all, when you talk about rape and pillage and murder you must have perpetrators, mustn't you? The press has names and places but now it appears that the media got it all wrong. The blatant fact is that many of those indicted for crimes against humanity in East Timor have reinvented their lives as politicians and are now preparing for the next general elections. Because of the twists of misinformation in Indonesia's old New Order, the annexation of East Timor has always been defended here. The independence of East Timor has always been seen as a grave mistake and as a loss. Because of that people like Guterres are popular not only among the masses of knee-jerk nationalists, but also among members of the political elite here.

They regard their past in East Timor as an asset rather than a liability. Maybe they are heroes and their actions were always in the best interests of their country. It apparently seems the general public in Indonesia thinks so. However, it would not be wise to actually elect these men into office. It isn't that their conduct in East Timor betrays either a blatant disregard for human life or plain incompetence. Cruelty and incompetence have never stopped anyone taking high office here. The problem is that they are recognized by activists as people who have escaped justice.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nine of Indonesia’s 11 richest families have found shelter in tropical tax havens

Billionaires Among Thousands of Indonesians Found in Secret Offshore Documents  By Nicky Hager April 9, 2013, 8:15 pm Nine of Indonesia’s 11 richest families have found shelter in tropical tax havens, holding ownership of more than 190 offshore trusts and companies, secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show. The nine families, worth an estimated $36 billion among them, are at the top of a wealthy class that dominates Indonesia’s politics and economy. Six were closely tied to the late dictator Suharto, who helped a special circle of Indonesians grow rich during his 31-year rule by granting economic fiefdoms to family and friends. The billionaires are among nearly 2,500 Indonesians found in the files of Singapore-headquart ered offshore services provider Portcullis TrustNet, which ICIJ has been analyzing and began reporting on last week. Although there is no evidence in the files of illegality by any of the ni...
Post a Comment
Read more

Debate Islam in Indonesia

http://www.thejakar taglobe.com/ opinion/interloc utors-of- indonesian- islam/560447 Interlocutors of Indonesian Islam Ahmad Najib Burhani | December 08, 2012 A few months ago, the Japanese anthropologist Mitsuo Nakamura told me that studying Nahdlatul Ulama as an organization was beyond the imagination of any American scholar from the 1950s to the ’70s. But he is not the only academic to have noticed this. George McT. Kahin of Cornell University stated the same thing. Even NU-expert Martin van Bruinessen was not expecting to study NU as his primary focus when he came to Indonesia for the first time in the 1980s.   During the early decades of Indonesian independence, NU was relatively unorganized and its management was largely based on the authority of religious teachers ( kyai ). Of course there were a number of scholars who studied NU-affiliated religious schools ( pesantren ) and its kyai, but not NU as an organization.   Even though NU was one of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

is that true in Indonesia there freedom of religion?

The problems began shortly after Tajul Muluk, a Shiite cleric, opened a boarding school in 2004. The school, in a predominantly Sunni Muslim part of East Java, raised local tensions, and in 2006 it was attacked by thousands of villagers. When a mob set fire to the school and several homes last December, many Shiites saw it as just the latest episode in a simmering sectarian conflict — one that they say has been ignored by the police and exploited by Islamists purporting to preserve the purity of the Muslim faith.   Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has long been considered a place where different religious and ethnic groups can live in harmony and where Islam can work with democracy.   But that perception has been repeatedly brought into question lately. In East Java, Sunni leaders are pushing the provincial government to adopt a regulation limiting the spread of Shiite Islam. It would prevent the country’s two major Shiite organizations from ...
Post a Comment
Read more