"Billions of dollars are needed to rebuild East Timor's devastated infrastructure," said Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington Director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division. "But there must also be a determined effort to put in place the kind of legal and human rights protections that East Timor badly needs. The international community should help."
In particular, a fully functioning and independent judiciary is needed to curb corruption, establish East Timorese confidence in civil institutions, and attract foreign investment.
Human Rights Watch made recommendations in three areas: strengthening judicial reform, ratifying international human rights treaties, and bringing perpetrators to justice for serious human rights abuses committed in East Timor in 1999 and previously.
Much progress has been made in creating a judiciary, under difficult conditions, to deal with ordinary crimes. Language and transcription issues remain a problem, as trials that involve three or more languages contend with a lack of qualified translators. Judges struggle to perform their duties despite insecure tenure, and inadequate training and support staff. A lack of defense counsel has been exacerbated by the delay in appointing the necessary commission and staff to oversee a state-funded independent legal aid body.
Human Rights Watch also expressed its support for moves underway to ratify several important international human rights and humanitarian law treaties. The East Timorese leadership has announced plans to immediately sign the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the International Criminal Court statute, and the conventions on refugees, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and landmines. They have also pledged to sign an unspecified package of human rights treaties and conventions, most likely during the General Assembly in New York later this year. This might include, for example, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as well as conventions outlawing torture and discrimination against women.
"The track record of many Asian governments is poor when it comes to adopting and complying with international rights treaties," said Jendrzejczyk. "East Timorese, having suffered terrible abuses for decades, can set a positive example for the rest of the region."
One of the most difficult challenges facing the new administration is the need to develop an effective strategy for dealing with the aftermath of the violence in 1999. Indonesian troops and army-backed militia carried out a scorched earth campaign of murder, arson and forced expulsions following the U.N.-supervised referendum on independence on August 30.
East Timor's newly created Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation provides a mechanism for individuals guilty of "less serious offenses," such as arson and theft, committed between 1974 and 1999, to admit their responsibility and provide compensation to the victims. The Commission is designed to minimize acts of vengeance and internal divisions as East Timorese aligned with the militia, who fled or were expelled from East Timor, return to their home communities. The truth component of the commission will include the difficult task of gathering testimony and writing a report on events since 1974.
But many East Timorese remain frustrated at the lack of progress in bringing to justice Indonesian military commanders and militia leaders who ordered, directed, and carried out the violence. The Indonesian government has thus far refused to extradite any Indonesian soldiers or militia leaders to Dili for trial before a tribunal of international and Timorese judges called the Special Panels for Serious Crimes, which has been in operation since January 2001. At the same time, there is widespread skepticism that trials underway in Jakarta before Indonesian ad hoc tribunals will bring accountability. Top generals implicated in the 1999 campaign have not even been indicted.
"Those responsible for crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, as well as rape and murder, must be brought to justice," Jendrzejczyk said.
Human Rights Watch urged the U.N. and donor governments to increase pressure on the Indonesian authorities to either effectively prosecute all those responsible, or turn them over to bodies that will, beginning with those already indicted in Dili. Human Rights Watch also reiterated its opposition to any moves to significantly expand training, funding or supplying arms to the Indonesian military until there is meaningful progress towards accountability for abuses committed in East Timor and in Indonesia.
