Balancing justice and reconciliation in East Timor

Abstract

As East Timor emerges from a long Indonesian nightmare, it is seeking to balance the agendas of justice and reconciliation. The verdict on justice for East Timor is one of disappointment. The main obstacle to accountability is Indonesia, abetted by an international community that seeks its assistance in the “war on terror.” East Timor's leaders have emphasized reconciliation while promoting a healing process and good governance. Recent violence reveals just how difficult this task remains. The hybrid tribunal established in East Timor by the UN was once heralded as an important innovation in transitional justice, avoiding the high cost and lengthy proceedings of other international tribunals. However, the tribunal has been unable to hold accountable those who bear the greatest responsibility for outrages committed against Timorese and defendants did not get fair trials or competent defense. A truth commission report released in December 2005, Chega! (Enough), emphasizes justice and reparations. The political leadership soft peddles justice because they believe this makes more sense and will better serve the people. Indonesians are now being given a chance to testify in front of the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF), but concern is widespread concern that the CTF emphasizes reaching closure, has no judicial mandate, and only ensures impunity for ranking perpetrators. Indonesia and East Timorese can regain dignity and move beyond their shared tragedy through a process of reconciliation that is based on justice and atonement. Germany shows this is possible; Japan, that it is difficult and problematic if neglected.     

The East Timor Conflict and Western response

Abstract

East Timor is a former Portuguese colony that was invaded and occupied by its neighbor Indonesia in December 1975. Since then the native population has been fighting the occupation under the leadership of Fretilin, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, and to this day the struggle continues.     

东帝汶的语言问题及其对教育的影响

东帝汶尽管还很年轻,是个新生的国家,但却有着漫长的历史和独特的文化.作为一个多语言、多民族的国家,东帝汶目前至少有16种本土语言.自2002年独立之后,东帝汶开始建设自己的国家,其中,语言问题不容忽视.本文研究了东帝汶的语言历史和现状,以及语言对其教育的影响.     

The state of East Timor studies after 1999

Taking stock of the state of knowledge on East Timor since the UN intervention of 1999, this article traces the rise of a hegemonic discourse especially around development issues notably as promoted by the World Bank. In turn, the World Bank discourse of lean government, market-oriented economic policies, and export-oriented agriculture is reflected in a number of publications. As a formidable patronage machine in East Timor, it would not be surprising if arriving international staff along with East Timorese returnees would emerge as Bank collaborators or even employees. The thriving NGO community which emerged in East Timor as the underbelly of the UN mission also found common cause with human rights discourse and, especially, sustainable development discourse from within the UN mission. Meanwhile, a number of foreign anthropologists embedded themselves within and without the UN mission producing a major corpus of writings. Amidst this “clash of paradigms” East Timor muddled along, dependent on donor support, but prey to vagaries of seasons, international markets, and predatory outsiders. To a large extent, the international agency, NGO, and academic literature tracked these vagaries but, outside of linguistic studies, we await a critical mass of autonomous writings by East Timorese about East Timor.     

荆棘与鲜血之路通向何方?

本文首先回顾了东帝汶问题形成的历史,其次将１９９８ 年６ 月以来东帝汶问题的发展分为三个阶段,即讨论自治问题阶段、讨论独立问题阶段和实现投票公决阶段,并从东帝汶本地区的形势、印尼国内状况、国际社会影响三方面分析了印尼政府改变对东帝汶政策的原因。文章的第三部分着重分析了影响东帝汶独立问题的主要因素,指出印尼国内政治对于东帝汶问题的解决发挥着重要作用     

独立前夕东帝汶的政治与经济

东帝汶的革命还未结束 ,新的考验就已经出现 :外国投资不足、官员以权谋私、政治意见分歧等等。这些问题解决得如何将对东帝汶的未来有着重要影响。     

浅析东帝汶阿尔卡蒂里政府的合法性问题

2006年的东帝汶骚乱凸现了阿尔卡蒂里政府的合法性危机,政府也因此而垮台.合法性包括规范要素、程序要素、绩效以及同意四个要素,如果其中一个要素缺乏,就会引发合法性危机.阿尔卡蒂里政府是随着东帝汶的独立而成立的,得到了国际和国内社会的同意,并且是由选民依宪法选举而产生的.然而,作为东帝汶的首届政府,它并未能有效解决民众最为需要的民生问题,特别是经济绩效低下,最终引起民众认同危机而导致垮台.     

Review essay: Recent books on Indonesia's occupation of East Timor and the East Timorese struggle for self-determination

Abstract

East Timor is the site of one of the great genocides since World War II. Out of a population of about 700,000 at the time of East Timor's brief independence, about 200,000 people have died as a result of the Indonesian invasion and the ensuing war, politically created famine, and the ongoing occupation. From the time of the Indonesian invasion on 7 December 1975 until January 1989 Jakarta kept East Timor closed. Apart from official foreign delegations, some international aid workers, and a limited number of journalists, few were able to enter the territory. On 27 December 1988 the Indonesian authorities accorded East Timor open-territory status following a one-day visit in November to the territory by Indonesian president Suharto. Jakarta was keen on encouraging foreign and “domestic” (Indonesian) investment in its “twenty-seventh province” as well as presenting an image to the outside world of normalcy in East Timor. On both accounts, Jakarta has largely failed in its objectives. The ongoing resistance by the East Timorese people to Indonesian hegemony and the concomitant political instability in East Timor as well as the relative poverty and isolation of the territory have prevented the influx of private capital. In terms of international opinion, the “opening up” of East Timor has not helped to suppress the image of the brutal nature of Indonesia's illegal occupation of the territory.     

Australian Reporting from East Timor 1975–1999: Journalists as Agents of Change

This article examines Australian reporting in East Timor from 1975 to 1999, and the changing professional practice of Australian journalists who reported from the region during this time. Research conducted for this article includes testimony from the journalists, and a collating of 3,456 newspaper articles published in the mainstream Australian press on the East Timor situation between 1998 and 1999. It will show that in addition to new regulations over access to the region, new mobile media technologies pushed journalism in new directions, adding to the ability of the journalist to facilitate instantaneous delivery of news to Australia. These reports filed by Australian journalists from East Timor were crucial in fostering the Australian government's decision to send troops to the region.     

Hostages to History: The Use of Portuguese Prisoners of War in the Annexation of East Timor

On 26 August 1975 the colonial administration in Portuguese Timor abruptly removed itself from Dili to the island of Atauru, amidst escalating armed conflict among Timorese political parties. A puzzle that has remained is why did the Portuguese administration leave so precipitately, and why did it not return a few days later when the conflict was over? We have been left with the impression that Portugal simply deserted its responsibilities, abandoning the territory to Indonesian annexation. This paper pieces together a rivetting but little-known story, from contemporary Portuguese, Indonesian, US, Australian, Timorese and eyewitness accounts, about the humiliating capture and detention by Timorese and Indonesians of Portuguese military as prisoners of war, which helps to explain a previously unrecognized constraint on Portuguese policy in East Timor in 1975-1976. This paper also shows that Indonesia had taken some important lessons from history on how to manage Portugal, from India's annexation of Portuguese Goa in 1961.     

Secret Intelligence And Escape Clauses: Australia and the Indonesian Annexation of East Timor, 1963-76

In September 2000 the Australian government declassified thousands of pages of documents concerning the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1975. Some 68,000 pages of documents were released. About 2,600 pages of diplomatic documents were withheld, along with Cabinet papers, intelligence materials, and Defence Department records. The documents cover only the period from early 1974 to mid-1976 and do not document the Indonesian war and its human costs. What they do document is the process whereby Australia acquiesced in the Indonesian annexation of East Timor. Above all, they show that secret briefings by the Indonesians kept the Australian government closely informed of Indonesian intentions and operations at every step. In the light of these secret briefings and related documents, it is clear that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's claim that he wanted to see a “genuine act of self-determination” by the East Timorese is and always was hollow. This was a fig leaf covering his desire to see East Timor incorporated into Indonesia as West Papua had been in the 1960s. Its patina of moral responsibility and legal respectability were his alibi or, as Richard Woolcott put it in late 1974, “escape clause,” if and when Indonesian actions led to accusations of Australian complicity with Jakarta. Mr. Whitlam was complicit. The record is clear.     

日本对中东能源政策的调整及其走势

受制于国内能源结构的重组和国际能源供求结构变化的影响,日本对中东能源政策做了一系列调整.面向未来,日本为确保中东石油进口的安全,将以政府援助为先导、民间合作为基础,谋求建立互利双赢的合作关系,并将力促中东融入世界经济体系,以保证其国际能源供求体系的安全运作.     

The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia: The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975-79, and East Timor, 1975-80

In this research note Ben Kiernan, director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University (www.yale.edu/gsp), scrutinizes estimates of the number of people killed in the two most recent cases of genocidal mass murder in Southeast Asia: Cambodia and East Timor. He concludes that the two cases were proportionately comparable, though many more people died in Cambodia. Each tragedy took the lives of over one-fifth of the population.     

Indonesian West Timor: The political-economy of emerging ethno-nationalism

Encouraged by the post-Soeharto atmosphere of reform and regional autonomy legislation proposed under Habibie, the aspirations of Indonesia's regional elites have been stirred. Yet prosperity has remained elusive for many amidst continuing economic decline and as an unreformed military continues to threaten the business ambitions of regional elites. In West Timor, one of the poorest parts of Indonesia, local elites have had to contend with the added burden of the fallout from the 1999 pro-integrationist military operation in East Tindonesian military-trained tormentors, the West Timorese have paid highly for independence in the East and sufmor. Beginning with the need to host the quarter-million East Timorese refugees who fled West accompanied by their Ifered enduring economic malaise. This is reflected in the devastation of tourism and foreign investment, the suspension of major aid projects, the severing of the air-link to Northern Australia and a United Nations high-security alert in force since 2000. This crisis in which the aspirations of regional elites have been thwarted by the neglect and incapacity of central government and by the nature and political agenda of the Indonesian military elites, has provoked several reactions. As some West Timorese elites have lobbied for a share of the East Timorese petroleum revenues, the discovery of an essential Timorese-ness by others has been manifested in the ethno-nationalist Negara Timor Raya (Nation of the Land of Timor) movement.     

Recent books on the East

The following paper was discovered by Laurence Evans, Professor of History at the State University of New York at Binghamton, during the course of research in the files of the Department of State (to which Department the paper had been made available in 1918 for use as background information by the American Delegation at the Peace Conference), and Professor Evans has kindly communicated it to the Society. Its contents are not included in the book on Mecca which Snouk published in German, and it is not among the scattered articles in Verspreide Geschriften (1923–27). That collection does, however, include another essay about Ahmad Dahlan, in Dutch, entitled “Een rector der Mekkaansche universiteit”, originally contributed to a learned journal and reprinted in vol. 111, pp. 65–122. [We are printing this paper in good faith believing it to be previously unpublished. Ed.]