How the generals got away with murder in East Timor
By James Balowski
"In a forest west of Dili, Filomena Amaral is about to learn the details of how her husband, a village schoolteacher and church leader, was tortured and killed. Photographs of her husband's shattered bones are needed as evidence in the event that his killers are ever brought to trial.
"The forensic team will piece together the final moments of her husband's life ... but the real evidence concerning his death isn't buried here. It's buried in filing cabinets, government memos and bank records. Buried in the minds of elegant men in suits who incited, approved of and paid for this execution and who, it would appear, are going to get away with murder ..."
So began a Dateline program, aired on SBS television on February 16, in which reporter Mark Davis links the funding of the pro-Jakarta militia directly to the Indonesian state, including the department of foreign affairs and cabinet ministers. Even more remarkable, the report also establishes that at least A$12 million earmarked for welfare and development was channelled to the militias from the World Bank — with the World Bank's knowledge and apparent inaction.
According to a number of key witnesses interviewed by Davis, the bagman was Francisco Lopez da Cruz, an employee of Indonesia's foreign affairs department. Former foreign affairs minister Ali Alatas denied that 9 billion rupiah had been directed to the FPDK, the main militia umbrella group. "No, No. We are not ... involved in internal things", he told Davis.
Davis then asked: "Cisco Lopez da Cruz — he is part of your department?".
Alatas: "He is, he was. Well, he is still perhaps ... special envoy on East Timor, yes."
Davis: "Lopez da Cruz gave them 9 billion rupiah. He works for your department. He says it came with your authority."
Alatas: "Yes, but that was not for militia. That was for general information perhaps."
Other government departments also gave money to the "socialisation of autonomy" — the code words for the propaganda campaign and militia activities that Jakarta hoped would ensure victory in the August referendum in East Timor. "The implications of government departments directly diverting money to militias are enormous", Davis noted. "It exposes ministers to war crimes prosecutions and the state to massive compensation claims."
Joao da Silva, head of East Timor's budget section and someone who had intimate access to all departments in the public service, told Davis he was the officer overseeing the payments to the militias. "All departments must donate — transmigration, agriculture, forestry — all must give for the 'socialisation of autonomy'."
Last March was a difficult time to be seeking money because it was the end of the financial year and government departments were all broke. From his government office in Dili, the leader of the FPDK cooked up a scheme with the governor of East Timor, Abilio Soares, with the co-operation of ministries in Jakarta, to plunder development and welfare funds. Militia murderers were to be put on the books as charity workers and it would be largely paid for by international donors.
Asked if the money was used for development, Adelino Gutteres, who worked for the head of the FPDK and was in charge of planning and development in Dili, replied: "No money was spent on development after we gave the 3 billion to the militia. There was nothing left to spend. No projects went ahead ... It was all for the militia. The whole 1999 budget was for the militia alone."
The World Bank discovered this fraud in the first month after it began. According to Ben Fischer in the World Bank's Jakarta office, the bank was aware of the scam and sought assurances from the government that it would end. "We did all we could short of stopping overall support", Fischer told Davis.
Australian knowledge
Two days before the Dateline program, ABC TV's Four Corners aired a report, "Ties that Bind", that revealed that one of East Timor's most senior militia leaders informed the chief of the Hong Kong office of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service of a plot to wipe out the East Timorese independence movement.
In four meetings in late April in Macau, Tomas Goncalves provided ASIS with extensive details and the names of senior Indonesian military officers behind the plan.
"The order came from the regional commander, Adam Damiri, to the East Timor commander and the special force commander, Yayat Sudrajat: liquidate all the CNRT [National Council for Timorese Resistance], all the pro-independence people, parents, sons, daughters and grandchildren. Commander Sudrajat promised a payment of 200,000 rupiah to anyone wanting to serve in the militia", said Goncalves.
"On March 26, I went to a meeting run by the East Timor governor. He said to kill the priests and nuns because it was they who were defending the people of East Timor", said Goncalves. However, Goncalves drew the line at killing priests and nuns and fled the country on April 18.
As early as November 1998, Lance Taudevin, an aid contractor who had been recruited as an informant for the Australian embassy in Jakarta, was reporting the links between the Indonesian military and the militia.
"I [told the embassy] that ... the whole program is being orchestrated. ABRI [Indonesia's armed forces] is recruiting, it is training, it is supporting, it is providing logistical support to the operations of the militia", Taudevin told Four Corners. However, the embassy advised him to "change his reports ... Just tone it down ... what you report has to fit into the big picture".
On August 20, Taudevin informed the embassy that the much publicised Indonesian troop withdrawals from East Timor were a sham. Australia's Defence Signals Directorate already knew.
A senior intelligence official in Canberra told Four Corners: "On the day of the supposed withdrawal, a number of radio transmissions were picked up from Indonesian naval craft. They were chatting to each other about how the landing craft had just gone around the island and dropped the troops off again."
Quoting a previously unpublished document from last April, Four Corners revealed that the Defence Intelligence Organisation had already reported to Canberra that: "Indonesian military officers are actively supporting pro-Indonesian militants in East Timor. Wiranto has failed to restrain these officers."
This was is stark contrast to Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer's public statements during last year's violence, when he stated: "It certainly isn't official Indonesian government policy, it certainly isn't something that's being condoned by General Wiranto, the head of the armed forces. There may be some rogue elements within the armed forces who are providing arms of one kind or another to pro-integrationists who have been fighting the cause for Indonesia."
May 5 accord
In an article in the August 28 Australian Financial Review, Brian Toohey described how the May 5 agreement signed by Indonesia and the UN to allow the Indonesian military to oversee security during and immediately following the referendum was a direct result of Australian policy.
By February 1999, there was increasing evidence that the Indonesian military were organising, funding and arming the militia. US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Stanley Roth met with head of the Australian foreign affairs department, Dr Ashton Calvert.
Toohey claims that according to the leaked record of the conversation, Calvert stressed the importance of encouraging the East Timorese to sort out their differences without resorting to the UN.
In April, Downer told parliament that Roth was "grateful" for the insight Calvert had given him about Indonesian resistance to peace keepers. "Only a child", he said, would continue to push for peace keepers in these circumstances.
According to Toohey, US officials said privately that they were not prepared to push for peacekeepers in the face of such determined opposition from an ally so close to the problem. Australia's policy was to rely on the instigators of the violence to maintain the peace, Toohey concluded.
Business as usual
While the international media has given considerable attention to the Dateline story, the Australian media has chosen to largely ignore it.
World Bank president James Wolfensohn has denied the allegations. Wolfensohn implied that Dateline had taken Fischer's comments out of context and challenged journalists to back up the allegation with evidence.
Mike Carey, Dateline executive producer, told Green Left Weekly: "We stand by our story ... I don't see how we misrepresented [Fischer], we faithfully reported what he said. We have him on screen acknowledging that they knew about the diversion of funds ... More critically, they [the World Bank] do not acknowledge the existence of the former Indonesian government bureaucrats in East Timor whose job it was to pay the militia from the development money, to hand it over to the militia. Adelino, that was his job and he admits it."
The revelations should raise very serious questions about the capacity of the Indonesian government to investigate and put on trial those responsible for the atrocities in East Timor. However, the UN and the Australian government remain unperturbed.
During his visit to Australia on February 21, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and Australian PM John Howard played down the need for an international war crimes tribunal.
"If [the Indonesian government does] mount a transparent and credible trial, I do not think the UN Security Council will see any need to set up an independent tribunal", Annan said. Howard agreed: "Indonesia deserves a lot of credit and understanding for what she's done on this and I think the process should be allowed to work in Indonesia."
The Dateline and Four Corners programs show that the responsibility for the violence, murders and widespread destruction which inevitably followed the Indonesian military's being put in charge of "security" before and after the August referendum lies fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the "elegant men in suits" — not just in Jakarta but right here in Canberra.