Washing the blood from their hands
"I think any comment [beyond "understanding and sympathy"] is really intruding a little into the internal affairs of another country", Prime Minister John Howard opined on the outcome of the Indonesian and United Nations investigations into crimes against humanity in East Timor in 1999.
Howard and foreign minister Alexander Downer are echoing the line of the United States government, that the Indonesian state should conduct the investigation and prosecutions itself.
These imperialist governments win no marks for consistency: although the Indonesian state invaded, occupied and conducted a genocidal policy against another country, East Timor, for nearly 25 years, Indonesia is to be trusted to bring the war criminals to justice; yet when Cambodia's Khmer Rouge were being charged for human rights crimes conducted against their own people, the imperialists harassed the government to allow international involvement in the trials.
Indonesia's judiciary is hardly impartial. It is still largely made up of Suharto-era appointees and if special courts are established to hear the human rights violations charges, they may include military judges.
Of course, there are no guarantees of justice from an international court either. That depends on the interests of such a court's sponsors. But the fact that both the Indonesian and Australian ruling elites oppose an international court is a sign that this would be a better option, at least for keeping the door open for the East Timorese people's struggle for justice.
The head of the UN investigation team, faced with official opposition to its recommendation for an international court, has now suggested an international "truth and reconciliation" commission instead. But this is unlikely to achieve justice for the East Timorese.
The experiences with such a commission in post-apartheid South Africa show that human rights abusers have mostly protected themselves through silence, or through gaining immunity as a condition for testifying.
The February 3 Australian Financial Review published an article by a former official in George Bush's administration in the US which hypocritically argued that "nations — especially emerging democracies — must confront the realities of their own histories" as a pathway to maturity. This is unlikely to occur in Indonesia until the rule of Indonesia's elite (including Suharto and his cronies, and the military leaders) is replaced with the rule of Indonesia's people. A people's inquiry would lead to quite different results from those on offer from the Indonesian courts.
The Sydney Morning Herald has maintained its (very belated) criticism of Australian government policy on East Timor that began just before the August independence ballot. On January 31, a front page feature noted that Australia's contingency plans "left the Timorese exposed to the militia and the Indonesian security forces".
However, the SMH accuses the government only of poor analysis. By way of excuses, the article states that Defence Intelligence Organisation reports failed to predict the terror upsurge in September and quotes Downer claiming that he was "surprised" by the level of violence in East Timor. To top this off, in a separate article in the same issue, the SMH offers up a paean to Major General Peter Cosgrove which aims to show that, in the end, the Australian state managed to get things right.
The real issue, however, is not the Australian government's incompetence, but its complicity in the horrors perpetrated in East Timor. The government supported the Indonesian regime's attempts to keep East Timor annexed — by defending the Indonesian government's claim to be ensuring "security" in East Timor, for example. This policy became a major problem for the Australian government only when masses of Australians, in solidarity with the East Timorese people, rejected it.
By supporting the Indonesian government's sole right to prosecute the crimes committed in East Timor, the Australian government is expressing the hope of the Australian capitalist class that as little as possible of the truth about its responsibility for what happened in East Timor will emerge. Australia's rulers are still trying to wash the blood of the East Timorese from their hands.