Indonesia, East Timor to hold meeting about occupation crimes
Next Friday in Bali, the two presidents will discuss the East Timorese report which charges Indonesia with over 180,000 deaths between 1975 and 1999. The document was presented to the UN last month by the president of East Timor.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) The presidents of Indonesia and East Timor are set to meet this week to discuss the report of an East Timorese Commission which has accused Jakarta of committing numerous atrocities during its occupation of the island. Official information sources said today the talks will be held on Friday, 17 February, in Bali.
The President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was scheduled to meet his East Timorose counterpart, Xanana Gusmao, already last month; the appointment was cancelled by Jakarta a few days after the report was present to the UN.
The document, based on 8,000 interviews, is the fruit of three and a half years of work by the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. It documents violations committed by Indonesian authorities in 24 years of occupation of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony invaded by Jakarta's troops a few months after achieving independence in 1974. The military troops perpetrated rapes and torture, causing the death of tens of thousands of civilians between 1975 and 1999, the year they withdrew.
On 20 January, Gusmao presented the report to the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, in New York. A spokesman for the Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry described the document's findings as "unrealistic". The Foreign Affairs Minister, Hassan Wirayuda, said "Friday's meeting will be used to listen to Xanana Gusmao himself about that report to the UN."
In a bid to tone down the report, the East Timorese president said in January that its main aim was to establish the truth about what had happened so it would not be repeated: "It is not so important to look at the figures. It is more important to look at the lessons."
Since 1999, the two governments have followed a policy of friendship and reconciliation, playing down violence perpetrated before independence and the fact that Jakarta did not make any move to punish those responsible for such actions.
The bishop of Baucau, Mgr Basilio do Nascimento, recently expressed the need for justice to be done and the hope that thousands of human lives lost during the occupation would not be forgotten in the name of reconciliation.
.png)
08/04/2005
