TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Lessons from Timor Leste
Indonesia would have learned a great deal from the fatal mistakes of its 24-year occupation of the then East Timor, now Timor Leste, so it hardly needs more lessons
Change Size
I
ndonesia would have learned a great deal from the fatal mistakes of its 24-year occupation of the then East Timor, now Timor Leste, so it hardly needs more lessons. Well perhaps one more: a lesson on statesmanship from President José Ramos-Horta.
On the 10th anniversary of the UN-sponsored independence referendum that ended Indonesian rule, Ramos-Horta’s speech Saturday was worthy of his standing as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, part of which read “My stated preference, as a human being, victim and head of state, is that we once and for all close the 1975-1999 chapters of our tragic experience [and] forgive those who did us harm.”
He called on Timorese to put the past behind and criticized those who continued to call for an international tribunal for Indonesians who had perpetrated the ugly violence in the wake of the Aug. 31, 1999, referendum. Mindful that the demands came mostly from the West, he asked why there were no similar demands for the carpet-bombing in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, or in the aftermath of the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Ramos-Horta is continuing the good neighbor policy started by his predecessor and Timor Leste’s first president Xanana Gusmao. He saw the completion of the work of the joint Commission for Truth and Friendship last year that agreed the two neighboring countries would look to the future and not be beholden by the bloody past.
Does this mean Indonesia is off the hook? Perhaps, but in the absence of any formal closure, the human rights violations will likely continue to haunt us prevent Indonesia from becoming the civil nation that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono referred to recently when he talked about a new vision of Indonesia for 2025.
Any investigation into the human rights abuses carried out by Indonesian officials in Timor Leste and elsewhere in the country should be an initiative by Indonesia, and not come at the behest or pressure from outside. We owe this to ourselves if only to clear our conscience.
Now a free and democratic country, the culture of impunity remains strong, raising serious doubts about our leaders’ commitment to human rights.
The perpetrators of the violence in Timor Leste and elsewhere in Indonesia during the Soeharto regime are still roaming free. Two former Army generals with dubious human rights track records now lead minority political parties in the House of Representatives. It was just as well that they did not win the recent presidential election, for that would put Indonesia in a very awkward position.
Timor Leste is fortunate to have truly great statesmen like Ramos-Horta and Gusmao. Statesmanship will remain in short supply among Indonesian leaders for as long as we continue to let human rights violations go unpunished. While our leaders are busy talking the talk at international forums, we are certainly not walking the human rights walk.
