Torture, Truth and Justice

Elizabeth Stanley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134021031
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book highlights how, and why, torture is such a compelling tool for states and other powerful actors. While torture has a short-term use value for perpetrators, it also creates a devastating legacy for victims, their families and communities. In exposing such repercussions, this book addresses the questions 'What might torture victims need to move forward from their violation?' and 'How can official responses provide truth or justice for torture victims?'

Building on observations, documentary analysis and over seventy interviews with both torture victims and transitional justice workers this book explores how torture was used, suffered and resisted in Timor-Leste. The author investigates the extent to which transitional justice institutions have provided justice for torture victims; illustrating how truth commissions and international courts operate together and reflecting on their successes and weaknesses with reference to wider social, political and economic conditions. Stanley also details victims' experiences of torture and highlights how they experience life in the newly built state of Timor-Leste

Tracking the past, present and future of human rights, truth and justice for victims in Timor-Leste, Torture, Truth and Justice will be of interest to students, professionals and scholars of Asian studies, International Studies, Human Rights and Social Policy.

1 Introduction

Timor-Leste (East Timor) is a small country located off the north-west coast of Australia, around 400 miles from Darwin. People from Melanesia and continental Asia inhabited the region from at least 20,000 BC and, from the fourteenth century, international traders began to use the sandalwood-rich island as a trading post. In 1702, Timor was officially established as a Portuguese colony (Jardine 1997).¹ The island was divided into two parts, East and West, by the International Court in 1913. From this time, West Timor was governed by the Dutch (becoming part of Indonesia in 1949) and Timor-Leste (that includes the enclave of Oecusse in the West as well as the islands of Ataúro and Jaco) was retained by the Portuguese (ibid.; Taylor 2003).

The Portuguese control of Timor-Leste continued, uninterrupted, until World War II when Allied Dutch and Australian troops landed in the territory to block Japan’s advance to the south. They were not successful as by January 1943, after over a year of fighting, Japan controlled the whole island. Having supporting the allies, an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 East Timorese lost their lives during this period (Gault-Williams 1990), many women were forced into sexual slavery, and local infrastructure was badly damaged. With Japan’s defeat in 1945, the Portuguese returned to their colonial post.

Throughout its administration, Portugal did not invest in the country. By the early 1970s, for instance, 93 per cent of the population remained illiterate (Simons 2000). Aside from services for senior officials, the capital Dili had no electricity, water supply, or telephone services. There were few paved roads and while an indigenous elite existed, within both urban and rural areas, most Timorese were relatively untouched by colonial powers (ibid.). Accordingly, while East Timorese people spoke Portuguese, practised Catholicism, and experienced state structures that reflected European traditions, most retained their agricultural, self-sufficient existence in small mountain villages controlled by traditional rulers (ibid.).

This situation completely altered following an April 1974 coup² in Portugal. Immediately, Portugal began to withdraw from its colonies in Africa and Asia, leaving a power vacuum in Timor-Leste (Taylor 2003). Three main parties, Fretilin (Front for an Independent East Timor), UDT (Timorese Democratic Union) and Apodeti (Timorese Popular Democratic Association), emerged and following a short civil war, Fretilin surfaced as the leading party (ibid.).³ The resulting period of peace was limited as for various reasons (including a desire to attain strategic claims on regional archipelago islands; to provide a lesson to other areas claiming independence; to benefit from oil reserves in the Timor Sea; and to fight alleged communism) the Indonesian government proposed that an independent Timor-Leste could not exist (Amnesty International 1977; Nairn 1997; Stanley 2008a; J. Taylor 2003).

Commencing a campaign of destabilization – named Operasi Komodo (Operation Komodo) – Indonesian forces staged military attacks on towns bordering West Timor, they began to solicit international support for Timor’s integration into Indonesia, they gathered intelligence, and they encouraged UDT leaders to undertake a coup (J. Taylor 1991). The subsequent attempted UDT-led uprising against Fretilin was not successful and, as shown below, this action led to long-term antagonism and violence between these two groups and their supporters. During this period of unrest and uncertainty, Portuguese officials removed themselves from the region and refused to participate in any decolonization processes. In some despair, and sensing that they were on their own, Fretilin leaders declared the independence of Timor-Leste at the United Nations (UN) on 28 November 1975. Just nine days later, and with the acquiescence of Western powers, the Indonesian government launched a sustained attack.⁴ The subsequent occupation lasted almost a quarter of a century.

The recently completed Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation estimates that over 102,800 people, over an eighth of the population, were killed during this occupation (CAVR 2005). People died in ad hoc killing sprees, planned massacres, bombing raids, and ‘disappearances’; others died in military operations,⁵ such as the ‘fence of legs’ operation that used Timorese civilians as human shields when Indonesian troops went to search for Fretilin armed resisters. Tens of thousands were forcibly removed from their homes and land in the mountains, and slowly starved to death in low-lying, unfertile and malaria infested ‘resettlement camps’ established by the Indonesian military (Nairn 1997). Individuals thought to be sympathetic to Fretilin, and their military wing Falintil, were similarly exiled on the island of Ataúro where they suffered illness and starvation. In addition to these killings, other Timorese people were routinely raped, ill-treated, detained without trial, and tortured.

More generally, Timorese people suffered all kinds of controls; for instance, restrictions were placed on the gathering of groups, individuals had to obtain permits to travel beyond their immediate neighbourhood, they experienced periodic curfews and house-to-house searches, their mail was checked, and cultural events were monitored (Amnesty International 1985, 1993). These restrictions on movement and residence were part of a strategy to control the population; however, they also marked military attempts to ‘resocialize’ the people into willing workers (J. Taylor 2003: 175). Indonesian officials coerced villagers into work and the Timorese were directed to provide labour for the Indonesian infrastructure and for cash crops (Nairn 1997). In particular, the Indonesian military took control of coffee plantations and used the revenues to offset their costs (D. Jenkins 1980).

Compared to the Portuguese administration, Indonesia did spend time and funds on the development of Timor-Leste. During occupation, schools were opened, roads were built, health services were implemented, and farming procedures were modernized (Sherlock 1996). However, the main beneficiaries of these ‘improvements’ were the new Indonesian immigrants who were given favoured status (International Commission of Jurists 1992). Educated East Timorese struggled to attain work, even in unskilled professions, and had to prove their loyalty by acquiring Indonesian citizenship for government positions (CAVR 2005). These experiences created antagonism between young East Timorese and the Indonesian regime, and they contributed to the emergence of a new wave of resistance from the early 1990s (Sherlock 1996). Added to that, East Timorese were deeply suspicious of the new services provided and saw many provisions as an extension of the control apparatus. As Martinho explained:

The schools were used to try to change us into ‘good Indonesians’, the clinics were used to sterilize us, the roads were used to transport us from one prison to another. We had no jobs, they took our land. And, we were supposed to be happy.

So, despite developmental ‘sweeteners’, the independence movement in Timor-Leste thrived and a network of fighters and supporters countered the occupation (Jardine 1999). This fight ran throughout the 1970s and 1980s; however it was not until the 1990s that the situation in Timor-Leste received significant international attention. The Santa Cruz massacre of 12 November 1991, in particular, was a significant turning point. International journalists secretly filmed, and later broadcast, this brutal event in which approximately 270 people were shot or beaten to death by Indonesian soldiers in a Dili cemetery. Following these recorded killings the campaign for self-determination gained a momentum that eventually could not be stopped and, in January 1999, the Indonesian government announced that the Timorese people could choose between autonomy and independence in a referendum. Despite the increased violence that was used against the population to ‘encourage’ votes in support of Indonesia, 78.5 per cent voted for independence on 30 August 1999.

The Indonesian retribution was brutal. In just a few weeks, over 1,400 individuals were killed, thousands were beaten or raped, over three-quarters of all buildings and infrastructure were destroyed and burnt, and three-quarters of the population fled their homes to hide in the mountains or crossed the border into West Timor (Robinson 2002). UN staff, evacuated after being held under siege, returned on 20 September 1999 with a UN multinational military force. Over the following months, a fragile peace was established and, in May 2002, the country finally joined the United Nations as a sovereign state (Stanley 2008a).

The international context

From the start of the occupation, the Indonesian government found ready support from other powerful allies. Time magazine noted that General Suharto’s seizure of power in Indonesia was the ‘West’s best news for years in Asia’ (Pilger 1998) as unlike his predecessor, President Sukarno, Suharto was viewed as being pro-US and anti-communist. Accordingly, the US Embassy was ‘generally sympathetic with and admiring of what the army was doing’ in the region (Jardine 1997: 22). This position was reiterated by US, UK, and Australian politicians on the basis that an independent Timor-Leste would be both unviable and a potential communist threat (Monk 2001; J. Taylor 2003).

Therefore, notwithstanding numerous UN Security Council Resolutions that called for Indonesia’s immediate withdrawal, violations were denied and no action was taken to stop Indonesia or to support Fretilin (Kiernan 2002; Robinson 2002). During UN debates on Timor-Leste, powerful states would encourage others to fall in line. For example, in 1982 the Vanuatu representative to the UN was ‘quietly informed by the Australian delegate that his government might curtail its aid to Vanuatu unless its prime minister took a less supportive stance on self-determination for East Timor’ (J. Taylor 2003: 180). As a result of such activities, most UN members failed to support Timor-Leste and either abstained or voted against relevant resolutions (Stanley 2007a).

While Indonesia held geographic, ideological, and political interests for powerful states it also presented strategic, economic opportunities. US-based multinational companies such as Goodyear, General Electric, Caltex, and AT&T had strong interests in Indonesia’s national resources and market opportunities (Jardine 1997). These major investors lobbied to support Suharto when the Dili massacre attracted international condemnation (Nairn 1997; Stanley 2007a). In the same way, the Australian government gave full recognition to Indonesia’s claim over Timor-Leste in a bid to access oil and mineral reserves in the Timor Sea. In 1989, Australia signed the Timor Gap Treaty with Indonesia, which gave ‘possession’ of an estimated seven billion barrels of oil belonging to Timor-Leste (Pilger 1998); as is detailed in Chapter 8, this remains a central economic issue for the Timorese people.

The international support for Indonesia also yielded significant economic opportunities for military sales and training. Australia’s military training only helped, as the Australian Foreign Minister from 1988 to 1996, Gareth Evans, admitted (in Robinson 2002: 164), to professionalize swathes of human rights abusers. Yet, the ‘arming up’ of Indonesian forces brought significant business for supporting states (Stanley 2007a). The US and UK, for instance, provided ‘ground attack aircraft, helicopters, missiles, frigates, battlefield communication systems, [and] armoured vehicles’ to Indonesia (J. Taylor 2003: 178). Some 90 per cent of the Indonesian weaponry used during the initial invasion of Timor-Leste was supplied by US companies (Jardine 1997; Kohen 1981) and throughout the occupation the US administration approved over US$1 billion of weapons sales (Chomsky 2000). When grassroots pressure eventually led to the US Congress voting to block weapons delivery, Britain became Indonesia’s largest arms provider (Phythian 2000). Despite the growing international pressure for Indonesia to withdraw from Timor-Leste, British arms sales to Indonesia grew throughout the 1990s. In 1996, when New Labour came to power, sales were valued at £438 million (ibid.). Throughout this period, British politicians accepted Indonesian government guarantees that supplies would not be used for internal suppression (Chomsky 2000). As Alan Clark, the British Defence Minister responsible for the sale of Hawk aircraft to Indonesia, remarked: ‘My responsibility is to my own people. I don’t really fill my mind much with what one set of foreigners is doing to another’ (Pilger 1994: 18).

Powerful states and transnational bodies continued, therefore, to ignore the plight of the Timorese people and, in many cases, directly assisted the Indonesian government to implement repressive policies. The World Bank channeled approximately US$30 billion to the Suharto regime. Despite issues of corruption, false accounting, and the militaristic appropriation of funds, the World Bank accepted that Indonesia pursued ‘good governance’ (Bello and Guttall 2006). Indonesia applied these monies to the Timorese people – for example, poverty alleviation budgets were used in Indonesia’s ‘socialization’ campaign of terror to deter people from voting for independence (La’o Hamutuk 2000).

This supportive stance was assisted by limited media coverage of events. Those few journalists who attempted to subvert Indonesian attempts to stop any reporting in the region faced surveillance, controls, and (as in the case of the ‘Balibo Five’⁶) sometimes death. Even when the territory was said to be ‘open’, Indonesian officials regularly blocked visits from humanitarian groups, human rights workers, and journalists (Amnesty International 1985). The distressing experiences of the East Timorese were generally not of interest to Western newspaper editors or TV programmers (Martinkus 2001; Nairn 1997). Moreover, newspapers minimized their coverage during periods of mass repression. For example, between August and December 1975, the Los Angeles Times ran 16 articles on Timor-Leste. Yet, from March 1976 to November 1979, when killings were occurring indiscriminately, ‘there was not a single mention’ of the country in the paper (Jardine 1997: 23).

This position was not unusual, and when the situation in Timor-Leste was reported in the mainstream media, it relied heavily on Indonesian misrepresentations (Chomsky 1996; Klaehn 2002). Indonesia sustained a solid propaganda effort in the face of criticisms. Before and during the occupation, media sources were heavily censored and influenced to present the Indonesian point of view (Cabral 2000). Articles were regularly planted in the press, media events were staged, and international journalists and politicians, as well as Timorese people, were encouraged to present material in favour of Indonesian policies. This propaganda had a number of recurrent themes: the denigration of communism, a paternalistic attitude to the Timorese population, a focus on the developmental ‘good’ provided by the Indonesian government, a focus on the potential division of Indonesia, and a disregard for foreign, notably non-governmental organization, intervention (ibid.: 73–75; see also McRae 2002). Perhaps the true terror in Timor-Leste was not illustrated in international, mainstream reporting because this would undermine the political and economic benefits of retaining friendships with Indonesia. As Herman (1982: 143) argues, ‘there was certainly no political advantage to be gained from focusing on the abuses’.

Of course, alternative reporting did illuminate the East Timorese situation – this is precisely why Bishop Belo and José Ramos Horta were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 and it is why human rights activists destroyed British Aerospace Hawk Jets, to prevent genocide, in the same year (Pilger 1998).⁷ These kinds of international acts underpinned an ideological shift in the political and media realms of once supportive countries. While the eventual referendum for Timor-Leste can certainly be attributed to Indonesian political change in May 1998, when President Suharto was replaced by President B. J. Habibie (the latter being a character who wanted to portray himself as a reformer, distant from corruption and economic instability), it can also be linked to the activities of powerful international interests that began to withdraw cooperation from Indonesia (Davidson 2001). As examples: President Clinton broke US Administration ties with the Indonesian military; the International Monetary Fund suspended talks on economic recovery; the World Bank froze US$300 million destined for Indonesia; the Paris club of creditors delayed their decision making; the British Foreign Secretary announced suspension of arms exports; and a general international agreement emerged that Indonesia must implement the results of the referendum (Robinson 2002). While, as J. Taylor (2003: 185) proposes, ‘It seemed that a unique set of events, within Indonesia and internationally, had combined to produce a brief period in which self-determination could be exercised’, these acts also illustrate that the crimes in Timor-Leste might have been previously stopped by the withdrawal of international support for Indonesian policies on Timor-Leste (Chomsky 1996).

Many states, corporations, and transnational bodies ignored human rights standards in pursuit of their own strategic, economic, and ideological goals. While the Indonesian state was central to repression in Timor-Leste, it could not act on its own and it appears that Indonesia would probably have retreated from the region if other external actors had intervened. As will be seen in the following chapters, these contextual global networks of power underpinned the creation and sustenance of local violence – led by Indonesian officials, but involving the East Timorese themselves.

Book overview

Against this backdrop, this book tracks the experiences of one group of human rights victims – torture victims⁸ – during and in the aftermath of this Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste. In particular, the original primary research in this book pursues three main themes: (i) how torture has been used, suffered, and resisted; (ii) the extent to which transitional justice institutions – specifically courts and truth commissions – might provide truth and justice for torture victims; and, (iii) how torture victims experience life in the wake of their violation. This book evaluates, therefore, the past, present, and future of human rights, truth, and justice for torture victims.

The decision to focus on torture victims has been, at times, questioned by onlookers – after all, as has already been indicated, the people of Timor-Leste have suffered a multitude of violations. In this light, why concentrate on such a specific group? This focus emerged as a consequence of previous work, on truth commissions in Chile and South Africa (Stanley 2001, 2004). During this research two major issues became evident. First, that torture victims (along with victims of sexual violence and rape) endure the most serious violation that the victim can survive. As shown in Chapter 2, torture victims suffer the most violent and grotesque atrocities, and they endure numerous physical and psychological repercussions. Second, despite these violations and sequelae, torture victims are frequently excluded from those institutions established to provide truth and justice. Truth commissions and court proceedings regularly confine their attention to violations that culminate in death and often leave thousands of living victims without recourse to official acknowledgement or redress. In the same way, the debates on transitional justice have brought limited attention to the issue of torture. This book attempts to fill this gap.

The book aims to expose the repercussions of violence and transitional justice suffered by victims. It details their experiences and highlights their needs for future considerations of truth and justice. This stance is also relatively unusual in the literature on transitional justice which tends to focus on the laws, philosophies, and policies of ‘dealing with the past’ rather than on considering the experiences of victims. In these respects, the following case study on Timor-Leste is significant on a much wider canvas. In highlighting the ‘view from below’ in this one country, this book presents an analysis about the potential and limits of transitional justice more generally. ...