Jakarta to cooperate on E. Timor cases

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE, APRIL. 8. The United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and the Indonesian Government have signed an accord on judicial cooperation in respect of the cases involving human rights violations in that territory, which is now under the world body's tutelage as a prelude to complete independence in a few years. East Timor was, until recently, a disputed province of Indonesia.

Welcoming the accord, the U.N. Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, drew attention to the limited scope of the cooperation, namely investigation and prosecution of those responsible for only last year's violence in East Timor.

The agreement provides for the transfer of people from the jurisdiction of one side to that of the other for cooperation in regard to the following aspects: the provision of information as also evidence, the participation in actual legal proceedings, besides the pre-trial exhumation of bodies of suspected victims of violence that took place before and after East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia last year.

The other key aspects pertain to a pledge by Indonesia and the UNTAET to transfer persons detained by one side to the other for eliciting evidence. Cooperation is pledged in regard to searches and seizures as also the arrest of suspects living under the jurisidiction of either side. The two will assist each other in carrying out investigations and in the transmittal of judicial documents.

On a different front of relevance to East Timor, three persons were reported killed and two others seriously wounded as a result of a gunfight in a refugee camp on the Indonesian side of the border with that U.N.-controlled enclave. Indonesian officials made it clear that the unrest had nothing to do with Jakarta's recent decision to suspend aid to the refugees in the pocket now affected by violence. The refugee camp in question housed a number of East Timorese who had earlier served in the Indonesian armed forces and Jakarta had recently begun confiscating the arms held by such persons.

As for alleged human rights violations inside Indonesia itself over the past several decades, the President, Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, is expected to discuss with the leaders of South Africa the finer points of its truth and reconciliation commission so as to ascertain whether that model could be adopted in South-East Asia's largest State.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Indonesian People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), Mr. Amien Rais and the Speaker of the House of Representatives (DPR), Mr. Akbar Tanjung, have separately expressed their opposition to the President, Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid's plea for a revocation of an old ban on the country's Communist Party.

Their argument, acquiring importance in the context of yesterday's rally by Islamic radicals against communism, is that the revival of an anti-religion political ideology would go against the grain of ``Pancasila'' or the five principles of Indonesian Statehood.

The ban was imposed in the 1960s by a provisional MPR and the Communist Party of Indonesia had participated in the 1955 general election, the country's only free poll until 1999.

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