Tess Morrell | The Wire

A phony friendship is allowing war criminals to walk free says Amnesty International.

A street protest in Dili. Image: Austcare

Loop holes within East Timor’s penal laws are allowing suspected war criminals to go unpunished according to a report by Amnesty International.

With the United Nations backing them, Amnesty is calling for a ban of these exemptions and for the Timor-Leste government to agree to an international tribunal.

Despite the people of Timor wanting justice for the mass killings that resulted in a death toll of over 200,000 people, the Timor-Leste government is opposed to prosecuting war criminals.

Senior lecturer of Politics at UNSW, Dr. Clinton Fernandes says, “The penal code itself has simply been drafted without close attention to detail as to what the international criminal code obligations are…what’s stopping the prosecution is not the law but political will.”

Listen to this story on the Wire:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sharing a border with a country that once occupied it has forced Timor-Leste to pursue a non-confrontational policy and a “phony relationship” which has economical benefits.

“East Timor imports approximately 50% of its imports from Indonesia. So there are economic as well as military reasons for East Timor’s aversion at a governmental level to pursue justice,” he says.

During the 1975-1999 Indonesian occupation, the Timorese were subject to mass killings, arbitrary imprisonment, sexual violence and torture.

The definitions for these crimes in the country’s Penal Code defer much from the international version, offering more loop holes for war criminals to exploit.

“The international criminal court can’t do very much because it only begins its jurisdiction in 2002 and East Timor was occupied between 1975 and 1999; so the international criminal court doesn’t actually have any jurisdiction,” says Dr. Fernandes.

“What’s required is an international tribunal; just as an international tribunal was held for Rwanda, an international tribunal was held for Yugoslavia and there’s another tribunal for Sierra Leone.”

East Timor’s National Alliance for an International Tribunal has been fighting for a tribunal since its founding in 2002.

Currently, an estimated accumulation of 390 suspected war criminals are sheltered in Indonesia.

The Timorese government holds the appropriate details for conviction – names and ranks – but Indonesia has refused to extradite them.

But Dr. Fernandes remains hopeful that an International Tribunal will happen.

“It’s going to take people inside Timor to educate and organise themselves and that could take a couple of years because the latent strength and desire for justice is definitely there,” he says.

“The overwhelming majority of the people of East Timor cry for justice.”

Tess Morrel is a reporter for The Wire.