Indonesia 'postpones' meeting with East Timor leader
JAKARTA (AP): President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has postponed a meeting scheduled for Friday with his East Timorese counterpart, his spokesman said.
Dino Patti Djalal denied the decision was linked to a report presented to the United Nations last week detailing Indonesian atrocities committed in East Timor from 1975-99.
The president is too preoccupied with domestic affairs to meet with East Timor's Xanana Gusmao, Djalal said.
"The meeting has been postponed," he said, adding no new date has been set.
The Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission report says at least 102,800 people were killed, disappeared, starved or died of illnesses under Indonesia's 24-year rule of East Timor.
The internationally funded report, which has yet to be made public, was compiled over a two-year period and was based on thousands of interviews.
East Timorese officials were not immediately available to comment on Indonesia's decision to put off the presidential meeting. (***)
The denial of former occupiers of their deeds, through the omission or near invisibility in the history they teach their children, is disturbing, to say the least, in the eyes of the formerly oppressed.
We sense such resentment from older Indonesians who survived Japanese occupation, for instance, when they hear reports of Japan's reluctance to revise its history books, so young Japanese can understand the atrocities committed by the country's soldiers during World War II.
Fast-forward to 10 years from now and try to imagine how the history books in Timor Leste, formerly East Timor, will depict Indonesia.
What Indonesians are taught is that our freedom fighters struggled to their last drop of blood against cruel Dutch and Japanese occupiers. Regarding East Timor, our children are still taught that in 1975 we came to the rescue after Portugal abandoned its impoverished colony, and that we lost many brave men fighting the Fretilin rebels, helping to save the world from a potentially dangerous communist power.
Last Friday, the world heard a different version of what took place in East Timor. A dapper Timor Leste President Xanana Gusmao delivered to the United Nations a report from the young nation's Truth, Reception and Reconciliation Commission. The report is said to be over 2,000 pages thick, containing the testimony of over 7,000 people who experienced life under Indonesia.
We know from leaked fragments of the report not only that some 183,000 East Timorese are said to have died directly and indirectly as a result of the 24-year occupation, but also that murder, torture, rape and starvation were deliberately used as weapons to ensure the subservience of the populace.
The report only confirms what was reported for decades by foreign journalists and activists -- but it is now an official document of the UN.
Indonesians seem to sense, or hope, the report will not cause any major turmoil in the international community. Indonesia has already gone through the humiliation of losing East Timor, and Timor Leste is naturally going through the teething problems of a new and poor country -- with only its much larger neighbor to rely on. The big powers that assisted Timor Leste in the separation have largely left to help people elsewhere.
Xanana himself has repeatedly stressed it is in no one's interest to follow up on the report.
"We accept the results of the report as a way to heal the wounds," were the words of the former Fretilin leader at a UN forum. It is not "punitive justice" the country is seeking, said Xanana, adding that the report also detailed human rights violations by the Timorese.
So there is probably no need for concern that the world will begin clamoring for Indonesian generals to be hauled in front of international rights tribunals.
What is important now seems to be the work of the Commission of Truth and Friendship, set up by Timor Leste and Indonesia to address past grievances and create "harmonious" relations between the countries -- even though the commission's mandate is only to bring to light human rights violations since 1999, except those already addressed by earlier commissions.
Expectations for the commission are high, maybe even too high. However, it will have contributed considerably to good relations between the countries if it adds to the record of what transpired around the time of the referendum leading to East Timor's independence.
Howard Varney, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, with experience on the world's first "truth and reconciliation" body, told this paper last year the commission should "at least put down the essential story of what happened ... at least to put a version of history that is a representation of the testimonies that have been put to them".
We are reminded here of our own experiences under colonial rule. My mother can forgive, but she cannot forget how her adoptive parents were taken away one day and never returned to buy her the bike they promised for her ninth birthday. But at least I can check the available records of the 1944 kidnappings and mass murders of "dissidents" in Mandor, West Kalimantan, where a plaque marks their mass grave. The people who laboriously documented the kidnappings and murders believed the stories of the victims must not be allowed to disappear.
Now for the difficult part. Indonesians, who see themselves as victims and eventual victors over inhumane colonizers, again face terrible allegations that have not disappeared, accusations of gross human rights violations when we were the occupier.
Beyond any debates that may arise after Xanana's UN appearance, which may further affect the settling of matters of "truth", "reconciliation" and "friendship", it is the business of the people of Timor Leste of how they decide to teach their nation's history.
And it is also up to Indonesians to decide whether we will continue to teach our children the same old stories, as if the UN report never existed, as if those 7,000 East Timorese were all liars. Borrowing from one of our eminent former foreign ministers, the East Timor story will then likely remain a "pebble in our shoe".