Timor Leste: CAVR report

I watched Sister Guillhermina Marcal survey the vast expanse of tarpaulins and tents that engulfed her convent compound in Dili, Timor Leste, this February writes Progressio's Africa, Middle East and Asia manager Catherine Scott. Around us 7,000 internally displaced people were sheltering: too afraid to sleep in their own beds at night for fear of the communal killings and violence that overtook Timor Leste earlier this year.
 
It was a very different experience to my last visit to the Canossian sisters two years before. Then, filled with exuberance in the 'first flush' of indepenpdence, Sister Guillhermina spoke proudly of her work in supporting youth at the local university. After years of misery under the 24-year long Indonesian occupation, the shackled, silenced, predominantly Catholic people of Timor Leste had voted for freedom and were full of hope and resolve.
 
Now, although Timor Leste's Independence Day in May was marked by the inauguration of their second president and a papal welcome for their first Ambassador to the Holy See, freedom is throwing up its own problems. And they are squarely Timorese in nature.

During his election campaign the new president José Ramos Horta - Nobel Laureate and former spokesperson for the Timorese resistance - joked that the successful candidate would win 'a wooden cross', a heavy burden to bear. Conflicts and enmities between people of different ethnic origin, different political backgrounds, young and old, are getting in the way of rebuilding one of Asia's poorest countries, where 40 per cent of the people live on scarcely half a dollar a day and average life expectancy is 57. This years conflict started with sections of the army rebelling and disintegrated into civil unrest after western Timorese said easterners were discriminating against them. Youth gangs have taken over some communities, regularly looting and torching people's homes.

Back in 1999 Horta addressed our Progressio AGM with prophetic words as his country was poised on the road to self-determination: 'The greatest threat to East Timor will not come from outside. I hope that those who are elected to govern will not be tempted by arrogance or impunity, will not forget where they came from, will not forget the sacrifices so many people have made. The greatest threat to peace and stability in East Timor will come from our own practices and behaviour.'
 
So it has proved. Yet why, after so much financial assistance from the international community, including the UK, in the four years since independence, is Timor Leste still so troubled? Many Timorese would point to the impunity of the Indonesian military elite who, despite committing appalling atrocities against Timorese civilians, have gone unpunished, with some even rewarded by promotions and honours.

woman and baby escape from killings and violence in Timor-Leste © Catherine Scott /Progressio

Horta bears some responsibility for this because he inaugurated a joint Indonesian-Timor Leste 'Truth and Friendship Commission' to establish truth but let human rights violators off the hook. Most Timorese, including religious leaders such as Bishop Ricardo da Silva and Bishop Basilio do Nascimento, have denounced this approach: victims cannot heal if crimes are swept under the carpet.
 
Such crimes were uncovered by the Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CAVR) whose final report Chega! (Enough!) documents the 24-year violent history of the occupation: 102,800 deaths, widespread human rights violations and 50 per cent of families forced into homelessness. Importantly, it makes recommendations for all governments involved. But no governing body - from the parliaments of Timor Leste, the UK and other western governments to the UN Security Council - have formally discussed the CAVR report.

The report says the UK turned a blind eye to the occupation while selling arms to Indonesia. It recommends British payment to victims of the conflict and greater control over its arms trade. To date there has been no formal response from the British government to the report, despite the UK being a major financial backer of the CAVR process. 

Until both the government of Timor Leste and the international community seriously address the findings of the CAVR report, it is unlikely that the tarpaulins and tents in the Canossian sisters' garden will permanently disappear. Sister Guilllhermina is disappointed in both her own political leaders and the international community so far, as is Timor Leste's Bishop Ricardo da Silva who said in 2005: 'Past crimes must be tried, whatever Kofi Annan (then UN Secretary General) may say and whatever East Timorese leaders may want ... the position of the church is the same, it's clear and firm. We need justice, justice must be done'.

If you think the UK should respond then write a letter to the foreign office minister Lord Malloch-Brown, using the following downloadable document to express your concerns. If possible try to rewrite it in your own words:

letter to Lord Malloch-Brown (21k Word)

Catherine Scott is Progressio's Africa, Middle East and Asia regional manager. She is joint author of Independent women: The story of women's activism in East Timor.

Progressio's development workers in Timor Leste (known in the UK as East Timor) work with partners in the country to strengthen local organisations to bring a stronger people's voice to local politics and institutions.