Word: timor
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...trials were a few extreme acts in an otherwise just and orderly operation. That's how the military wants its actions in 1999 to be portrayed, and that's what was heard until recently from people on the streets?but not what investigators, journalists and activists saw in East Timor, and have described in accounts available to anyone who cares to look. "The indictments are so appalling that they will serve no useful purpose," says Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group...
...smartly pressed, a red and white scarf tied fastidiously around his neck?than to saving his own skin. Guterres is a central figure in the first ever human-rights trials held on Indonesian soil, a highly public attempt to account and atone for the carnage that occurred in East Timor in 1999 when the Indonesian military, in conjunction with local militias, viciously turned on supporters of East Timor's pro-independence movement. But Guterres, the leader of one of the most brutal of the militia gangs, wears the look of someone whose conscience is clean as he asks, "What...
...International pressure forced Indonesia to hold the trials, but Jakarta, insisting the tribunals be under Indonesian jurisdiction, appointed local judges and prosecutors. Ostensibly intended to deliver justice to victims who were murdered or wounded while simply trying to vote in East Timor's independence referendum, the trials have come to symbolize Indonesia's struggle to rein in the military's influence on virtually every aspect of life in this sprawling archipelago...
...trials won't deliver some convictions. Indonesia is aware of Washington's interest in the case. Following the 1999 slaughters, Congress passed laws saying U.S. relations with Indonesia, particularly military cooperation, would be limited until the country accounted for crimes against humanity in East Timor, among other reforms. Washington wants to get closer to the Indonesian military, viewing it as an important Southeast Asian partner in the fight against terrorism. Some soldiers could get jail time and some might even serve it, but these will be sacrificial convictions offered up by a grudging military?not an atonement, not an accounting...
...point is to look at other definitions of justice,” Ryan said. “This is one of those ways. Would this work with al-Quaeda terrorists? No—But it may teach us something that will apply in East Timor or Chechnya...