Global Policy Forum

By Mark Dodd

Senior Indonesian military officials actively directed and organised last year's murderous political violence in East Timor, according to findings of a senior UN official investigating war crimes in the territory. The United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor has appointed foreign affairs consultant James Dunn, 73, a former Australian consul in Dili, to investigate crimes against humanity committed by army-backed militia last year.

"I'm getting more and more evidence of deep Indonesian military involvement. I'm getting much closer to the military," Mr Dunn said at the weekend in Dili.

Mr Dunn said an Indonesian army colonel had been identified as directing the mayhem in Suai, including the massacre of up to 200 people at the Ave Maria Cathedral on September 6, days after the announcement of an pro-independence victory. "He was not just an ordinary military officer," he said. "He was a full colonel in the infantry, and that was the highest army rank in East Timor. He was carrying a weapon and giving orders.

"The people who organised this violence, it is now very clear were the Indonesian army. They paid the militias, and issued them with arms."

He said his report, which will be finished by January, will name those responsible for last year's violence, who could be subject to UN or Indonesian prosecution. A UN serious crimes unit is preparing cases related to five major incidents of killing and rape by army-backed militias that occurred in the lead-up to and after last year's self-determination referendum.

Mr Dunn's report is not just a case-by-case investigation. "Nobody has ever done a general report on what happened. This will identify who were the commanders and units involved," he said. It will also include evidence of several lesser-known massacres by Indonesian troops in the early years after Jakarta's 1975 invasion of East Timor. Mr Dunn will investigate repeated claims that bodies of militia victims were taken out to sea and dumped to hide the evidence.

Human rights investigators estimate about 1000 East Timorese independence supporters were killed and more than 250,000 people deported to West Timor in the weeks after the independence ballot.