A friend has just sent me the transcript of an interesting-looking documentary about East Timor's ground-breaking Truth Commission, which wrapped up its four years of work earlier this year. The documentary, titled "The Price of Peace", was made by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which aired it September 25.
By the way, the main page for the Commission's website promises that the Commission's final report "will be delivered to the President of Timor-Leste before 7 July 2005." Can anyone elucidate whether that in fact happened, and perhaps provide a link to the report's text?
Anyway, the ABC transcript reveals a number of interesting features of the process and philosophy of the commission, which is formally called the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor and is known by its Portuguese initials, CAVR.
One interesting aspect of CAVR's philosophy was spelled out on camera by Timorese President Xanana Gusmao. Namely that,
As a result, the healing called for by the CAVR was very much an intra-Timorean healing. (As noted here, a parallel process-- the "Truth and Friendship Commission"-- has also started its work at the East Timor-Indonesian level.)
Another aspect of CAVR's work revealed in the ABC documentary was that it intentionally built on indigenous mechanisms of conflict resolution used in Timorean communities for-- presumably-- many generations.
One of the main challenges faced by the people who designed and ran CAVR was to design a process that would both satisfy the requriements the international community increasingly places on aid recipients who are terminating conflicts that they try to use transitional justice mechanisms that embody "accountability" and do not lead to the dreaded bug-a-boo of "impunity", and that at the same time is one that is acceptable to the communities concerned-- and also, I should say, financially affordable.
(This last, given that the per-case processing cost for cases tried at, say, the ICTR has come to somewhere over $40 million... )
One of the people who featured heavily in the ABC documentary is the (Australian?) lawyer Patrick Burgess, who served as "international legal adviser" to CAVR. At the end of the documentary, he gave what seems to me a reasonable evaluation of the CAVR's achievements:
The non-"western" world, in fact, is full of deep-rooted and ancient cultures that have developed numerous effective mechanisms for achieving social reconstruction tasks like this one-- even under what seem to be the direst of post-atrocity circumstances. I certainly found that the use of community reintegration mechanisms had worked well in Mozambique (see, e.g., here)... And indeed, once you start looking for evidence of the existence of such mechanisms in non-'western' cultures, you can end up finding them just about everywhere.
What is needed now, I think, is a process mainly of calm and respectful ethnopgraphic enquiry to identify and then find ways to bolster and support such mechanisms around the world. I think this would be a lot more helpful than simply trying to ram western models of conflict resolution, social psychology, and criminal justice down everyone else's throats.
In the case of Timor-Leste, the International Center for Transitional Justice made a first stab at trying to undertake an ethnographic-style enquiry connected to the work of CAVR-- see the 56-page report they produced on the topic, here.
That piece of research was carried out for the ICTJ by the respected South African investigator Piers Pigou. But I wish that his approach had been even more open-ended still, and more dedicatedly elicitative of the Tomorean respondents' own ideas about how they saw their priorities and the kinds of mechanisms they would prefer to use...
This is, I think, a non-trivial point. As Jonathan wrote in this recent TJF post, a large proportion of "transitional justice" situations nowadays are those of societies emerging from deep-rooted conflict. And, as we all know, the majority of the world's conflicts these days are being fought in countries that are (1) very impoverished, (2) very poorly infrastructured, and (3) not of predominantly 'western' culture.
This provides both challenges and opportunities. The opportunities lie mainly in the field of being able to identify, adapt, and support the non-western kinds of conflict-trandence mechanisms that many or most such societies still have. (Rwanda's recourse to an adaptation of the gacaca mechanism is another case in point.) But the opportunities only become opportunities if the international system, international NGOs etc can make space for the active support of non-western models of community reintegration/ social reconstruction-- and if we can enough anthropologists and ethnographers who are will and able to help us in the task.
By the way, the main page for the Commission's website promises that the Commission's final report "will be delivered to the President of Timor-Leste before 7 July 2005." Can anyone elucidate whether that in fact happened, and perhaps provide a link to the report's text?
The commission's mandate was extended again, and the report is now scheduled for October.
This is really interesting as I've been trying to find the final report for quite some time now. Now it's end of October and I still haven't come across the report. Is the mandate extended further? Will the report be available to the public? Thanks!
Posted by: Susanne at October 31, 2005 08:35 AMExtremely informative and thought provoking. Thanks
and if we can enough anthropologists and ethnographers who are will and able to help us in the task.
Any further info. on this?
Posted by: Sagar Gurung at April 9, 2007 02:17 AMI think the following summary of the relevants issues from the ICTJ website maybe useful for the purpose of basic information:
"""" The ICTJ has actively supported efforts in Timor-Leste to address the human rights violations and impunity left by 24 years of Indonesian occupation by assisting the work of the Serious Crimes Unit (SCU) and the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR). The ICTJ helped inform the structure and production process of the CAVR's final report and also facilitated the work of ICTJ consultants on Commission-related issues. Consultants assisted the Commission in its research on several aspects of its work, such as international law, violations of economic and social rights, reparations, memorialization, and guarantees of non-recurrence.
Though the Commission had planned for its final report to be released to the public immediately or soon after being handed over to Timorese President Xanana Gusmao in October 2005, the president chose only to release it to the Timorese parliament and prime minister in November 2005. The ICTJ, along with other international and local human rights organizations, has publicly criticized the government for its inaction and called on it to make the report available to the public immediately. In January 2006, the final report was posted on the ICTJ website.
The Center assisted the SCU's efforts to bring Indonesian officials and their subordinates to justice for the atrocities committed in 1999. One example of the ICTJ's work with the SCU is its exploration of creative prosecutorial strategies, including "Rule 61" proceedings to publicize indictments, based on the rules of procedure of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The Center continues to support prosecutorial and judicial action, demanding accountability for indicted high-level perpetrators. From 2003 until it was finally established in February 2005, the ICTJ called on the UN to establish an international commission of experts (COE) to examine impunity for the crimes committed in 1999 and to devise workable, efficient, and fair strategies to ensure accountability. The Center cooperated closely with the COE and urged the UN to acknowledge its findings and put its recommendations into practice.
When the SCU approached the date of its mandated dissolution in May 2005, the ICTJ catalyzed a robust international advocacy effort aimed at postponing the disbandment of the Unit to allow the UN Security Council to consider the COE's recommendations before deciding on its future. The Center also facilitated a consultation process that led to a consensus among Timorese, Indonesian, and international organizations on the future of the serious crimes process, rejecting impunity, and political priorities that ignore the rights of victims.
To help inform the debate about accountability, the ICTJ produced a report in August 2003, "Crying Without Tears: In Pursuit of Justice and Reconciliation in Timor-Leste," which examines the perspectives of a cross-section of Timorese citizens on issues of violence, truth, justice, and reconciliation. "Justice Abandoned?" a paper assessing the work of the SCU and the hybrid panels of judges established by the UN, was published by the Center in June 2005.
In August 2005, the governments of Indonesia and Timor-Leste established a Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF). Under its current terms of reference, the CTF fails to serve victims' rights and fulfill state obligations, having the power to recommend amnesties for perpetrators of crimes against humanity. The ICTJ has maintained serious reservations about the establishment of the CTF, and has publicly and strongly advised the international community not to cooperate with the initiative until its mandate is significantly amended to bring it in line with international human rights obligations.
The Center's work has relied strongly and depended on consultation with Indonesian and Timorese civil society groups including the Judicial System Monitoring Program and Yayasan Hak in Timor, and the Human Rights Working Group in Indonesia. This robust collaborative approach has contributed to the establishment of the COE, the continuity of the SCU, and permanent support for the CAVR—an exemplary truth commission widely recognized as a success.
The transitional justice situation in Timor-Leste is particularly complex because unlike most other transitional contexts, it affects two countries. The reluctance of the local political leadership to push for accountability was not only the result of domestic politics as in other countries, but a bilateral position that could appear convincing to the international community. The ICTJ has been able to address the complexity of the situation by reaching out to both Timorese and Indonesian civil society actors, strengthening their voices, and informing the Center's position with their experiences and concerns. The ICTJ believes that any successful transitional justice strategy in the region requires a long-term, persistent engagement, and is planning its future involvement accordingly.
Background
Tim-Leste, a former Portuguese colony, was forcibly annexed by Indonesia in 1975. For 24 years,Timor-Leste suffered the effects of brutal counter-insurgency tactics used against nationalist guerrillas. In 1999, after the fall of the authoritarian regime led by General Soeharto, Indonesia accepted that the Timorese population would hold a referendum on the territory's future, and on August 30 of that year, 78 percent of Timorese voted for independence.
The vote was preceded by a widespread campaign of intimidation that turned to brutal reprisals after the results indicating overwhelming support for independence were released. Pro-Indonesian militias killed an estimated 1400 Timorese civilians and destroyed most of the territory's infrastructure. More than 200,000 individuals fled or were forced into Indonesian West Timor in a spasm of violence that ended only because of the intervention of UN-authorized troops and the establishment of a transitional UN authority (UNTAET). On May 2002, Timor-Leste finally became an independent state.
UNTAET established a prosecutorial authority, the Serious Crimes Unit (SCU), and hybrid national-international courts, the Special Panels for Serious Crimes, to bring suspects to trial. Since its creation, the SCU has indicted 395 people for crimes against humanity and other serious violations, and ensured the conviction of 88, mainly low-level perpetrators. However, the majority of indictees, among them high-level Indonesian officials, remain at large in Indonesian territory. The Indonesian government has refused to cooperate with the prosecutions process and has conducted biased and unfair sham trials for some of the suspects.
After independence, the serious crimes process became part of Timor-Leste's judicial system, even though it was still staffed and funded primarily by international practitioners. An unintended effect of this transfer of authority was that, as the Timorese government sought to improve relations with Indonesia, the SCU and the Panels lost necessary political support from the Indonesian government. A critical warrant for arrest issued in April 2004 against Indonesian general Wiranto was objected to by the Timorese leadership. President Gusmao met the indicted general claiming that reconciliation had been achieved, and the Timorese Prosecutor General did not forward the warrant to Interpol (the International Criminal Police Organization).
The UN decided to shut down the serious crimes process in May 2005, despite the fact that several cases under investigation have not yet resulted in indictments and that the nascent Timorese judiciary will likely be unable and unequipped to deal with the complex cases left behind by the SCU.
The governments of Indonesia and Timor-Leste have stated that their lack of interest in the serious crimes judicial process stems from the fact that it is an obstacle in their diplomatic relations. Instead, in August 2005 they established a deeply flawed Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) that under its current terms of reference fails to serve victims' rights and fulfill state obligations to uncovering the truth and promoting accountability.
In February 2005, the UN established a Commission of Experts (COE) to examine and assess the progress of accountability processes for the crimes committed in 1999. The Commission's findings and recommendations were issued in May 2005, but the UN Security Council has not yet discussed them. The COE found that some of the Indonesian trials of perpetrators of the 1999 crimes were fatally flawed and did not amount to genuine efforts to achieve accountability, and recommended new trials. The Commission also recommended that the serious crimes process be extended and that the CTF's terms of reference be comprehensively reformed.
In early 2002 UNTAET established a Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) to investigate the facts about human rights violations committed in Timor-Leste between 1974 and 1999; help reintegrate perpetrators of less serious offenses into their communities; and recommend to the government measures to prevent future abuses. The CAVR held a number of successful and emotional public hearings, took more than 7000 statements from victims throughout the country and presented its final report to President Gusmao in October 2005. He then distributed it to the Timorese parliament and prime minister in late November, but did not publicly release it. The new crisis unfolding in Timor-Leste now has rekindled official interest in the recommendations of the CAVR, as exemplified in the inaugural speech by Timor's new prime minister, Jose Ramos Horta, during his swearing-in ceremony mid last year.""""
(Updated Mar 07)
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