Tom Hyland; 13/4/08
Canberra is maintaining a diplomatic silence over Indonesia’s failure to punish anyone implicated in the mass murders that led to Australia’s military intervention in East Timor in 1999. Instead, the Federal Government has backed a “friendship” commission set up by Indonesia and East Timor, which is about to report but has no power to call for prosecutions and was boycotted by the UN. The release last week of former militia leader Eurico Guterres after a Jakarta court overthrew his conviction means all those charged by Indonesian prosecutors over the violence that killed about 1500 people have now been freed. Mr Guterres, a former petty criminal with powerful backers in Jakarta, now plans to run for the Indonesian parliament next year.
