Mission & Justice

Peter Rodgers; The Australian; 30/1/10;

Peter Rodgers worked in Indonesia as a diplomat and journalist and received the Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year award for his reporting on East Timor.

If You Leave Us Here We Will Die: How Genocide Was Stopped In East Timor; By Geoffrey Robinson; Princeton University Press, 319pp, $54.95
Geoffrey Robinson is a campaigner, determined to prove that Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975 led to genocide and that a second Indonesian-created genocide in 1999 was prevented only by UN-led armed intervention. The broad-brush nature of the UN Convention, which he relies on, gives him a head start. Its definition of genocide includes the killing of or causing harm to national, ethnic racial or religious groups “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part”. Early in the book Robinson writes that there is no evidence that the Indonesian army commanders who planned the operation in East Timor in 1975 intended to kill one-third of the population. Yet, he argues, the very nature of the “culture of terror” fostered within the Indonesian military “inevitably and predictably led to a massive loss of life”.
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26/12/09; The Sydney Morning Herald, Letter

There is no doubt that Pope Pius XII helped some Jews of Rome. But by only assisting some of the old established patrician families, he failed as the Pope for all Catholics (Letters, December 24). To say that he did not interfere in case it would make things even worse for Jews is a bad joke. How often would they have gassed the Jews in Auschwitz? What he could have done is to say in clear language that any Catholic involved in the killing or torture of any person due to racial grounds would be excommunicated. He knew what was happening in Germany from 1933, when he was living there —  and he received reports about the concentration camps and the gas chambers. He did nothing except arrange for the Pacelli family’s tailor and a minority of rich Roman Jews to enter and live in the Vatican. An uneducated Catholic maid and her daughter hid a Jewish woman in Budapest. They were declared 65 years later as “Righteous among the Nations”, the highest honour Israel bestows. I know, for it was my mother and me they hid. They risked their lives. No sainthood for them. Steven Colman; Chatswood

Letters; 12/12/09

The Free Papua Movement (OPM), like all civil society organisations in West Papua, has supported the concept of a zone of peace in West Papua. The OPM has also been calling for dialogue with Jakarta. Unfortunately, it appears that Jakarta’s response to this peace initiative is to kill Kelly Kwalik, an OPM leader who is of great symbolic importance to the West Papuan people (“Suspected Papuan separatist leader killed”, 17/12).

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10/10/09

The Palestinian Authority appears to be attempting an about turn on endorsing the Goldstone report that criticises Israel’s conduct in its war on Gaza. The Palestinian representative to the United Nations in Geneva said he was in talks to convene an emergency session of the world body’s human rights council to discuss the report. Ibrahim Khreisheh’s announcement on Thursday comes a day after the UN Security Council rejected Libya’s request for an emergency session on the report. Published at the end of September, the UN-sanctioned report by Richard Goldstone, a former South African judge, identifies war crimes committed during Israel’s war on Gaza between last December and January.

See: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/2009108222821260976.html