Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Outside a Jakarta court, a motley mix of [inaudible] mingle with street thugs, military veterans, even a local rock star.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

They're all here to fly the flag for Eurico Guterres, fated in Indonesia, but reviled as a war criminal in East Timor.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

He and the cult of celebrity upstages the rule of law, but this is bogus justice, a clumsy Indonesian attempt to appease international outrage.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Well may he look smug as Guterres is not before the court in Jakarta on major crimes against humanity, he's on a minor charge, for ordering his militiamen to snatch back some weapons they'd previously surrendered.

Speaker 3:

[foreign language]

Speaker 4:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Now living under so-called house arrest with his wife and young family, he's insisting that like Xanana Gusmão he's guilty of fighting for nothing more than his country.

Speaker 3:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

But Guterres' version of justice is not recognised in East Timor. It's unlikely he will ever face trial for his role in two brutal massacres. Politics has intervened to allow him and many others identified in this report to avoid their day in court. Many accused of the worst of crimes now hide inside Indonesia, arguing that they only acted as patriots to the Indonesian cause.

Speaker 5:

Patriotism and murder are incompatible, he had every possible facility to spread his gospel among the Timorese people. The fact that they voted, overwhelmingly, against his ideal certainly did not entitle him to use force, violence, and behave in a criminal fashion against his own brothers and sisters. That's not patriotism, that's a major crime against humanity.

Speaker 2:

While key players search for a face-saving solution, in this Dili graveyard investigators from the United Nations Serious Crimes Unit are digging up the dead again.

Speaker 6:

All the bodies buried here, as a direct result of the violence from '99.

Speaker 2:

Despite their commitment to their grisly task, there is frustration at the UN's slow response, that these exhumations are still happening more than 18 months after the killings represents a failure by the United Nations to run down serious war criminals at all.

Speaker 7:

At the moment there aren't the resources, the competence, or the political will, for the UN to be able to deliver on justice in these terms.

Speaker 2:

While the United Nations refuses to confront Indonesia, the perpetrators of crimes walk free. The rights of the victims and their families ignored. In truth, the real victim in East Timor is justice itself.

Speaker 8:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

October 22, 1999 was an emotional and bittersweet day for the people of East Timor, as they welcomed home their hero, freedom fighter Xanana Gusmão.

Speaker 8:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Xanana Gusmão spent 17 years fighting a guerrilla war to win independence from Indonesia. This was his first day back in Dili, East Timor's ravaged capitol, having spent the previous seven years locked up in Jakarta.

Xanana Gusmão:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

For all the emotion and triumph, it was a day tempered by anguish. Few if any of these people had been left untouched by the brutality of Indonesia's military, or the militia they created.

Xanana Gusmão:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Justice is a raw issue here, the scale of the crimes so vast, the evidence so palpable. James Dunn is the UN's special war crimes investigator in East Timor, he believes the number of people killed is double the original estimate of 1,000.

James Dunn:

I have to say, that what I found most disturbing in this whole investigation, is not just the killings; it was the brutality that accompanied almost all of them, people weren't just killed they were brutally killed, and so often the bodies were mutilated. One particularly vicious case near the border where two young women who were pregnant, they came across them, they couldn't have had anything against them, they knocked them down and actually cut open their abdomens and removed, I mean one of the women were alive and dying, removed the foetuses and just threw them aside. I mean, it's just that's callous brutality. It was profoundly shocking to me.

Speaker 2:

But only a very few perpetrators had been brought to book. Justice has been delayed.

Speaker 11:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

While the chief of the United Nations mission in East Timor ask the UN for extra resources, only one country offered funds, none offered people.

Speaker 5:

Was it a failure of the international community of member states, probably yes. Was it our failure, probably yes. But the fact remains that, the serious crimes investigation did not have sufficient people, sufficient investigators to do a better job.

Speaker 2:

Only a few months ago did the UN create a panel of international and East Timorese judges to hear the first and meagre list of crimes to be prosecuted. These men are here to answer charges of crimes committed in the district of Lospalos, but human rights watchers know that these are only the small fry.

Speaker 5:

There will be some trials of people who have been held in detention for over a year, for the occasional murder or rape or whatever, but it will be very surprising if there were any significant militia leader who were convicted of mass destruction or of multiple murders.

Speaker 2:

It's not just militia leaders who are accused of atrocities, their mentors the Indonesian military, also remain out of reach. Colonel Tono Suratman was the leader of the Indonesian army in East Timor, hailed as a hero by his own disgraced troops. He's accused of raping this woman, Nancy Sancha Nessia Manto [phonetic]

Nancy Sancha:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

The wife of a key militia leader, she believes she was assaulted as an act of retribution after her husband deserted the cause.

Nancy Sancha:

[foreign language]

James Dunn:

Well these have to be investigated of course but there have been several reports that he was involved personally in sexual assault. I can't say any more at this stage.

Interviewer:

Did you find it credible?

James Dunn:

I found it credible.

Speaker 2:

Although Suratman denied the allegations, he's one of 23 suspects named by Indonesia to appear before a local human rights inquiry, an inquiry that's yet to get off the ground, and he's since been promoted to Brigadier General.

Speaker 5:

Basically Indonesia's approach has been the classic one of a sovereign saying that we're not going to give up any of our people, and what goes on next door is basically not a matter of concern to us.

Speaker 2:

But doubtless the major crime against humanity is to be found in Indonesia's own backyard, whereas many as 100,000 East Timorese refugees remain in camps like this one in Kupang, the capital of Indonesian West Timor. More than 18 months after many were forced at gunpoint to leave their homes in East Timor they remain bargaining chips for militia leaders, as heinous a crime as their detention continues to be.

Speaker 7:

The forced displacement of civilian populations is one of the most serious crimes, as a matter of fact it is also punishable under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 that establish basic rules in times of conflict.

Speaker 2:

But so far the UN has been unable to act. Last year when three of it's staff were hacked to death, they ordered all of their workers to abandon the refugees and leave West Timor.

Speaker 5:

The United Nations lost three of it's fine officers in Atambua, in tragic circumstances as you know. They were butchered to request the United Nations to return to West Timor is not a serious proposition unless we can establish beyond any reasonable doubt that the Indonesian authorities have restored law and order and have regained full control of that territory.

Speaker 2:

One of the few groups providing support is the Catholic Church through the Jesuit Refugee service. It's been calling on the UN to return.

Speaker 22:

Illness is spreading rapidly, there are no doctors, and food is in short of supply. So what you have is a situation which is desperate.

Speaker 14:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Jose Gomes Baptista is a militia leader also with blood on his hands. He claims there's now no danger to international aid workers, he and his men will guarantee their safety. While Jose does not want to go back, other leaders are trying to cut deals.

Speaker 7:

Obviously they will not return unless they cut a deal, whereby it's understood that upon their return, they will be given immunity from prosecution.

Speaker 2:

One such militia leader is Cancio Lopes de Carvalho, he's been linked to the Sawan massacre where at least 200 people were killed.

Ken Gillespie:

He was a charismatic leader in his area, he was a powerful man, and he currently controls probably six to eight thousand refugees, and that's why people are prepared to talk to him, because it's the six to eight thousand and their coming home that's important.

Speaker 2:

But Cancio's not going to allow them to go home without an amnesty. The UN has opened negotiations with him, but insists he must be prepared to face the law.

Speaker 16:

[foreign language]

Speaker 17:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

But reconciliation has its limits, even in this most Christian community. The Suwai Cathedral, previously the site of one of the most gruesome atrocities now houses informal classrooms. It's a community united in one belief, that justice must prevail.

Speaker 18:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

When the people of Sawai were given a chance to be heard, the rejected the UN's reconciliation approach, claiming justice had to come first.

Speaker 15:

They're not prepared to forgive some of the more heinous crimes, they're not prepared to forgive murders that involved mutilation, the hacking of women's breasts, or the cutting out of tongues. Those sorts of things stick very strongly in their mind, and they're not prepared to forgive mass murder, and they're not prepared to forgive activities that involved rape.

Speaker 2:

But the cold political reality is that they will be denied the justice they seek, lost to the vested interests of the militia leaders, and a lack of will on behalf of a UN held hostage to conflicting interests at the international community. Xanana Gusmão now sees the only possible cause of action as a South African style truth and reconciliation commission.

Xanana Gusmão:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

But East Timor's spiritual leader Bishop Carlos Belo opposes reconciliation that does not include justice, he insists that those who have committed serious crimes must be made accountable for their actions.

Bishop Carlos:

When do you find you meet women and you meet mothers who come to you and explain, Bishop I'm seeing in the road those militias totally free, no? And they have killed my son, what about justice? So we are creating some climate of psychological disease in the Timorese people if we don't take these actions.

Speaker 2:

Australian Brigadier Ken Gillespie heads the UN peacekeeping operation along the hottest stretch of border between East and West Timor. He's concerned that the failure to achieve justice and reconciliation may provoke a new round of violence.

Ken Gillespie:

In some discussions I had with Xanana Gusmão he made the point that reconciliation and the election process had to be two separate processes, that we had to get reconciliation out of the road before we embarked on the political process because if you didn't there was a chance that some of the political process could be violent.

Speaker 7:

The risks are enormous in terms of violence, but also in terms of the prospect that there might not be the establishment of a legitimate nation state.

Speaker 2:

Just days after we visited their camp in Kupang, this boatload of 500 East Timorese refugees return to Dili. Their return was marked by suspicion and fear, their future as uncertain as their countries transition to a peaceful democracy. With East Timor's first democratic election set for August, the need to reconcile thousands of refugees still held in West Timor and the demands of the victims for justice, is running to a very tight timetable.