4

Shining Chega!’s Light into the Cracks

Pat Walsh

In his song “Anthem,” Leonard Cohen sings: “Ring the bells that still can ring / there is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in / that’s how the light gets in.”1

Canadians have long spent time and energy working with Timorese people to find the cracks, enlarge them, and let the light in. That lonely, often frustrating, but heroic hard work by a dedicated few was acknowledged to wide acclaim in 2015 with the award of the Order of Timor-Leste to the East Timor Alert Network (ETAN/Canada). Some of this extraordinarily gritty work is recorded in the report of the Timor-Leste Comissão de Acolhimento, Verdade e Reconciliação (Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation, or CAVR) entitled Chega! (“enough” or “no more”). Thanks to the Timor-Leste government and the Indonesian Gramedia publishing house, this report is now available in hardcover in English.2 In addition to ETAN, one of the few organizations anywhere to address the human rights responsibilities of the private sector, Chega! credits the Canada-Asia Working Group, the Indonesia-East Timor Program, and a number of creative individuals for speaking truth to power and ensuring that Timor-Leste’s distant voice was heard in Canada. The challenge confronting us now is how to put this monumental report to work for the good of Timor-Leste, including Timorese victims, Indonesia, and humanity in general.

Due to limitations of space in this already long report, the references to Canada in Chega! are sparse. Canadians, Timorese, Indonesians, and others should consult other sources for the full story which, like Australia’s, is an object lesson in the subordination of principle to pragmatism and the failure of political imagination.

In brief, Canada did not support Timor-Leste during the Indonesian occupation. It voted only once for Timor-Leste during the period 1975–82, when the territory’s status was discussed in the UN General Assembly, and it gave de facto recognition to Timor-Leste’s forced annexation by Indonesia. In its detailed review of the great famine that devastated Timor-Leste in 1978–79, Chega! mentions that Canadian ambassador Glen Shortliffe, though he was one of eleven senior diplomats who visited the disputed territory at the time and saw the cruel impact of the famine, said little about this appalling war crime. Famine, Chega! concluded, was used as a weapon of war by the Indonesian military in violation of its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Chega! also concluded that this famine—and not direct killing, as many assume—was the major cause of the massive death toll in Timor-Leste.

It is impossible to read the account of this famine in Chega! without reeling with shock and disbelief. And yet Canada maintained a program of military co-operation with Indonesia, along with Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and particularly the United States. The Canadian government would probably deny that any of its matériel was used directly against the Timorese, but it is surely safe to say that the Indonesian military took Canada’s support as a green light for its Timor campaign, the unchecked humanitarian impact of which is graphically detailed in Chega! Suharto, Indonesia’s president from the late 1960s until 1998, had ultimate command responsibility for the campaign and is named by the CAVR for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Timor-Leste. He visited Vancouver for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in 1997, not long before his resignation.

The CAVR proposed a number of ways in which international governments might respond to Chega! The commission called for the report to be given the widest possible distribution domestically; for states that had military co-operation programs with Indonesia during the illegal, UN-condemned occupation of Timor-Leste, whether or not this assistance was used directly in Timor-Leste, to apologize to the people of Timor-Leste; for corporations who profited from the sale of weapons to Indonesia to contribute to a reparations program for victims; and for Indonesian officers indicted by the UN-sponsored Serious Crimes Unit and named in Chega! to be denied visas and subjected to other sanctions until their innocence has been credibly established by a court of law.

4.1: Entry to Chega! exhibit, Dili, Timor-Leste. Photo: David Webster.

Canada has contributed to the postwar reconstruction and development of Timor-Leste. The Canadian International Development Agency also provided US$200,000 to the CAVR, and Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools studied the CAVR process. These, as well as expressions of interest in the Chega! report by a number of Canadian institutions, including universities and NGOs, are welcome developments. They do not, however, amount to an official admission of responsibility or an acknowledgement of the needs and rights of victims to reparations.

What was this CAVR that made the findings and bold proposals mentioned above? Addressing some of the salient features of this commission will also allow me to clear up some misunderstandings about it and to comment briefly on a few of the issues to which the CAVR’s findings and recommendations have given rise.

The Chega! Report: Some Misconceptions

First, it is important to state that the CAVR was a Timorese institution. Because the commission was established during the UN interregnum that followed Indonesia’s withdrawal, some have concluded, erroneously, that it was a UN body and that Chega! is a UN report. Like a number of institutions from that period, the commission benefited from the support of the UN, donors, international advisers, and the experience of others—in this case, truth commissions in South Africa and various Latin American countries. But it was not a foreign import or clone of South Africa’s famous commission.

The CAVR was established following a unanimous request by the Timorese resistance under Xanana Gusmão, and it enjoyed the support of the community and historic Timorese political parties such as Fretilin and the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT), despite their misgivings that truth-seeking might reflect adversely on them.3 Great care was taken to consult Timorese stakeholders and to create a body and processes appropriate to Timor-Leste’s cultural and other circumstances, including reviving and utilizing the country’s local conflict-resolution customs and locating the commission in a former political prison. The commission was led by seven Timorese commissioners, each of whom was nominated by the community. It was staffed mainly by Timorese and all its senior advisers had been closely involved with the Timor-Leste issue prior to joining the commission. The CAVR is acknowledged in the Timor-Leste constitution, was endorsed by Timor-Leste’s parliament, and throughout its life collaborated closely with Xanana Gusmão, Timor-Leste’s first post-independence president. The CAVR, in short, was made in Timor-Leste.

Second, consistent with its mandate to restore victims’ dignity, the CAVR set out to be victim-focused. Valuing victims and acknowledging their experiences was critical to the commission’s peace-making and healing mission. A process that alienated or angered Timor-Leste’s many victims or that failed to pre-empt potential outbursts of local revenge and payback would have compromised peacebuilding at the local, grassroots level during the critical first days of the newborn nation.

The CAVR used its extensive truth-seeking process, which involved individual debriefing, public hearings, and community mapping to give thousands of ordinary Timorese in all parts of the country a chance to share their experience, to be listened to and honoured, and to have their stories recorded in the CAVR’s archives and the Chega! report for the benefit of future generations. Victims also participated actively in hundreds of community reconciliation ceremonies and some of the most vulnerable benefited from a reparations program and related services provided by the commission.

The CAVR was proud of its innovative community reconciliation process. The commission undertook some 1,400 reconciliation ceremonies across the country between low-level perpetrators of the 1999 violence and the families and communities they had offended. Had time permitted, an estimated 3,000 additional cases could have been addressed. The CAVR felt, however, that it had achieved critical mass and done enough to settle local communities. Most offenders were young men recruited into pro-Indonesian militias by the Indonesian military. Participation in these reconciliation ceremonies was voluntary; though painful and resulting in a sanction, they offered perpetrators what they treasured most—namely, acceptance back into their communities and immunity from future prosecution—not to mention what the community needed and wanted most: peace at the grassroots. Victims actively participated in ceremonies and insisted on full accountability to the truth and genuine remorse on the part of offenders.

Two elements, inter alia, contributed significantly to the effectiveness and sustainability of the process. One was the CAVR’s use of familiar customary methods, such as the laying out of the big mat (biti bo’ot), developed by the Timorese over time to settle internal conflicts, and the sanctioning presence of traditional elders. The other was the opportunity for all parties to listen to each other and understand for the first time the background to the crimes and their shocking impact on communities. An excellent detailed review of the process can be found in volume 4 of the Chega! report.

The CAVR was mandated to restore victims’ dignity. To this end, the commission made a determined effort to listen to victims and to ensure their voices were heard publically and officially. The Chega! report documents their distressing experiences in graphic detail. It also identifies the individual and institutional perpetrators of the crimes they suffered and the factors and policies responsible, and it proposes dozens of recommendations designed to address the rights and needs of victims and to ensure non-recurrence (these can be found in volume 4 of the report). Though legally and morally incontestable, the CAVR’s findings and recommendations have been outweighed by political calculations that have tacitly benefitted perpetrators, not victims.

This victim-centric approach differentiated the CAVR from Timor-Leste’s bilateral commission with Indonesia, the Commission for Truth and Friendship, and it informs the extensive recommendation for reparations to victims found in volume 4 of Chega!

In anticipation of political and administrative objections, the CAVR recommended that reparations be aimed at those who are still most vulnerable as a result of the human rights violations they suffered, such as torture and sexual violence. It also avoided mention of financial handouts in favour of service referral and other forms of reparation. Nevertheless, this recommendation has so far failed to win official support in Timor-Leste.

The government has not offered a formal explanation for its aversion to reparations, but a mix of factors appears to be at work. These include fears of a cost blowout, of social jealousy and division, of a repetition of the troubled veterans program, of double-dipping, and of a culture of dependency and entitlement. Some decision-makers probably also object to the idea of Timor-Leste offering reparations when those most responsible for the harm, including Indonesia, are avoiding their obligations. The end result is that veterans of the armed resistance have done well while the most vulnerable of Timor-Leste’s victims have not benefited from the reparations which are their due. This has also distorted retrospective perceptions of the CAVR, which the commission is no longer around to do anything about.

Third, it is important to state that Chega! is first and foremost a human rights report, not primarily a piece of formal historical research. There is a growing tendency, including at the highest levels of Timorese society, to rebrand the report as history and to promote it—particularly as an educational resource—for its information value only. This is welcome as far as it goes, but it is also a significant distortion of the CAVR’s basic raison d’être and function. The CAVR engaged in serious research and fact-finding, but this was not done for its own sake. Rather, it was done primarily to identify what human rights violations had occurred during the twenty-five-year period from 1974 to 1999—who suffered, who and what should be held accountable, and what policy and programmatic measures should be taken to address these findings and to ensure non-recurrence. This is a very different agenda than that undertaken by a history textbook. Reducing Chega! to a teaching resource bypasses the significant moral, legal, and political issues that the CAVR was mandated to address. It allows the report to be used without offending the offenders (whether Timorese, Indonesians, or others), and without having to act on or even debate many of its key recommendations. It is a serious misrepresentation of the CAVR and disservice to the victims whose dignity the CAVR was asked to restore.

Volumes 2 and 3 of Chega! documents seven sets of human rights violations committed during the commission’s 1974–99 mandate period. This disturbing litany starts with an assault on the Timorese people’s right to self-determination, the fundamental principle of decolonization to which Western members of the international community in particular paid only lip service during the worst years of Indonesia’s occupation. A long report on killings and disappearances follows. The Chega! index lists over a hundred massacres. The CAVR engaged Benetech, the independent California-based human rights data group, to research the death toll from the war. Using an innovative process, Benetech concluded that it could be scientifically established that at least 100,000 civilians had perished as a direct or indirect result of both the civil war and the war with Indonesia. It allowed that the total could have been as high as 180,000, but that the absence of reliable data and the passage of time made it impossible to be definitive. The CAVR’s evidence on forced displacement and famine is particularly distressing. It documents the use of famine by the Indonesian military, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, to starve tens of thousands of Timorese into surrender. Harassed by the military as they sought “to separate the fish from the water,” many elderly people and children starved to death like animals. The CAVR also documented detention and torture, unfair political trials, violations of the laws of war, violations of children’s rights, and sexual violence, particularly against women. The latter is painful reading. Chega! also includes a review of the limited available literature on violations of social and economic rights, matters not generally addressed by truth commissions. Further research is needed but the study provides compelling evidence that top-down development, particularly when it is designed principally to serve security objectives, is inherently unsustainable.

Then there is the important matter of Timor-Leste’s second, bilateral truth commission with Indonesia, the Commission on Truth and Friendship (CTF), and its impact on Chega!

Since 2009, when the CTF report, Per Memoriam Ad Spem (Through Memory to Hope), was released, I have argued that it should be embraced because, although it does not go as far as Chega!, and is especially weak on the fundamental issue of impunity, some of its findings and recommendations are very similar to those of the CAVR. Unlike the CAVR’s report, however, the CTF’s recommendations also enjoy the status of being officially endorsed by both governments—in Indonesia’s case by president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, himself a former military officer in Timor-Leste.

The CTF was established by the presidents of Indonesia and Timor-Leste in 2005 as the CAVR was winding up. A bilateral body led and staffed by respected nationals from both countries, it mainly operated out of, and was controlled by, Indonesia. Not surprisingly, then, many concluded that its function was to override and neutralise Chega!, and that its mandate to focus only on specific periods in 1999, to offer amnesty, not to name names, and even to clear the names of those “wrongfully accused,” was provocative and a patent whitewash in the making. It was effectively boycotted by the UN, NGOs in Indonesia and Timor-Leste, and the victims themselves. The CAVR did not oppose it a priori but called for any further truth-seeking to complement, not contradict, the CAVR’s work and to strengthen, not weaken, the chances of criminal justice.

In some respects, however, the CTF belied these concerns. The CTF did not recommend anyone for amnesty or clear the names of any individuals and, like the CAVR before it, it concluded that crimes against humanity and war crimes were committed in Timor-Leste in 1999. Though it stopped short of naming names, it also affirmed that the Indonesian military and its militias were principally responsible for these excesses. Furthermore, the CTF recommended reparations for victims and the opening of Indonesian archives as part of a joint, long-term research project into the causes and impact of the conflict. As its title indicates, Per Memoriam Ad Spem represents a clear official commitment to remembering the Timor-Leste issue in Indonesia rather than having it swept under the carpet. It is an open invitation for joint examination of the issue that is waiting to be taken up. Unfortunately, few Indonesian researchers and intellectuals seem to be aware of the report. Neither government made it available on the Internet (though the Indonesia-based group Asian Justice and Rights, or AJAR, has posted an English translation of the report).4 Meanwhile, responses to its recommendations have been subjected to in-house management by senior public servants on both sides. Indonesian-Timorese government negotiations remain focussed on border and pension issues, not recommendations concerning human rights or the broad joint interrogation of the shared history of both countries recommended by the report.

While some aspects of the CTF’s work are to be welcomed, its contribution should not be overstated. The CTF did not claim, or even intend, to facilitate reconciliation between Indonesian perpetrators and their Timorese victims. It settled for “friendship.” Arguably, even this is too big a claim, given the pragmatic self-interest at work on both sides: “marriage of convenience” might be a more accurate description of the outcome. Indonesian politicians are silent on the matter but the claim by some Timorese politicians that the CTF is a unique international model of reconciliation is an exaggeration prompted more by self-defence against erstwhile critics than by reality. It also does violence to the deeply sensitive concept of reconciliation, gives comfort to perpetrators over victims, and weakens the campaign against impunity across Asia.

What Does the Future Hold for the CAVR Report?

Given that more than a decade has passed since the report was handed over in 2005 and the Timor-Leste parliament has failed to complete its self-appointed task to address the report’s contents and recommendations, it could be concluded that Chega! is a lost cause in Timor-Leste. The report also seems to be at odds with state-sponsored trends in Timor-Leste that favour, for example, a more intense community focus on development, an end to “mourning,” and the prioritising of veterans over victims by promoting the narrative of military resistance and the rewarding of militant service. Ever closer relations with Indonesia at the economic, educational, cultural, diplomatic, and even military levels, and Indonesia’s determination to delete its embarrassing Timor-Leste adventure from public consciousness, also appear to rule out possibilities for justice despite the patent legal and moral logic of the case for due process.

On the other hand, it can be argued that there is no reason to fear for Chega!: it is a gift to humanity, a testament of such quality and power that it will stand the test of time and the vagaries of politics. Advocates like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, call for Chega! to be given “its rightful place in the international canon of human rights and conflict resolution literature.”5 Thai conflict resolution expert Surichai Wun’Gaeo of Chulalongkorn University believes that Chega! transcends politics and time. The events it recounts, he says, should be seen as a part of humanity’s history, with universal lessons for all.6 Others cannot understand why Timor-Leste’s government appears to distance itself from the CAVR, the first commission of its kind in the region and said to be one of the most effective truth commissions to date anywhere.7 According to this view, Timor-Leste’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government agencies should be marketing the CAVR and its report as achievements, analogous to the way in which Costa Rica makes capital out of its contribution to peace and energy renewables.

A number of favourable developments can be pointed to both in and outside Timor-Leste.

Many truth commissions lack any follow-up institution; this is a problem, for instance, in Solomon Islands, as Betty Gigisi and Terry Brown discuss in their chapters. For its part, the Timorese government has continued to fund the Post-CAVR Technical Secretariat, which was established as a short-term body after the final Chega! report in 2005. It has also financed both the publication and international dissemination of Chega! in English and Portuguese translations. This initiative has been positively received internationally. Scholars, specialists in conflict resolution, civil-society activists, and government officials engaged in facilitating peace in a number of countries have expressed their appreciation for the report and the methodologies and insights it offers.

Timor-Leste’s Ministry of Education has also begun to make use of Chega! in its first ever homegrown school curriculum for the teaching of history and human rights in primary schools. In due course, this rollout can be expected to create a demand for the use and study of Chega! at the secondary and tertiary levels.

A further domestic development with significant potential is the interest of Timor-Leste’s prime minister (from 2015 to 2017), Dr. Rui Maria de Araújo, in the idea of a follow-up institution to preserve memory and truth. Both the CAVR and the CTF made proposals for such an institution and have indicated a number of activities that a follow-up body might pursue. These include further statement-taking, archival and educational activities, memorialization, a targeted reparations program for the most vulnerable victims, and, based on a CTF recommendation, a co-operative program of research, archive-building, personnel exchanges, and shared learning with Indonesia. In 2010, the Timor-Leste parliament went as far as drafting a law for the establishment of an “institute of memory,” but, after sporadic discussion, the initiative lapsed. It has not been revived by the current parliament.

The interest of prime minister Araújo, who also had responsibility for the best use of the government funding provided to the current Post-CAVR Technical Secretariat, may represent a needed breakthrough. In 2016 Araújo broke the stalemate by proposing a working group to review the status of the CAVR recommendations, to consult stakeholders, and to advise the government on issues of mandate, legal status, governance, and funding for a new body. It is to be hoped that it will build on the unique legacies of both commissions and result in a permanent institute of memory and human rights akin to those in Taiwan, Colombia, and other parts of the world, and that it will serve to deepen relations between Timor-Leste and Indonesia and contribute to a culture of human rights in both countries and in the region as a whole.

The Fate of Chega! in Indonesia

While Timor-Leste is making some progress in memorializing its past, Indonesia—joint authorship of the Per Memoriam report notwithstanding—remains set on the path of denial and obfuscation. This is characteristic of Indonesia’s general attitude to past violence, most notably the extensive extra-judicial killings and detentions led by the military after Suharto’s takeover in 1965–66, a few short years before the invasion of Timor-Leste and its rationalisation on the same grounds.

Inconvenient Truths, a recent study into the fate of both Chega! and Per Memoriam Ad Spem in Indonesia commissioned by AJAR, found that few educated Indonesians knew of either report; when asked for their views, these same individuals tended to default to Suharto-era propaganda.8

The study reports that the Indonesian government disingenuously dismisses Chega! as the document of a foreign country, one that is none of Indonesia’s business. “Chega! belongs to Timor-Leste. So we don’t have anything to do with it,” a foreign affairs official told researchers with a straight face. The report also points out that Timor-Leste has been dropped from Indonesia’s education curriculum and that self-serving memoirs are being published by ex-military “to correct history” (untuk meluruskan sejarah) and deny responsibility for human rights violations in Timor-Leste. In other words, Indonesians are either being told nothing about this chapter of their country’s history, or are given the old official version: that their army’s intervention in Timor-Leste was not an invasion and occupation in violation of international law, but instead a justified intervention in a local conflict that, it was falsely claimed, threatened Indonesia’s national and political unity.9

However, cracks are appearing in the Suharto-era defences. During a lecture tour to present the Chega! report to university audiences in eight Indonesian cities, I was impressed by the openness of younger lecturers and students to the Chega! narrative and their interest in incorporating it into existing courses. The good will they showed is also evident in other areas, such as the publication by Gramedia of the Chega! report and the work being undertaken by AJAR to reunite Timorese children taken to Indonesia during the war with their families and culture. AJAR is also the driving force behind the development of a joint Timorese-Indonesian teaching course grounded in Chega! and the shared history of the two societies.

Several Indonesian think tanks are also open to revising their position and engaging further on the subject. For example, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), whose founders advised Ali Murtopo and Suharto on the issue in the mid-1970s, expressly committed to discuss Chega! and contribute to a review of Indonesia’s narrative and its place in the school curriculum. In his memoir Shades of Grey, CSIS éminence grise Jusuf Wanandi acknowledges that he made mistakes on the Timor-Leste issue and laments the fact that, far from liberating Timor-Leste, Indonesia colonised the former Portuguese territory, imposing on the Timorese what he calls “much misery and abuse.”10

These developments did not just happen by accident. They are the outcome of creative initiatives undertaken to make use of changes in Indonesia in particular. But, though important and promising, these developments are relatively small and leave much to be done.

Canada was once a player in the Timor-Leste issue but it has retreated to a seat on the sidelines. One hopes that one or more of its great institutions, whether in government, academia, church, or civil society, will find a way to respond to the CAVR recommendations mentioned earlier and that it will engage with some of the unfinished business that Chega! and Per Memoriam Ad Spem have identified, and that have universal relevance for humanity’s efforts to build a better world.

Notes

1  Leonard Cohen, “Anthem,” on The Future, Columbia Records, 24 November 1992.

2  Chega! The Final Report of the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) (Jakarta: Gramedia, 2015). This translates the original Indonesian-language report delivered in 2005. The English translation was edited by Pat Walsh. For tales of the editing process, see Pat Walsh, “Two Sharp Eyes,” in Stormy with a Chance of Fried Rice: Twelve Months in Jakarta (Jakarta: Gramedia, 2015). Other CAVR publications are available at www.cavrtimorleste.org and www.chegareport.net.

3  Fretilin (Independent East Timor Revolutionary Front) and UDT (Timorese Democratic Union) leaders’ testimony about their own records is summarized in Timor-Leste Internal Political Conflict 1974–1976 (Dili, TL: Post-CAVR Technical Secretariat, 2009).

4  Indonesia–Timor-Leste Commission on Truth and Friendship, Per Memoriam Ad Spem: Final Report of the Commission on Truth and Friendship (CTF) (Denpasar, ID: CTF, 2008), http://www.chegareport.net/profil-of-ctf/ (accessed 28 October 2016).

5  Desmond Tutu, foreword to Chega!, xxi.

6  Remarks in Pat Walsh, “Chega! 10th anniversary Regional Roadshow,” http://home.patwalsh.net/chega-10th-anniv-region-roadshow/ (accessed 28 October 2016).

7  Truth commissions expert Patricia Hayner lists the CAVR as one of the five strongest truth commissions. See Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions (New York: Routledge, 2010).

8  Budi Hernawan and Pat Walsh, “Inconvenient Truths: The Fate of the Chega! and Per Memoriam Ad Spem Reports on Timor-Leste,” Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR) (August 2015), http://home.patwalsh.net/wp-content/uploads/Inconvenient-Truths.pdf (accessed 28 October 2016).

9  The official version appears in Marwati Poesponegoro and Nugroho Notosusanto, Sejarah Nasional Indonesia, VI: Zaman Jepang dan Zaman Republik Indonesia (Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 2008).

10 Jusuf Wanandi, Shades of Grey: A Political Memoir of Modern Indonesia 1965–1998 (Jakarta: Equinox, 2012).