The KKP Committee has 10 members (5 from each country; from legal & human rights backgrounds as well as academics & religious leaders), and their stated objective is,
“to establish the conclusive truth in regards to the events prior to and immediately after the popular consultation in 1999 in Timor-Leste; to further promoting reconciliation and friendship, and ensuring the non-recurrence of similar events in the future.”
The Commission has a 3-part mandate:
Reveal the factual truth of the nature, causes, and the extent of reported violations of human rights during the popular consultation in Timor-Leste in August 1999.
Issue a public report establishing the historical record
Recommend measures to heal the wounds of the past
There were five speakers:
Pak Dionisio Soares (East Timor delegation co-chair)
Pak Marzuki Darusman (chief of ASEAN Human Rights working group)
Pak Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara (chief of Indonesia’s National Human Rights committee)
Pak Mochamad Slamet Hidayat (Director General multilateral division of the Foreign Ministry & former ambassador)
Pak Robert Evans (professor at Plowshare Institute & Truth-Reconciliation expert who worked for Desmond Tutu in South Africa).
The whole event was moderated & conducted in bahasa Indonesia,,, which is my humble way of saying I understood about 60%-70% of the speeches, for as long as my attention span could stand (then I just started praying it would be over soon). But the question & answer period, I could understand about 95% of that, because people were using regular words I’m used to hearing everyday. The entire KKP committee was seated up front.
The questions were interesting, and reflected the way the day was broken up. The first 3 speakers went in the morning & focused on national views & implications. The day was split with a fantastic lunch (free for me! =) thanks Nikko hotel!) and then the afternoon segment focused on the international community view of this process.
The morning questions in hovered around 4 themes:
who is more responsible for the events of Aug ’99, the Indonesian government or the military? And who bears the brunt of responsibility for repairing relations?
who will hold TNI generals responsible for violence done on their watch? Something more significant & honest than parading a few sacrificial lambs before the crowd.
If the problems with E.Timor are already resolved (as the government claims), what’s this KKP for? There are many political announcements, but where are the results?
what does amnesty provide the victims?
Most of the morning speakers spoke about the recommendations of the KKP: Amnesty for the perpetrators of the violence is the best way to entice them to publicly testify about what happened, and get the truth out. It’s a balancing act between seeking justice & truth.
The afternoon speeches & questions hovered around the international community view & whether they would accept the recommendations that come out.
Dr. Evans was the one guy that doesn’t speak Indonesian (whew! Thank you,,, I understood 100% of one speech!),, and he was quite the animated speaker- but he had a lot of interesting things to say. Having been invited by Desmond Tutu to work on the Truth & Reconciliation process in South Africa in the 1970s & 80s resulting from Apartheid, and participating in many of the 30 (+/-) such TRC efforts around the world, his view was that:
most people don’t read the final report anyways
most measures are slowly implemented by governments, if at all
the process of publicly getting the truth out is usually most important to the people, and the most powerful element of the whole effort to heal wounds
I’d have to say that I agree with him there, my humble 2 cents opinion. The rest of the arguments for amnesty & justice get complicated very quickly.
My head was exhausted after a full day of soaking in PhD level bahasa Indonesia (= and my efforts to get home & relax were flavored by one more element of daily life in Jakarta… Traffic.
The phenomenon of traffic here can be imagined straight out of a downtown LA or New York horror traffic story. Cars stacked up solid from one red light to another,,, for your entire trip- no matter where you’re going.
I thought of 20 colorful ways to describe this thing called “macet” (traffic jam) on the way home… but none of the funny comparisons are coming back to me now. I’ll save the effort for a later day. My 20 minute ride home took 1 ½ hours in the back of a cab. I was done for the day.
“to establish the conclusive truth in regards to the events prior to and immediately after the popular consultation in 1999 in Timor-Leste; to further promoting reconciliation and friendship, and ensuring the non-recurrence of similar events in the future.”
The Commission has a 3-part mandate:
Reveal the factual truth of the nature, causes, and the extent of reported violations of human rights during the popular consultation in Timor-Leste in August 1999.
Issue a public report establishing the historical record
Recommend measures to heal the wounds of the past
There were five speakers:
Pak Dionisio Soares (East Timor delegation co-chair)
Pak Marzuki Darusman (chief of ASEAN Human Rights working group)
Pak Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara (chief of Indonesia’s National Human Rights committee)
Pak Mochamad Slamet Hidayat (Director General multilateral division of the Foreign Ministry & former ambassador)
Pak Robert Evans (professor at Plowshare Institute & Truth-Reconciliation expert who worked for Desmond Tutu in South Africa).
The whole event was moderated & conducted in bahasa Indonesia,,, which is my humble way of saying I understood about 60%-70% of the speeches, for as long as my attention span could stand (then I just started praying it would be over soon). But the question & answer period, I could understand about 95% of that, because people were using regular words I’m used to hearing everyday. The entire KKP committee was seated up front.
The questions were interesting, and reflected the way the day was broken up. The first 3 speakers went in the morning & focused on national views & implications. The day was split with a fantastic lunch (free for me! =) thanks Nikko hotel!) and then the afternoon segment focused on the international community view of this process.
The morning questions in hovered around 4 themes:
who is more responsible for the events of Aug ’99, the Indonesian government or the military? And who bears the brunt of responsibility for repairing relations?
who will hold TNI generals responsible for violence done on their watch? Something more significant & honest than parading a few sacrificial lambs before the crowd.
If the problems with E.Timor are already resolved (as the government claims), what’s this KKP for? There are many political announcements, but where are the results?
what does amnesty provide the victims?
Most of the morning speakers spoke about the recommendations of the KKP: Amnesty for the perpetrators of the violence is the best way to entice them to publicly testify about what happened, and get the truth out. It’s a balancing act between seeking justice & truth.
The afternoon speeches & questions hovered around the international community view & whether they would accept the recommendations that come out.
Dr. Evans was the one guy that doesn’t speak Indonesian (whew! Thank you,,, I understood 100% of one speech!),, and he was quite the animated speaker- but he had a lot of interesting things to say. Having been invited by Desmond Tutu to work on the Truth & Reconciliation process in South Africa in the 1970s & 80s resulting from Apartheid, and participating in many of the 30 (+/-) such TRC efforts around the world, his view was that:
most people don’t read the final report anyways
most measures are slowly implemented by governments, if at all
the process of publicly getting the truth out is usually most important to the people, and the most powerful element of the whole effort to heal wounds
I’d have to say that I agree with him there, my humble 2 cents opinion. The rest of the arguments for amnesty & justice get complicated very quickly.
My head was exhausted after a full day of soaking in PhD level bahasa Indonesia (= and my efforts to get home & relax were flavored by one more element of daily life in Jakarta… Traffic.
The phenomenon of traffic here can be imagined straight out of a downtown LA or New York horror traffic story. Cars stacked up solid from one red light to another,,, for your entire trip- no matter where you’re going.
I thought of 20 colorful ways to describe this thing called “macet” (traffic jam) on the way home… but none of the funny comparisons are coming back to me now. I’ll save the effort for a later day. My 20 minute ride home took 1 ½ hours in the back of a cab. I was done for the day.
posted by jonathan adventures at 12:26 AM
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