Balibo probe puts ties at risk: Indonesia
TOM ALLARD IN JAKARTA AND BRENDAN NICHOLSONSeptember 10, 2009 THE Australian Federal Police's war crimes investigation into the slaying of five Australian-based journalists in East Timor in 1975 risked undermining the relationship between Indonesia and Australia, the Indonesian foreign ministry said yesterday. The sharp official response to the new investigation into the death of the Balibo Five came with a warning that Indonesia would not co-operate. ''We don't understand why past issues like this are being raised. It is not conducive to the bilateral relationship, especially when we are aiming at building something better between the two countries,'' said foreign ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah. These comments were echoed by the analyst Hugh White of the Australian National University and the Lowy Institute. Professor White said the killings were tragic and deeply disturbing and he could understand why they continued to torment the families. ''But for the country as a whole, our obsession with what happened at Balibo in 1975 has started to become a distraction from a whole lot of much more urgent and important questions which include the nature of Australia's relationship with the new Indonesia which is so different from the Indonesia of Soeharto,'' Professor White said. A NSW coronial inquest in 2007 into the death of one of the five journalists - the Channel Nine cameraman Brian Peters - found he and his colleagues were ''shot and/or stabbed deliberately'' by Indonesian special forces when they invaded East Timor in October 1975. It named Yunus Yosfiah, a special forces captain who later rose to lieutenant-general, as having ordered the killings on the instructions of his (now deceased) superiors. Brian Peters's sister, Maureen Tolfree, said in a phone interview from her home in Britain she was over the moon. ''Wow, at last! That's brilliant news,'' Mrs Tolfree said. ''I'm shaking like a leaf.'' Mrs Tolfree said Yunus was responsible for the deaths of many East Timorese as well as her brother and the other newsmen - Malcolm Rennie, Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Tony Stewart - and he should be tried and jailed for his crimes. Mr Yosfiah later served as a minister for information in the government of B.J. Habibie. Mr Yosfiah, like the other man named by the inquest's report as a participant in the killings, Christoforus Da Silva, is alive. The former head of Indonesian Special Forces, Major-General Benny Murdani, and Colonel Dading Kalbuadi, Special Forces Group Commander in Timor, are dead. Mr Yosfiah, who has denied he ordered the killings, lives in Jakarta while Mr Da Silva is believed to live in Flores. Asked whether Indonesia would agree to their extradition should the AFP judge decide there is enough evidence, Mr Faizasyah was dismissive. ''Our position is that it's case closed. We have no intention of re-opening this case.'' The former Jakarta governor Sutiyoso, whose Sydney hotel room was broken into by NSW police seeking to summons him before the inquest, said he was puzzled by the investigation. But University of NSW academic and former army intelligence operative Clinton Fernandes applauded it. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10596090 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
