http://www.smh.com.au/news/0203/14/national/national992.html
The Sydney Morning Herald
March 14, 2002
Silence over a crime against humanity
International Editor Hamish McDonald reveals the critical evidence
Australia's spy chiefs have kept hidden, as trials begin in Jakarta
today over violence during East Timor's independence vote.
The evidence is contained in the most tightly held archive in
Canberra: the electronic data base of the Defence Signals Direct-
orate (DSD), the result of months intercepting secret
communications between Indonesian officers involved in a shadowy
campaign to thwart East Timorese hopes of independence in 1999.
Some details of this vast intelligence record have been revealed for
the first time to the Herald by senior defence community sources in
Canberra. They are dismayed at a huge crime against humanity,
committed on Australia's doorstep and under the eyes of the
United Nations, remaining unexposed.
The DSD intercepts map out the chain of command, from the local
militias and covert Indonesian forces in East Timor up to one of the
most feared military men in Jakarta, General Feisal Tanjung,
whose involvement has so far escaped mention in human rights
investigations.
The defence sources also say that some of this critical intelligence
in the first half of 1999, pointing to high-level Indonesian
involvement, was not included in intelligence exchanged with
United States' agencies at a time when the Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade was blaming the militia violence on "rogue
elements" in the Indonesian army.
The tensions this caused between Canberra's Defence Intelligence
Organisation and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
(DFAT) have been seen as contributing to the June 1999 suicide of
the DIO liaison officer in Washington, Lieutenant-Colonel Merv
Jenkins, after he was questioned by DFAT security officials about
"Australian Eyes Only" material shared with American counterparts.
The intercepts, contained in files classified as "Secret Spoke"
(meaning derived from intercepted clear-voice telephone calls) or
"Top Secret Umbra" (derived from encrypted or scrambled voice
communications), have not been shared with UN or other
investigators.
But they include details of command and communications
hierarchies that would provide vital evidence for international-
standard war crimes tribunals, such as those prosecutions being
mounted in The Hague against politicians and generals in the
former Yugoslavia.
Instead of setting up such a tribunal for East Timor, the UN has
stood back for 21/2 years to let Jakarta fulfil its promise to mount
its own trials of those responsible for the 1999 massacres,
abductions, coerced population movements and destruction.
In Jakarta, the first trial is due to begin today, with former East
Timor governor Abilio Soares and former provincial police chief
Brigadier-General Timbul Silaen accused of crimes against
humanity involving widespread attacks on civilians.
Silaen is one of three generals among the 18 military personnel
and civilian militia leaders accused of participation or responsibility
in some of the more large-scale acts of murder in 1999. The other
two are Major-General Adam Damiri, former head of the Udayana
regional command, which included East Timor, and Brigadier-
General Tono Suratman, who was East Timor military commander
for much of 1999.
To the extent they face substantial punishment the three still seem
to be in the pipeline for promotion within the army and police these
generals and a number of colonels and junior officers appear to be
the sacrifices to appease foreign and local concerns.
The senior generals who were more closely supervising the militia
campaign on the ground in East Timor, and who reported directly to
top military figures in Jakarta, have been left off the list of accused,
although some were named as suspects in Indonesia's special
human rights commission report in February 2000.
So far, it appears the Indonesian legal process, while concentrating
on specific incidents of terror, has not attempted to lay overall
blame for the militia campaign ahead of the August 30, 1999, vote,
or for the systematic drive after the result was announced to deport
the population and lay waste to the territory.
The Indonesian armed forces commander and defence minister at
the time, General Wiranto, was forced to resign from his later
cabinet post as co-ordinating political and security minister after
the February 2000 report said he carried moral responsibility for the
violence, given that Indonesia had guaranteed security for East
Timor's referendum.
But now Wiranto also appears to be a fall guy, in terms of political,
if not legal, responsibility. In all the inquiries so far, little
attention has been given to the role of Feisal Tanjung, Wiranto's
predecessor as armed forces commander then as political-security
minister, whose pivotal role in instigating, planning and executing the
militia campaign is brought into focus by the DSD intercepts.
Normally, the political-security position in the Indonesian cabinet
has little executive responsibility or clout within the Indonesia
military, compared with that of the commander. But the weighting
of the two roles seems to have been reversed in 1999 because of
the personalities and records of the officers involved.
Wiranto was a sociable some say weak political general who had
risen to senior ranks through his positions in the entourage of
former president Soeharto, who had been forced out of office by
popular protest in May 1998. Throughout 1999 he kept an eye out
for his prospects in Jakarta as political parties courted the powerful
military following general elections in June.
TOUGH-minded Feisal Tanjung had spent much of his career in the
feared Special Forces, known as Kopassus, or the paratroop units
of the Strategic Reserve. He had associations with operations in
East Timor from the earliest occupation days in 1975.
Tanjung appears to have operated a chain of command parallel to
that wielded by General Wiranto, using officers with Kopassus and
East Timor backgrounds, especially the two major-generals Zacky
Anwar Makarim and Sjafrie Sjamsuddin assigned as "liaison
officers" to the UN mission running the ballot in East Timor.
Most of these officers were, like Tanjung, associated with the
"Green" or conspicuously Islamic faction active in the Indonesian
forces in the last years of the Soeharto era. Wiranto and key aides
like then lieutenant-general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono belonged
to the "Red and White" or more secular nationalist faction (the
name derived from Indonesia's national flag).
Because of his political ambitions, Wiranto may have been happy
to distance himself from the dirty work involved in keeping East
Timor within Indonesia. His colleagues may have been equally
content to preserve his political acceptability in order to maintain
the military's privileged position. This meant the crescendo of
protests made to Wiranto by Canberra and other foreign capitals
about the obvious military collusion with the militias went to the
wrong address. Equally, Wiranto's promises of fair behaviour by the
security forces carried little weight.
According to the Defence sources, the Indonesian embassy in
Canberra was also out of the loop. DSD intercepted several queries
by the then defence attache in Canberra, Brigadier-General Judi
Magio Yusuf, to his Jakarta superiors asking for clarification of
atrocities being reported from East Timor. He was routinely told
these were foreign press fabrications and to ignore them.
Nine specific intercepts detailed by the Defence sources, plus
accounts of other patterns of command and consultation at critical
points in 1999, reveal some of the key officers and strategies in the
covert campaign to retain East Timor.
On February 9 less than a fortnight after then president Habibie's
announcement that the East Timorese would have an early choice
between wider autonomy within Indonesia or independence DSD
intercepted messages confirming that two Indonesian special
forces units, codenamed Tribuana and Venus, had arrived in East
Timor to join undercover operations.
The East Timor military command, abbreviated to Korem 164, had
already been using armed local auxiliaries and militias since the
latter months of 1998 to counter the popular unrest that had been
growing since Soeharto's fall.
On February 14, DSD heard the Dili militia leader Eurico Guterres
telephone the Tribuana unit about the condition of an injured
member of the militia group, which was called Mahidi. Tribuana told
Guterres: "We know that Brig-Gen Simbolon is concerned that one
of his crew is injured."
This refers to then Brigadier-General Mahidin Simbolon, who was
chief of staff in the Bali-based Udayana regional command, which
included East Timor. A former East Timor commander, Simbolon
was close to the Mahidi leader Cancio de Cavalho, whose coined
name for the group (Mahidi, from the Indonesian words meaning
"Live or Die for Integration") was a tribute to the Indonesian officer.
On May 5, Indonesia's commander in East Timor, then Colonel
Tono Suratman, was intercepted phoning Guterres to ask where he
was massing his militia group for a show of force in Dili, the
territory's capital. Guterres reported 400 militias waiting outside a
city hotel.
On June 1, DSD intercepted Colonel Suratman telling Guterres:
"Don't deal with me directly. Contact me via Bambang [referring to
Major Bambang Wisnumurti, the intelligence chief in Suratman's
command]."
On August 8, DSD intercepted a message from military
headquarters in Jakarta, allocating radio frequencies for use by pro-
Indonesian groups. This was one of a series of frequency
allocations that were intercepted routine signals but the kind that
provide crucial pieces of evidence for war crimes prosecutors. The
point of contact for the militia groups was another intelligence
officer, a Lieutenant Masbuku, in Suratman's Korem 164
headquarters in Dili.
On August 9, a message stated that Director "A" in Jakarta's
military intelligence agency BAIS, a Brigadier-General Arifuddin,
had organised flags and other material for a demonstration against
Unamet, the UN mission. Arifuddin said 5000 T-shirts had been
prepared, and 10,000 ordered.
In intercepts in a file dated September 4, and classified "Top
Secret Umbra", Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim is making
last minute calls to find out how the count of the votes from five
days earlier is going (the result, a 78.5 per cent majority for
independence, was later announced by the UN that morning).
Anwar spoke to a police officer named Andreas and asked how the
count was going. The police officer said that with 50 per cent of the
vote counted, only about 20 per cent seemed to be for the
autonomy-within-Indonesia option. Anwar appeared incredulous,
asking: "Are you sure? How can it be?" He pointed out that all
across East Timor, households had been displaying the red and
white Indonesian flag.
Anwar also spoke to Brigadier-General Glenny Kairupan, head of
another special team appointed by General Feisal Tanjung, for
pointers to the impending result, and to the East Timorese activist
leading Jakarta's political campaign in the ballot, Basilio Araujo
who said it was obvious the poll was fixed.
While speaking to Araujo, General Anwar also asked him to keep a
close eye on Eurico Guterres. Anwar said Guterres had a relative
who was a Catholic nun, and might easily be persuaded to jump to
the independence side. "I'll take care of him if he goes over to the
other side," Anwar said.
ONCE the ballot's result was announced on September 4, the
Indonesian authorities on the ground moved quickly to adapt
existing contingency plans for evacuation of pro-integration
elements and Indonesian residents.
Across the central and western parts of East Timor, people were
driven from their homes and shepherded to land or sea transport to
West Timor or other parts of Indonesia. The aim, apparently, was
to discredit the UN ballot as rigged, by suggesting that a majority
of Timorese were voting with their feet in accordance with their true
wishes, or to create conditions for partition of the territory. Over the
grim two weeks this scheme was carried out, before the arrival of
the Australian-led international force Interfet on September 20, DSD
picked up numerous scrambled telephone conversations between
General Tanjung in Jakarta and General Anwar in Timor discussing
details, the Defence sources say.
In addition, DSD intercepted other discussions about the
population transfer involving General Anwar and two ministers in the
Habibie government, both with intelligence and special forces
backgrounds. One was Lieutenant-General A.M.Hendropriyono, the
minister for the former inter-island "transmigration" scheme, the
other Lieutenant-General Yunus Yosfiah, the information minister.
On September 21, as Interfet was still landing troops in Dili and
establishing an uneasy interregnum with Indonesian forces, DSD
intercepted a phone call to the veteran pro-Indonesian political
leader Francisco Xavier Lopez da Cruz, informing him that
Kopassus had formed special hit-squads code-named "Kiper-9" to
hunt down pro-independence elements and pro-Indonesian figures
who changed sides.
A final intercept revealed by the sources, reported on October 5,
details a message from the East Nusatenggara provincial police
commander to the police chief in the provincial capital Kupang (in
West Timor). The local police chief is reminded that some visitors
from the US State Department are about to visit camps holding
relocated East Timorese. He is to make sure the visitors get the
impression the refugees are free of harassment.
The generals who figure in the command chain of this campaign
aside from Damiri, Suratman and Silaen are all free of legal charge.
Feisal Tanjung is active in party politics since losing ministerial
office with the end of the Habibie presidency in October 1999,
along with former information minister Yunus Yosfiah. Damiri's
former chief of staff in the Udayana command, Mahidin Simbolon,
has been promoted to his own command, in Papua, where local
independence activists fear he could pursue a militia strategy
against them, and where Kopassus soldiers are suspected of
murdering the Papuan Council leader Theys Eluay.
Zacky Anwar Makarim remains in the army, attached to the TNI
headquarters without specific assignment. Sjafrie Sjamsuddin, who
is among army officers resisting legal summonses to testify on
violence against students in early 1998 (when he was Jakarta
garrison chief), has been appointed official TNI spokesman.
The former transmigration minister who helped organise the mass
deportations in September 1999, General Hendropriyono, has had
a revived career, being made head of the new National Intelligence
Body created by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whom he had
cultivated in her opposition years against Soeharto.
Only the decades of impunity enjoyed by the Indonesian security
forces make the country's leadership unabashed by the irony that
Hendropriyono and Sjamsuddin are now the public faces of a TNI
and intelligence service being asked to join the War against Terror.
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