14 January 2000
Holbrooke Concerned About Events in Jakarta, West Timor
(Departures from West Timor camps too slow, envoy says) (690) By Judy Aita Washington File United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke issued a "statement of strong American Government concern" January 14 over Indonesian military members who are opposed to democratic changes and the number of East Timorese who still remain in refugee camps in West Timor. Holbrooke expressed "considerable concern" about "certain high-ranking members of the Indonesian military" who "continue to take the position opposing internal accountability, internal inquiries, internal human rights commission." "All they will do is succeed in increasing the international pressure on them for more action by the commission of inquiry," he said. Calling them "the forces that are fighting democracy," the ambassador said that "the Indonesian generals should know that their own efforts to thwart their own internal accountability and openness and inquiry are only going to result in greater pressure." Holbrooke made the comments outside the Security Council chambers after a private session during which the council planned for a meeting in early February with the head of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), Sergio Vieira de Mello. The ambassador said he made the same comments during a phone conversation with 10 leading Indonesian journalists in Jakarta earlier in the day. Characterizing the differences between Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid and senior military officers as "a profound struggle going on between the forces of democracy and the forces that look backward to protect their own skins," Holbrooke said it is "vitally important" that the president, attorney general, foreign ministers and "other people trying to move the process forward get the full support of the Indonesian people." Holbrooke added that the military must "understand that they are going to bring the whole house down if they persist in obstructing this." "It is a struggle of great historic consequence," he said. "Indonesia is one of the more important countries in the world...the world's third largest democracy." Holbrooke also said that despite the agreement he brokered at the East Timor-West Timor border in November and subsequent agreements with the UN, the departures from the refugee camps in West Timor are too slow. "The militia have to be removed from the camps, and this is the core problem," he said. There are "still 100,000 people in the camps in West Timor.... But the 100,000 are only trickling out and at the current rate of departure they are going to be in those camps a very long time," the ambassador said. "There are people who will never go back; they voted against independence and they consider themselves more Indonesian than East Timorese," Holbrooke continued. "The government said they will be registered by March 31 and reintegrated. That is still too slow for our taste. They should be moved out of the camps fast and given rightful places in Indonesian society, hopefully on islands other than West Timor." "Right now the international community is paying for these people and they don't need to," he said. "A second group are people who do want to go back and are being prevented from doing so either by physical terror or psychological intimidation," the ambassador said, explaining that the refugees are being told "a lot of lies by the militia." Among the lies are suggestions that refugees will be either raped or killed if they go home, according to Holbrooke. Comparing the militia to the Khmer Rouge operating in Cambodian refugees camps on the Thai border in the 1980s, Holbrooke said that they "are bad people" who are still being paid and encouraged by the Indonesian military. "They're like a street gang that controls the block and is being offered something they are not so impressed with -- a chance to get a good decent paying job but not one that allows them to swagger around. These are real thugs and they have to be dealt with," the ambassador said. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)
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