Starting Points: Taur Matan Ruak

Mar 12, 2010

Appeal if not happy with Court's decision, says Prosecutor-General while Defence Force Commander condemns conviction of soldiers and the use of Portuguese in Courts

Diario Nacional, March 11, 2010 language source: Tetun - The Prosecutor General Ana Pesoa Pinto has said that the only way for the lawyer for Frederico da Conceicao Oan Ki’ak, a former guerilla fighter, and Alberto da Costa Belo, to challenge the Court's decision is to appeal to the higher court.

Image by Rui Miguel da Silva Pinto via Flickr

Image via Wikipedia

Both Oan Ki’ak and Alberto were armed by the Defence Force to stabilise the country following the dysfunction of the Timorese National Police to maintain law and order in 2006.

“The only legal way is for the lawyer to lodge an appeal and make submission to the court so that the Court will process the case in accordance with the law. It is therefore inappropriate to make comments to the media,” Ms. Pinto said.

Ms. Pessoa made the comment following the statement by the lawyer for Florindo and Belo that he was dissatisfied with the recent decision made by the court to sentence Florindo to eight years and four months and Belo to six years and six months in prison.

Meanhile, in an extraordinary outburst reported by Televizaun Timor-Leste on March 11, 2010, the Timor-Leste Defence Force General (Falintil-FDTL) Commander Major General Taur Matan Ruak has said that members of the Defence Force are being criminalised for defending the country in times of war.

“Our Prime Minister Xanana was in the jungle defending his homeland and the Indonesian court convicted him as a criminal and now we are being criminalised as well for defending Timor,” Matan Ruak said Thursday in Metinaro, Dili.

He added that if defending the nation is a crime, then they would simply run away from defending the country in times of war.

He said that those who have big mouths today should be mindful of the sacrifices of the liberation army which brought good fortune for those who become ministers, presidents, and other important political positions.

“Those who have big mouths today should not forget that because of us defending the country they are now happy and hilarious …. as presidents, ministers, etc,”, said the two-star general.

He said that it is unacceptable for him that even after Timor-Leste gained its hard-fought independence, members of his defence force are still criminalised.

Recently the Dili District Court sentenced Frederico da Conceição Oan Ki’ak, a former guerilla fighter, and Alberto Belo eight and six years in prison respectively for an incident in May 2006.

Both Oan Ki’ak and Alberto were armed by the Defence Force to stabilise the country following the dysfunction of the Timorese National Police to maintain law and order in 2006.

In May 2006, many PNTL members joined F-FDTL deserters whose total was about half of the number of the defense force loyal to the government. The rebels were led by Major Alfredo Reinado Alves, who was then shot in a shoot-out at the resident of President Horta in early 2008.

Matan Ruak went on to harshly criticise the use of the Portuguese language in the Courts of East Timor, calling for the end of Portuguese in the judicial system because it caused difficulties for the people.

“As a General I ask all Timorese to join me in launching a big campaign to end the use of Portuguese in all Timorese courts,” said Matan Ruak.

Matan Ruak made the comment following the decision of the Dili District court where verdicts to sentence Oan Ki’ak and Alberto da Costa were read in Portuguese.

He said that the court should only use Tetun and other native languages in its proceedings.

Matan Ruak added that with the call for language change in the court, international judges, prosecutors, and lawyers should be able to speak Tetun, which is an official language of the country.

He urged that those who cannot speak Tetun should be replaced by Timorese to make the process easy for Timorese to comprehend.

Many Timorese judicial actors like lawyers, judges and public defenders, graduated from Indonesian law schools, making them competent in both Indonesian and Tetun.

Matan Ruak said that those cannot speak Portuguese should not be penalised for this reason as it was part of the history.

The Constitution adopts both Tetun and Portuguese as official languages of Timor while Indonesian and English are used as working languages in the country. Posted by : Voice of East Timor on 12 March 2010

SBY’s Timor History

SBY - top graduate 1973

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), like many of his generation of former military men, has a Timor history. Australian researcher Ernie Chamberlain shows that, while SBY may not have been in the very first wave of the 7 December 1975 Indonesian military invasion, he was on active duty in Timor in those early years of the occupation which had such catastrophic consequences for the Timorese population and resistance. While the detailed story of SBY’s roles inside Timor is yet to be told, what follows sketches the beginning of his Timor history.

Chamberlain writes:

In his senior year (1973) at the Akabri military academy at Magelang, Bambang Yudhoyono was the Dandivkortar (“top cadet”) – overseeing 3,000 cadets. On graduation in November 1973, as the “top student” among the 987 graduates (Prabowo Subianto, by the way, graduated the following year in third place), he was presented with the Bintang Adhi Makayasa medal personally by then President Soeharto.
From Akabri, he was posted as a platoon commander to Kostrad’s 330 Airborne/Raider Battalion (Commander 3 Platoon, “A” Company) serving in the period “1974-76″. That unit’s history website notes that the battalion saw service in Timor in “1975-1976″.
Indonesian journalist and author Hendro Subroto has written on 330 Battalion’s operations in several of his works. In particular, two battalions of 330 Battalion’s formation – the 17th Airborne Brigade/”Satgas B” – parachuted onto the Baucau airfield on 10 December 1975, but 330 Battalion (commanded by Major Syukur) did not arrive in Baucau from Kupang until 14 December in an airlanded operation utilising civil-type aircraft. Soon after landing, 330 Battalion led the ABRI advance south to Viqueque – meeting quite stiff Falintil opposition led by Sabika in the Lariguto/Ossu area.

SBY’s Timor entrance
But was Yudhoyono with 330 Battalion in Timor in December 1975 ? I think not.
Firstly, Hendro Subroto is an inveterate “name dropper”. In relating operations in Timor, he invariably highlights the presence/role of any later-to-become-senior ABRI officers. He makes no mention of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the Baucau/Viqueque operation of 330 Battalion. Moreover, Yudhoyono reportedly attended English language training at the US military’s Defence Language Institute in Texas in late 1975/early 1976, followed by Airborne and Ranger training at Fort Benning in 1975-1976.
He apparently returned to Indonesia in mid-1976 – deploying to Timor in August 1976 as a platoon commander in 305 Battalion (a month after his marriage to the daughter of Major General Sarwo Edhie Wibowo a renowned/infamous commander of the RPKAD and graduate of the Australian Army’s Staff College at Queenscliff, Victoria). While little is known about 305 Battalion’s activities in Timor in 1976-1977, it reportedly operated principally in Lautem.
Among his medals, Yudhoyono wears the Satya Lencana Seroja, 1976 (Operasi Seroja – Operation Lotus – was the name given to the major Indonesian military campaign in Timor from December 1975 to November 1979)

Other connections
As an aside, over the years, Bambang Yudhoyono has had several koneksi with the Australian military – and was a close friend of Lieutenant General Peter Leahy (former Chief of Army, and now a professor heading the University of Canberra’s National Security Institute). They were in the same class at the US Command and Staff College, Leavenworth in 1990-1991 (Leahy was the “top” foreign student, Bambang Yudhoyono was “No.2″). It was planned that Yudhoyono attend the year-long “one-star” ADF ACDSS course at Weston Creek (Canberra) in 1996 – but in November 1995, Yudhoyono was quite suddenly posted to Bosnia-Herzegovina as the Chief Military Observer of the UN Peacekeeping Force.

Sources:

Subroto, S., Operasi Udara di Timor Timor (Air Operations in East Timor), Pustaka Sinar Harapan, Jakarta, 2005, pp.107-197.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susilo_Bambang_Yudhoyono

Military Academy website: http://www.akmil.ac.id

Battallion 330 website: http://www.yoniflinud330.mil.id/

More SBY biographical details: http://www.tokohindonesia.com/ensiklopedi/s/susilo-b-yudhoyono/biografi/keluarga.shtml

Ernie Chamberlain is a retired Australian brigadier, having served for 36 years – including as Australian Defence Attache in Jakarta in the mid-1990s. Since retirement in 1998, he has spent some years in Timor – including advising Defence Minister Roque Rodrigues and F-FDTL commander Taur Matan Ruak on defence policy and planning (2004-05).