Three arrested in Indonesia for Timor attacks
Updated
Three men have been arrested in Indonesia in connection with the February attacks on the president and prime minister of East Timor.
Presenter: Tom Fayle
Speaker: Timor expert Damien Kingsbury of Deakin University; Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhyono.
KINGSBURY: The interesting thing about this association is that Jaoa Tavares was the head of the militias which rampaged through East Timor in 1999, before and after the ballot for independence. Now Jaoa Tavares has been supported by the Indonesian military, the TNI for many years. In fact he was supported by and worked with Indonesian military going back as far as 1975 or even 74 and was clearly part of the Indonesian military structure in 1999 and has been supported by the Indonesian military and worked with them since then.
It's almost impossible for Jaoa Tavares to have guests at his house, particularly the types of guests that he is reported to have had without the Indonesian military at least knowing about it and I would imagine approving of that visit.
We know that the Indonesian military runs smuggling operations across the border into East Timor in concert with militia members and with some members of the East Timorese police and military. And clearly the links were already there and what these three have done is just continued to use those links and travel across the border and seek support and assistance from the ex-militia leader.
FAYLE: Now the arrests of the three Timorese rebels was announced by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and he also had a few barbed words to say about some of the comments coming out of Dili?
YUDHOYONO: It is my fervent hope that the leadership of Timor Leste would not issue any statement to insinuate any involvement on the part of Indonesia, which may cause confusion or misinterpretation by the international community and for the Indonesian people.
FAYLE: President Yudhoyono there, clearly a little annoyed. Damien Kingsbury, do you think he's got grounds for being a bit testy?
KINGSBURY: I think what Yudhoyono's trying to do is walk a fine line between what he knows to be official corruption on the part of the Indonesian military and the militias that still exist in West Timor and the official position of the state.
Now, clearly the state and Yudhoyono do not support this sort of activity. I don't think they are anyway involved officially. But Yudhoyono knows very well that the Indonesian military still survives economically by running illegal or black market businesses including the type of smuggling I've just referred to. And he would know that there would be these types of links across the border. And he saying well this isn't official policy and we don't want people talking about it in public, because it might be confused with official policy.
However, this is a critical issue, because it's part of Yudhoyono's own crackdown on the TNI trying to get it to clean up its act and I think that he's finding this a bit embarrassing and probably creating for him some domestic problems.
FAYLE: Alright, what's been Mr Ramos Horta's response to the Indonesians presidents comments then?
KINGSBURY: Well, Mr Ramos Horta has backed down on his comments. He said that he was misinterpreted by the media and he is obviously back peddling because he wants to retain good relations with President Yudhoyono and the Indonesian Government and that's been the position of the Timorese Government now for the last few years. So that's entirely consistent.
The problem is of course though when he does discuss a legitimate problem and there is support for cross border smuggling from West Timor, from the TNI there and obviously some link to the people who were working with Reinado and probably with Reinado himself.
The problem is if we can't talk about this in public, if Yudhoyono says don't talk about this and Ramos Horta accedes to that demand, then what we find is a censorship in cover up and of course we can't resolve these types of problems if you have that type of censorship and cover up.
