Damien Kingsbury of Deakin University writes about a failure of justice over the crimes committed by Indonesia in East Timor:
East Timor is a country of rugged beauty, but it is impossible to look without knowing there has been great horror. Spectacular views from a cliff; bound people were thrown from it. Lovely beach; that was where the bodies dumped from the wharf used to wash up. Spirits of the dead are everywhere.
More than 100,000 people have been documented as having died directly as a result of Indonesia's 24-year occupation. The higher and more probably accurate end of this figure is about 200,000 - more than a quarter of the then population.
The popular feeling in East Timor is no longer so much for revenge, although that feeling continues to gnaw at some. More compelling is the desire for justice. For a people still coming to terms with the notion of the rule of law, amnesties for the worst offenders make a mockery of other legal claims.
Kingsbury goes on to explain the 'pragmatic reasons' of East Timor's leaders for not following up vigorously on crimes against humanity, and speaks in this connection of the 'argument that a country and a people need to move on'. At the same time, he argues, the rule of law is 'not yet well embedded in East Timor', and there could be a detrimental effect upon it if people see amnesties being granted to the worst sort of criminal.
That is one point, and important. But there's something else at least as important as the likely future consequences of criminality going unpunished. This is the failure - in itself - to respond appropriately to grave wrongdoing. When people are murdered by the tens of thousands and those responsible are not made to pay any penalty, that is an uncancelled wrong. It is an injustice left standing. Not that what was done can ever be undone. But it is a humanly intolerable further injustice to the dead and the bereaved if the murderers are treated as being no different from anyone else. It's as if the lives that were taken can be discounted. There may sometimes be prudential reasons for accepting that the perpetrators of crimes against humanity have to be left alone (for the time being). But when this is the case, it is not only the future effects of the amnesty that matter; it is also that a past injustice is waved through and a new injustice added to it.