A BODY UNDER FIRE
The CTF is composed of five commissioners each from Indonesia and East Timor. Aside from being unable to recommend prosecution or other judicial measures, it also cannot compel individuals to testify or cooperate. It can, however, recommend amnesty for those who "cooperate fully." It is this provision that the United Nations has found particularly upsetting, and which it has tried to convince the Commission to get rid of.

In February 2007, the CTF began to hold public hearings in Bali and Jakarta after operating for almost two years quietly and under very limited public scrutiny. The May 5 hearing that saw Wiranto testify was the third of its kind in a span of just three months. Previously, the commission had also heard testimonies from a number of public figures from both countries, including former Indonesian President B.J. Habibie and former Dili Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo.

	LA'O Hamutuk analyst Charles Scheiner. [photo by Joseph Laban]

But critics of the Commission singled out several high-ranking Indonesian military and civilian officials for uttering statements that, they said, were "self-serving" and contradictory to "well-established historical record." Or as a report by the Timor-Leste Institute for Reconstruction Monitoring and Analysis (La’o Hamutuk) put it, the CTF proceedings seemed to be meant to "clear the reputations of former and current Indonesian leaders and cast aspersions on the UN and other international institutions and legal processes'' more than anything else.

To La’o Hamutuk analyst Charles Scheiner, the Commission was "too concerned about building economic and political relationships rather than (seeking) justice." He added, "The commission has allowed itself to become a platform where lies are told."

At the very least, Wiranto was not made to account for any of the UN reports’ findings during the hearing. Not one of the commissioners brought them up. The East Timorese commissioners sat quietly as Wiranto said with intensity, "If I planned all those arson, then nothing would have been left there.” But the tersely enunciated line was met by approving laughter from the adoring crowd.

"If you look at Wiranto specifically, he was not here (in East Timor) when the militia burned down houses," CTF Co-Chairman Soares, who was not present during the hearing, said later. He also pointed out that the principle of "command responsibility" does not apply because "we are not talking about a formal justice system here, we are talking about approaching the cases through a political pathway but still using legal instruments to analyze it."

He said that the CTF would be addressing "only 14 cases (that) fulfill the criteria" that it developed, even though almost 500 murders committed during the 1999 violence have yet to be investigated by any official body. Soares said that due to the "enormous number" of human-rights violations committed in East Timor in 1999, the CTF had to narrow down the scope of the Commission's mandate with a set of predetermined standards. He said the criteria the commissioners agreed on are that the cases "are still living in the collective memory of the people, they still continue to be remembered every year, and third, it is still a question to the international community."

Few among General Wiranto’s audience that Saturday afternoon in the Indonesian capital had any first-hand memory of the carnage that took place in East Timor in 1999. They obviously were not there. The general’s speech was a hit, and most of those who heard him took home a tale of a war hero returning from the battlefield.

It is said that it is the victors who usually write and rewrite history. In the case of East Timor, however, there are times when it is simply not clear who won.

Joseph Israel M. Laban is a senior producer at GMA-7. He wrote this article as a participant in the 2007 Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) Journalism Fellowship Program.