1999 marked a turning point in international public policy concerning the inclusion of amnesties for perpetrators of human rights violations in peace agreements. In what was a significant watershed moment for the organisation, the United Nations (UN) decreed in a policy statement and almost simultaneously at the Lomé peace conference, convened to bring an end to the war in Sierra Leone, that peace negotiators were no longer permitted to offer blanket amnesties, even where the signing of a peace agreement was at stake.¹ Where once amnesties had been viewed as a necessary, pragmatic compromise, instituted to ensure peace and stability, smooth the way for political transitions, or facilitate reconciliation, now justice, it seemed, would prevail. Echoing this sentiment, a senior representative of the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor made the new position clear with the triumphant announcement: ‘impunity is over […] What was once accepted as an acceptable price to pay for peace is no longer a legal possibility’.²
For conflict-ridden Timor-Leste, the UN’s anti-impunity policy has had profound implications. Just weeks after the UN made its pronouncement banning amnesties, Timor-Leste’s 24 year long struggle for independence from Indonesia came to a head with a referendum in which 78.5 percent of the population rejected special autonomy within Indonesia leading to East Timor’s separation from Indonesia. Reprising the violence it had inflicted on the Timorese people during its occupation, the Indonesian military retaliated, killing at least 1,000 people and burning 75 percent of undefended buildings across the nation ‘to the ground in a deliberate scorched earth policy’.³ Hundreds of thousands of others fled or were forcibly displaced from their homes, many into neighbouring West Timor.
Following negotiations between the governments of Indonesia and Australia and the United Nations, on 15 September 1999 the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorising an Australian-led multinational intervention into East Timor (known as INTERFET—Intervention Force for East Timor) to quell the violence. Although Resolution 1264 did not mention amnesties at all, its preamble expressed ‘concern at reports indicating that systematic, widespread and flagrant violations of international humanitarian and human rights law have been committed’ and stressed that ‘persons committing such violations bear individual responsibility’.4 Just days earlier, UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan announced at a press conference that ‘crimes against humanity’ committed in East Timor would be punished.5 The UN’s position was clear: there would be no amnesties for perpetrators of human rights violations in East Timor. That is, in line with its new policy and reflecting the wider sentiments of the international human rights community, justice would not be subordinate to the demands of peace and stability, politics, or reconciliation.
Please click here to read the full “Trading amnesty for impunity in Timor-Leste” article by Griffith University Asia Institute and School of Government and International Relations Professor, Renee Jeffery.
