End impunity for human rights offenders in Cambodia and East Timor

Geneva, 2000 - Press Release - Briefing
The Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the international community to urge the Cambodian government to fully cooperate with the United Nations (UN) in establishing a joint tribunal to try Khmer Rouge leaders for the death of 1,7 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. The negotiations are in a deadlock situation since Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen refused an UN control of the tribunal. The UN insists that the trial should be conducted before a majority of foreign judges with an independent UN-appointed prosecutor to ensure a political impartial and fair process. An agreement would be historic and exemplary to other cases of genocide.

In East Timor reconciliation will be impossible, if the human rights offenders are escaping justice. There are serious reser-vations about the capacity and the commitment of Indonesia to deliver fair trials.Therefore the Society for Threatened Peoples urges the UN to implement the recommendations of its own Commission of Inquiry and to establish an international investi-gation and prosecution body as a first step. Preparations for an international tribunal on the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed since the Indonesian in-vasion in 1975 must continue. Urgently we are calling on the UN to refrain from creating double standards in their efforts to end impunity by ceasing to demand an international tribunal on East Timor. The UN has a special responsibility to prosecute human rights offenders in East Timor, because they failed to provide security to the harassed pro-independence supporters in East Timor before, during and after the ballot on the future status of the territory. Inaction would provoke a further loss of credibility of the UN.

Ending impunity will be an important step in encouraging recon-ciliation in East Timor and Cambodia. Most of the Camodians and East Timoreses don't want to take revenge, but they want to know the truth about the huge human rights violation. The international community which has ignored these genocides for a long time or prevented the prosecution of the human rights offenders has a moral obligation to act now. The Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the international community, to strenghten its support for reconciliation and the search for truth in Cambodia and East Timor.