Timor-Leste: reconciliation and return from Indonesia

• International Crisis Group

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19 April 2011This paper analyses the factors that hold back the remaining refugees who might otherwise be attracted to return to Timor-Leste as a result of the country' s increased political stability and growing prosperity.

The unresolved status of thousands of former refugees who fled across the border following a 1999 vote for independence remains a challenge to Timor-Leste’s long-term stability. Many were never well integrated into host communities and are being drawn back across the border in small but increasing numbers by relative economic and political stability in the new state.

These returns should be encouraged by both countries as a good opportunity to promote reconciliation between the two communities divided by the border. Doing so will expose the costs of impunity for the violence that surrounded the 1999 referendum and highlight the failure to implement practical recommendations from its two truth commissions, the CAVR and the Commission on Truth and Friendship. Timor-Leste’s leadership may yet decide that some form of amnesty is the best way forward, but the country cannot afford to further delay broad discussion on solutions.

Political consensus on justice and reconciliation has been elusive but is urgently needed. The parliament and government of Timor-Leste should take the following steps:

• clarify with the Indonesian government through a memorandum of understanding the formal procedures for voluntary returns by those born in East Timor;
• develop an official policy supporting voluntary returns, including limited assistance to returnees, through food assistance and mediation support during a provisional period as well as strengthened welfare monitoring and elaborating their rights upon return;
• debate in parliament the CAVR report and draft laws on reparations for victims and the creation of a planned successor institution to the CAVR, whose mandate should include supporting community reconciliation processes;
• renew efforts to implement with Indonesia the recommendations of the Commission for Truth and Friendship; and
• publicly commit to the prosecution of existing indictments in the domestic courts.