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Murder and Enforced Disappearance
Murder is the unlawful and intentional causation of the death of a human being. In the context of armed conflict it is a crime against humanity. Extermination - also a crime against humanity - is closely related. It means causing death within a context of mass killing. Extermination includes indirect means of causing death. Enforced disappearance is the "arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of, a State or political organisation, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time."1 Enforced disappearance is outlawed as a crime against humanity in the 1992 UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
The CAVR concluded that "Indonesian military commanders ordered, supported and condoned systematic and widespread unlawful killings and enforced disappearances of thousands of civilians."2 The CAVR pointed to the "vast number of these crimes, their coordinated nature across the territory of East Timor, the efforts of domestic and international non-government and domestic effort to inform the military and civilian authorities in Jakarta that these atrocities were happening, [and] the systematic failure of the Indonesian military and civilian leadership to prevent and stop these acts which they must have known about." It must be emphasized that this is an ongoing crime against humanity because - without providing information to the relatives of the disappeared - the Indonesian authorities continue to conceal the disappeared persons.
The CAVR found that there were a small number of brave individuals who baulked at the command to execute unarmed civilians and sought to prevent these crimes:
- A member of Battalion 745 from Bobonaro refused to execute a group of civilians, which included women and children, preventing a massacre in Rotuto (Manufahi) in 1982.
- An Indonesian member of Brimob smuggled a female CNRT leader to safety the day after the ballot in Gleno, Ermera, in 1999. Although she was initially safe, she was eventually raped and killed by militia when she attempted to return home a week later.
- An East Timorese police officer was shot and killed when he attempted to prevent the looting and burning of a village in Maubisse (Ainaro).
Throughout the period of occupation (1975-1999), methods and circumstances in which unlawful killings were carried out included: 3
- Indiscriminate shooting of unarmed groups of civilians
- Dividing groups of unarmed civilians by gender, then indiscriminate shooting of the men
- Ordering of victims to dig their own grave before execution
- Ordering of victims to line up in formation before line by line execution
- Execution of unarmed individuals by close-range shooting
- Discarding of bodies by burning, by speedy secret burials without any attempt in identifying the victim and next of kin, by dumping into a well, lake, or ocean
- Throwing of grenades at unarmed groups of civilians
- Death in custody by beating and torture
- Immediate execution after capture during military operations
- Public beheading
- Public staged or real acts of cannibalism
- Public cutting of body parts
- Public display of decapitated heads, severed limbs or body parts
- Forcing a civilian to kill another civilian under duress
- Tying to a moving vehicle to be dragged to death
- Immolation
- Tying up on a cross before execution
- Throwing down a cliff, sometimes after being wounded
- Burying alive wounded victims
- Public execution where a married couple was stripped naked, hit on the back of the neck so that they fell into a prepared grave
- Public fatal beating
- Parading of corpses
- Deadly assault using traditional weapons, such as machetes, spears and knives
- Death by acts of torture
- Abduction followed by disappearance, in some cases blind-folded and tied-up
- Targeted killing by militia from lists drawn up by military personnel
- Execution of detainees in detention centres, and in isolated places in the countryside, including in lakes and from rural bridges
- Displaying of human ears and genitals to family members of the disappeared
- Rape before the killing of female victims.
1 Article 7(2)(i) of the Statute of the International Criminal Court.
2 Chega! Executive Summary p 71.
3 Chega! Executive Summary pp 70-1.
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