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Subject: Timorese call for action on 'collaborator' also When war criminals hide out in the open
The Sydney Morning
Herald
Timorese call for action on 'collaborator'
September 18, 2008
Pressure is growing for Australia to investigate a Timorese visitor who
is accused of being a war criminal, reports Connie Levett.
JOSE BELO identified the face in the picture as Guy Campos, claiming the
East Timorese man was present when he was interrogated and tortured by
the Indonesian Special Forces on the night of January 9, 1995.
"I was very badly tortured by Kopassus soldiers while Mr Guy Campos with
two other Timorese who worked as the Indonesian Intelijen [spies] were
present in the room," Mr Belo recalls.
The photograph was taken on a western Sydney street, where Mr Campos was
holidaying after coming to Australia on a World Youth Day visa. Some
members of the Australian East Timorese community are asking how he
could freely enter Australia.
Mr Campos refused, through his brother Fernando Campos, who lives in
western Sydney, to answer questions from the Herald. "Find out for
yourself," Mr Fernando Campos said. "As far as I know he never worked
for an [intelligence] agency."
Clinton Fernandes, the principal analyst, East Timor, for Australia's
intelligence corps in 1998-99, said he was "100 per cent" certain the
man photographed in Sydney is the same Guy Alberto Francisco Campos who
was a key collaborator with the Indonesian military during its
occupation.
"[Campos] was not a low-level beater; he, along with Jose Gregorio
Trindade de Melo, ran a spy network for Indonesia, in conjunction with
them," Dr Fernandes said. "He would have come within the upper echelons
of collaborators."
His role was to identify East Timorese for interrogation and torture by
the Indonesian military, and he participated in their "disappearances",
said Dr Fernandes, who became aware of Mr Campos' activities in 1994.
The Immigration Department has defended its decision to issue a visa,
saying it was not aware of Mr Campos being wanted for charges or
convicted of war crimes or crimes against humanity.
"We were aware of this individual and went through comprehensive
screening. In the absence of any charges he was granted a visa," a
department spokesman said. The department has referred the allegations
to the Australian Federal Police.
Dr Fernandes said he presented a brief to the AFP before the Olympics
detailing Mr Guy Campos's role in Indonesia's Satuan Tugas Intelijen
(the intelligence task force/implementing body).
Jose Teixeira, an East Timorese politician with connections to the
former resistance, said there was a simple reason Mr Campos did not
appear on an international watch list. "There have never been formal
investigations or judicial inquiries or any similar process in
Timor-Leste with respect to crimes committed during the Indonesian
occupation for the period 1975 to 1999. The United Nations established a
serious crime court but that only dealt with the crimes of 1999."
Mr Teixeira called for Mr Campos to be prosecuted in Australia for his
alleged part in the torture of resistance fighters, saying "[Among]
former resistance leaders, especially of our clandestine network, his
exploits as a collaborator with the Indonesian military/intelligence
repressive apparatus are openly told and [he is] cited as being a person
whom all feared from reputation."
Mr Teixeira said former East Timorese political prisoners had called for
Mr Campos's arrest in Australia. "We have to respect the calls of these
people who were victims of atrocities and are thirsting for justice. I
support them in their calls."
The claims against Mr Guy Campos's involvement in acts of torture and
coercion were first made on Channel Seven's Today Tonight program. Mr
Teixeira asked Australian authorities to consider the prosecution,
"given the current underdeveloped state of our prosecutorial services,
and the case overload, all concerned would be more speedily served by
justice in a jurisdiction such as Australia".
Dr Ben Saul, the head of Sydney University's centre of international and
global law, said Australia, as a party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions,
had a duty to search for, investigate, prosecute and extradite any
suspected war criminal found in the jurisdiction.
"If there is someone here with credible allegations it certainly
triggers an obligation for Australia to investigate the allegations and
decide whether to prosecute or extradite."
He said the convention was open as to whether a country should prosecute
or extradite someone accused of breaching the conventions.
Mr Belo was a student leader in 1995 when he was detained. Today he is a
journalist in Dili. "I am ready to talk because I am looking for
justice. I want to know what happened to my friends they just killed
during the occupation. Maybe Mr Guy Campos can help find out ? Justice
for me is the truth. I want to know what happened, when, why they did it
to me."
---
When war criminals hide out in the open
By Piers Akerman
September 16, 2008 12:00am
THE Rudd Labor Government has dudded its constituency on almost every
domestic issue and is now turning its back on core principles of
humanity.
Four years ago, Labor MPs Nicola Roxon and Tanya Plibersek bared
their concerns for the victims of war crimes living in Australia in an
interview with the 7.30 Report and expressed the hope those
victims would never have to worry about being confronted by their
torturers in the streets of their adopted nation.
According to Roxon, now Rudd's Health Minister: "This is a very
important issue of principle, it's an issue about bringing people to
justice if they have committed terrible crimes, and we're talking about
some of the most horrific sorts of events that probably you and I or
your listeners can't even conceive of. I don't want people who are
fleeing from those sorts of circumstances overseas and trying to make a
new life here in Australia to find that they are going to run into at
the shops someone who was actually perpetrating that violence against
them."
And Plibersek, now Minister for the Status of Women added: "There are
survivors of torture and abduction and many people who have lost family
members in countries around the world who live in Australia and who can
point to people in their own community whom they accuse of committing
these crimes."
All well and good, but Joanna Ximenes, an East Timorese woman living in
Sydney, says she has identified the man who she believes was responsible
for the death of her brother, and the Rudd Government seems reluctant to
treat the matter seriously.
Channel 7's Today Tonight reporter James Thomas last week aired
two segments about an East Timorese man, Guy Campos, who Ximenes accuses
of contributing to the beating death of a young boy in 1979 and another
woman, Odetty Moniz Alves-Platt, accuses of assisting Indonesian
soldiers in seizing her father in 1979 and placing him aboard an
Indonesian military helicopter, never to be seen again.
Thomas' files contain further accounts from others who claim that Campos
collaborated as a spy with the Indonesian special forces and
participated in a number of acts of torture.
Naldo Rei, author of Resistance: A Childhood Fighting for East Timor,
identified Campos as one of a number of intelligence officers who beat
him with an iron rod until he was unconscious. Jose Belo, another East
Timorese, says Campos was among the collaborators who tortured him with
electric shocks, kicking and beating in 1995.
But it would seem that is insufficient for Home Affairs Minister, Bob
Debus, to take an interest and not good enough for the Australian
Federal Police, who seem to be dragging their feet even though Campos is
in Australia on a 90-day pilgrim's visa issued in connection with World
Youth Day and is scheduled to leave the country next month.
East Timorese MP Jose Teixeira, the former minister for the East
Timorese sea negotiation, told me he believes Campos should be held in
Australia under Australia's war crimes legislation, which, he says, was
intended to ensure such accountability.
"One of Australia's citizens is seeking to hold such a person
accountable for his actions. It is fair and reasonable to take the view
that, at this stage, Timor-Leste's justice system would not dispense
justice to either the alleged victim's family or the potential accused,"
he said.
"The prosecutorial arm is notoriously slow and inefficient in bringing
matters before the courts in a timely manner. Similarly, even the United
Nations has reported that the office of the Prosecutor General is
extremely susceptible to political interference. Though it is matter for
the Australian justice system, it is with utmost certainty that I can
say, on the balance of convenience, this matter, left to the Timorese
justice system, would be extremely unlikely to be dealt with in a timely
and just manner for all."
The MP is not alone in this view.
Dr Clinton Fernandes, a former major in the Australian army and the
former principal intelligence analyst on East Timor for the Australian
Defence Force, now the senior lecturer in strategic studies at
University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy, told me: "I
am certain he (Campos) participated in and supervised the administering
of beatings with iron rods, torture through electric shocks, and by
placing the leg of a table on someone's foot, and jumping on it, in
violation of the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture."
Government sources say action against Campos was not initiated on his
arrival here because the Immigration Department relies on material
prepared by International Criminal Tribunals, the International Court of
Justice and the UN. However, the East Timor conflict has never been
brought before an international criminal tribunal, or the ICJ or an
enquiry by the UN, and its 2006 commission of inquiry was not into war
crimes but the conflict which led to the fall of the last government.
The argument is specious and leaves one with the conclusion that Rudd
Labor talked the talk on pursuing war criminals while in Opposition, but
is not prepared to walk the walk in Government.
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