CAT/C/TLS/CO/1
While appreciating the challenging context in which the State party’s efforts to date
have taken place, the Committee recalls that the prohibition against torture is nonderogable and that the State party’s obligations under the Convention require it to
take further action to prevent impunity for perpetrators and ensure redress for the
many victims of torture residing in the State party. The Committee calls upon the
State party to:
(a)
Ensure the wide public dissemination and full and effective
implementation of the recommendations of the Commission for Reception, Truth and
Reconciliation and the Commission of Truth and Friendship regarding victims’ rights
to justice, truth and reparation;
(b)
Take effective measures to allow the special panels for serious crimes to
be reconvened and for prosecutions involving allegations of crimes of torture,
including sexual violence, and enforced disappearance, to resume;
(c)
Seek cooperation with the Indonesian authorities in extraditing persons
for whom the special panels for serious crimes issued arrest warrants for crimes
including torture, and enhance efforts to ensure criminal accountability for
perpetrators of crimes committed in the past, and particularly for those with the
greatest responsibility for their commission;
(d)
Consider including the database on victims, alleged perpetrators and
witnesses compiled by the United Nations Serious Crimes Investigation Team and
given to the national authorities in 2013 in a publicly accessible national archive;
(e)
Ensure the expeditious redrafting of proposed legislation to provide
redress for all victims of past human rights violations, as recommended by the Chega!
National Centre, and ensure that all victims of torture and ill-treatment, including
sexual violence, obtain redress, including compensation and the means for as full
rehabilitation as possible.
Enforced disappearance
10.
The Committee is concerned that little progress has been made regarding the
investigation of many alleged cases of enforced disappearance that occurred in the State
party during the period 1975–1999. It also notes with concern that the State party has not
yet established a commission on enforced disappearance tasked with gathering data about
all disappearances perpetrated throughout this period and with identifying the whereabouts
of the estimated 4,500 children from Timor-Leste who were forcibly taken to Indonesia
during the occupation, as recommended by the bilateral Commission of Truth and
Friendship (arts. 2, 12–14 and 16).
11.
The Committee urges the State party to redouble its efforts to determine the
fate and whereabouts of all the individuals reported missing between 1975 and 1999.
In particular, the State party should:
(a)
Take appropriate measures to ensure effective and impartial
investigations into all outstanding cases of alleged enforced disappearance; to ensure,
if possible, the prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators; and to provide
compensation to the families of the victims;
(b)
Undertake renewed efforts to clarify, in cooperation with Indonesia, the
whereabouts of the missing, ensure criminal accountability for perpetrators and
facilitate the return of the remains of the deceased. In particular, the State party
should establish a commission on enforced disappearance as a matter of urgency, and
ensure that the commission is empowered to establish a database and collect data on
disappearance, disaggregated by gender, age, geographical region, type, location of
disappearance and, where available, on the date and place of exhumation, to identify
the whereabouts of children forcibly taken from Timor-Leste to Indonesia, and to
undertake further inquiries regarding unresolved disappearances that occurred prior
to 1999;
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