An initiative of the Australian Jesuits to provide both material and an index on social issues from a Christian perspective, on the internet in Australia.
Timor Links has been provided during the crisis in East Timor to provide key links to organisations, especially Christian based ones, who can provide current information or who are trying to bring peace to the territory.
This page offers a quicker strategy than the one proposed by Mary Robinson to deal with the systematic abuse of human rights in East Timor.
To East Timorese Networks
Indonesia, having signed the Convention Against Torture, ratified it on 28 October 1998. Indonesia must now report regularly to the UN Committee set up under the Convention. Pursuant to Article 20:
If the Committee receives reliable information which appears to it to contain well-founded indications that torture is being systematically practised in the territory of a State Party, the Committee shall invite that State Party to co-operate in the examination of the information and to this end to submit observations with regard to the information concerned.
Torture is broadly defined in Article 1 as:
For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Best wishes
Frank Brennan SJ
Director, "Uniya" Social Justice Centre
Back to the Timor crisis page.
Page last edited Monday 13 Sep 1999
The Cardoner, © Copyright 1999 by Jack Otto.
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