Mass graves were discovered in East Timor from a violent, bloody war among Jakarta’s security forces in Indonesia. Australian forensics are currently working to identify 270-400 people. According to an Australian newspaper, The Herald Sun, in Nov. 1991, Indonesian troops fired on peaceful activists at the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili after students protested in a pro-independence rally.

“Indonesia has a lot of violation and torture. The military and police maintain a prominent role in the nation’s political and social affairs, and their powers cause serious human violation,” said George Guo, associate professor of political science and East Asian studies.

According to The Herald Sun, the massacre pushed East Timor to vote for independence in 1999, but the pro-Jakarta military continued the violence.

The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine is investigating the remains, and they hope to give closure to the victims’ families.

“There are many families who don’t know the fate of their missing loved ones. There is emotion, there is anger still there, and there is frustration,” said Soren Blau, who is from the Victorian Institute of Forensics Medicine, to The Herald Sun.

The forensics hope to give the bodies back to the families once they are identified.

“The ultimate goal is to try to give the victims back to the families. They look at the state of the bones and look for identifying injuries and take photos of the victims,” said Bryan Brendley, assistant professor of biology. “The bones will be there for a long time, up to 50 years. The breakdown of the clothes depends on the fabric; it could be one-half to 36 months depending on how wet and humid the environment was.”

The forensics team includes a forensic dentist, a translator and two Argentine forensic anthropologists. According to The Herald Sun, the anthropologists are world leaders in investigating mass graves.

The time period in which it will take to identify the bodies is still unknown.

“Unfortunately with graves that size, there is not a magic answer. It is not easy to pull out a skull and figure out whose it is just by looking at the remains,” Brendley said. “Occasionally the remains with clothing would be laid out and looked at by families who have lost loved ones. The anthropologists try to come up with a profile of the person’s sex, age, stature and ancestry.”

According to Brendly, it could take at least three to six months to identify the bodies.

“It depends on who is able to work on processing the grave full-time,” Brendley said.

East Timor and Australian aid officials are backing up the excavation project.

The United States ended military ties with Indonesia when the forensic team identified one site that held bodies from a massacre, causing the United Nations to disapprove.

According to The Herald Sun, the search was humanitarian and did not expect to discover human rights crimes against former or current members of the Indonesian military.

“There is no remit to anything in terms of prosecution. Our role as forensics scientists will be to collect all evidence, but how that evidence is used in the future is up to the government of East Timor,” Blau said to The Herald Sun.

East Timor was ruled by Indonesia for 24 years before the 1991 vote and won full independence in 2002. No Indonesian militia has been jailed for human rights crime in the former territory.

“The prospects for promoting human rights within Indonesia have advanced recently,” Guo said. “But the government has failed to take concrete steps to enact laws and create institutions or set up procedures to protect human rights and put the military under check. A number of initiatives to bring the military under civilian control remain stalled.”

According to The Herald Sun, witnesses in East Timor saw bodies taken away in Santa Cruz military trucks, and the wounded disappeared from hospitals.

Tim Wallis, who is a candidate for the peace studies department, said all countries agreed that an international court (ICC) would prosecute anyone from any country for genocide or killing civilians.

“People don’t want to get caught. During war time there is very little that can be done about it,” Wallis said, “but thanks to the International Criminal Court, no one is safe from prosecution for war crimes or acts of genocide. Anybody can be taken to the international court. If they do not want to get caught and be taken to court, they are going to try even harder to hide the existence of mass graves and any other evidence that may be used against them.”

The forensics team hoped to start excavating on Feb. 24, but may be delayed, due to two attempts to assassinate East Timor’s president and prime minister.