Kiwi helps get Timor's police back on beat

Athol Soper

East Timor's Police Academy sits on the western edge of Dili, close to some of the worst rioting and looting in the tiny nation's capital in the past three weeks.

Inside, heavily protected, are members of what used to be the Policia Nationale de Timor Leste (PNTL). The streets outside are far too deadly for them: 10 were killed and 25 injured when the Army opened fire on a column of men surrendering under United Nations protection.

Within the force itself, factions and rivalries tore the PNTL apart as law and order disintegrated. A volatile brew of former senior officers drawn from the pre-independence Indonesian police force, disgruntled former guerillas and the barely-trained were set loose with frightening firepower.

Now, looking beyond the violence that still rages in Dili, Jakarta-based New Zealand Police Superintendent Athol Soper sees a huge task ahead in putting police back on the beat.

"To regain the confidence of the PNTL is going to take a considerable time," he says. "Their people have been, for want of a better word, murdered. They are absolutely traumatised by the fact that their own people have attacked them. Those things won't go away quickly."

Soper was in Dili during the most intense recent violence, working with a handful of New Zealand troops to rescue Kiwis in trouble and to secure the New Zealand Embassy. A veteran of other hotspots in the Pacific and Asia, he is leading a New Zealand Police team that will spend two weeks in East Timor assessing the best form of aid Wellington can provide to help rebuild the PNTL.

Australia has also sent 45 Federal Police officers and an assessment team to work out future aid and advise frustrated troops on how to deal with gangs that roam, attack and destroy almost at will.

Portugal has sent about 150 paramilitary troops, members of the Republican National Guard with a reputation for tough and harsh action, who will be operating outside the command of the Australian military commander, Brigadier Mick Slater.

Somehow, once Australian, New Zealand and Malaysian soldiers have restored order, the PNTL needs to be put back on the streets. It will not be easy.

President Xanana Gusmao has already recognised that East Timor will need to start from scratch - again.

An entirely different system will be needed to the UN's creation of the PNTL - the first time it has had to create an entirely new police force from ground up.

Bad mistakes were made: the 32 countries involved each had their own doctrines and methods, with no uniform national standard; former Timorese members of the hated Indonesian police force, Polri, often inexperienced in anything but brutality and junior in rank, were drafted in and given senior posts; there were former Falantil guerilla soldiers, angry that they were excluded from the new Army, but subject to jealousy from those who missed out on both; poor training of just three months for new recruits, effectively shortened by the need for interpreters.

Armed with weapons including assault rifles and machine guns, and sworn to uphold a mishmash of UN, Portuguese and Indonesian law, the PNTL also clashed with the Army over their roles and lost the people's trust.

The US State Department's latest human rights report criticised abuses by the police. In April, Human Rights Watch listed complaints including excessive force, and torture and ill-treatment of detainees.

For Soper, this points to a key need for both immediate issues of law and order and for the new police force that will eventually emerge.

"I want to make sure that amongst all this activity that's going on that people don't forget there are victims involved here," he says. "When I look around, even the mobs who are carrying out the violence at the moment are actually victims as well, because for a whole lot of reasons they haven't had opportunities."

He says East Timor has lived through a decade of violence, and any new intervention by foreign police had to be sympathetic and avoid adding further trauma.

"We don't want to do anything at this stage, where we're trying to gain control, that ruins our credibility in the medium- and long term to help the Timorese people make a change," he says. "The credibility of the people who are on the ground now is hugely important as to how things are going to develop."

Brigadier Slater has already said the Army needs police to help restore order: "We're not about kicking arse. It's about getting criminals off the streets and police do that better than soldiers."

Soper believes everything has to be done through the Timorese people, with community policing vital.

"The people here will know the answers to the problems, but nobody's asked them yet. They need to be involved in the process."

He also wants to see a significant number of female police: "In my view, the people who are the victims most here are women and children, so I've got a strong passion that part of any intervention here should involve women staff."

And Soper believes that while the military is able to provide protection, police should walk the beat without guns.

"Because of all the trauma here, the gun has been the ruler," he says. "Using a New Zealand example, a smile and a wave and a conversation is usually a whole lot better, if it can be done that way, to resolve some conflicts.

"There will always be a need for firm policing, but in my view less lethal options [than firearms] would be the preferred course here when the situation is stabilised."

Another key to building a new PNTL would be a single set of training and operating procedures.

From experience in Bougainville, Banda Aceh in Indonesia and other Pacific troublespots, Soper believes it will be necessary to set up a unified and consistent approach to rebuilding the police. It does not matter how many countries are involved, he says, as long as they agree on a single curriculum, a single course of action and one method of operation.

Justice and retribution for the present troubles will also be critical to the acceptance of a rebuilt PNTL.

Soper would not comment on the failure to prosecute most of those involved in the carnage of the 1999 independence vote.

But he says action from the present upheaval would help rebuild trust, with emphasis on the two worst incidents - the killing of unarmed policemen by soldiers, and the murder and burning of a mother and five children. Soper took pictures of the family's deaths.

They will become part of an investigation of both incidents by the Australian Federal Police, which will include evidence by UN military adviser Major Ian Martyn, a New Zealander who narrowly escaped death in the police massacre.

A proper investigation, says Soper, "will provide excellent confidence for the people that these things will be not forgotten and they will think that normality is returning."

But he warned: "Be aware that a decade of violence may take more than a decade or two to bring about some realistic change."