All peoples are united by common bonds . . . this delicate mosaic may be shattered at any time (Preamble to the statute for the International Criminal Court, June 1998).
Part of East Timor's reconstruction will be the judicial pursuit of those responsible for the pogrom of an estimated 7,000 people in the wake of the brave and clearcut vote for independence on August 30th.
Moves towards establishing a war crimes tribunal for East Timor have already been made. UN investigators are reported to have started amassing evidence on, and planning interviews with, soldiers suspected of having organised the militia death squads, such as Maj Gen Zacky Anwar Makarim. Australian lawyers are setting up an extensive database of evidence. So the prospect of another special tribunal, along the lines of those now functioning on the massacres in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, is strong.
Yet the process of setting up a permanent tribunal, or International Criminal Court, seems to have gone to the bottom of the world's priority list. The statute establishing such a permanent court was first suggested at the time of the foundation of the United Nations and the convention on genocide, shortly after the second World War.
It was finally agreed only last year, after a bitter five-week conference in Rome. But just four of the required 60 ratifications have taken place. Ireland is not one of them. Those who have had the courage of their convictions are Senegal, Trinidad and Tobago, Italy and San Marino.
Setting up the East Timor tribunal will take time, sensitivity and money. If the International Criminal Court agreed last June was already in existence, the whole process would be streamlined, especially as in this case UN personnel were in situ to bear witness to the terrible events which occurred after August 30th.
This year has featured many examples of the need for an ICC. Pinochet, Milosevic, Makarim - the names in the headlines deemed responsible for slaughter in Chile, in Yugoslavia, in Timor, would be appropriate defendants against charges of genocide.
The key word, and the key problem, is international. To what extent do states have the right to poke their noses into their neighbours' affairs? One might argue that when the scale of a state's internal misdeeds are such that neighbouring countries have to suffer dire consequences, then those countries have rights in the matter. Macedonia and Albania being flooded with Kosovo refugees, for example, or Australian soldiers having to risk their lives to restrain the Indonesian militia's murderous campaign, would qualify, - even when they are not directly involved in the quarrel. The ICC is one issue which Ireland, with its history of humanitarian and peace-oriented initiatives at the United Nations, would seem ideally placed to press. Yet there appears to have been little enthusiasm so far.
Mr Niall Andrews MEP has been agitating for action. He says he has written to the European Commission president, Mr Romano Prodi, to urge concerted action before the EU summit in Finland on October 15th.
The Department of Foreign Affairs says appearances are misleading, and ratification for Ireland is a complicated process involving the Departments of Justice and Defence and the Attorney General. "But we are actively working on it, and it is a priority," a departmental spokesman said.
Fresh from the horrors of Kosovo, we in the so-called civilised societies have been watching, yet again, the wicked and totally unjustified slaughter and dispossession of the East Timorese. For such evil to flourish, all that is needed is for us to do nothing. Setting up the ICC would be one small but important step towards restraining the actions of future power-crazed militias.