wfn.org | Bodies Pile Up in East Timor On Eve of Independence Balloting

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

30-August-1999 
99286 
 
    Bodies Pile Up in East Timor 
    On Eve of Independence Balloting 
 
    by John Filiatreau 
 
DILI, East Timor - Friday was a relatively peaceful day in East Timor's 
capital. Three-quarters of the shops downtown were shuttered, and traffic 
was light. Schools were closed because many teachers, fearing violence, had 
flown away to Java. A scheduled rally of pro-independence activists on 
this, the last day for campaigning, was canceled by consensus after the 
grave events of Thursday, when anti-independence militias and/or Indonesian 
military killed four people. 
 
    That raised the death toll to about 200,004, roughly one third of East 
Timor's population - in the past 25 years. 
 
    In the past 500-years, East Timor, a small, impoverished island 
country, has been brutally subjugated in turn by Portuguese, Japanese and 
Indonesian conquerors. Some of its natives refer to their homeland as "the 
place of the dead." 
 
    On Friday nobody was reported killed, but eight people were injured - 
two shot, four slashed by machete-wielding thugs, and two beaten while 
trying to run away from the mayhem. 
 
    And reports arriving from the districts told of a typical daily 
complement of houses torched by pro-Indonesian "militias" - armed thugs 
paid and controlled by the Indonesian military, who appear at the homes of 
pro-independence "supporters," chase the residents away and burn the houses 
down. (Reports of these incidents dribble in daily, of houses burned in 
Maliana, in Maubisse, in Liquica. The population of Timorese IDPs - 
internally displaced persons - already in the tens of thousands, inches 
ever higher.) 
 
    The occasion for the violence - a referendum in which the people of 
East Timor will choose either to remain a part of Indonesia or to become an 
independent nation - was just three days away, and many people in Dili and 
in scattered villages in the sun-scorched countryside feared the worst. 
 
    For the popular consultation, as the referendum process is termed, 
contending parties campaign on alternate days, for safety's sake. On 
Wednesday, a pro independence day, an estimated 15,000 people gathered near 
Dili harbor for a celebration of the free East Timor that they have 
envisioned at least since the mid 1970s, when Portugal left its longtime 
colony and Indonesia's army promptly marched in and seized it. 
 
    The Wednesday rally included a joyful procession of trucks and other 
utilitarian vehicles (anti-independence forces reportedly had used some of 
their Indonesian largesse to engage virtually all available taxis and 
buses), their shock absorbers bottomed out under the overflow loads of 
laughing and singing Timorese. It was a boisterous crowd, young and old, 
male and female, clearly confident of victory, whole families on hand to 
witness the birth of a nation. Hundreds of beaming children took part. 
There was no violence, but one top-heavy truck overturned, killing two 
riders. 
 
    Many in the Wednesday crowd wore T-shirts and waved posters bearing 
photographs of Jose Alexandre Gusmao, known as Xanana, a legendary former 
leader of Falintil, the pro-independence guerrilla army. Gusmao, recently 
released from prison but still under house arrest in Jakarta, is considered 
the front-runner to become the first president of a free East Timor. In 
past years, anyone who dared to display his image risked arrest and 
torture, if not death; that his visage was so much in evidence during this 
rally is a measure of the pro-independence group's confidence. 
 
    Thursday's rally for those who favor Timorese "autonomy" under 
Indonesian rule involved far fewer people - most onlookers felt that 
Australian TV's estimate of 12,000 was extremely generous - and took place 
in a decidedly different atmosphere. Most of the "autonomi" activists 
seemed glum or angry (it was widely reported that pro-autonomy leaders 
recruited some participants with gifts of money, hats and T-shirts, and 
some with threats of violence); most hands raised in salute were drawn into 
fists; and most groups of participants exuded aggression and menace. Very 
few women and children joined in. While security forces had been all but 
absent during the previous day's rally, the anti-independence procession 
included numerous police vehicles full of solemn-looking officers in riot 
gear brandishing U.S.-provided M-16 rifles. 
 
    By mid-morning, reporters gathered at the Hotel Tourismo on the 
waterfront were trading rumors and reports of violence: Pro- and 
anti-independence forces had squared off downtown, the pro- crowd unarmed, 
the anti- group firing weapons, while the Indonesian policemen who are 
supposed to keep the peace did nothing to disarm the militiamen or to keep 
the groups apart; a photographer was shot in the leg, apparently by a 
militiaman armed with a (notoriously inaccurate) homemade pistol; a group 
of reporters was assaulted after being surrounded by a crowd chanting, 
"Kill them all! Kill them all! Australian journalists!"; a rampaging 
militia burned three houses and severely beat a 60-year-old woman trying to 
flee; a militiaman with a cane knife slashed the corpse of one of the 
victims. One man, wounded and bleeding profusely, was brought to the 
regional office of UNAMET - the United Nations Assistance Mission for East 
Timor - medics tried to save him but he died minutes later. In addition to 
the four who were killed on Thursday, six were injured, requiring treatment 
at a Dili clinic. 
 
    One group of militia fighters marched - provocatively, and in plain 
violation of election law - to downtown headquarters of the CNRT (the 
Conselho Nationale de Resistaoia Timorese, Portuguse for National 
Resistance Council of East Timor, the umbrella group for pro-independence 
organizations), and tried to strike the CNRT flag. After beating up some 
CNRT supporters who resisted, they attacked the building, breaking windows 
and doing other minor damage. 
 
    Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, the wildly popular of the East 
Timorese Roman Catholic Church, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 
1996 for his efforts to end the violence in his homeland, commented on 
Thursday that the anti-independence militias were effectively in control of 
Dili at that moment, and that he therefore didn't see how a fair and free 
referendum would be possible. 
 
    After Thursday's violence, statements harshly critical of Indonesia for 
its failure to maintain order in East Timor were issued by spokesmen for 
the United Nations, the United States and Australia. On Friday, Australian 
officials in Dili said they had reached agreements with Great Britain, New 
Zealand and the United States that if evacuation were to become necessary, 
Australia would act to remove their citizens to safety. 
 
    It is virtually impossible now to buy tickets for commercial flights to 
and from East Timor. Scores of houses stand empty in Dili; whole 
neighborhoods have been abandoned by people fearing violence before or 
after Monday's vote. Perhaps as many as 50,000 East Timorese have left 
their homes in recent weeks and crossed the border to the safety of West 
Timor, a former Dutch colony now part of Indonesia. 
 
    Jakarta military officials have helped create a state of fear by 
predicting that, if the pro-independence side is victorious, a civil war is 
"inevitable." 
 
    Twenty-thousand Indonesian police officers have been deployed to keep 
the peace in East Timor, a mountainous land about the size of Maryland. 
 
    The election is being conducted under the auspices of UNAMET, which has 
assigned its own force of about 1,000 supplemented by another 1,400 
volunteer election "observers" from around the world, to polling places in 
13 voting districts to see that the election is managed fairly and that 
voters are free to choose the option they really prefer. 
 
    The more than 30 observer organizations accredited by UNAMET for 
Monday's "Popular Consultation" included the Independent Committee for 
Monitoring Balloting (740 observers); the Commission of Disappeared and 
Tortured Peoples (217); the International Federation for East Timor (168); 
the Indonesian Rectors' Forum (73); the Carter Center (23); and the Asia 
Pacific Center for Justice and Peace (14). A group of 200 Indonesians 
volunteered last week to serve as observers, but was refused accreditation 
because it was not affiliated with a known pre-government organization. 
Indonesia and Portugal also are sending 50-member contingents of "official" 
observers. The European Union is sending representatives and a number of 
governments are sending parliamentary delegations. 
 
    Armed militias in many districts, especially those in isolated rural 
areas, reportedly have threatened to kill villagers who vote against 
continued Indonesian rule. Nonetheless, most Indonesian and Timorese 
analysts seem to believe the national sentiment is strongly in favor of 
independence, and the vote will go that way despite the violence and 
intimidation. 
 
    Saturday and Sunday are designated "quiet days" in advance of Monday's 
vote. No further campaign activities are permitted. Despite the violence, 
the vote is scheduled to go ahead on Monday, the 30th. 

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