---------------------------------------------------------- FREE for JOIN Indonesia Daily News Online via EMAIL: go to: http://www.indo-news.com/subscribe.html - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - Please Visit Our Sponsor http://www.indo-news.com/cgi-bin/ads1 ---------------------------------------------------------- Times [London] September 5 1999 FOCUS Terror follows Timor freedom vote - UN local staff are besieged with death threats - Evidence of complicity between security forces and the militias they are supposed to be keeping in check. By Marie Colvin Dili THE streets of East Timor belonged to the militias yesterday. Within hours of the announcement that its people had voted overwhelmingly for independence, edgy young men hostile to the outcome and armed with machetes and guns ringed Dili, the capital, with roadblocks and swerved through the streets packed into lorries. Gunfire sounded throughout the city. The militias appeared to have seized control of the main towns to the west, perhaps in an attempt to force a revision of the border that would deny the newly independent country the territory closest to the Indonesian half of the island of Timor. There was little celebration of the vote that gave East Timorese their first glimpse of freedom after 24 years of brutal occupation by Indonesia. Throughout the night and in the hours after dawn yesterday, families fled to the Roman Catholic monasteries and convents of the capital or took their children to the hills. "The militias lost but they are still the kings," said Hollandina Cairo, a middle-aged restaurateur who, with her son, brother and his 10 children, was among 1,000 people crammed into the religious compound of Bishop Carlos Zimenes Belo, the 1997 Nobel peace prize winner. There was no sign of peace at his church yesterday. Women and children sheltered from a baking sun under trees and worried that they had no food or water for the young and elderly. Most had fled with only the clothes on their backs. The scene at the nearby St Yoannes convent was even worse: 700 people, mostly women and children, were crammed into a small single-storey building. The front garden remained empty because it could be seen from the street. There were private moments of joy. At the announcement that the vote had been 78.5% in favour of independence, people hugged each other and raised fists in the air, but few ventured outside. The only ones moving about the tree-lined avenues were militiamen or families burdened with bags and boxes, taking a chance to head for the port to buy or beg their way on board a ship. When I tried to drive into the Becora neighbourhood in eastern Dili - an independence movement stronghold where smoke hung over houses set on fire by the Aitarek (Thorn) militia - a shot rang out from what seemed to be a checkpoint set up by a dozen young men. The driver of my ageing, rattling blue taxi stopped and a brief standoff ensued. Then a boy in a baggy yellow T-shirt and bandanna aimed his automatic weapon at the vehicle and let loose two bursts of fire. He continued firing as the driver reversed at speed. Fear of the militias is compounded by the fact that they are virtually unrestrained by the police or military, who, since the fall of President Suharto last year, have armed and organised them to do their dirty work. Throughout the city there was evidence of the complicity between these forces and the militias they are supposed to be keeping in check. At the port, a lorry with 15 militiamen pulled up so that they could chat to the police. At a Portuguese observers' compound, which was besieged for two hours by gunmen despite its diplomatic status, one of the supposed police protectors gave a militiaman the keys to a Portuguese Land Rover and calmly watched him drive off. The unarmed United Nations force, which had been sent to supervise the referendum but had been left to rely on Indonesia for security, was taking a battering. Since Monday's vote, four local UN employees have been killed and six have disappeared. On Friday the UN withdrew its people from the western city of Maliana, only to hear reports of a militia rampage that night. "There has certainly been a lot of killing in Maliana," was all one laconic UN man would say. Yesterday it pulled its unarmed police out of the western towns of Suai, Lospalos, Same and Ainaro, where a UN house was burnt. An American member of the UN force, a civilian police adviser, was shot in the stomach as he drove in convoy through the town of Liquica. He was flown to hospital in Darwin, Australia. The actions of the Indonesian forces have given the lie to statements from Jakarta, where President B J Habibie said: "I instruct all police and military to take firm action against all parties engaged in violence." He insisted that the Indonesian government accepted the vote for independence, but there was no sign of that in East Timor, where many fear civil war. Indonesia remains responsible for security until its People's Consultative Assembly ratifies the result of the referendum. That is unlikely to be until November, after which a transitional authority will be set up under the UN. Congratulations rang in from around the world, but there was a note of desperation in the statements of East Timor's leaders. Xanana Gusmao, the bearded leader of the resistance movement, who is under house arrest in Jakarta but is due to be released this week, appealed for an international force to move in to prevent "genocide". The tragedy of East Timor appeared to be drawing to a climax in the same bloody, brutal way that it began nearly a quarter of a century ago, since when 200,000 have died. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, used fine words to praise the Timorese for their pluck when he announced the result, but all the verbal ammunition expended over the past few weeks has failed to achieve what a force of well-trained soldiers could have ensured at short order. The United States took the lead in ruling out the dispatch of a UN peacekeeping force, rejecting calls led by Canada and the Netherlands for intervention. Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, favoured increasing pressure on Jakarta to restore security. Talks were under way to see if a "coalition of the willing", with Australia and New Zealand at its operational core, can be assembled. Several thousand Australian troops are on standby in Darwin. The UN's intelligence officers have information that the militias plan to split off areas of the emerging nation. According to diplomatic sources, some factions in the Indonesian military want to see the new East Timor stillborn, wrecked by fratricidal conflict, its economy shattered and its land divided. Yesterday the militia leaders were summoned to Jakarta to hear the orders of the man who may just be able to pull East Timor back from the brink of disaster if he deems it in Indonesia's interests. General Wiranto is the key figure in Indonesia's painful transformation from the Suharto dictatorship to a vast, turbulent democracy of 200m souls that is straining at the seams. The stakes are high: grand strategy apart, western businesses have huge interests in Indonesia's economy and British firms were the largest direct investors last year. Wiranto, an American-trained officer, is in constant touch with US military and intelligence contacts and other western missions whose countries have armed and trained Indonesia's thinly stretched forces. Jose Ramos Horta, East Timor's other Nobel peace prize winner, derided Tony Blair as "the most cynical leader in Europe" for allowing an invitation to be issued to Indonesian military officers to visit an arms sales exhibition in Britain next month. The officers "have Timorese blood on their hands", he said. The West's solution is Wiranto, who was expected to travel to East Timor today. He is under enormous international pressure to deliver on his government's promises of law and order and a managed transition for the Timorese. >From President Bill Clinton down, world leaders have privately told the Indonesians to live up to their word or face the loss of vital financial aid to an economy already crippled by Asia's financial crisis. But it may not be as simple as that. The Indonesian army is a labyrinth of factions over which Wiranto may not have full control. For months the militias' tactics have served Indonesia's broader purpose; now, the game lost, their usefulness is clearly over. The problem is that they will not see it like that. Thousands of Timorese people have been forced to flee Dili as the militias have stepped up sweeping operations against the East Timor resistance. Everywhere UN local staff are besieged with death threats. The Timorese who bravely helped the UN to run the electoral mission are being rewarded with stabbings and bullets. Ian Martin, the Briton who heads the UN mission, said: "The UN cannot provide protection to the people or local staff." Police Inspector Michael Holdsworth, from Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, admits that "things are getting worse and the Indonesian police can't handle the situation". He should know: he has become the UN chief of operations for the 270 unarmed international police officers. The murky world of the militias is a mixture of gangland culture and covert counter- insurgency, bonded by initiation ceremonies at which blood is said to be drunk. The sinister figure of former General Prabowo Subianto, Suharto's ambitious son-in-law, played an important part in bringing the extremist movements into being. Although Prabowo fell from influence when the old man was toppled last year, his legacy lives on among Indonesian officers who made Timor a profitable playground. Nearly all the known militia leaders are Timorese who, over many years, have worked for the Indonesian military and intelligence agencies. Joao Da Silva Tavares, known as the war commander and supreme leader, collaborated in the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975. Tavares has been well rewarded for his services and now owns houses in Jakarta, Dili and two safe towns in Indonesian-controlled West Timor. Then there is Enrico Guterres, deputy commander of the militias, who controls the Aitarak group in Dili. He was a small-time hoodlum who ran a gambling racket at an inter-city bus terminal. One day, however, Prabowo picked him up out of the gutter and gave him a career opportunity in counter- insurgency against the Timorese resistance movement. The Indonesian military and their militias have decisively lost the political campaign to keep East Timor wedded to the Republic of Indonesia. Basilio Araujo, a spokesman for the United Front for East Timor Autonomy, which includes the pro-Jakarta militias, challenged the integrity of the UN vote count. His group called the referendum "gar-bage and an international conspiracy". One UN election worker said that, during a voter education meeting in the town of Balibo, militiamen chanted: "We want war, we want war." Unless the UN - or that undefined "coalition of the willing" - swiftly calls their bluff, that is exactly what they are going to get. Additional reporting: Tom Fawthrop, Dili, and Tom Rhodes, New York East Timor fact file East Timor: 5,600 square miles, 1,300 miles east of Jakarta. Pop: 850,000 Capital: Dili. Religion: 90% Roman Catholic Exports: coffee, marble Oil in disputed 'Timor Gap' History: 1701 - Becomes Portuguese colony August 1975 - Civil war. Pro-independence Fretilin takeover December 7, 1975 - Invaded by Indonesia. Only foreign journalist to remain, Roger East, shot and thrown into sea 1977 - David Owen, foreign secretary in Callaghan government, approves first sale of Hawk fighter bombers to Jakarta 1993 - Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao, commander of East Timorese resistance, sentenced to 20 years imprisonment 1996 - East Timor's religious leader, Roman Catholic archbishop Carlos Belo, shares Nobel peace prize May 1998 - Indonesian president Suharto steps down January 1999 - Jakarta says it will respect referendum on independence Photo: Moment of jubilation: an elderly East Timor woman celebrates the vote for home rule [John Feder] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Didistribusikan tgl. 5 Sep 1999 jam 14:59:02 GMT+1 oleh: Indonesia Daily News Online <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.Indo-News.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
