The following article was printed in the Washington Post.
While Diplomats Talk
By Carlos Belo
Thursday, September 16, 1999; Page A25
When I last visited Washington two years ago, I met with President Clinton
in the White House to discuss what was then a bad human rights situation in
my native East Timor. At the conclusion of the meeting, for which I was
grateful, the president stated, in a friendly and sympathetic way, "We will
try to be more helpful." That help is vitally needed now for East Timor, a
former Portuguese colony illegally invaded and occupied by Indonesian
forces in 1975.
Whatever the problems in East Timor were in 1997, they are infinitely worse
now: Put simply, the people of East Timor face the specter of genocide.
Although President B. J. Habibie of Indonesia announced on Sunday that
international peacekeepers would be allowed into East Timor, nothing has
actually changed since then. In fact, merciless attacks on defenseless
people have continued without respite. My people face wholesale slaughter.
Decisive action by President Clinton, the United States and the world is
urgently needed before it is too late.
Since the Aug. 30 United Nations-sponsored referendum, when 78.5 percent of
those able to vote chose to become independent from Indonesia, a cyclone of
violence orchestrated by Indonesian army elements has swept East Timor from
end to end. This is a monstrous effort to annul the people's choice, which
they made despite months of constant intimidation and killings aimed at
securing a vote in favor of Indonesian rule. Dili, the capital, is now a
charred ghost town that has been completely depopulated.
Many have been butchered by Indonesian forces, which are the true authors
of this tragedy -- a small group of local militia leaders could not exist
without army support and are a convenient fiction perpetrated by Indonesian
military intelligence to convince the world that the tragedy in East Timor
is a civil war rather than the war of conquest that it really is. More than
half of East Timor's 700,000 people have been forcibly removed from their
homes, many of which have been burned.
Members of the clergy, Protestant as well as Catholic, have been murdered
in cold blood by Indonesian troops, some for the simple act of defending
refugees. There is systematic persecution of the Catholic Church; our
structures have been demolished, as was my own residence and surrounding
buildings, where thousands of people, mainly women and children, had taken
sanctuary. During the assault on my home, as well as many other church
facilities in East Timor in recent days, numerous people have been killed.
Last week, I was compelled to take refuge abroad to alert the world to this
evil campaign of annihilation.
Since early last week, hundreds of thousands of people have been herded at
gunpoint into trucks, boats and planes to be taken to Indonesian West
Timor, where they are subject to deadly treatment at the hands of gangs of
paramilitary thugs, and where East Timorese clergy are being persecuted.
Hundreds of thousands of others have fled into mountainous areas, where,
hunted by Indonesian troops with high-powered weapons, they face starvation.
The world must contemplate the fact that by 1979 alone, at least 200,000
people, or about a third of the original population of 688,000, had
perished from the combined effects of the war. There were many executions
and deaths in combat between guerrillas seeking independence and the
Indonesian army, but the vast majority died from war-related starvation
that could have been prevented had international relief agencies been
granted prompt access to East Timor by the Indonesian government.
Now the same thing is about to happen again, despite a tiny presence of Red
Cross workers. In fact, all told, East Timorese people now in the
countryside are facing extermination. We need an immediate, massive
humanitarian relief effort to avert a calamity.
What is the world waiting for? An international peacekeeping force is
urgently needed to prevent the slaughter from proceeding, and it must
arrive in East Timor right now, not in weeks or months, if an even more
cataclysmic situation is to be avoided that would be a permanent stain on
the world's conscience. Delays engineered by Indonesian military
authorities pursuing a murderous scorched-earth policy away from the eyes
of the world -- journalists and most other foreign observers have been
forced to leave because of the efforts of the army -- must not be
permitted. While diplomats talk, my country is being destroyed.
The Pentagon must use the full weight of its influence with the Indonesian
military to cease its campaign of violence. Moreover, the United States and
other world powers should insist that Indonesian troops quickly withdraw if
this tragic conflict is to end once and for all. The world's willingness to
indulge Jakarta as it continues to claim sovereign rights in East Timor
cannot be justified with heartless talk of the great importance of
Indonesia, as if Indonesians are the only ones who matter.
The United States and other nations that have supported the Indonesian
military with arms aid as well as diplomatic and financial backing since it
first invaded East Timor and turned a blind eye until very recently have a
solemn obligation to take concrete measures to avert further annihilation.
After the terrible events of recent months, we must keep our spirits up,
for above all we must go back to rebuild. But we cannot accomplish this alone.
The writer is the Roman Catholic bishop of Dili, East Timor. He was awarded
the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize.
Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
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