Precedence: bulk
TIMOR TERROR (NEWSFEATURE)
DILI, East Timor, AAP - A few weeks ago they dug up a body from a salt
lake near Baucau, East Timor's eastern centre. They think he was a
21-year-old economics student from another town.
No-one is sure, because the young man's face had been cut off.
Jose Luis Pereira, if it was him, may have suffered unimaginably before
his death and nobody really knows why he was killed.
But the horrifying circumstances of the single murder are these days
becoming buried in a wave of deaths, torture, beatings, terror and violence
that is paralysing the people of the province - just as they should be
engaged in vigorous debate over the August 8 ballot on the future of their
homeland.
In April alone more than 100 deaths have been documented by human
rights organisations.
Those brave enough to speak to foreigners often beg for a United
Nations peacekeeping force to save them from the officially sanctioned
violence that has pounded through their lives for the 23 years since
Indonesia invaded this former Portuguese colony.
Perhaps a handful of countries including Australia will send police
advisers. But even that small international security presence could be
jeopardised by the spiralling violence that no authority seems willing to
stop - despite a highly publicised peace agreement engineered by
Indonesia's armed forces commander-in-chief General Wiranto on April 21.
One of the pro-independence leaders who signed it, Manuel Carrascalao,
has fled the territory seeking safety for his family. The other, Leandro
Isaac, remains in protective police custody.
Meanwhile, the supreme commander of all the East Timorese
pro-integration militia groups Joao Tavares, who signed the agreement on
behalf of those who wish to remain part of Indonesia, travels freely and
continues to swear-in new militia recruits.
The well-armed paramilitary groups are conducting a campaign of terror
to produce a vote for the so-called first option in the August 8 poll -
autonomy within the Republic of Indonesia.
This is a significant concession for them. Mario Vieira, foreign
affairs spokesman for the pro-integration's political wing, the Forum for
Unity, Democracy and Justice, says political discussion has been suppressed
for 23 years, so the people don't understand what they are being asked to
decide.
Aitarak (Thorn) militia leader Eurico Guterres grudgingly accepts a
vote - although he says he would question the fairness of any ballot that
produced a pro-independence result - but he would really prefer the
integration arrangement to stay as it is.
Autonomy is a much greater degree of independence than he believes
necessary.
Baucau chairman of the Catholic Church's Peace and Justice Commission
Ilidio Gusmao fingers through piles of reports as he talks of the terror
and intimidation that has grown in recent weeks.
He has long documented the Indonesian military's violations of the
lives of the ordinary people in this tough pro-independence region about
100km east of Dili and now the paramilitary groups - Team Saka and Team
Sara - are adding to the nightmare.
There are now too many murders, too much torture, for him to remember
details of every case without consulting his reports.
"The commander of the paramilitaries told me they would force people to
fly the Indonesian flag," Ilidio said.
"People are very afraid of the militias."
Indonesian flags fly from every stall in the produce market of Baucau,
the bargaining observed by the hard eyes of young men armed with M-16s who
stroll by in pairs.
Their heavily armed presence makes a joke of Wiranto's peace agreement
and the made-for-television surrender of eleven home-made wooden guns he
presided over while on a flying visit to Dili earlier this month.
Ilidio's reports are a litany of murder, torture, abduction, arbitrary
detention, property confiscation and burning and beatings.
They are still incomplete for April, but in one of several reports for
March, the Commission listed four confirmed deaths (three shot by military
or militia groups) and nine people missing (eight of them believed killed).
Hard stares are also worn by the men in red-and-white bandanas
scrutinising passing traffic on country roads west of Dili, a city still in
mourning for lives snatched by rampaging mobs of pro-integration
paramilitary groups on April 17 and 18 that left 30 dead and scores wounded.
In Ermera, to the south-west, Indonesian police, now in plain clothes,
this week stood by while another group of militia was inaugurated in a
ceremony which included the sealing of an ugly pact by quaffing chicken
blood mixed with cheap whiskey.
In Baucau too, police mix with the gun-toting youths, apparently
uncaring that here in East Timor is an alternative security force to their
own - unthinkable in the rest of the country.
From across the province, reports of deaths, beatings, torture,
intimidation, house-burnings, confiscation of property and arbitrary arrest
are daily events.
A man who wishes to be known only as Ramelaututo (meaning the peak of
East Timor's highest mountain) in order to protect his family has walked
through the mountainous jungle for five days to bring a report to Dili
human rights body Yayasan Hak.
He tells of five people who were summarily executed, their bodies left
where they fell for an afternoon, to serve as a warning to others to toe
the pro-integration line.
Reports of the incident in Meligo village near Cailaco, south-west of
Dili, vary. But Ramelaututo said the executions happened when military and
militiamen outraged at the death of one of their own at the hands of the
Falintil resistance guerrillas sought out some people believed to be
independence sympathisers and shot them.
"They all had guns, real guns," He told AAP.
The military personnel involved were wearing uniforms, he said.
Yayasan Hak reported that in the following days, the Halilintar
(Thunder) militia trashed houses, burned and confiscated belongings and
bashed targeted victims known to be pro-independence helpers of the
Falintil guerrillas in the surrounding region.
In another report, the Peace and Justice Commission listed 18 killed,
22 houses and two kiosks burned and 10 people tortured from April 11 to 24
in the Suai region, about 100km directly south-west
of Dili.
Some of these incidents, including four deaths, had occurred since the
peace agreement.
Anything associated with the movement for an independent East Timor is
gradually being eliminated and those promoting freedom forced into hiding
in fear of death.
The East Timorese pro-independence movement - its president, Jose
Xanana Gusmao jailed in Jakarta, its Dili leadership in protective custody
or in hiding and its branches being shut down by freely-roaming
pro-integrationists who force office-bearers to publicly defect to their
side in traditional blood-drinking ceremonies - has been pleading for
months for a UN peacekeeping force to calm the escalating violence.
Few in East Timor feel safe from the pro-integrationists.
Indonesian flags flying from every grass hut in tiny villages whose
inhabitants worry only about the daily struggle for enough to eat show the
power of the lawless paramilitaries.
Their power to ensure that August 8 produces the right result for them
is real.
"We're very afraid, and because of that, for the moment, we have agreed
to support autonomy," Ilidio said.
"When UN peacekeepers come, then we will be able to say we want
independence." ***
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