 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 April 1999 Issue No. 426 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
 |
 |
|
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 April 1999 Issue No. 426
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
|
|
|
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Special Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A tortuous path to freedom
By Faiza RadyEastTimor's warring factions -- the pro-Jakarta militias, backed by the occupying Indonesian army, ABRI, and the FALINTIL liberation forces -- signed a ceasefire agreement on Wednesday pledging to end the violence which has shaken the island in recent weeks. Following the ceasefire, UN-sponsored peace talks are scheduled to begin today in New York to prepare the details of an autonomy plan for East Timor, which was annexed by Indonesia in 1976.
While armed clashes between ABRI and the FALINTIL have of late defined daily life in East Timor, international condemnation of Indonesia and outrage over reports of the recent massacre of unarmed refugees in the town of Liquisa may have paved the way to Wednesday's ceasefire.
On 6 April, ABRI soldiers -- aided and abetted by the East Timorese anti-independence militia Besi Merah Putih (BMP) -- threw hand grenades into the Liquisa church, killing 45 civilians who had sought refuge from the fighting in the sanctuary. Following the mass killing, ABRI and BMP troops forced their way into the home of Rafael Dos Santos, the church pastor, where they shot five more people, reported Yayasan HAK, a human rights organisation in Dili. Describing the situation in the wake of the massacre, Yayasan HAK urged that the surviving refugees who had fled the town needed immediate protection and shelter. "The thousands of refugees who had been taking refuge in the church since 5 April to avoid attacks by BMP and ABRI troops are now scattered," HAK reported.
After the killings, the military immediately proceeded to barricade Liquisa -- closing all access roads to the town and disconnecting its phone lines in addition to cutting off water and food supplies.
Portugal, East Timor's former colonial power -- and a party with Indonesia to the UN-sponsored peace talks over the island's future status -- blamed the Indonesian government for the slaughter of civilians in Liquisa. In a gesture of protest over the massacre, Portugal temporarily withdrew from the peace negotiations. "The Indonesian authorities must be seen as responsible before the international community for the wave of violence by armed militias against civilians," Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio told reporters. Sampaio also called for the UN to send peace-keeping forces to the island and restore conditions so as to allow the people to decide their future democratically.
Nationalist East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao, who was only recently released from jail and is currently under house arrest in Jakarta, responded to the massacre by calling on FALINTIL to intensify the armed struggle for national liberation. "I am compelled to authorise the FALINTIL guerrillas to undertake all necessary action in defence of the population of East Timor against the unprovoked and murderous attacks by armed civilian groups [backed by the military]," said Gusmao. He also denounced the international community's tacit acceptance of and complicity with Indonesia's brutal occupation and annexation of the island in 1975-76.
"We have fought alone these past years, not only against a despotic and murderous regime, but also against the complete indifference of the international community," said Gusmao in a statement to the press.
The international community has indeed given the murderous Suharto dictatorship a free hand to decimate East Timor's people since the early days of the occupation. As the Indonesian army was wreaking death and destruction on the island, the American media censored all relevant news from its headlines. "In the US, media coverage reached flat zero in 1978 (as it did in Canada), when the Indonesian assault reached its peak of near-genocidal ferocity, while President Carter -- of human rights fame -- sent new deliveries of arms to expedite the slaughter," explained MIT linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky.
Throughout the media blackout, the killing fields flourished. As Chomsky has written: "We are considering a death toll that international human rights monitors estimate at more than a quarter of the population, with half the remnants driven by 1979 into closed camps where they suffered famine comparable to Biafra and Pol Pot's Cambodia, the second highest infant mortality rate in the world, destruction of 90-95 per cent of livestock and collapse of agricultural production."
In a powerful condemnation of the political motives that lie behind the recent massacres, Guasmo accused the Indonesian government of following Suharto's old policy of attempting to destabilise the region so as to justify its continued occupation.
Jakarta, however, vehemently denies the charges -- reminding its critics that it was President B J Habibie himself who last January proposed independence for East Timor, should its people refuse self-determination. In an attempt to dissociate the government from the raging civil war, Dewi Fortuna, a top foreign affairs adviser to Habibie, said, "We can't be blamed for the violence that happens. The government did not mastermind this."
Yet many political analysts disagree. Last month, the National Council for Timorese Resistance (NCTR) said they had evidence that shadowy Jakarta-based groups, financed and backed by the military, had embarked on a campaign to terrorise and starve the 850,000 people of the island.
NCTR informants testified that anti-independence groups had spent about $1.7 million since early February to arm and pay civilian militias, which had then torched and burned scores of villages, displacing an estimated 10,000 people from their homes.
Other sources confirmed the military-militia partnership. Kansio Lopez, the commander of MAHIDI, one of the most powerful anti-independence para-military groups, told the BBC that he received 20 Chinese-made SKS rifles from the local military, who had also given him M-16 rifles captured from FALINTIL freedom fighters. Thousands of refugees, who have fled the area around the town of Suai where Lopez was operating in January, said that MAHIDI terrorised the region -- a view confirmed by the church and local aid workers. Lopez, however, remained undaunted, describing his "work" as part of a life-and-death struggle to prevent independence at any cost.
While much of the evidence points to the army's hand behind these attempts at destabilisation, some observers have also pointed to the government's systematic dismantling of East Timor's fragile infrastructure, a process which directly proceeded the outbreak of the present "civil war".
A Sydney-based human rights group, the East Timor International Support System (ETISS), reported that residents had testified last month on condition of anonymity that "the Indonesian government are pulling out the medical staff -- staff are ordered to leave by Jakarta. The department of education is ordering 5,000 teachers to leave. Half the schools are now closed. Food is not arriving. They are trying to represent East Timor as a country in chaos, to show that things don't work and to create an impression of civil strife."
Following the mass exodus of professionals from the island, and the delay of food and medical shipments, the Indonesian government has effectively succeeded in engineering a serious crisis. The Sydney Morning Herald quoted the only remaining foreign doctor working in Dili as saying: "The health system has collapsed. I can't imagine a country with more tuberculosis than Timor... Between 50 and 100 people are dying each day from curable and preventable diseases."
The doctor further noted that it was evident Indonesia was pursuing a deliberate policy of preventing medical shipments from reaching the territory. Three tons of medical supplies from Europe were recently held up in Jakarta customs, and the authorities were charging an aid organisation for their storage.
Manufacturing civil war, dismantling the island's infrastructure and starving its people, Indonesia evidently had high stakes in maintaining the occupation -- until increasing pressure finally forced Habibie's hand this week. The question of Indonesia's persisting interests in the island has yet to be answered. Chomsky, for one, believes that the stakes remain unchanged. Coveting East Timor for its vast oil reserves, Suharto invaded the island in 1975, thereby facilitating the transnational pillage of its rich resources which continues to this day. In Chomsky's words, "What's good for the energy companies is always the national interest [of Indonesia, in this case]. That's true virtually by definition."
