Eye witness account from East Timor

Q: What plane did you come to Denpasar on?

A: A chartered Hercules.

Q: Why did you go back to Kupang?

A: I thought it was safe in Kupang. I had been in Dili and didn't know the militias were all over Kupang openly carrying their weapons. I wanted to go there and get my personal documents and other things. But when I got there it was far from safe. And the situation there is even more grave.

But in reality I have been threatened and terrorised for a long time, and hunted for many months. I had received a written death threat (first week in May), saying that I would be attacked, beaten and killed. This happened several times.

Q: What about these stories of East Timorese students being attacked in the bus station in Kupang?

A: (several occurances beginning in April 1999): I arrived at the bus terminal to put several of my friends on the bus. But one of my friends is widely known and was dragged off the bus, and beaten to a bloody pulp. And as they beat him they declared that this would happen again to East Timorese who wanted to come to Kupang for university study. But they were opposing the Indonesian race. This happened several times to different friends.

They attacked him on the excuse that we were speaking Tetum in the terminal and that he was therefore swearing at them. But they don't have a problem with people speaking Sabu, or Rote, or Timorese, only Tetum. These and other languages are used all the time at the bus terminal. But if you use Tetum they claim we are cursing them. How do they figure that? This happened many times at the bus terminal. One of my friends was put in the hospital from the beating he got. At least one disappeared when he was dragged out the terminal and beaten (early May). So they were regularly waiting for us at the bus terminal. The militias had their people at the bus terminals a long time ago.

Before this we had already heard that the bus stations and the harbour had people watching them and occasionally taking action against the East Timorese. Other people were beaten at Tenau (the harbour for Kupang). And other East Timorese students were beaten at the bus terminal.

And I have heard that some of the young men here in Kupang are very unhappy with me and have declared that even while I was getting my tertiary education in Kupang, I nevertheless was working quietly to oppose the government. And during that time I got a phone call from a friend of mine the head of the GGG student organisation who told me that I shouldn't come to the organisation's offices because there are several other students who are upset with that reputation of mine. They obviously don't understand what is going on, but they have made threats against me. So I felt I had to get out and come here. It seems that the militia groups have begun to influence the thinking of people in Kupang. They always look for people to do not understand the dynamics of what is going on, stupid, uneducated or simple people, those types are the ones of greatest potential to serve their purposes. They can be used to create chaos anywhere.

It's like the ones in Jakarta. Give them a free lunch and you can set up a demonstration anywhere you want about whatever issue you want.

Q: Are you the only one being hunted?