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Eye witness account from East Timor

By The Uniting Church in Australia - posted Friday, 15 October 1999


A: Oh no! There are many students who have been a bit vocal about the problems in East Timor. That kind of thing just goads them. That make us a military target. But some of us started while still in high school. But then we kept all our meetings strictly secret, meeting in the bush. But now we are all being pursued and hunted like now. But now things are in the open. Anyone can talk about East Timor. But it used to be only a few people who dared to get together and talk about it. Now many speak openly and boldly and are willing to organise things. Now everyone acts bold, but it wasn't like that before. People used to be afraid of being killed or murdered. But I have been active since high school. I secretly helped get various sorts of information out of East Timor. One of my friends here acted as a funnel for channeling information out of here. But he was murdered in Kupang. His name was XX. (Two sentences omitted to protect identity.) I don't know where he was killed. But we found his body after 4-5 days. It had been thrown into the sea.

Q: How did your name get on a hit list, and how did you find out about it?

A: A long time ago, before the current militias were active, I'm sure I wasn't on a list. I was always careful not to tell my true name, and careful to not allow myself to get interviewed by journalists, and was extremely careful to not get my picture taken at meetings. I was really afraid of having my picture taken. But a few months ago I was given information by a church leader who had obtained it from the militias. When YY was being hunted (early May) he brought him safely out of East Timor, he found me and told me that he had seen a hit list from the militia and my name was in the top group of students outside East Timor to be killed. So I knew that I was being hunted more actively. The leaders of both the catholic and protestant churches of East Timor were at the top of another list. Bishop Belo's name was on the list. Arlindo Marçal (head of GKTT)'s name was also on the list. Another name on the list was, who's the guy who is head of the KOMNASHAM (Indonesian Human Rights Commission) in Dili that is a bit vocal? The number two man in the protestant church was also on the list (Rev. Fransisco Ximenes de Vasc., who has been reportedly murdered around 7 Sept.). There were a number of church leaders being hunted. But I was told I was in the top group of students to be killed.

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I was a bit active in those things, but never openly. I've never participated in planning bad things in a meeting. The things I tried to do at meetings was to expose the activities of ABRI as they killed people. They were killing them as if they were merely animals. I tried to get this information out. But we have never publicly slandered ABRI, or cursed ABRI. But whenever ABRI killed someone, I tried to get the information out. If we knew about it, we always got the information out. We got it out secretly. We could never do it openly. But more recently some of my friends have been captured. They have been tortured and electrocuted. Perhaps some of them succumbed to the torture and gave our names. I have to admit that that's probably how they got the names of those in our group.

Q: How many East Timorese students are there in Kupang?

A: At the beginning of the year the East Timorese Students Association in Kupang knew about 700 students there. But now it's far less.

There is another possibility. For a long time I've been good friends with many foreigners. And with reference to East Timor, foreigners are considered the enemy by many Indonesians. All foreigners are considered to be pro-independence. Therefore anyone who hangs around foreigners is assumed to be giving information to be sent out. Yes, that's one of the problems we face. If we are not political, but want to talk about human rights, then we are automatically assumed to be anti-ABRI and pro-independence. I have often told my friends in various NGOs that they can talk about human rights anywhere they want, but not in East Timor. Because if you talk about human rights in East Timor, that is considered to be the same as opposing or accusing the government and ABRI. And the ones thought to oppose the government are assumed to be pro-independence, and pro-independence supporters are assumed to be Fretelin, and Fretelin is equated with PKI (the official communist party outlawed in 1965). All of these are supposed to be eradicated.

Q: What about this report of corpses being seen last week stacked up in the police station or the jail?

A: Oh ya. I got a phone call from a friend, who got this news from someone who had seen it with their own eyes. In the jail building there in Dili, there is the military prison, and there are prisons for ?? and ??. He said there were corpses stacked so high that he could see arms and hands sticking out of the top window. Blood was leaking out of the roof like an open faucet. We heard later that the army burned down that building when they started hearing about war crimes trials.

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About the Author

The Uniting Church in Australia was formed on June 22, 1977, as a union of three churches: the Congregational Union of Australia, the Methodist Church of Australasia and the Presbyterian Church of Australia.

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