A way of healing people in E. Timor<\/p>\n
DILI, East Timor (JP): How do you cheer up whole villages hit
\ntwice by armed gangs killing and burning everything in sight?<\/p>\n
\"With competitions -- sports, boat races, cooking, singing,\"
\nsays Father Yosef Daslan of the Liquica parish in East Timor's
\nwestern region.<\/p>\n
Months after the September 1999 violence that drove Timorese
\ninto hiding following their vote for independence, the priest
\nreturned from his hometown in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, to find
\nmembers of his congregation sitting around glumly on the streets.<\/p>\n
They needed cheering up and the contests worked so well that
\nan international organization is donating bicycles for races in
\nthe next contest.<\/p>\n
\"We decided to hold it every year,\" Daslan told The Jakarta
\nPost. He was speaking in his office which is also the priest's
\nofficial residence -- and now also a monument to the massacre of
\nApril 6, 1999.<\/p>\n
The priest, who replaces Father Raphael dos Santos who
\nsurvived the attack, displays the new tiles, window panes and a
\ndark spot of dry blood missed in the cover-up of crucial evidence
\nonly three days after the April killings.<\/p>\n
The church, he says, now must help people recover their
\ncourage to speak up. But it turned out that the first urgent need
\nwas \"to be merry\".<\/p>\n
The assault by pro-Indonesia militias is now among cases
\ninvestigated by Indonesia's Attorney General's Office. The attack
\nwas part of the tension ahead of the Aug. 30 referendum and in
\nSeptember, the violence was repeated. Once again, Liquica
\nresidents fled to the hills.<\/p>\n
Figures of both the April and September attacks for Liquica
\nalone have not yet been formally released -- but there are some
\n100 widows and scores of orphans in Liquica and nearby Maubara --
\namong them witnesses of both tragedies.<\/p>\n
The mourning here is for both the deaths and the absence of
\nknowing where bodies lie for many of them. Adding to the pain, as
\nin all areas ravaged by violence in East Timor, is that close
\nrelatives are among the attackers.<\/p>\n
Witnesses of family losses are easily found -- the young
\njournalists who witnessed parents being shot dead when attempting
\nto escape in the late 1970s; a witness of a massacre in Los Palos
\nin the 1980s.<\/p>\n
\"I was about 10, I was sitting on a boulder at a distance,\" a
\nnative of Los Palos said. \"I saw a line of men in fatigues giving
\norders to the second line in front of them, or killing those who
\nhesitated.\"<\/p>\n
The second layer was ordered to kill some 30 men and women,
\nthe source recalls, and he later learned that similar killings
\noccurred in three other villages.<\/p>\n
Similar to women in Liquica, in Maliana's Balibo area, Inazu
\nColo cannot yet discuss reconciliation. She would like to know
\nwhere her husband is buried -- as she is sure that he is dead
\nalong with seven other men abducted in September 1999.<\/p>\n
Inazu works in the very house where she and other women took
\nfood to their men every day, until one day she was told by a
\nneighbor: \"Go home, he is no longer here.\"<\/p>\n
The house, which initially belonged to a militia leader, is
\nnow the local headquarters of Xanana's organization, the National
\nCouncil for East Timor Resistance (CNRT). It is right across from
\nthe remains of a building occupied by five journalists from
\nAustralia, Britain and New Zealand before they were killed in
\n1975.<\/p>\n
The building, an abandoned shop, has been continuously used by
\nresidents as a shrine to pray for all those whose remains are
\nfound in the area.<\/p>\n
Similar to Father Daslan, a women's group, Fokupers, has also
\ntried to help victims recover. Far from the reconciliation plans
\nto accept back \"those who robbed my husband\", in the words of one
\nLiquica widow, and far from the courts, the healing rituals aim
\nfor the first step in healing victims -- finding their voice.<\/p>\n
On the surface, Laura says, Timorese \"have grown used to gang
\nfights; we've become hardened\". But once the women began to talk,
\n\"they cried and cried\".<\/p>\n
One healing ritual took place in the Kararas village in
\nViqueque district, the site of a 1983 massacre of some 1,000
\nvillagers, which witnesses say was conducted by the Indonesian
\nmilitary. Laura said the women talked of their children fathered
\nby soldiers who raped them.<\/p>\n
Abortion was out of the question in the Catholic community,
\nand the illegitimate youngsters had grown up without school,
\nrejected for inexplicit, yet clear, reasons.<\/p>\n
There are reportedly scores of such children, who pose yet
\nanother challenge for those working in healing and
\nreconciliation. (anr)<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/a-way-of-healing-people-in-e-timor-1447893297",
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