Bishop Belo reports rights violations to President
Bishop Belo reports rights violations to President
DILI, East Timor (JP): Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo has reported to President Soeharto on what he sees as widespread violations of human rights in the territory.
Belo said a spate of violence that led to human right abuses in the former Portuguese colony has been particularly worrying over the past three months.
"If there is no reply from the President, I may lodge a complaint with the UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali," he told The Jakarta Post.
The East Timorese top Roman Catholic leader said violence has been worsening since the murder of an East Timorese trader by a South Sulawesi migrant on the eve of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Jakarta in November.
The highly politicized incident sparked several days of rioting and demonstrations in the town, which provoked strong reactions from the security authorities.
A similar incident occurred again on Jan. 1 in Baucau, 180 kilometers east of here, when an East Timorese was killed in a brawl with a South Sulawesi migrant in a minor feud.
Belo said the latest distressing incident is the killing of six people that the Armed Forces (ABRI) believed were members of the Fretelin separatist movement in the Liquica regency on Jan. 12.
The National Commission on Human Rights will probe the incident, which has received wide press coverage in the foreign media.
Belo said he decided to write President Soeharto after he heard news about the killing of another five people, whose bodies were recently found in a western outskirt town.
On a separate occasion, local military commandant Col. Kiki Syahnakri said ABRI was certain that the six people killed in the Jan. 12 clash were Fretelin rebels.
He told visiting Japanese diplomats on Wednesday that from those killed, troops confiscated classified documents belonging to Coni Santa, 45, who succeeded fretelin leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao, now in a Jakarta jail.
According to Syahnakri, a soldier was wounded in the clash and is now in the hospital. (yac/pan)