Children of Timor veterans protest at Australian and U.S. embassies

JAKARTA (JP): Some 200 youths, offspring of veterans and soldiers who died in the East Timor campaign, protested at the Australian and United States embassies on Saturday, calling on the countries to stay out of Indonesia's domestic affairs.

"We reject foreign interference. We won't keep quite if we find foreigners intruding in our motherland," the group, calling itself the Communication Forum of the Children of Fighters in the East Timor Seroja Military Operation, said in a statement.

Traveling on five buses, they arrived with posters and photos of their late fathers.

Three members of the group were allowed into the Australian Embassy to present their statement to an embassy official.

They also presented an Australian flag to the official, saying this was "a symbol to educate Australians to respect another country's flag".

This was in reference to a series of anti-Indonesia protests in Australia in which Indonesian flags were burned. Indonesian protesters later retaliated by burning Australian flags, and at one time even storming the Australian Embassy and replaced the Australian flag with the Indonesian flag.

The protesters were later driven to the U.S. Embassy to hold a similar protest before they dispersed.

The protests at the two embassies passed off without any major incident.

In Sydney, meanwhile, more than 20,000 protesters took to the streets on Saturday demanding urgent action to end the bloodshed in East Timor, AFP reported.

The rally called on a "gutless" Australian government to immediately withdraw recognition of Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor and to send in an armed peacekeeping force.

Wielding banners emblazoned with slogans such as "Howard You Coward" and "East Timor -- Blood on Howard's hands", a breakaway group of 30 demonstrators battered their way into the prime minister's Sydney office.

To screams of "UN in, Indonesia out" the group rammed the glass sliding doors.

The protesters ran to the lifts inside, which they occupied for about five minutes before leaving voluntarily. No arrests were made.

During the five-hour rally, dozens of solidarity activists, politicians and union members made emotional pleas to the government to take immediate military action to end the massacres by pro-Indonesia militias.

The protest condemned Canberra's refusal to act without Indonesian permission and a UN mandate.

Demonstrators, who brought the city to a standstill, vowed to continue to stage mass rallies if an international peacekeeping force was not in the region within a week.

They called for a war crimes tribunal and for international financial agencies, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to cut funding until peace was restored.

Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union spokesman Andrew Ferguson told the noisy protest that Australian retailers would be picketed if they failed to take Indonesian goods off their shelves.

In Brussels, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) said on Friday it was asking unions throughout the world to join a campaign to isolate Indonesia both economically and politically because of the violence in East Timor.

The ICFTU said it had sent a message to its 213 affiliates in 143 countries asking them to step up their East Timor protests through demonstrations, rallies and pickets at Indonesian diplomatic missions.

The confederation said it was also urging member unions to lobby governments to recognize immediately East Timor's independence and to put pressure on international financial institutions to demand financial sanctions.

East Timor erupted in violence at the hands of pro-Jakarta militias, reportedly supported and encouraged by Army elements, after the United Nations announced that nearly 80 percent of voters in a UN-organized poll had opted for independence from Indonesia.

The ICFTU said it was planning a "day of world mobilization" on Sept. 30 if the situation had not changed.

It said it had asked the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to deduct from any nonhumanitarian aid to Indonesia a sum equal to Indonesian military spending, which it said was estimated at more than US$1 billion a year.

It said it had asked the United Nations to call a special meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission to discuss the East Timor situation. (asa)