East Timorese leaders to petition UN committee
East Timorese leaders to petition UN committee
JAKARTA (JP): Five prointegration East Timorese leaders will
travel to New York to take part in a United Nations' meeting on
decolonization next week, Antara reported yesterday.
Economist Domingos M. Policarpo dos Reis, one of the leaders,
told the news agency that they would travel in their personal
capacity to petition the "Committee 24" on behalf of those
supporting East Timor's integration with Indonesia.
The meeting is scheduled for June 16 and June 17. The
committee is a forum for non-governmental organizations that
include a number of liberation movements. It is separate from the
UN decolonization committee.
The four other East Timorese leaders going are activist
Florentino C. Sarmento from the Etadep Foundation, Simao Assuncao
from the East Timor provincial administration, Natercia, who will
represent East Timorese women, and Octavio, a student at Gadjah
Mada University who will represent young East Timorese.
Domingos reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about
their planned trip yesterday.
East Timor is still on the UN decolonization committee's
agenda, although Indonesia has succeeded in preventing the issue
from being discussed at the General Assembly every year.
The assembly has agreed each year to defer debate on East
Timor to let the UN secretary-general supervise talks between
Indonesia and Portugal to settle the matter.
Indonesia says decolonization in East Timor was completed in
1976 when tribal leaders representing most of the population
declared their intention to join the republic.
Indonesia also says that Portugal abandoned its colony of more
than three centuries in 1975, neglecting its previous
decolonization commitments.
Domingos said the East Timorese delegation planned to brief
the committee on real conditions in East Timor and balance its
information.
He said the committee had received one-sided information on
the province which was detrimental to Indonesia.
Anti-integration leaders had always been active in UN
committee meetings with the aim of discrediting Indonesia, he
said.
"Realizing there was a need to ensure balanced information,
the five of us, with assistance from the East Timor provincial
administration, are going to the meeting to explain the real
situation in the territory," he said.
He said there was a danger that failure to counter anti-
integration propaganda could lead to a situation where "things
that aren't true become true".
"This could happen because of the unbalanced information. One
way to rectify this is to make it balance," said Domingos, a
young graduate of the prestigious University of Indonesia's
School of Economics. (emb)