East Timorese traumatized by violence

By Ati Nurbaiti

DILI, East Timor (JP): A woman who lost her husband in the Liquica killings on April 6 has seven children. She did not know where her husband's body was, but she knew she could not grieve forever.

She asked the local authorities for her husband's salary -- he was a village head charged with inciting proindependence support -- but instead was beaten up, according to her sister-in-law.

She now apparently is emotionally traumatized, refusing to speak, but every once in a while bursting into song for no apparent reason. Her sister-in-law, Sonia (not her real name), said she was concerned by the woman's mental state.

The corn in the yard of the family's burned home was stolen by the militia. Uniforms and school certificates needed to enroll one of the children in secondary school were lost in the fire.

The woman is only one of many left to fend for their families after their husbands were killed or went missing in the alleged slaughter in Liquica.

"We are lost, we don't know where to go," Sonia, who lost three relatives in the violence, said.

The number of such senseless incidents in the turbulent history of the province and their effect on the East Timorese is not clear to outsiders, but locals continue with their lives while waiting for the next alarm signal to send them rushing home.

There were infants among the crowds in Liquica who mistakenly sought shelter in the church where the alleged slaughter took place. Thankfully, the babies are not on the lists of the dead compiled by organizations which questioned survivors of the violence.

The ages of the youngest recorded victims were 12, 13 and 14.

One child, barely two years old, did not scream or cry amid the chaos.

"He laughed; he was amused hearing the shots," a survivor said.

The source was one of the few males who escaped from the church unscathed, according to local priest Rafael dos Santos, who witnessed the atrocity. The man believes he escaped because he was holding the child and the attackers took pity on him.

A woman whose husband also survived the incident with severe slash wounds says her husband now has trouble sleeping. The couple are in hiding and have not returned to Liquica since the violence.

"We should be harvesting our coffee now ... ," she says quietly. From a family who used to make a good living growing coffee, they have now been reduced to mere statistics; two of the some 18,000 internal refugees in East Timor.

During the attack on the church, the husband was in a bathroom in the priest's home. He saw a woman with a gun pointed to her head before he was discovered by a militia member. The woman had a baby with her; it fell somewhere.

The man was thrown against a tree and was shot at, but the bullets missed their mark.

Trauma

The coffee farmer's wife was one of a number of villagers forced to flee after their houses were set on fire. She escaped carrying her youngest child, a one-year-old, and herding her other children to safety.

The idea of treating survivors of East Timor's prolonged violence for trauma is seen mainly as a future concern, with relief organizations concerned with getting food and medicine to the victims in East Timor.

However, the issue has come to the attention of the National Commission for Violence Against Women.

Visiting commission member Augustine Nunuk Murniati said the commission had begun training councilors, including several East Timorese. The commission's first job, however, is to identify women who can provide basic counseling to relatives or neighbors in the absence of any formal institutions.

"The women are definitely there," Nunuk said.

Women reportedly comprise the majority of survivors from the Liquica incident, and probably many other such incidents.

The main concern of women suffering from trauma is "not that they are weak, but that they must carry the burden of taking care of the family while having to deal with their children's fears as well as their own," commission member Koesparmono Irsan, a retired police officer who also sits in the National Commission on Human Rights, said.

At one Dili clinic where victims of violence frequently are taken, the nun in charge said although there was no counselor at the clinic staff members would gladly lend an ear and offer spiritual help.

"One incident follows on the heels of another," said the nun, requesting anonymity. Liquica victims were now outpatients but the clinic was treating eight people with gunshot wounds from the violence in Dili on April 17.

At an understaffed non-governmental organization awash with complaints, men and women exchange stories of missing relatives and horrendous experiences. Heads shake, handkerchiefs are pulled out to dab at tears.

One woman blurts out, "We'll settle for anything, autonomy or independence, as long as it's quick and all this can end."