Ex-Fretilin leader speaks for RI at UN committee
Ex-Fretilin leader speaks for RI at UN committee
JAKARTA (JP): A former leader of an East Timor armed
separatist movement spoke in favor of the integration of the
former Portuguese colony and said he is proud to be an Indonesian
citizen.
Fransisco Xavier Amaral, a former leader of Fretilin which has
been fighting for a separate state for the last 19 years, told
the United Nations' Decolonization Committee in New York that
East Timor is firmly part of Indonesia.
"Ethnically, East Timor is no different from West Timor. They
were only separated because of past colonial policies," Amaral
was quoted by the Antara news agency as saying.
The UN forum, better known as the Committee of 24, resumed the
debate about East Timor on Wednesday. The world body still
regards it as a Portuguese colony although Portugal abandoned the
territory in haste in 1975.
Amaral, a founding member of Fretilin, was one of three
persons who spoke about the need for everyone to be realistic in
treating the East Timor case. The other two were Jose Martins
III, formerly head of the Timorese Liberation Organization, and
Paulino Gama of the Timorese International Secretariat for Human
Rights, according to Antara.
The committee also received a petition from 29 international
non-government organizations that included the Timorese
Democratic Union and the East Timor Action Network of the United
States and the Asia-Pacific Conference on East Timor in Manila.
The petitioners criticized Indonesia's human rights record in
East Timor and demanded that the territory be given its
independence.
Amaral, however, recounted the cruelty of the Portuguese in
colonizing East Timor for over 450 years which included
persecuting any literate East Timorese because they were
considered dangerous.
Portugal also set one East Timorese against another, even a
son and his father, he said.
When they abandoned East Timor, they washed their hands of it
while the country was in a state of civil war, he said. "I know
this because I was one of the protagonists in that civil war
fighting for East Timor's independence."
Amaral told the committee that the East Timor problem has now
been turned into a "political commodity" by some people to serve
their own interests, including those in Portugal.
He underlined that Portugal also has a poor record when it
comes to its hands-off policy in its other former colonies such
as Mozambique and Angola.
"Integration does not simply mean that East Timor is part of
Indonesia, it also means that all of Indonesia belongs to East
Timor," he said.
The Indonesian and Portuguese delegations are expected to
address the forum on Thursday.
Indonesia has insisted that the decolonization process of East
Timor was completed on July 17, 1976, when tribal leaders
representing the majority of the East Timor people signed a
petition declaring their intention to integrate with Indonesia.
(emb)