Terror in East Timor
Fresh reporting by Keith B. Richburg of The Washington Post confirms the darker suspicions about Indonesia's intentions in East Timor. Indonesia has promised an early choice between autonomy and independence to the 800,000 East Timorese. Their island was a colony of Portugal, which was about to release it to independence, when Indonesia grabbed it in the 1970s. Even as Indonesian officials spoke the other day in Jakarta, however, Indonesia's military was intensifying a program of murder and intimidation in Timor plainly designed to subvert the promised choice on Aug. 8.
In the Liquica district of Timor, correspondent Richburg found evidence that local paramilitaries controlled by the Indonesian Military last month stormed a church where hundreds of proindependence refugees had fled, teargassed the crowd and shot or hacked to death some 50 persons. Another scene exploded into violence on May 9 in the Timorese capital of Dili when a crudely armed anti-independence militia attacked a marketplace and was met by youths who fought back with stones. Portuguese and Australian journalists were threatened during the incident.
Indonesia's civilian government promises the East Timorese due process, but its military arm appears ready to preempt the offer by force. Whether the inconsistency proceeds from artifice or from real internal conflict is uncertain.
What is clear, however, is that the August vote cannot be conducted, let alone respected, if immediate steps are not taken to ensure a fair and open run-up, vote and count. The newly recounted episodes of terrorism on the part of the Indonesian military make it impossible to rely on that body. The United Nations talks of putting in an international police force of 300 persons, perhaps armed, perhaps not. The United States, onetime patron of the Indonesian military, plans to train Jakarta police commanders in the peaceful handling of antigovernment demonstrators. These measures hardly seem enough to ensure an honest act of self-determination by the Timorese.
-- The Washington Post