Two big burial sites found in East Timor

Two big burial sites found in East Timor

MAUBARA, East Timor (Agencies): Peacekeepers in East Timor found 26 bodies at two separate burial sites on Monday they fear might contain more than 100 victims massacred by anti- independence militiamen and Indonesian troops.

Australian navy divers recovered the body parts of a dozen victims that had been dumped in a lake at Maubara, some 11 kilometers west of the coastal town of Liquica. More were feared to be beneath the water.

They are believed to be the victims of a bloody April 6 attack on a group of parishioners at Liquica's main Roman Catholic church. Yayasan Hak, a Timorese human rights group, claimed a total of 67 people were shot or hacked to death by soldiers and thugs belonging to a local militia gang.

"We have been asked to search the lake to see if we can find anything else to connect the atrocity to the (Indonesian army) or the militia in the area at the time," said Lt. Com. Jonathan Peacock, who commanded the naval detachment.

The divers, who started pulling bones and other body pieces from the small lake Monday, said they were guided to the location by a villager who claimed he had driven a truckload of corpses to the site after the massacre.

"He said he wasn't a willing participant and he was held at gunpoint to make sure he drove the truck and completed the task," Peacock said.

The divers will continue to search to bottom of the lake, which is 12 meters deep.

Bones were scattered around the shoreline which has receded about 200 meters since last April. Clothing was hanging in branches that were submerged before the water level dropped.

Separately, peacekeepers found a mass grave with up to 52 bodies in the enclave of Oecussi, said Capt. Andrew Plunkett, an intelligence officer in the region.

If the body counts from both sites are confirmed, they would be the largest found in East Timor since Indonesian troops and the militias went on a rampage of violence following an Aug. 30 independence referendum. Four-fifths of the territory's people voted to break away from Indonesia in the UN-supervised ballot.

Plunkett told visiting Australian Defense Minister John Moore that 14 bodies had been exhumed from a field near Oecussi's border with Indonesian-held West Timor.

International troops believe about 170 people were killed in and around Oecussi, a district that is part of East Timor, but is separated and surrounded by West Timor. It was the last part to be secured by the peacekeepers, who landed in East Timor on Sept. 20.

The United Nations, which is administering East Timor during its current transition to independence, is now investigating allegations that the Indonesian military organized the violence.

The UN Security Council is considering whether to establish a war crimes tribunal to try those responsible.

Indonesia's new reformist government has separately set up its own human rights inquiry, which has already blamed top generals for the bloodshed. The military has denied that it took part in organized killings.

Before Monday's grisly discovery, about 200 bodies had been recovered from various sites.

Meanwhile, Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio said in Bangkok on Monday that Portugal wants to mend fences with Asian nations, particularly Indonesia, after handing back its last colony in the region.

Sampaio arrived in Bangkok from Macau early Monday morning after overseeing its return to China after more than four centuries of colonial rule.

Sampaio met with Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai. He was due to travel on to the former Portuguese territory, East Timor which endured a much more bloody emergence from colonialism, on Tuesday night.

Sampaio will be the first Portuguese head of state to visit East Timor since Portugal abruptly left it, paving the way for the Indonesian invasion in 1975.