Why leave the flock?

The rules of combat are that a commanding officer should never turn and run while in the heat of battle. Troops need a commander for moral support. Why then are we applauding the acts of cowardice by Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao and Bishop Belo?

Both these men have turned their backs on their foot soldiers and run. They have left them to be slaughtered. Bishop Belo was given a Nobel Peace Prize, which obviously made him so valuable that he thought he should leave his flock and the 5,000 souls who had sought refuge in his compound. Their deaths would have been meaningless next to his. Bishop Basillio, on the other hand, felt he should stand with his people and was injured. What reward will he get for his bravery? Perhaps he will be allowed to shine through Belo's medal.

After having led the revolution from his jail cell Xanana, upon release, felt he might be killed if he went back to the half-island where he had fermented the problems that exist. He was a revered guerrilla leader. A guerrilla leader who is hiding behind the skirt of his mother (the British Embassy). He too feels that his life is too valuable to join his fellow proindependence fighters. He must feel that he has to be saved since he will be the only human on East Timor that can be president. Perhaps the families of the dead will remember him as a turncoat who abandoned them in their hour of need and not want him as their leader.

At this terrible time in East Timor's history both these men should hang their heads in shame. They have put their egos on a higher pedestal than the lives of their people. Now is the time for them to stand up and try to bring some sense of reason and calm back to East Timor, not stand on foreign shores and hypothesize what should be happening and who is at fault. I sincerely hope history will remember them for what they truly are, selfish men whose only concern was for themselves.

DINA ANDRIESA SJARIEF

Jakarta