Yunus again denies role in foreign journalists' murder

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Information Lt. Gen. Muhammad Yunus Yosfiah has again denied involvement in the killing of five foreign journalists in Balibo, East Timor, 23 years ago while serving there with the military.

Yunus said he neither shot nor ordered his troops to shoot the journalists. He said he had never even met them and became aware of their deaths only in 1981.

"First of all I express my sympathy to the families of the five journalists murdered in East Timor in 1975, but I deny the allegation that I was involved," Yunus said after attending a monthly cabinet meeting on the economy at the Bina Graha presidential office.

Olandina Maya Guteres, an East Timorese exile currently living in Portugal, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last month that she herself saw then Captain Yunus order his soldiers to shoot the journalists.

Yunus said it was impossible that Olandina, a member of the pro-Portuguese UDT party, was present in Balibo because the area was controlled by the party's rival, Fretilin.

"As a religious man, I know that I will be responsible for whatever I have said in the hereafter," he added.

Tom Sherman, a former Australian government lawyer who conducted a two-year investigation into the case spanning 1995 and 1996, reported that the journalists were caught in crossfire and that Indonesian troops had no intention of killing them.

Yunus was in command of a unit of the Army's Special Force (Kopassus) during the war in the territory.

Olandina said Yunus ordered his troops to fire at four of the journalists through the windows of a house in which they were taking refuge. The fifth was then stabbed in the back after he was ordered out of the house.

"My presence in Balibo at that time was for humanitarian purposes. Along with other volunteers I helped to evacuate East Timorese citizens out of the civil war zone," Yunus noted.

Meanwhile, Minister of Defense and Security/ Armed Forces (ABRI) Commander Gen. Wiranto reiterated that the military has withdrawn some troops from East Timor, despite recent reports to the contrary.

He said troops had been withdrawn in phases so as not to disturb security and stability in the province. He pointed out that the troop withdrawal had been undertaken with the approval of President B.J. Habibie.

"Now, there is a ruckus and suggestions that the stated withdrawal was just a cover for a build up of troops. That is not true. ABRI is not going to play hide-and-seek like that," Wiranto stressed.

Wiranto strongly refuted a report that appeared in the Australian press alleging that Jakarta has deployed around 21,000 troops in East Timor.

According to Wiranto, some troops have been dispatched to East Timor to replace soldiers pulled out after serving there without their families for two consecutive years.

"It is just a rotation of territorial units. It is routine. The replacements must not be thought of as extra troops," he said. (prb)