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![]() COVER STORY: SEPTEMBER 20, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 11
Island of Death
Last week that plea again burned the ears of the world. Within hours of the announcement that the vast majority of East Timorese had voted for independence from Indonesia, militias trained and supported by elements of the Indonesian armed forces had turned the tiny half-island into a tropical hell. Concerted attacks on churches and other places of refuge killed scores and terrified anyone who favored breaking away from Indonesia. An estimated 200,000 East Timorese (out of a population of 850,000) either fled or were forced from their homes. Gangs emptied and looted the capital, Dili, where columns of smoke choked skies all week long. The rampage drove nearly all foreign journalists from the territory, and by the end of the week, the United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), which organized the Aug. 30 referendum, had dwindled to a skeleton crew of 84 staff. All week long U.N. offices in New York fielded horrified calls from Dili. "A lot of these people had been on missions in Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Liberia," reports a New York-based U.N. diplomat. "They said this was the worst." The death toll almost certainly reaches into the hundreds, perhaps the thousands. The pace of the attacks seemed to slow by the weekend--either because of Jakarta's reassertion of control or for lack of additional targets. But East Timor is now a blasted land, emptied of as much as a quarter of its population, and scarred by a nightmare that refuses to end. Its people can only cling to the hard equation that has defined their tragedy since 1975: that what they have paid in lives, Jakarta will suffer in the death of its reputation.
Outside the U.N. compound there was a silence frightening in its completeness. Other sanctuaries had shut their doors, including Dili's traditional safe havens--the home of Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo and the headquarters of the Red Cross, both of which were overrun by militias on Monday. Sister Merrilyn Lee, working with the aid group Caritas Australia, helped 400 mostly women and children hide in a Dili convent for a day before militiamen threatened to burn down the shelter. "So we told them they had to go," she says. "It was the worst thing I've had to do in my life. Women with babies at the breast, pregnant women: they had to go back to their homes, alone, with no food." Rumors of mass killings filtered in, although individual tragedies proved easier to confirm. The U.N. reported that at least 100 people were killed in a grenade attack on a church in Suai, while more than a dozen priests and nuns in Dili and Baucau have reportedly been murdered. Caritas Australia says that its East Timor office head, the Rev. Francisco Barreto, and "most" of his 40-member staff are dead. On Thursday night independence leader Xanana Gusmão learned that his father had been killed in Dili. Many others could only fear the worst: in several cases militia members, with the connivance or open disregard of Indonesian troops, culled suspected independence supporters from groups of refugees being forced out of the territory. Their fate remains unknown. The world knows where those pushed out have gone--mostly to neighboring West Timor--but not why. Many of those who fled were among the 21.5% of East Timorese who voted to accept autonomy within the Republic of Indonesia and who may fear retribution in an independent East Timor. In the West Timorese capital of Kupang, former government officials and their families fill the town's hotel rooms. Less well-off refugees are housed in large camps outside the city, controlled by Aitarak and Besi Merah Putih militiamen who have barred access to journalists and international aid workers. Those East Timorese thought to support independence have been picked out and confined in separate camps, where their condition cannot be monitored. PAGE 1 | 2 | 3 TIME Asia home
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