Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, in an interview with the May 24 Sydney Morning Herald, denied Indonesian army involvement with the terrorist militias in East Timor and demanded that Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer provide "evidence". ROBERT R. McGREGOR, recently returned from East Timor, outlines what he found there.
There is an orchestrated campaign by the Indonesian armed forces (ABRI) in East Timor intended to sabotage the possibility of a free and fair vote on August 8. The Indonesian military elite hopes to deny the people their chance of independence and enforce continuing integration with Indonesia through terror and intimidation.
This campaign has been a concealed operation designed to provide a cover for the leadership of ABRI. The front they have created is the "pro-integration militias". These groups are an extension of ABRI and operate with the full support of the military command.
The violence is largely one sided — by an armed force with overwhelming military superiority against a largely unarmed population. The East Timorese resistance forces (Falintil), under instructions from their leader Xanana Gusmao, are avoiding confrontation.
The military has tried hard to fabricate the illusion that the militias carrying out the state-sponsored terrorism are a grassroots phenomenon — part of a groundswell of pro-integration sentiment that has brought about two "warring factions": pro-independence and pro-integration.
The military fiction goes on to say that there will be "civil war" in East Timor if these groups are not restrained. The ABRI mass murderers will keep the peace!
In fact, ABRI, which has occupied East Timor illegally for more than 23 years and been responsible for the deaths of at least 200,000 people, there will be given responsibility for "security" during the ballot on August 8. This bizarre plan has been supported by the Australian government and endorsed in an agreement under the auspices of the United Nations.
In spite of statements that the terror campaign against independence supporters would be stopped, the evidence from the ground is that it continues unabated.
Reports of militia violence from journalists in the capital, Dili, are only the tip of the iceberg. Roadblocks are maintained by the militias, and journalists are rarely allowed to leave Dili. Reports leaking out from church sources and others paint a consistent picture of an ongoing holocaust in the countryside.
Many thousands of Timorese independence supporters are in hiding or have fled. Scores have been murdered. Communication is difficult because phone lines are monitored by the military or cut in some cases, and roadblocks make movement difficult or impossible.
What information does leak out shows a wide-ranging and organised terror campaign involving bashings, murder and disappearances in at least Suai (where there has been confirmation of more than 40 killings), Atabae, Maubara, Liquica, Ermera, Aileu, Viqueque and Baucau — often with the direct involvement of the Indonesian military.
Preparations
The setting up of militia groups was initiated about October 1998 in East Timor and at training camps in West Timor near the border. It has been speeded up since Habibie's January 27 announcement that the East Timorese would be allowed to choose between autonomy and independence.
Spy photos late last year showed activity such as movements of trucks and personnel in dormant military camps close to Atambua in West Timor. This is consistent with information from a well-placed source that on October 24-26, 1998, militias began to be formed with "the acceptance of a large number of new recruits, with priority given to young East Timorese and young people of Nusa Tenggara Timur" (NTT) the province adjacent to East Timor containing West Timor, Flores and adjacent islands. The people of this province may look similar to the East Timorese.
This military training camp in West Timor has also been reported by the Timorese resistance and Catholic Church sources. A journalist who visited Atambua earlier this year saw intense activity and also heard of the training camp.
The same source commented further in November: "The aim of all this is to cause division among the people". However, it was not easy to initiate this process amongst the East Timorese: "Many registrations were from the NTT youth because the East Timor youth were not interested". He said there were plans for 11,000 militia troops in East Timor.
On November 10, 400 members of Kopassus Group 4 (the same group involved in the abduction and murder of activists in Indonesia) landed at Kupang in West Timor and headed east.
Kopassus were the operators and handlers of the pre-existing paramilitary units in East Timor — Team Saka, Alpha etc. It was an obvious choice to use existing systems to implement the new militia policy.
Another source in Kupang reported that there were many hundreds of troops covertly landed and trucked towards East Timor late last year. He noted they went east with weapons and came back without them.
The training of local and West Timorese militias for covert war is familiar from Operasi Komodo of 1975 — the covert operation to invade East Timor at that time. Again this is being done to create conflict that can be misrepresented to the outside world as "civil war" between "warring factions".
The militias appear
After January 27, the militia campaign was stepped up. It was about then that the MAHIDI militia appeared in the south-west of East Timor in a campaign of terror around Suai — leading to some killings and thousands of terrified refugees.
MAHIDI, in addition to being the acronym for "Live or Die by Integration" also happens to be the name of Mahidin Simbolon — chief of staff of Kodam 9, the Bali command centre for operations in East Timor. Simbolon has a Kopassus background and was military commander of Timor previously. MAHIDI operated with the blatant support of ABRI (for example, when MAHIDI and ABRI together attacked the village of Gallitas, according to eyewitnesses) and had already been supplied with automatic weapons.
On the north west-coast, Besi Merah Putih (Red and White Iron) appeared. This area is populated by Belu people, whose tribal group straddles the border with West Timor.
From ABRI's point of view, this was a strategically good place to begin operations. It would be possible to control the northern (as well as southern) access roads to Dili, bring in militias from the training camps across the border and set them up, pretending they were the nucleus of a threatened civil war if a vote on independence went ahead.
The West Timorese presence in the BMP militia has been consistently reported. Recently Bishop Belo confirmed that West Timorese and other outsiders, including "faces from Java", are amongst the militias. This helps to explain their willingness to attack victims inside a church and in a priest's house, something even pro-integration East Timorese would be unlikely to do.
Since then the numbers have been augmented by locals, some of whom are press-ganged by threats to families, as confirmed by Aniceto Guterres, the director of Yayasan Hak in Dili.
It appears that some of the guns distributed may have disappeared "up the mountains", and this may explain the reluctance of ABRI to hand out more.
There is evidence that within the militia groups there are ABRI (probably Kopassus) personnel in plain clothes. They probably have a supervising and controlling role and may be directly responsible for the killing.
For instance, survivors of the killings at Manuel Carrascalao's house in April described known ABRI members in balaclavas being involved in the killing.
The photo on the front page of the Australian on May 1 showed two "militia members" walking with ABRI — all with automatic weapons. The "militia members" don't look Timorese, are wearing shiny new army boots and carry their automatic weapons with suspicious ease. They are most likely Kopassus in plain clothes.
It is likely that the automatic weapons are given mainly to the ABRI supervisors within the militias, because ABRI does not fully trust the militias.
Funding from Jakarta has been plentiful. Militia members are paid about 250,000 rupiah per month — quite a lot in local terms. It was an open secret that 26 billion rupiahs (about A$5 million) were being made available for this project in early February. There has no doubt been much more since.
However there are indications that the money supply may be insufficient: 150 million rupiah worth of counterfeit notes from Jakarta were recently used to pay militias in Timor. This was discovered when Aitarak militia commander Eurico Guterres tried to bank his, because the notes have a number of flaws.
The determination to retain East Timor by force seems very deep — at least amongst the military elite. Marzuki Darusman, head of the human rights commission and prominent Golkar leader, stated recently: "If East Timor was let go, it would discredit the whole armed forces completely".
Financial interests of some ABRI officers and Suharto cronies in East Timor (as outlined in a recent article by George Aditjondro) have played a part. And the military would rationalise the terror campaign as necessary to protect the integrity of the Indonesian state.
There are not yet any signs that ABRI is thinking of behaving honestly, transparently or with honour and integrity in East Timor (or Indonesia). There has been significant international pressure to get ABRI to restrain its dirty war in Timor, but so far with no effect. In fact the campaign has become more widespread, blatant and pitiless — there are now hundreds of victims and tens of thousands of displaced people and internal refugees.
ABRI commanders
Presumptions that this process must be endorsed from the top of the armed forces are now verified. General Adam Damiri (commander of Kodam 9 in Bali) was present in East Timor immediately before the massacre in Liquica. He openly endorsed the military actions being undertaken in Timor.
A few weeks later General Zacki Anwar Makarim (former head of army intelligence) and General Kiki Syahnakri were supervising in Dili when the militias were let loose on the defenceless population and dozens were killed. They were, in effect, endorsing and controlling the terror campaign.
When Manuel Carrascalao pleaded with East Timor's military commander, Tono Suratman, at that time to stop the fatal attack on his house, Suratman replied it was beyond his control. He was almost certainly taking orders from his superiors, Anwar and Syahnakri.
On May 3 the Indonesian newspaper Kompas reported that CNRT (the Timorese resistance organisation) had been "dissolved" in the Timorese district of Ambeno, that autonomy had been accepted and that it was "not necessary to hold a ballot". Attending the ceremony were Tono Suratman and chief of police Timbul Silaen.
On May 4, the Jakarta Post reported on a cabinet meeting in Jakarta that involved ABRI chief Wiranto and information minister Yunus Yosfiah (an old Timor hand). According to Wiranto, CNRT "had lost its roots in 10 of the province's 13 regencies. Wiranto said pro-integration groups had received wide support from the province's 800,000 residents, describing pro-integration sympathizers as a 'silent majority'. 'Only in Viqueque, Baucau and Manatuto does CNRT still exist,' Yunus [Yosfiah] said."
It is clear that Wiranto is not simply "turning a blind eye" to events in Timor, but is being briefed about the progress of the dirty war and noting how well the process is going. This is the leader of the military force that, according to the UN, is supposed to maintain security in a neutral manner for a free vote in East Timor!
The fusion between ABRI and its militias was made even clearer when US journalist Alan Nairn interviewed the "chief of staff" of the militias. Herminio da Costa said there had been an accord in effect since late January between ABRI and the militias which authorised his men to "attack homes, interrogate and kill members of the CNRT".
He described killings done with prior clearance from ABRI and confirmed, "If we kill CNRT or Fretilin members there is no problem".
Da Costa said the accord was worked out with police chief Colonel Timbul Silaen and Tono Suratman.
In late May journalists travelling with the UN to investigate more militia killings near Atsabe, south of Dili, saw the local militia responsible for these killings being trained by the Indonesian military in an army base. A photo of this direct link was published on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. The UN was blocked by ABRI from investigating the killings that had occurred.
Wiranto had supervised a "peace accord" on April 21 in Dili. Generals Anwar and Syahnakri were present at this and stated that their role was to maintain security prior to the ballot. However, the violence was allowed to continue completely unchecked, and in fact all evidence is that it has been escalated outside Dili.
In spite of the complete discrepancy between the stated objectives of ABRI and the clear evidence of worsening violence, not one ABRI officer or soldier has been disciplined or removed. Only on May 24, after much international attention, did Indonesian police claim to have arrested any militia members involved in any of the multiple killings.
If General Wiranto wanted to stop this process, it would be easy for him to discipline or remove those in the chain of command. The activities of the militias are illegal under Indonesian law. The fact that he takes no action is a clear indication of his support for the terror campaign.
When Australia's ambassador recently asked ABRI top brass whether they were planning to interfere with the UN process in East Timor, they just rolled their eyes and smiled.
ABRI atrocities in East Timor at least equal and probably exceed Serb cruelty in Kosova — yet Belgrade is bombed while governments only whisper to Jakarta about a crime that is at least commensurate. Whilst Philip Ruddock and John Howard grandstand about receiving Kosovar refugees, they warn East Timorese trying to flee their nearby hell that they won't be accepted here.
Unless the world acts soon to stop the horror in East Timor, the people there will be condemned to a continuing nightmare — until they participate in a "vote" that may be simply a farce.