CSM: Evidence of Indon Army's Direct Role in Killings in E Timor (fwd)

["M.G.G. Pillai" <pillai@mgg.pc.my>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 13 Mar 2000 03:08:25
From: tapol@gn.apc.org
Reply-To: "Conference act.indonesia" <indonesia-act@igc.org>
To: Recipients of indonesia-act <indonesia-act@igc.org>
Subject: CSM: Evidence of Indon Army's Direct Role in Killings in E  Timor

From: TAPOL <tapol@gn.apc.org>
Subject: CSM: Evidence of Indon Army's Direct Role in Killings in E  Timor

Received from Joyo Indonesian News

The Christian Science Monitor [U.S.]
Monday, March 13, 2000 

A BRUTAL EXIT BATTALION 745

A deadly highway rendezvous

Evidence of an Indonesian Army unit's direct role in killings in East Timor.

Cameron W. Barr 
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BURUMA, EAST TIMOR 

After East Timor voted last August to reject Indonesian rule, the territory 
was thrown into a chaos of violence and destruction. Indonesia's military 
leaders deny responsibility for the upheaval, in which hundreds of people 
died.
  
But an examination of one Indonesian battalion's final two weeks in East 
Timor indicates that its soldiers were involved in 20 murders and 
disappearances leading up to the killing of Monitor contributor Sander 
Thoenes.

As Battalion 745 withdrew from East Timor - according to eyewitnesses, the 
victims' families, and a former 745 sergeant - its troops murdered specific 
supporters of independence and were ordered to shoot people who came within 
range of their departing convoy.

Today the Monitor begins a four-part series documenting the brutal last days 
of Battalion 745.

The soldiers of Battalion 745 greeted Sept. 21, their last full day in East 
Timor, by torching the barracks where they had spent the night.

As flames danced on the roofing timber of the cement buildings, the soldiers 
clambered into their trucks and rumbled away from the coastal town of Laga. 
In a few minutes, just a few miles down the road, the killing would begin.

NO HUSBAND, NO FATHER: Cesarina da Costa Victor and her son, Jaime, wear 
black to mourn the loss of Egas da Costa. He and his brother were shot last 
September while returning home on their motorcycle. SPECIAL TO THE CHRISTIAN 
SCIENCE MONITOR 

The cool of daybreak was just giving way to the brittle heat of East Timor's 
dry season when Zelia Maria Barbosa Pinto heard the convoy: the deep grinding 
of truck gears, the buzzing whine of the motorcycle escorts, and sporadic 
gunfire.

Standing about 50 yards from the road in an expanse of rice paddies, Ms. 
Pinto was returning home after spending the night at a friend's house. She 
watched with growing apprehension as two men on a motorcycle were ordered to 
stop as they approached the 30-truck convoy.

Egas da Costa and his younger brother Abreu, two relatively well-educated 
local farmers, were on their way home. The previous day they had gone to a 
local community college to see for themselves the television coverage of the 
arrival of an Australian-led international force in East Timor.

The Da Costas were supporters of East Timorese independence and saw the 
coming of the Australians as a joyous event - the beginning of stability and 
freedom after months of turmoil and 24 years of Indonesian control.

'I constantly dream about them ... [about] saying goodbye.' - Zelia Maria 
Barbosa Pinto, who witnessed the killing of two relatives from this rice 
paddy in Buruma, East Timor. CAMERON W. BARR

Three weeks earlier, East Timorese voters had opted overwhelmingly for 
independence in a United Nations-sponsored referendum. But on the road in 
front of Egas and Abreu were some of the last vestiges of Indonesia's 
presence in the territory - a group of about 100 soldiers and officers, along 
with some of their families and a few refugees, heading for neighboring West 
Timor, which would remain a part of Indonesia.

Faced with scores of armed men, some wearing red-and-white Indonesian flags 
as patriotic headbands, Abreu slid off the back of the motorbike. It must 
have been obvious to him and his brother that they were encountering the 
wrong people at the worst possible time.

At about this time on that Tuesday morning, Sander Thoenes was leaving his 
home and climbing into a cab bound for Halim Airport in Jakarta, the 
Indonesian capital. A reporter who worked for London's Financial Times, the 
Monitor, and publications in his native Holland, he was joining dozens of 
other journalists waiting for a charter flight to East Timor.

Thoenes wasn't exactly eager to return to the territory - he'd been there 
just three weeks earlier - but he felt he had to go. The arrival of the 
UN-authorized international force in the territory on Sept. 20 was dominating 
headlines around the globe.

Over the weekend, Thoenes and others had abandoned an earlier plan for a 
charter flight after Indonesian military officers would not provide security 
guarantees. But the presence of the Australian-led force now made the 
situation seem safer.

At the airport, Thoenes chatted with other journalists about the working 
conditions in the devastated city: little shelter, no food or water, 
questionable supplies of electricity. They all but cleaned out the airport's 
Dunkin' Donuts stand. They were not overly concerned about their safety.

In a confidential preliminary report obtained by the Monitor, a Dutch 
investigator and an Australian military policeman conclude that Battalion 745 
killed Thoenes in the late afternoon of Sept. 21. If so, Thoenes was the last 
of as many as 13 people that the battalion appears to have murdered that day. 
The Da Costa brothers were about to become the first.

PHOTO: SANDER THOENES: The Dutch journalist flew to Dili, East Timor, on 
Sept. 21, 1999. COURTESY PETER THOENES 

Ms. Pinto crept forward both for cover and to see what would happen as the 
convoy halted in front of the brothers. She circled behind a low hill topped 
by a craggy tree in the middle of the rice paddies. Now she was about 40 
yards from the road.

A soldier shouted something that quickened her fear: "They're the ones we're 
looking for. They're GPK," an Indonesian acronym that translates roughly to 
"terrorist." Abreu backed away from the motorcycle. "We're going to die," he 
screamed to his brother, and ran for Pinto's hill.

As several soldiers opened fire, Pinto ducked down and slipped into an 
irrigation ditch filled with muddy water. Peering through vegetation that hid 
her head, she saw Abreu get hit in the right leg and fall, about half way 
across the paddies.

Egas also tried to flee, dropping the motorcycle and running, but he took 
only a couple of steps in the direction of his brother before one of the 
soldiers shot him in the stomach. He collapsed by the side of the road.

Suddenly Abreu was up, lurching toward the hill on his injured leg. A soldier 
fired, felling Abreu for the last time with a bullet to the head. By the 
road, Egas was still alive, "still breathing," says Pinto. Another soldier 
walked over and stabbed him with his bayonet.

Two soldiers set the brothers' motorcycle on fire and dragged the bodies 
behind Pinto's hill. She lay nearly submerged in the water, keeping as still 
as she could. She heard the soldiers discussing whether to dump the bodies in 
the irrigation ditch where she was hiding.

For some reason they left the corpses in the open. Sometime later - it seemed 
to Pinto that the convoy lingered for an hour at the site - she heard the 
trucks and motorcycles rev to life. She still didn't move. But suddenly the 
water and earth around her shuddered as something exploded in the rice 
paddies. Had the soldiers spotted her? Another munition was fired toward the 
hill as the convoy pulled away. This one plopped into the water near her - 
but didn't detonate.

Later, dizzy and disoriented from the blast and the time underwater, Pinto 
had to look at the bodies three times before recognizing Egas and Abreu. They 
were members of her extended family; she considered them brothers.

"I constantly dream about them," says Pinto, a small woman with a face that 
seems more used to frowning than smiling. Her dreams are about "saying 
goodbye."

PHOTO: TARGET PRACTICE: The Battalion 745 convoy bedded down at this military 
compound in Laga, East Timor, on Sept. 20. The next morning, they destroyed 
the buildings, leaving nothing behind that others might use. [SPECIAL TO THE 
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR] 

The Da Costas were halted about 100 yards short of the turnoff to their 
mudwalled home in Buruma. Had they traveled just a few minutes earlier or the 
convoy a few minutes later, today Egas's wife, Cesarina, and his 
three-year-old son, Juvito, would not be wearing strips of black fabric 
around their necks as a sign of mourning.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 0181 771-2904   Fax: 0181 653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
Indonesia, East Timor, West Papua and Aceh

26 years - and still going strong 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++