[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 136 (Friday, September 27, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1752-E1753]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN EAST TIMOR

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. TONY P. HALL

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 26, 1996

  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, for many years I have been deeply 
concerned over the tragedy in the former Portuguese colony of East 
Timor. I have had the privilege of meeting the Roman Catholic Bishop of 
East Timor, Carlos Ximenes Belo, on several occasions.

[[Page E1753]]

Bishop Belo is a most courageous figure who has ceaselessly tried to 
promote a peaceful solution and dialog as a way out of the 20-year-old 
conflict in East Timor, which Indonesia invaded in 1979 and where as 
many as a third of the population has perished.
  During his 13 years as apostolic administrator of the Roman Catholic 
Church in the Indonesian-occupied former Portuguese colony of East 
Timor, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo has been a tireless advocate of 
peace, human rights, nonviolence and reconciliation in a situation 
marked by war, grim atrocities and an atmosphere of terror. It is worth 
recalling some of the details of Bishop Belo's effort. On November 12, 
1991, Indonesian troops opened fire on a peaceful gathering of 
thousands of people at Santa Cruz cemetery in the East Timor capital of 
Dili. More than 250 were killed on that day, many more were badly 
wounded. The full extent of the tragedy surrounding the Santa Cruz 
events is still not widely known. Most of the victims were young 
people.
  In the immediate aftermath of the Santa Cruz massacre, driving his 
own automobile, between the hours of 9 a.m. until 2 a.m. the next 
morning, Bishop Belo gathered, in groups of five and six, hundreds of 
young people who has been at Santa Cruz cemetery the morning of 
November 12 and returned them to their homes before they could meet 
further harm at the hands of the Indonesian military. Subsequent 
reports indicate that dozens of those who survived the massacre at 
Santa Cruz cemetery were taken away and executed by Indonesian security 
forces.
  On numerous occasions before and since, Bishop Belo has acted to 
deter violence. But in the absence of greater international support his 
power over the situation is limited. The other day he told a friend 
from Washington that last week two villages--a civil servant on the way 
to picking up his pay envelope with a relative--were shot dead by 
Indonesian troops in the town of Viqueque, while others in the region 
of Ermera were beaten, arrested, and prevented from attending Mass and 
from tending their coffee fields.
  The tension in East Timor is of great cause for concern, particularly 
now that the fifth anniversary of the November 12, 1991 Santa Cruz 
massacre approaches. I believe the Congress and the administration 
should be prepared to give the greatest possible support to Bishop Belo 
in his efforts to bring peace to East Timor and to help strengthen 
Bishop Belo's hand in the difficult weeks and months ahead.
  For the benefit of my colleagues, I would like to submit for the 
Record a firsthand account by Arnold Kohen from the December 10, 1995, 
Boston Globe:

           [From the Boston Sunday Globe, December 10, 1995]

              Buried Alive: East Timor's Tragic Oppression

                          (By Arnold S. Kohen)

       With the world's attention focused on the Bosnian peace 
     agreement, the 20th anniversary of an invasion that led to 
     even greater carnage than the tragedy in the Balkans passed 
     Thursday with little notice. But the consequences of 
     Indonesia's December 1975 invasion of the former Portuguese 
     colony of East Timor are still with us. The children of those 
     who perished in the first wave of savage repression are at 
     this moment being beaten and tortured.
       Over most of the last two decades, East Timor has received 
     only sporadic worldwide attention: in 1991, when Indonesian 
     troops massacred more than 250 people in a church cemetery, 
     an event filmed by British television and broadcast around 
     the world, and again last year, when East Timorese students 
     occupied part of the U.S. Embassy compound in Indonesia 
     during a visit by President Clinton. On Thursday, in 
     recognition of the anniversary of the invasion, pro-
     independence Timorese occupied part of the Dutch and Russian 
     embassies in Jakarta. But for the most part, the public knows 
     little of what is happening in East Timor.
       East Timor, an area located off the north coast of 
     Australia, and about the size of Connecticut, deserves the 
     special sympathy of Americans, because, the United States 
     provided the arms and diplomatic support for that 1975 
     invasion. President Ford and Secretary of State Henry 
     Kissinger were in Jakarta the day before, and they made no 
     objection to the Indonesian action, though it was illegal 
     under international law and has never been recognized by the 
     United Nations. Longtime efforts in Congress finally have 
     stimulated pressure to address the tragedy in East Timor.
       If the public is troubled about Bosnia, it should also be 
     concerned over East Timor. About 250,000 people of a 
     population of 4 million have perished in Bosnia since 1991, 
     while in East Timor, it is estimated that 200,000 of a 
     population of less than 700,000 died from the combined 
     effects of the Indonesian assault between 1975 and 1979, 
     many in a war-induced famine compared with some of the 
     worst catastrophes in recent history, including starvation 
     in Cambodian under Pol Pot.
       ``It defies imagination that so many people have perished 
     in such a small place as East Timor,'' said Mairead Corrigan 
     Maguire, who won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in 
     Northern Ireland, where 3,000 people have died in the 
     violence since 1969. East Timor has sparked public concern in 
     Ireland, in part because of the Irish historical experience 
     of occupation by a powerful neighbor.
       Today, tension and oppression have a vise-like grip on East 
     Timor. I visited there in September, during some of the most 
     serious upheavals since the Santa Cruz massacre of 1991. 
     ``This place is like a concentration camp,'' said a priest 
     who could not be identified.
       At a Mass one day at the home of Roman Catholic Bishop 
     Carlos Ximenes Belo, himself considered for the Nobel Peace 
     Prize in 1995, there was a crippled boy, his face black-and-
     blue with caked-up blood from a beating by security forces. 
     Traumatized and barely willing to speak, he said he had been 
     in a police station with 30 other young people who had been 
     stripped naked and similarly assaulted.
       ``We have been going from prison to prison--I don't know 
     where he is--and the police won't tell us,'' said one 
     desperate parent searching for his child. He took a 
     considerable risk simply in talking to a foreigner. Nearby, 
     dozens of young people taking refuge in a courtyard, several 
     with head wounds inflicted by Indonesian police.
       ``They're taking everything from us,'' said one man. ``All 
     most Timorese have now is the skin on their bones.'' 
     Indonesian settlers brought into East Timor are taking the 
     scrace jobs and opportunities. As in Tibet, invaded by the 
     Chinese in 1950, the settlers seem to be there to swamp the 
     East Timorese in their own country.
       ``It's a slow annihilation,'' said another priest, who 
     reported that as many as 80 percent of the native East 
     Timorese in some areas suffer from tuberculosis, while 
     Indonesian authorities make it difficult for many people to 
     obtain medicines.
       The disparity between the two sides could not be more 
     clear. On the one hand, unarmed young people who have little 
     more than ideals to sustain them. The other consists of 
     heavily armed elite units of Indonesian mobile brigade riot 
     police. I saw countless trucks filled with machine-gun toting 
     army troops, both uniformed and in plainclothes, some wearing 
     ski masks in broad daylight in the oppressive tropical heat--
     an open reminder of those in East Timor who have 
     ``disappeared'' without a trace. Spies working for Indonesian 
     forces are everywhere.
       In a telephone conversation this week, Bishop Belo, a 
     courageous moderate who has worked hard to deter violence in 
     the territory, said the situation remains the same.
       During the past few months, dozens of young East Timorese 
     have entered embassies in Jakarta seeking political asylum. 
     The personal histories of almost all of these young people 
     tell the story of East Timor today: Many, if not most, have 
     lost parents in the war, and most have been beaten or 
     tortured.
       Involvement of the Clinton Administration in Bosnia and 
     Northern Ireland has helped smooth the way for peace 
     agreements. There are signs that over time, the same might 
     work in East Timor. President Clinton, who has raised the 
     issue with Indonesian President Suharto, can increase his 
     support for United Nations peace talks and try to convince 
     Indonesian government to take concrete steps in pursuit of a 
     peaceful solution. Experts say there is growing recognition 
     in Indonesia that changes must be made if Jakarta is to rid 
     itself of what has come to be a debilitating injury to the 
     country's international reputation.
       In the meantime, international pressure could save lives. 
     All official buildings in East Timor today are adorned by 
     idealized portraits of Indonesia's vice president, Try 
     Sutrisno, former commander of the army. I was reminded of his 
     statement after the Santa Cruz massacre: The young victims 
     ``were delinquents who needed to be shot and we will shoot 
     them.'' I was told by authoritative diplomatic sources that, 
     in the absence of growing international pressure led by the 
     United States, Indonesian forces would simply kill the young 
     resisters of East Timor, as they have killed so many of their 
     elders. All the more reason why distant East Timor should 
     have more than a little meaning for us.
       Arnold S. Kohen is writing a book on East Timor and 
     international policy.

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