[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 4, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H250-H252]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TROUBLE IN EAST TIMOR

  (Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago I returned from visiting Bishop 
Carlos Belo in the island of East Timor, which is under the military 
oppression of the governor of Indonesia. As our colleagues know, the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall] nominated Bishop Belo, the first 
Catholic priest ever to receive the Nobel peace prize. I will be taking 
out a full special order on that issue and trip, but I want to tell my 
colleagues that on the island of East Timor today the military 
occupation there is fear and terror. They are going through the island 
at 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning pulling young people out and taking 
them away. Many are fleeing to the hills.
  When this Congress has to deal with the issue of Indonesia and East 
Timor, we should do the right thing. Second, there is a concern among 
Indonesians that the Lippo Bank connection and

[[Page H251]]

the Riady family which dealt with Web Hubbell, may be tied into why 
this administration is not willing to take on the issue of East Timor.
  I challenge the Clinton administration to deal with the issue of East 
Timor and stand up for independence and get involved in this process so 
the killing and the fear and the terror will end. This administration 
has an obligation to deal with the issue of East Timor.

                     Champion of a Forgotten People

                          (By Paul Raffaelle)

       Bishop Carlos Belo knelt in his chapel in Dili, East Timor, 
     for his early morning prayer. It was November 12, 1991, and 
     as Belo prayed, 2000 people were gathering to march to the 
     nearby Santa Cruz cemetery to protest the killing of a pro-
     independence activist by Indonesian intelligence agents. For 
     16 years the bishop's island home had been under the heel of 
     the Indonesian military.
       Later that morning Belo heard bursts of automatic gunfire, 
     then screams. Within minutes dozens of young people were 
     racing in panic toward his residence. ``Hide us, or they will 
     kill us!'' shouted a teen-age girl in a blood-soaked dress.
       ``Come inside, all of you!'' the bishop cried out, as more 
     than 250 people crammed into his garden. He dispatched the 
     wounded to Catholic clinics and then drove to the cemetery. 
     Dozens of civilians, many ripped open by bullets, lay 
     crumpled in the dust. Soldiers armed with assault rifles 
     screamed obscenities at everyone in sight. Then the bishop 
     saw a trail of gore leading to a chapel.
       Despite his fear, he rushed inside, where he found several 
     people--some beaten, others with gaping bullet wounds--lying 
     in pools of their own blood. Taking in the carnage, Belo 
     silently vowed the world would know of his people's 
     suffering, and began to pray for the dead and dying who 
     surrounded him.
       In a remote land of the Malay Archipelago in southern Asia, 
     a gentle people are stalked by terror. In the 21 years since 
     Indonesia's invasion, it is estimated that almost one-third 
     of East Timor's 700,000 native inhabitants have lost their 
     lives. Countless thousands have been tortured or raped.
       Embattled Timorese still cling to hope embodied in the man 
     they revere as the champion of their rights. It is not a 
     destiny many would have expected for Carlos Filipe Ximenes 
     Belo.
       He was born in 1948 on a rice farm in Wailacalma, 100 miles 
     east of Dili, the capital of the impoverished Portuguese 
     colony. His widowed mother, a pious and reflective woman, 
     introduced Carlos early to the thrill of books. He excelled 
     in his Catholic schooling, and at 20 left to begin his 
     studies for the priesthood in Lisbon.
       Turmoil came to East Timor in 1975, as Portugal prepared to 
     cut its colony loose. West Timor, a former Dutch colony, had 
     become part of Indonesian when the latter became independent 
     in 1949. But Indonesia had no legitimate claim to the larger, 
     eastern half rich in oil and natural gas.
       Belo was in Macau for further religious training when 
     Indonesian troops attacked East Timor. Jets and naval ships 
     bombarded towns. Soldiers wiped out entire villages. The few 
     thousand ill-equipped resistance fighters scurried to the 
     mountains.
       The government in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, claimed 
     that its soldiers had been ``invited in'' by the East 
     Timorese to ``restore order.'' The United States and many 
     other Western nations remained largely silent. And on July 
     17, 1976, Indonesia formally annexed the tiny nation.
       Convinced that he could best serve his people if he had the 
     moral authority of a priest, Belo continued his religious 
     studies. Meanwhile Indonesian troops burned crops, 
     slaughtered livestock and herded almost half the population 
     into camps, where thousands died.
       Belo's exile ended when he was ordained in 1981. He assumed 
     the post of rector of the Fatumaca seminary near Baucau, East 
     Timor's second largest town and by now headquarters of at 
     least 10,000 troops. Everywhere he looked, soldiers strutted. 
     After dropping his things off in Baucau, he traveled to his 
     home village.
       His aged mother clasped his hands when he entered the 
     family's modest home. ``The Indonesians have done terrible 
     things to our people,'' she said. Over the next few days 
     Belo was horrified to find only women and children in some 
     villages. Thousands of males had been forced into the 
     Indonesian army to fight against the East Timorese 
     resistance.
       As aggrieved as he felt, he decided not to speak out. 
     Better to accept Indonesian rule in the interests of peace.
       This cannot be, a stunned Belo thought as he studied the 
     telegram. Just two years after his arrival in Baucau, the 
     Vatican had chosen him to be East Timor's new Apostolic 
     Administrator--the leader of the Catholic Church in his 
     homeland. Among his concerns was that he had been picked 
     solely because he wasn't likely to promote dissent.
       His fellow East Timorese clerics suspected worse. ``He's 
     nothing but a puppet,'' they muttered in private. All 37 
     priests boycotted the installation ceremony. They're 
     convinced that I'm an Indonesian stooge, Belo thought glumly. 
     But the people had faith in him.
       Courageous East Timorese were regularly slipping into 
     Belo's home to tell him about atrocities. One secret visitor 
     was a middle-aged woman who had pulled a shawl over her face 
     to hide her identity from army informers. ``The soldiers shot 
     my son dead as he was walking across the fields,'' she 
     whispered through sobs.
       Deeply moved, Belo placed a hand on her shoulder. ``I'll 
     seek justice for you,'' he promised.
       At a reception the next morning, he approached Colonel 
     Purwanto, the local commander of East Timor's occupation 
     force, and told him the mother's story. Colonel Purwanto 
     abruptly turned his back.
       Before long Belo lost count of the people who sought him 
     out to report the disappearance, jailing, rape or murder of 
     friends and family members. Belo confronted the local 
     military commanders again and again, but was always 
     dismissed.
       Meanwhile the Indonesian government tightened its grip on 
     East Timor, luring more than 100,000 Indonesian migrants with 
     free land and jobs. Soon most shops were owned by the 
     newcomers. Their soldiers and bureaucrats thronged the 
     streets. Military officers lived in the handsome waterfront 
     villas.
       Dili no longer belongs to us, Belo realized. East Timorese 
     clerics shared his outrage but also saw cause for hope in 
     Belo's willingness to expose atrocities. ``Perhaps,'' they 
     said, ``he has the backbone for this task after all.''
       Belo was named bishop in 1988. This time, at his 
     installation ceremony in Dili, he was flanked by smiling East 
     Timorese clergy. Unfortunately, the task before Belo remained 
     critical.
       The military continued slaughtering innocent East Timorese, 
     while a campaign of cultural obliteration was equally 
     relentless. TV and radio broadcasts in East Timor's lingua 
     franca, Tetum, were barred. East Timorese students had to 
     sing the Indonesian anthem before lessons and perform 
     Indonesian songs and dances at school concerts.
       In November 1988 an enraged Belo ordered that a statement 
     be read from all pulpits. ``We condemn the lying propaganda 
     according to which abuses of human rights do not exist in 
     East Timor,'' the message said.
       When a village leader passed on army boasts that they would 
     soon crush the bishop and the Catholic Church, Belo responded 
     with a resigned smile. ``One day the soldiers will kill me,'' 
     he said.
       In February 1989 Bishop Belo wrote a letter to United 
     Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. ``We are 
     dying as a people,'' Belo wrote. He pleaded to the U.N. to 
     conduct a referendum on independence in East Timor. It was a 
     desperate move, but Belo could see that much of the world had 
     come to accept Indonesia's annexation. The United States, 
     Britain, Germany, Australia and others were major arms 
     suppliers to Jakarta.
       Several weeks later Archbishop Francesco Canalini, the 
     papal nuncio in Jakarta, summoned Belo. ``Keep out of 
     politics!'' the portly archbishop thundered. Late-night 
     callers threatened to kill Belo. But he remained defiant, and 
     the people's admiration for him grew. Inspired, many East 
     Timorese were converting to Catholicism. By 1990 the number 
     of Catholics in East Timor had surged from 30 percent of the 
     population to 85 percent.
       The bishop became the hero of the young as well, yet Belo 
     could not be sure they supported his message of nonviolence. 
     He knew they were ripe for rebellion when the 2000 East 
     Timorese gathered in the Santa Cruz cemetery on that November 
     1991 morning to mourn their compatriot's murder--only to flee 
     or die in a hail of bullets.
       Returning to his residence after viewing the carnage at the 
     cemetery, Belo heard details of the onslaught: without 
     warning the Indonesians had opened fire at point-blank range. 
     An eyewitness account told of soldiers chasing young people 
     down and shooting them in the back.
       The next morning Belo confronted the military commander, 
     demanding to see the wounded and dead. At the military 
     hospital the bishop moved tearfully among more than 200 
     injured youths, most in their teens. Three days later he 
     returned to the hospital. Only 90 youngsters remained.
       Belo got a first inkling of the likely fate of the missing 
     when a nurse paid him a visit. ``I washed the bodies of 78 
     murdered East Timorese,'' the nurse whispered. Later a 
     medical aide told of military doctors giving some of the 
     wounded lethal injections.
       A parishioner related that an Indonesian soldier confided 
     he'd been forced to take part in the executions of dozens of 
     the wounded. Trucks had taken them to an open mass grave in 
     the hills, where they were sewn into rice sacks. ``The 
     soldiers shot them one by one and pushed the sacks into the 
     grave,'' said the distraught man. In all, more than 250 dies 
     in the cemetery massacre and its aftermath.
       Belo helped smuggle two massacre eyewitnesses to Geneva, 
     where they testified before the U.N. Human Rights Commission. 
     Whatever it takes, Belo vowed, the world will learn about 
     this evil.
       By 1993 East Timorese resistance had weakened, but 
     atrocities continued. The bishop shared the grim details with 
     journalists and reiterated his call for a U.N.-sponsored 
     referendum.
       Finally foreign governments were moved to action. The U.S. 
     Congress passed legislation requiring the White House to bar 
     the sale and transfer of lethal crowd-control equipment and 
     small arms to Indonesia until there was ``significant 
     progress'' in human-rights conditions in East Timor. 
     Australia's

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     pro-Jakarta foreign minister, Sen. Gareth Evans, began 
     criticizing Indonesia's human-rights record. Amnesty 
     International issued a damning report of prisoner torture and 
     ill treatment.
       Reacting to international outrage, Jakarta set up a 25-
     member national commission on human rights to monitor abuses. 
     When soldiers near Dili executed six unarmed civilians in 
     1995, the commission found the killings ``unlawful,'' and a 
     court-martial led to the jailing of two soldiers for up to 
     4\1/2\ years. ``It's a beginning,'' Belo told a Western 
     reporter. Still the bishop often received several death 
     threats a week.
       One Sunday in early 1995, several hundred East Timorese 
     gathered in Belo's garden for Mass. ``Christ suffered so much 
     for us,'' he said. ``But in his resurrection we see our own 
     hope for the time when we are at last free.''
       His sermon was a direct glimpse into his soul. For the 
     bishop still trusts that freedom will come, that Indonesia 
     will one day grant East Timor self-rule. But like every East 
     Timorese, he also lives with an abiding fear.
       After the service Belo pulled aside a visiting journalist. 
     ``We beg the outside world not to forget us,'' he said 
     softly. ``If that happens, we are doomed.''
       The world did not forget Belo and his people. In October 
     1996 the Nobel Committee honored the bishop and another East 
     Timorese activist, Jose Ramos-Horta, with the Nobel Peace 
     Prize, citing ``their work toward a just and peaceful 
     solution to the conflict in East Timor.''

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