[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 29, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1987-E1988]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRAGEDY IN EAST TIMOR

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. LUIS V. GUTIERREZ

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 29, 1999

  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, on September 4, 1999, U.N. officials 
announced the results of a U.N.-sponsored referendum of voters in East 
Timor. 78.5 percent of the voters rejected an indonesian government 
plan for East Timor to receive a special autonomy arrangement within 
Indonesia. This result, which effectively called for independence, 
sparked a rampage of killings and other acts of terror by East Timorese 
paramilitary groups supported by the Indonesian Army.
  One of my constituents, Mr. Michael Rhoades of Chicago, went to East 
Timor to serve as a United Nations accredited observer of the August 30 
referendum. He participated with the International Federation for East 
Timor (IFET) Observer Project as a photojournalist. I submit a copy of 
a recent letter from Mr. Rhoades dated September 25, 1999. He was an 
eyewitness to the horrors that took place in East Timor.
  I urge my colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 2809. This bill will impose an 
immediate suspension of assistance to Indonesia until the results of 
the August 30, 1999, vote in East Timor have been implemented.

       I send this letter out of desperation, writing from 
     Australia where I've been for a few weeks courtesy of an 
     Australian Air Force evacuation flight from Dili, East Timor. 
     Two weeks ago I flew from Darwin (our evac destination) to 
     Sydney, sitting frustrated and sad now as I wait to fly back 
     into Timor. It is difficult to write this because there is so 
     much to say, because these have been some of the most 
     heartbreaking weeks of my life, feeling absolutely powerless 
     as politicians bow and curtsy through shallow condemnations 
     of the Indonesian massacre in East Timor.
       I was in East Timor as an election/human rights observer 
     with the International Federation for East Timor's observer 
     project (IFET-OP). We were (I add proudly) the largest 
     observer group in Timor, at one time numbering almost 150 
     participants with small teams dispersed in villages and 
     cities throughout the country. Our mandate was to document 
     human rights abuses and election rule violations during the 
     August 30 popular consultation, as well as the periods 
     immediately preceding and following.
       During my stay in Timor I saw time and again the blurring 
     between ranks of military, police, and militia personnel. I 
     heard stories from refugees sheltering in churches who'd been 
     told that if the vote was for independence their village 
     would be slaughtered. I heard soldiers scream to a family 
     cowering behind the front wall of their home that they'd be 
     back to kill them in the night. I helped try to save a young 
     man (younger than me) dying from machete wounds, ghost-
     walking bleeding from his shoulder, arms, and gut--bone and 
     intestines pressing through split flesh.
       I saw this younger-than-me man wrapped in soaked-through 
     bloody sheets as we helped him into our truck. He remained 
     absolutely silent while his sister and father screamed his 
     pain and part of our team sped him off to the only medical 
     clinic still functioning in Dili. I saw him (in-head) as we 
     dodged military and militia patrols trying to get (quick and 
     nonchalant) back home. I see him as I write this letter, I 
     see him as I remember hearing that he was dead.
       I see this younger-than-me man as Indonesia stalls for time 
     and our leaders huff and sigh for the cameras and their 
     respective constituencies. I see this dead boy, and my 
     friends left behind in East Timor.
       I fear (am terrified) for the life of Gaspar da Costa whose 
     house we rented in the mountain village of Maubisse, and who 
     went behind that house to quietly cry while we went inside to 
     hurridly pack after telling him we were evacuating, leaving 
     his town for the ``safety'' of Dili; ``and what happens to my 
     family?'' he asked as we swapped our integrity for our skins. 
     And I snapped pictures of Gaspar and his brothers and wife 
     and daughters to document in advance the barbarism of the 
     Indonesian government, preferring to photograph the da Costas 
     while still alive, hugging Gaspar with everything in me when 
     we left, feeling (though not wanting to believe) that I was 
     hugging a dead man.
       And through the cacophony of U.N. sabre rattling I hear 
     Father Mateus, the priest of Maubisse, who assured me that he 
     was not a hero but who absolutely was. And though the East 
     Timorese soil is wet with the blood of thousands far braver 
     than me, I am particularly in awe of Father Mateus who 
     sheltered refugees in his church and who stood up to the 
     local police and militia heads, saying boldly that he did 
     not trust them because he had been shown time after time 
     that he could not trust them. The last I heard of Father 
     Mateus, his name was at the top of the local militia 
     deathlist. Selfless to the point of bullheadedness Father 
     Mateus declared that there had not yet been a priest 
     martyred for East Timor (because at the time there had not 
     been) and he was prepared to be the first.
       I remember the horror in the Maubisse polling center the 
     afternoon of the vote when certain militia members and 
     military officers had whispered to the local Timorese polling 
     staff that they'd kill them all in their homes that night. I 
     remember that they slept in the polling center (Maubisse's 
     schoolhouse) on the floor with no blankets, using 
     deconstructed cardboard voting booths as mats. I remember 
     leaving them there when we went home to dinner and a bed at 
     Gaspar's because we were forbidden by our mandate to stay 
     with them through the night. I remember walking up to the 
     school at sunrise the next morning as we'd promised, to see 
     if all was ok, and finding everyone across the road in the 
     church for morning mass. I remember the terror still sharp in 
     their faces as mass finished and they dragged along on tired-
     of-it feet back to their refuge in the school. And there were 
     the folks who wound their way round to us between the mass 
     and their refuge and shook our hands because they mistakenly 
     thought that we had made the vote possible when it was them--
     the East Timorese--coming out to vote in mind-blowing numbers 
     that made the vote. And there was the old woman who came up 
     to us and shook our hands and kissed them and said, 
     ``friend.''
       I remember my friend Meta who shouted my name and came up 
     to hug me when our team walked through the gates of IFET's 
     Dili HQ after we'd evacuated Maubisse. Meta who was so proud 
     to introduce me to his father. Meta my friend, who is 
     running; who went to hide in the hills. Who I hope with every 
     part of me is still alive, as I do Gaspar and his family and 
     Father Mateus and the brothers and refugees in his church . . 
     . and here I feel like I'm being selective and truly I wish 
     that no Timorese were being slaughtered. But that now is an 
     impossibility, estimates put the death toll in the high 
     thousands or tens of thousands and the longer that we U.N. 
     member states stall, the greater the number of East Timorese 
     being massacred or forcibly ``relocated'' and the greater our 
     collective shame.
       When I originally drafted this letter for a few small U.S. 
     newsweeklies, Indonesia had just conceded to allow a U.N. 
     peacekeeping force into East Timor. I, among others, did not 
     trust them. They would stall for time. And in that time there 
     would be more slaughter. It is a week later now and much of 
     this U.N. force is in the region, working with

[[Page E1988]]

     an Indonesian military which continues to be uncooperative 
     and brutal. Airdropped food is providing a minimum of 
     sustenance for hundreds of thousands of refugees slowly 
     starving in the Timorese hills, but the Jakarta-driven 
     massacre continues as stories of mass-killings during the 
     past few weeks come forward through eye-witness testimonials, 
     as refugees forced into West Timorese camps are terrorized 
     and murdered, and as the militia masses its Indonesian-
     military-backed forces along the western side of the 
     Indonesia-East Timor border (as it now can be called). The 
     Australian media reported that Interfet peacekeepers chased 
     three TNI trucks (TNI being the acronym of the Indonesian 
     military) through the streets of Dili Thursday, TNI trucks 
     which were loaded with troops who fired three bursts 
     from automatic rifles, trying hard to shatter any remnants 
     of the peace which they were tasked with restoring.
       Originally this letter was a call to action. Now, I hope, 
     it acts as a call to continue that action. Unflinching 
     vigilance and continued humanitarian action will be absolute 
     necessities in the coming months, not only in East Timor but 
     also for the hundreds of thousands of refugees forced into 
     military convoys or onto boats headed to West Timor and other 
     Indonesian islands. (Recent reports speak of a near total 
     absences of males between the ages of 16 and 50 in the 
     refugee camps and convoys.) And at home in the United States 
     there are bills in both the House and the Senate (HR. 2809 
     and S. 1568) which would `lock-in' the temporary bans on 
     military and financial assistance to Indonesia. These bills 
     also set conditions (including a safe and secure environment 
     in East Timor, full humanitarian assistance, and the return 
     of all refugees), which Indonesia must meet before this 
     assistance can resume. I write this letter in the hopes that 
     you will read it and be incensed, that you will read it and 
     want to pressure our government to act, to continue to act. 
     The United States government carries much of the blame for 
     this slaughter in East Timor, as they have sat by for twenty-
     four years while Indonesia--third largest global market for 
     U.S. weapons and consumer goods; home to a bargain-priced, 
     easily-exploitable labor force; and our viciously anti-
     Communist Cold War ally--carried out its sadistic policies 
     against the East Timorese population, as they (the U.S. 
     government--and we citizens by extension) turned a blind-eye 
     and an approving nod to the invasion. I write this letter as 
     a plea, an agonized cry from across the Pacific, to ask that 
     you pressure our representatives in Washington to act. Please 
     pressure them to act.

     

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