[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 15] [House] [Pages 21301-21304] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]IN MEMORY OF FATHER HILARIO MADEIRA AND FATHER FRANCISCO SOARES WHO WERE MURDERED IN EAST TIMOR The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I welcome the news that Indonesia will allow an international peacekeeping force into East Timor, but let me emphasize that the international community must act quickly before more lives are lost. Shortly before the August 30 referendum on independence, I was in East Timor with two of my colleagues from the other body. Dili was a bustling city as it prepared for the U.N.-supervised vote. We were the only Congressional delegation to travel to East Timor before the elections and the last Members of Congress to see Dili as it once was. The burned, looted, and destroyed city emptied of its people is heartbreaking. Our delegation traveled to two towns along the western border, Maliana and Suai; and I would like to share some of what I saw in Suai. August is the dry season in East Timor. It was sweltering, hot and dusty. In this poor town we went to the Catholic church compound where over 2,000 people were seeking refuge. Father Hilario Madeira, the senior parish priest, and Father Francisco Soares who would be our guides greeted us. They introduced us to their world, one filled with worry and tension and subjected daily to violence and intimidation by the Indonesian military and militias organized and armed by the Indonesian armed forces. Despite the strain and uncertainty of their situation, I was impressed by Father Hilario and Father Francisco's warmth, good humor, hospitality, and steady nerves. Here were men carrying out God's mandate to love and care for your neighbor, protect the weak and live humbly. In talking to the refugees, we discovered most had been burned out of their homes or forcibly evicted. The majority were women and children. They sought refuge in the church compound surrounded by militia who over the past 2 days had cut off all their food and water. Our delegation met with town officials asking that the water be restored. It was clear that militias were in charge of the water and that town officials would do nothing. The armed Indonesian police and soldiers, those charged with protection and security of the East Timorese people during the U.N. process, stood in the shade doing nothing, laughing and joking with the militias. When I met with President Habibie in Jakarta, we demanded the water be restored in Suai. Less than 24 hours later the militias turned on the water. Father Hilario shared with us his concerns about the current violence and his fears about violent retaliation against the people who would go to the polls scarcely a week later, and we took that message to heart. That evening in Dili we had dinner with Nobel Peace Prize winner and Catholic bishop Carlos Belo. In the dining room of his house overlooking the courtyard between his residence and the chapel where he said mass, Bishop Belo emphasized the need for protection following the vote, and as we met in Dili with Indonesian officials, police and military commanders, we were constantly assured they were providing security for the people. They brushed aside our description of the situation in Suai, and I asked that they could cite a single instance where they had detained, arrested, or confiscated the weapons of any militia member, and they could not. As our delegation prepared to depart from Dili, we called upon the U.N. to immediately deploy armed peacekeepers to East Timor to protect the people from further violence, especially following the referendum. Now we know everyone's worst fears have been realized. Over the Labor Day weekend I received word that the home of Bishop Belo where I had dined just 2 [[Page 21302]] weeks ago had been burned to the ground. The bishop barely escaped with his life. The 3,000 people given refuge in his courtyard were forced out at gun point by uniformed Indonesian military militias. Their fates are unknown. And on Wednesday morning I received a phone call from human rights workers in Jakarta that eyewitnesses reported militias had gunned down and killed Father Hilario and Father Francisco along with Jesuit priest Father Dewanto. Many of the people of Suai sheltering inside the church were also killed. Some escaped while others were forcibly transported out of the country. These were good men; these were holy men. Nothing we say or do here in Congress, nothing President Clinton may say or do, nothing the U.N. may say or do can bring these men back to the people of Suai. In so many ways we in the United States and the international community failed them. They trusted us, and we failed them. If we were to honor their memory, then we must not fail them again. Mr. Speaker, we must support the rapid deployment of an international force to rescue and guarantee the security of the people of East Timor. We must take immediate steps to protect refugees and displaced people from further harm and attacks. We must disarm the militias and confiscate and destroy their weapons. We must provide humanitarian support, food and medicine for East Timor. We must safely return those who are forced to leave their homes, villages, and country. We must guarantee the full and safe implementation of the independence process for East Timor, and we must help the East Timorese people rebuild their cities and towns. This time the international community must keep its word to the people of East Timor. [From the Washington Post, Sept. 11, 1999] Nuns Describe Slaughter in E. Timor--Militiamen Killed Priests, Then Refugees in Church, Witness Says (By Doug Struck) Kupang, Indonesia, Sept. 10--Father Dewanto was the first to die, said Sister Mary Barudero. The militiamen had lined up outside the old wooden church filled with refugees from East Timorese town of Suai on Monday afternoon, and parishioners watched as the young Indonesian Jesuit priest stepped out dressed in his clerical robes to meet the trouble. A burst of gunfire cut him down. Father Francisco followed. The militiamen waited for the senior parish priest, Father Hilario. When he did not emerge, a witness said, they kicked down the door to his study and sprayed him with automatic weapons fire. A nun who watched the massacre from the window of her house described the scene to Barudero less than an hour later. The nun told Barudero the militiamen entered the church filled with refugees, and began firing long bursts from their weapons. Then they threw hand grenades into the huddled victims. Inside, there had been only young children and women, babies at their mothers' breasts, and pregnant women, Barudero said. The men had fled days earlier. Barudero, who works as a nurse, had sent four of the pregnant women from her hospital to Suai just two hours earlier to await further progress in their labor. ``They went to the church because that's where they felt safe. They felt being near the priests was protection,'' said the 64-year-old nun, vainly fighting her tears. Her account of the massacre, also reported Thursday by the Vatican's missionary news agency Fides, is one of the first graphic descriptions of the violence that has wracked East Timor at the hands of Indonesian military-backed militiamen who opposed the independence for the province. Roman Catholic clergy, seen by the militia as having supported independence for East Timor, were among the first victims. Most citizens of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, are Roman Catholics. Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country. Barudero, a Philippine-born Indonesian citizen who belongs to the French order of Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres, agreed to talk to a reporter here in western Timor, because ``I have lived my life. I am not afraid to die.'' Other refugees still feel the militias' reach in the supposed safety of western Timor, and have been warned not to talk to reporters. Barudero's colleague who watched the massacre, and who belongs to the Canossian order, has fled to Darwin, Australia, but still is afraid to be identified, she said. Barudero said the militia that carried out the massacre had been active in the area and was well known to residents. Of the three priests who died, young Father Dewanto was an Indonesian citizen from Java who arrived in Suai just three weeks before the massacre and had been ordained only a month before that. Father Hilario, who had been in the town for some time, was well known as a supporter of independence for East Timor, according to Fides. Fides also said about 100 people were killed in the Suai massacre. It quoted witnesses as saying 15 priests were killed in the cities of Dili and Baukau, and some nuns were killed in Baukau. Here in the western part of the island of Timor, refugees who fled the violence in East Timor still have cause for fear. The militiamen who brought destruction to East Timor, have taken control of the 84,000 refugees now in camps in western Timor, and move freely around the city. Some are armed; some seem intent on intimidating foreigners and refugees. Foreigners have not been allowed in the camps. At a western Timor refugee camp in Atambua, on the border with East Timor, a man identified as a supporter of independence was killed Wednesday, apparently by militiamen. An official of Catholic Relief Services, who had just returned from Atambua, provided some confirmation of reports that pro-independence refugees were forcibly removed from East Timor. ``If you ask the refugees once, they say they left because it was unsafe, and they had to leave their houses. But if you ask again, they will tell you that the soldiers terrorized them and made them come,'' said William Openg, an Indonesian relief worker for Catholic Relief Services. Although many in the refugee camps are said to be opponents of independence--like the militiamen--those who support the outcome of the Aug. 30 referendum favoring independence may not acknowledge it. ``They are afraid to show their faces. It could cost them their lives,'' said Agapitus Prasetya, an Indonesia UNICEF worker who has been in the refugee camps. ``The militias are everywhere. They are all over.'' Anti-foreigner passions have been whipped up by the militias, and even Indonesian staff members distributing food to the refugees strip the UNICEF signs off their cars, he said. ``The militias are killing people, and the people are threatened here in west Timor,'' complained a Catholic clergyman who fled Dili only to find militiamen in control of refugee camps in western Timor. ``Where is the law and order in Indonesia? The militias, the military and the police are above the law.'' He and several other clergy members described their flight from East Timor on condition that their names not be used. They said they fear consequences from the Indonesian military and Timorese militias. One nun who lived in Dili said the gunfire began about three hours after the ballot result approving independence was announced last Saturday. ``It was really frightening. We couldn't go out of the house,'' she said. ``We could see a lot of fires. It looked like they would use diesel gas, because the fires would be big black balls, and then you could see white smoke from houses. That was everywhere.'' On Monday, she and other nuns decided it was too dangerous, and left in an old pickup truck in a convoy escorted by police. As they passed through Dili, she saw a surrealistic scene of fires and lawlessness, she said. ``It was remarkable. There was shooting going on, and people were running for their lives. But others were looting the stores, very calmly, as though they were so relaxed.'' She said she saw some looters loading goods into military trucks. In one section, ``all the stores were razed,'' she said. ``I saw a lot of military, and of course, the militias. Some people were ransacking, and some people were looting. The whole place was in ruins, except for the government buildings.'' ``And there were a lot of people moving out, because their houses were burning.'' Another clergyman said the gunfire intensified after the referendum results. ``God, it was frightening,'' he said. ``There were motorcycles running all over, bringing military and militias. You could hear the big guns of the military.'' On Tuesday, water, electricity and telephone lines were cut in his section of Dili, and he decided to leave, the clergyman said. He passed many burned houses, he said. ``It seemed the pro-independence houses were targed. But the referendum was approved 4 to 1, so they didn't have to go very far.'' ``I never saw any instance of refugees being forced by gun- point,'' said a priest. ``Our people did not want to leave. But they were told if they stayed, the houses would be burned and they might be killed. They were forced out by fear.'' The militias were particularly strong in the western areas of East Timor, where Barudero and four other nursing nuns ran a hospital in Suai, and where Roman Catholic priests ran the church where the massacre occurred. Barudero said she was not intending to leave, even after the men fled, even after more victims of the rising violence came to the hospital, even after she and the other nuns had to dig a grave for a victim on the grounds of the hospital. The victim's family members were too afraid to claim him or were victims themselves, she said. [[Page 21303]] But after the massacre, ``there was no one left to help. They had all left or been killed. And I knew, if we stayed, we could be killed,'' she said. ``I am old, I'm ready to die. But the young sisters would not go unless I went. They have many years left to help people. Finally, I said, `pack what you can. We will leave.' '' ____ [From the Washington Post, Sept. 12, 1999] Jakarta's Army Tied to Deaths--Report Says Sympathetic Troops Joined Militia Rampage (By Doug Struck) Kupang, Indonesia, Sept. 11--A human rights organization said today it has documented atrocities in East Timor that implicate the Indonesian military and militias in at least seven instances of mass killings and dozens of individual slayings. ``Killing, plundering, burning, terror intimidation and kidnapping [have] been carried out by the Indonesian armed forces along with the pro-Jakarta militia'' in the days since East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence on Aug. 30, concludes the report by the Foundation for Law, Human Rights and Justice, based in Dili, the East Timor capital. The organization interviewed many refugees secretly because of fears of retribution from militiamen in the refugee camps. Most of the atrocities cited by the group have not been verified, because after the shooting erupted in Dili, journalists were confined to the U.N. compound and then evaluated. According to the report, witnesses identified Indonesian military members, in addition to the militaries, as having participated in the atrocities. Indonesia has denied that any mass killings occurred and has sent more troops to East Timor to impose martial law and end the turmoil. [U.N. human rights commissioner Mary Robinson said Sunday that she wanted an international war crimes tribunal set up to investigate human rights violations in East Timor. She said she would also probe the extent of military and police involvement in such violations.] The Indonesian human rights group's report includes some incidents that have been verified by the media and other sources and others not previously known. Among them: Several hours before results of the independence referendum were announced on Sept. 4, 45 people were killed in Maliana, in western East Timor. They included 21 drivers and local employees of the U.N. observers' operation. Ten people in Bidau Macaur Atas, a neighborhood in Dili, were hacked to death Sept. 4 by militiamen and Indonesian soldiers, according to the human rights report. Some were buried by relatives, but ``others were put into bags and thrown away on the side of the road. Others were thrown into the ocean.'' On the same day, militia members killed 50 people in Bedois, in eastern Dili. The next day, the report said, eight people who went to the Dili harbor to try to leave by ferry were identified as pro-independence and shot dead by Aitarak militia members. The group said it also has documented the attack on the Dili Roman Catholic diocese that killed at least 25 people, including a baby; the killing on Sept. 5 of 15 local employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Dili; and an attack by the army and militia on a Catholic church compound in the Dili neighborhood of Balide, where unknown numbers were slain. The human rights group, which is working in western and East Timor, provided reliable reports in Dili before chaos engulfed the city last week. Its offices there were ransacked, and many of its files were destroyed. Much of the violence has been carried out by pro-Indonesian militias, but there also have been frequent reports of shooting and looting by the military. The Indonesian armed forces chief Gen. Wiranto, acknowledged today that the militias and military are ``comrades in arms.'' He said his forces have not succeeded in ending the violence because, for his soldiers, ``I can understand it is very hard to shoot their own people.'' An official of the foundation asked not to be identified for fear the group's work would be stopped by the military or the militias, who control the refugee camps in western Timor through fear and intimidation. For the same reason, the official said, the witnesses were not identified in the report. In Australia, aid worker Isa Bradridge told Channel 7 that his wife, Ina, had seen piles of dead bodies stacked in a room at a police station in Dili before the couple was evacuated. ``It was chockablock full of dead bodies, right up to the roof.'' he was quoted as saying. ``All she could see through the bars were arms hanging out, heads, old and new, blood dribbling out under the door.'' The report could not be verified. Some human rights groups alleged that some East Timorese were forced by the militias to become refugees. Accounts slowly emerging from the refugee camps in western Timor appeared to confirm that claim. ``We were asked by the local government and the Aitarak [militia] to leave East Timor,'' said a 29-year-old Dili resident of the Noelbaki Refugee Camp near Kupang. ``I didn't want to go. . . . I would like to go back to Dili.'' Reporters have been barred from the camps in western Timor, though several Indonesian journalists accompanied Social Affairs Minister Yustika S. Baharsjah on a quick tour of three camps today. ____ [From the Sidney Morning Herald, Sept 9, 1999] Catholic Clergy Executed by Indonesian Military (By Louise Williams) Catholic Church leaders were hiding in remote East Timor mountains last night after military backed pro-Jakarta militia gangs went on a rampage of bloody retribution, murdering at least 14 priest and nuns and stabbing the Bishop of Baucau. Six nuns were reported killed in Baucau, four nuns in Dili and three priests in Suai, said a spokeswoman for Caritas Australia, the Catholic overseas aid agency. The Bishop of Baucau, the Most Rev Basilio do Nascimento, was stabbed before escaping into the mountains. Father Francisco Barreto, the local director of Caritas, was believed to have been murdered just outside the capital, Dili. He had warned the Foreign Minister, Mr. Downer, during a visit to Australia in April that terrible violence would be orchestrated by the Indonesian military. One account of the attack on the six Canossian sisters in Baucau, 115 kilometers east of Dili, said the militia thugs had forced them into a forest where they were murdered. Reports of the atrocities emerged as Indonesia announced last night that a five-member United Nations Security Council team would travel to East Timor tomorrow, but Jakarta remained strongly opposed to any UN peacekeeping force. In the worst slaughter to date, the UN confirmed that at least 100 people, including three priests, had died in an attack earlier this week on refugees sheltering in the church at Suai, on the remote east coast. The dead priests were Father Hilario Madeira, who had long been an outspoken critic of military and militia abuses, Father Francisco Soares and Father Tarcisius Dewanto. The savage attacks are the first deliberate violations of the sanctity of the church under Indonesian rule and have robbed the East Timorese of their last refuge. The militias appear to be using a death list of independence sympathizers compiled before the ballot to systematically hunt down their targets. Many of the priests and nuns are sheltering on Mate Bean, the mountain of death, where tens of thousands were killed by bombing in the first years of the Indonesian occupation. It is not known whether they have any supplies or access to medical treatment. A communications blackout in Dili has made it impossible to confirm the number of dead or injured in the attacks and Catholic networks in Australia and Indonesia are working with the Vatican to try to establish the facts. Some reports have been received by overseas diocese offices through e-main from outlying Catholic schools and churches in East Timor, describing attacks on churches and buildings were nuns and priests were sheltering with thousands of refugees. A Caritas Australia spokeswoman, Ms. Jane Woolford, said: ``We don't even know where many of our local staff are. We hold grave fears for their safety as many of them have been on death militia lists before and have been attacked trying to deliver aid.'' Many church leaders were identified as independence supporters and the Catholic Church became an important symbol of opposition to the Muslim-dominated Indonesian Government. The leader of the Catholic Church in East Timor, Bishop Carlos Belo, was evacuated to Darwin earlier this week after his offices and home were burnt to the ground, with scores killed. Father Jose San Juan, also recently evacuated to Darwin, said: ``I fear many, many priests and sisters will be killed if they stay. In the past the church was a safe place, even from the Indonesian military, but if they can attack the bishop then that's it.'' The militia units were stacked with Indonesian operatives, and Father San Juan, a Filipino from the Salesian order. ``I saw the militias attacking churches before I got out and many of them were speaking in Indonesian, not the local language, so I do not believe they are all East Timorese,'' he said. ``They were yelling at people to get out or be killed, and if they refused they just shot or stabbed them. The Indonesian police and military were just standing there.'' The chairman of Caritas Australia, Bishop Hilton Deakin, said: ``These murderous attacks on the church are part of a much wider unjust genocide. ``When Catholic Church members, who have offered relief and refuge to East Timorese, are struck down, we realize there is no respect for any life in East Timor.'' Ms. Ana Noronha, director of the East Timor Human Rights Commission, said information on the deaths had been sent to the United Nations. ``It is now obvious that the violence is reaching everyone and that there is a pattern of the Catholic Church being attacked.'' [[Page 21304]] ____ [From the Carter Center East Timor Weekly Report No. 9, Sept. 13, 1999] Indonesian Armed Forces Continue Campaign of Murder, Violence, and Massive Forced Deportation in East Timor as Militias Terrorize Timorese Refugees in West Timor The Carter Center is encouraged by the decision of the Indonesian government to allow the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in East Timor. However, the Indonesian military and police, with the assistance of their militia surrogates, continue to murder and terrorize the people of East Timor, destroying buildings and infrastructure and forcibly expelling tens of thousands of unarmed civilians from the territory. The city of Dili, the capital of East Timor, has been almost completely destroyed over the past week, and reports from other parts of the territory indicate widespread destruction, looting, and murder. It is clear that the Indonesian armed forces are executing a deliberate, planned campaign under the direction of senior military commanders to destroy and forcibly depopulate East Timor. In West Timor armed pro-integration militias are now operating with official support, openly terrorizing the more than 100,000 East Timorese refugees who have been forced over the border. Those displaced by the violence, both in East Timor and West Timor, now face the threat of malnutrition and disease as domestic and international humanitarian efforts are hampered by militia and military activity and Indonesian government efforts to block access to refugee camps. Carter Center staff and observers, forced at gunpoint to evacuate Dili Sept. 5 and now reporting from several locations throughout Indonesia, have confirmed the following through eyewitness accounts from reliable sources: Refugees fleeing East Timor have been subject to extreme intimidation and acts of violence. The Carter Center has confirmed that pro-integration militia members murdered approximately 35 young men traveling on the Dobon Solo ferry from Dili to Kupang on Tuesday, Sept. 7, and dumped their bodies overboard. In the attack at Bishop Belo's compound last week, militiamen hacked to death with machetes some 40 refugees in the courtyard while TNI soldiers fired into the bishop's residence from the street. A military ambulance later came and removed all but two of the bodies. In an Indonesian television interview, Rui Lopez, a militia leader, admitted that Indonesian civilian police and military officials in Suai, East Timor, held a meeting before announcement of balloting results and were given instructions to attack UNAMET offices, burn the town of Suai, and drive the population into West Timor. There are now more than 100,000 refugees from East Timor in West Timor and on the islands of Flores and Alor, and estimates of the total number of people displaced from the territory range from 120,000 to 200,000 (nearly one-fourth of the entire population). Refugees have been transported by Indonesian military ships and aircraft to a number of locations within Indonesia, including Irian Jaya, Ambon, Sulawesi, Surabaya, and Bali, some of which are thousands of kilometers from East Timor. Pro-integration militias are now active throughout West Timor, particularly in the towns of Atambua and Kupang. Eyewitnesses report that militia members have entered refugee camps with lists of names of supporters of independence, and that a number of individuals have been removed from camps or executed in the camps of militiamen. Militia members armed with automatic weapons also have been seen stopping and searching vehicles in central Kupang and driving looted UNAMET vehicles in and out of the provincial police headquarters. The Indonesian military and police have prevented international aid workers, journalists, and observers from visiting refugee camps in West Timor and from interviewing Timorese refugees. Eyewitnesses report that the Indonesian military and police have joined in the looting and destruction of Dili. Indonesian soldiers and police officers have frequently sold looted food and other basic necessities to refugees under their control at exorbitant prices. It is now apparent that militia violence has been targeted at political, social, and religious leaders, and a number of priests and nuns have been murdered during militia and military attacks on churches sheltering those seeking refugee from the violence. ____________________