East Timor: new wave of repression
By Max LaneThe East Timorese resistance organisations have called for the release of all East Timorese political prisoners and have appealed for help from non-government human rights organisations in the search for disappeared resistance leaders. These and other demands are contained in a statement issued on August 17 by the National Council for Maubere Resistance (CNRM), the Executive Council of the Clandestine Front (CEL/FC) and the Coordinating Commission for East Timorese Nationalist Organisat ions in Indonesia (CCONTLI).
The statement was issued in response to the reported capture on June 30 of Pedro Nunes, also known as Sabalae, and his deputy Remisio Piedade Tilman. Nunes is the leader of the clandestine front in East Timor.
According to the statement, Pedro Nunes was travelling by motorbike towards the town of Ermera with Remisio Piedade early in the morning of June 30, when he was stopped by the Indonesian military. On inspection of their identity cards, it was discovered t hat Nunes was carrying one issued in Kupang, Indonesian West Timor. The fact that Nunes spoke no Indonesian or Kupang dialect aroused suspicion. Nunes speaks mainly Tetum and Portuguese.
At that point Tilman attempted to resist the military. There are fears that he was shot dead. There has been no news of him since that time.
Meanwhile, the resistance has received reports that Nunes has been brought to Jakarta. The statement ends by appealing to the UN and the Red Cross to help confirm whether was murdered and, if so, to hand the body over to his family.
CCONTLI was formed in early 1995 and comprises the four main East Timorese nationalist organisations which are clandestinely active in Indonesia. These are RENETIL (East Timorese Nationalist Student Resistance), GOD (the 1.2. Group), AST (Timorese Sociali st Association) and ANVISTI (East Timorese Solidarity Committee Against Violence).
The formation of CCONTLI was a major step forward in consolidating the forces of CNRM inside Indonesia.
The statement also appeals to the international solidarity movement to assist in pressuring the Indonesian government to reveal Nunes' whereabouts and to obtain his release.
Nunes joined the resistance after Jakarta's invasion of East Timor in 1975. He became the secretary of a Fretilin district committee and later joined the Central Committee of Fretilin as a political commissioner under Xanana Gusmao.
On December 17, 1987, Nunes was captured by the Indonesian occupation forces in Same district and was released only in 1989. He rejoined the struggle in 1991 after making contact with Xanana Gusmao, who by then had established CNRM as the umbrella group f or most of the resistance organisations.
Soon afterwards, Indonesian intelligence discovered that Nunes had become active in the underground movement, and he has been hunted ever since. Nunes took over from Constancio Pinto as head of the clandestine front when Pinto was forced to leave East Tim or after the 1991 Dili massacre. As head of the clandestine front, he has been coordinating activities with the diplomatic front and Ramos Horta, and the guerilla front and Konis Santana.
The capture of Nunes seems to have occurred in the midst of another wave of repression and intimidation in East Timor and Jakarta. Timorese sources in Jakarta told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that Xanana Gusmao has been placed under tighter security in Cipin ang prison. This follows the detaining, by Indonesian intelligence officers, of an East Timorese woman carrying a letter from Xanana Gusmao outlining her tasks at the upcoming women's NGO conference in Beijing. Xanana has been subjected to a new wave of i nterrogation and now is also guarded more closely by intelligence agents and is in a maximum isolation cell.
In East Timor on July 29, 15 young East Timorese on the way to a birthday party were beaten and detained by the military. Their parents have appealed to the International Red Cross to help find them.
On July 30 a fight broke out between several East Timorese youths and five Indonesian soldiers in the Ermera shopping centre. The soldiers beat the youths ferociously, which led to the surrounding crowd rioting and burning shops in anger. That evening, th e military kidnapped some students. The whereabouts of these youths — F. Maia (27), Berito (22), Mau-Kalai (23), Abilio (26), Helder (23) and Julio (25) — was not known at the time of the CNRM/CEL-FC/CCONTLI statement.
On August 1, eight youths were arrested in Liquica as they set off by car to Dili. They were stopped and beaten by soldiers from Battalion 745 and then driven away in a Land Rover. They are still missing. According to the statement, in some towns, East Ti morese have been forced to assemble and listen to Indonesian military officials speak on the "legitimacy" of the Indonesian invasion. Reports indicate that in some cases where the youth have not attended, they have been beaten and taken away.
In Jakarta, CCONTLI's appealed to the UN and other humanitarian organisations to force the Indonesian government to adhere to the agreements made by East Timorese representatives under UN auspices on June 5.
According to CCONTLI, the agreement was to end "all arrests and indiscriminate torture of the East Timorese people, especially the pro-independence East Timorese leaders". It called on Indonesia to withdraw its military forces from East Timor.
The CCONTLI statement also demanded that the UN force the Suharto regime to adhere to all the UN resolutions recognising East Timor's right to self-determination under international law.
The call for a more active policy by the UN was echoed by the East Timorese-based guerilla commander Konis Santana in a radio interview broadcast in Portugal on August 13. Santana defended the peace plan presented by the CNRM, and underscored the importan ce of a UN presence in East Timor for safety and stability. With the UN involved, said Santana, the Indonesian troops should withdraw, the political police should be neutralised and the arms provided by Jakarta to some civilians removed. Under these condi tions, the resistance guerillas could be disarmed.
The newly formed Indonesian People's Solidarity Struggle with the Maubere People (SPRIM) has demanded the immediate withdrawal of all Indonesian military and police and the formation of a provisional East Timorese government to hold a referendum on indepe ndence. SPRIM includes Students in Solidarity with Democracy in Indonesia (SMID) as well as the Indonesian Centre for Labour Struggles (PPBI).
Speaking for the Australian Coalition for a Free East Timor, Sydney activist Gil Scrine issued a statement calling on the Australian government to "scuttle its current policy on East Timor" and to support the peace plan formulated by CNRM.