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The following is an abridged message sent by women from the East Timorese resistance to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing on September 6. In the middle of the night amidst a great silence in Dili, I'm thinking of you all, and I imagine how many you must be, how strong you are, how free you talk to each other, and how wonderful that is! I congratulate you for what you are, and for what you achieved or will achieve in this Conference.
Nearly 20 years ago, on December 7, Indonesia invaded my country East Timor, planes dropping paratroopers from the skies and boats vomiting fire and hatred from the waters.
As women we have gone through anything a military invasion and a military occupation machine sets up: rape, imprisonment and death. In 20 years, an untold number of women went through the horror in the Indonesian prisons all over East Timor. Many of us died of starvation and exhaustion in the mountains; others died cremated by the napalm bombs; others shot in the battlefield; others languished in military controlled prisons until raped and executed. Many of us carry on our bodies the scars of the interminable days and nights of prison. Our men and our children went out one day to fight the Indonesians, many did not come back. Others are still fighting. Many are in hiding, carrying out clandestine duties.
The Indonesian military have done the most terrible things against us. During the most difficult days back in the late '70s and early '80s, the Indonesian military used to kill husbands and children in front of the wives and mothers and literally asked them to smile and yell "viva Indonesia", and then bury their own husbands and children. Little unborn babies were dislodged from their pregnant mothers with a knife and in the fury of their "anti-communism" the Indonesian military would smash them against the rocks!
We hope in human solidarity and believe in the solidarity of the women of the world.
International support has been crucial. We appeal to you, as women, as mothers, as sisters and as wives, to say a word and to act in your own countries, in all your capacities, power and strength, for the dignity and freedom of the people of East Timor, for the dignity and freedom of all the East Timorese women.
To the Indonesian women in this Conference we appeal for courage and for dignity: Indonesia should recognise it has committed a very big mistake. It is time to say to your men: respect East Timor, and the best way to do it, is to leave East Timor. It is time for Suharto to sit down with Xanana Gusmao, and solve the question of East Timor. And there will be peace, we will be good neighbours.
Your men, your children, your soldiers in East Timor will be doing nothing but killing innocent people, our children. In spite of the official rhetoric, that is the crude reality. Remember November 12, 1991, the Santa Cruz massacre! The killing fields are no more in the rugged mountains alone. For us, the towns and the villages have become battlefields for freedom. For you, only killing fields everywhere!
Our fight for freedom will go on as long as there is no freedom to live as free human beings, as women, as individuals, as a nation and as people of East Timor.
Dear friends, in the freedom you live in the free world, in the peace of your families, in the dignity of your work in small and big cities, don't forget East Timor, don't forget the East Timorese women, their plight, their struggle and the struggle of the people.