Jakarta claims big Fretelin surrender

Press, 4 December 1978, Page 8

Jakarta claims big Fretelin surrender

i NZPA-Reuter Jakarta Almost 200,000 former members of sympathisers of the Leftist Fretelin movement have surrendered to the Indonesian authorities in the last two weeks, a senior foreign official has said in Jakarta.

I The official, who refused ■to be identified, said the ;East Timorese had surrendered to Indonesian troops and other officials from their hiding places in the jungles and mountains in the former Portuguese territory, absorbed into Indonesia in 1976. The annexation came after one-year of bloody civil war, between the Left-wing Fretelin and pro-Indonesian groups backed by the Indonesian Army.

An American professor told the United Nations General Assembly’s colonialism committee on Saturday that about 62,000 East Timorese people had been killed by Indonesian troops since 1975. Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the United Nations that Indonesia, aided by the United States, was waging a repressive war against East Timor.

Mr Chomsky quoted Australians who took a disabled yacht into the harbour of Dili, capital of East Timor, only a few weeks ago as reporting that warships, many Indonesian troops, and distant explosions left no doubt that Dili was still a war zone.