‘Timor deaths continue’

Press, 14 January 1982, Page 6

‘Timor deaths continue’

NZPA London East Timorese refugees arriving in Lisbon say that mass executions and indiscriminate brutality are continuing in their homeland, six years after Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony, it has been reported in London.

A “Guardian” correspondent, Jill Jolliffe, reported that two members of Parliament from the Regional Assembly of East, Timor were arrested recently after they complained in their annual report to President Suharto of the behaviour of occupying troops. They said that the . Regional' People’s Representative Assembly of the province of East Timor was continually receiving verbal and written reports or comlaints from the people about torture, maltreatment, murders, and other serious cases.

Feelings of fear were widespread among the people with the result that living conditions had worsened.

The report, which went on to document specific atrocities, was signed by Joao Pedro Soares and' Isaac Leandro, and was forwarded to President Suharto in June.

In September it was leaked to the foreign press, and in November the two men were arrested, but have since been released after an outcry in the Australian press. Jolliffe added that according to refugees who recently arrived in Portugal through a precarious escape route from Dili, the East Timorese capital, fighting was still going on between Indonesian troops and Timorese nationalists led by Fretilin, the Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor, and arrests and arbitrary imprisonments were continuing. Amnesty International has been monitoring the situation since the invasion and its list of East Timorese who have disappeared or allegedly been executed is growing. Jolliffe said the refugees were bitter that the world community was vocally indignant about Afghanistan but appeared to have forgottem them. In recent months, the island territory had been the scene of a new military offensive by the Indonesain Operation Security was an attempt to sweep the country with a force made up of Indonesian Army regulars and the conscripted local population. The result, according to a Catholic Church source in Dili — which has been one of the few reliable channels of information since 1975 — was the execution of about 500 civilians late last year, although the operation failed to capture more than a handful of Fretilin guerrillas. According to Jolliffe, the resistance has survived the most devastating Indonesian military onslaughts over six years, and the population at large appears as opposed to the occupation as it was in 1975.