Portugal protests over ‘massacre’ in East Timor

Press, 24 September 1983, Page 11

Portugal protests over ‘massacre’ in East Timor

NZPA Lisbon Portugal’s Parliament has voted to protest over the reported massacre by occupying Indonesian troops of 200 to 300 civilians in the East Timor village of Viqueque last August. The protest expressed the 250-seat Chamber’s “most firm condemnation over this nefarious crime,” and called on all nations to press Indonesia against further attacks in the former Portuguese colony. The protest also termed Timorese moves towards self-rule “legitimate.”

Indonesian forces invaded the half-island territory in December 1975, and have occupied the region since. Jakarta officially “annexed” East Timor two years after the invasion.

The protest came after reports from Timorese refugees reaching Australia and Portugal that Indonesian troops had entered Viqueque on August 21 and began killing residents indiscriminately in. the wake of the killing of 15 Indonesian officers by guerrillas of the Timorese independence movement, Fretilin. Most of the victims, according to one Timorese

refugee recently arrived in Lisbon, were women and children. The refugee, who asked not to be identified to protect relatives still in the territory, also confirmed earlier reports that the Indonesians had begun a big, new offensive against Timorese fighters since August. The refugee said that Dili, the capital, was under a dusk-to-dawn curfew and that troops and military equipment rumbled through the darkened city at night to and from combat in the

region’s mountainous hinterland.

Catholic sources from the territory have reported Church findings indicate as many as 200,000 Timorese have died in combat or by hunger since the Indonesian invasion.

Meanwhile, diplomatic analysts said that the United Nations decision to defer debate on Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor was a boon for Australia’s Labour Government, but a mixed blessing for Indonesia.

The Australian Prime Minister, Mr Bob Hawke, no longer faced the immediate problem of whether to support Indonesia and thus split the Australian Labour Party, or support East Timorese independence and thus alienate Australia’s sensitive but strategically important neighbour to the north, said the analysts. The United Nations General Committee’s postponement of the East Timor debate for a year had gained Mr Hawke ample time to wean the A.L.P. from its official support for East Timor’s selfdetermination.