[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1987-E1988]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

TRAGEDY IN EAST TIMOR

______

HON. LUIS V. GUTIERREZ

of illinois

in the house of representatives

Wednesday, September 29, 1999

Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, on September 4, 1999, U.N. officials
announced the results of a U.N.-sponsored referendum of voters in East
Timor. 78.5 percent of the voters rejected an indonesian government
plan for East Timor to receive a special autonomy arrangement within
Indonesia. This result, which effectively called for independence,
sparked a rampage of killings and other acts of terror by East Timorese
paramilitary groups supported by the Indonesian Army.
One of my constituents, Mr. Michael Rhoades of Chicago, went to East
Timor to serve as a United Nations accredited observer of the August 30
referendum. He participated with the International Federation for East
Timor (IFET) Observer Project as a photojournalist. I submit a copy of
a recent letter from Mr. Rhoades dated September 25, 1999. He was an
eyewitness to the horrors that took place in East Timor.
I urge my colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 2809. This bill will impose an
immediate suspension of assistance to Indonesia until the results of
the August 30, 1999, vote in East Timor have been implemented.

I send this letter out of desperation, writing from
Australia where I've been for a few weeks courtesy of an
Australian Air Force evacuation flight from Dili, East Timor.
Two weeks ago I flew from Darwin (our evac destination) to
Sydney, sitting frustrated and sad now as I wait to fly back
into Timor. It is difficult to write this because there is so
much to say, because these have been some of the most
heartbreaking weeks of my life, feeling absolutely powerless
as politicians bow and curtsy through shallow condemnations
of the Indonesian massacre in East Timor.
I was in East Timor as an election/human rights observer
with the International Federation for East Timor's observer
project (IFET-OP). We were (I add proudly) the largest
observer group in Timor, at one time numbering almost 150
participants with small teams dispersed in villages and
cities throughout the country. Our mandate was to document
human rights abuses and election rule violations during the
August 30 popular consultation, as well as the periods
immediately preceding and following.
During my stay in Timor I saw time and again the blurring
between ranks of military, police, and militia personnel. I
heard stories from refugees sheltering in churches who'd been
told that if the vote was for independence their village
would be slaughtered. I heard soldiers scream to a family
cowering behind the front wall of their home that they'd be
back to kill them in the night. I helped try to save a young
man (younger than me) dying from machete wounds, ghost-
walking bleeding from his shoulder, arms, and gut--bone and
intestines pressing through split flesh.
I saw this younger-than-me man wrapped in soaked-through
bloody sheets as we helped him into our truck. He remained
absolutely silent while his sister and father screamed his
pain and part of our team sped him off to the only medical
clinic still functioning in Dili. I saw him (in-head) as we
dodged military and militia patrols trying to get (quick and
nonchalant) back home. I see him as I write this letter, I
see him as I remember hearing that he was dead.
I see this younger-than-me man as Indonesia stalls for time
and our leaders huff and sigh for the cameras and their
respective constituencies. I see this dead boy, and my
friends left behind in East Timor.
I fear (am terrified) for the life of Gaspar da Costa whose
house we rented in the mountain village of Maubisse, and who
went behind that house to quietly cry while we went inside to
hurridly pack after telling him we were evacuating, leaving
his town for the ``safety'' of Dili; ``and what happens to my
family?'' he asked as we swapped our integrity for our skins.
And I snapped pictures of Gaspar and his brothers and wife
and daughters to document in advance the barbarism of the
Indonesian government, preferring to photograph the da Costas
while still alive, hugging Gaspar with everything in me when
we left, feeling (though not wanting to believe) that I was
hugging a dead man.
And through the cacophony of U.N. sabre rattling I hear
Father Mateus, the priest of Maubisse, who assured me that he
was not a hero but who absolutely was. And though the East
Timorese soil is wet with the blood of thousands far braver
than me, I am particularly in awe of Father Mateus who
sheltered refugees in his church and who stood up to the
local police and militia heads, saying boldly that he did
not trust them because he had been shown time after time
that he could not trust them. The last I heard of Father
Mateus, his name was at the top of the local militia
deathlist. Selfless to the point of bullheadedness Father
Mateus declared that there had not yet been a priest
martyred for East Timor (because at the time there had not
been) and he was prepared to be the first.
I remember the horror in the Maubisse polling center the
afternoon of the vote when certain militia members and
military officers had whispered to the local Timorese polling
staff that they'd kill them all in their homes that night. I
remember that they slept in the polling center (Maubisse's
schoolhouse) on the floor with no blankets, using
deconstructed cardboard voting booths as mats. I remember
leaving them there when we went home to dinner and a bed at
Gaspar's because we were forbidden by our mandate to stay
with them through the night. I remember walking up to the
school at sunrise the next morning as we'd promised, to see
if all was ok, and finding everyone across the road in the
church for morning mass. I remember the terror still sharp in
their faces as mass finished and they dragged along on tired-
of-it feet back to their refuge in the school. And there were
the folks who wound their way round to us between the mass
and their refuge and shook our hands because they mistakenly
thought that we had made the vote possible when it was them--
the East Timorese--coming out to vote in mind-blowing numbers
that made the vote. And there was the old woman who came up
to us and shook our hands and kissed them and said,
``friend.''
I remember my friend Meta who shouted my name and came up
to hug me when our team walked through the gates of IFET's
Dili HQ after we'd evacuated Maubisse. Meta who was so proud
to introduce me to his father. Meta my friend, who is
running; who went to hide in the hills. Who I hope with every
part of me is still alive, as I do Gaspar and his family and
Father Mateus and the brothers and refugees in his church . .
. and here I feel like I'm being selective and truly I wish
that no Timorese were being slaughtered. But that now is an
impossibility, estimates put the death toll in the high
thousands or tens of thousands and the longer that we U.N.
member states stall, the greater the number of East Timorese
being massacred or forcibly ``relocated'' and the greater our
collective shame.
When I originally drafted this letter for a few small U.S.
newsweeklies, Indonesia had just conceded to allow a U.N.
peacekeeping force into East Timor. I, among others, did not
trust them. They would stall for time. And in that time there
would be more slaughter. It is a week later now and much of
this U.N. force is in the region, working with

[[Page E1988]]

an Indonesian military which continues to be uncooperative
and brutal. Airdropped food is providing a minimum of
sustenance for hundreds of thousands of refugees slowly
starving in the Timorese hills, but the Jakarta-driven
massacre continues as stories of mass-killings during the
past few weeks come forward through eye-witness testimonials,
as refugees forced into West Timorese camps are terrorized
and murdered, and as the militia masses its Indonesian-
military-backed forces along the western side of the
Indonesia-East Timor border (as it now can be called). The
Australian media reported that Interfet peacekeepers chased
three TNI trucks (TNI being the acronym of the Indonesian
military) through the streets of Dili Thursday, TNI trucks
which were loaded with troops who fired three bursts
from automatic rifles, trying hard to shatter any remnants
of the peace which they were tasked with restoring.
Originally this letter was a call to action. Now, I hope,
it acts as a call to continue that action. Unflinching
vigilance and continued humanitarian action will be absolute
necessities in the coming months, not only in East Timor but
also for the hundreds of thousands of refugees forced into
military convoys or onto boats headed to West Timor and other
Indonesian islands. (Recent reports speak of a near total
absences of males between the ages of 16 and 50 in the
refugee camps and convoys.) And at home in the United States
there are bills in both the House and the Senate (HR. 2809
and S. 1568) which would `lock-in' the temporary bans on
military and financial assistance to Indonesia. These bills
also set conditions (including a safe and secure environment
in East Timor, full humanitarian assistance, and the return
of all refugees), which Indonesia must meet before this
assistance can resume. I write this letter in the hopes that
you will read it and be incensed, that you will read it and
want to pressure our government to act, to continue to act.
The United States government carries much of the blame for
this slaughter in East Timor, as they have sat by for twenty-
four years while Indonesia--third largest global market for
U.S. weapons and consumer goods; home to a bargain-priced,
easily-exploitable labor force; and our viciously anti-
Communist Cold War ally--carried out its sadistic policies
against the East Timorese population, as they (the U.S.
government--and we citizens by extension) turned a blind-eye
and an approving nod to the invasion. I write this letter as
a plea, an agonized cry from across the Pacific, to ask that
you pressure our representatives in Washington to act. Please
pressure them to act.

____________________