Subject: Los Palos meeting
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 20:40:10 -0700
From: bradley robert simpson <simpsonb@nwu.edu>The following is a report from a
meeting which took place in Los Palos on August 30. Brad Simpson and Kristin Sundell
recently left East Timor after a two week visit.
We stayed overnight in Los Palos after checking in at a well stocked police station,
where we were asked if we were journalists, etc. The next morning we set out to find a
rumoured free speech forum. We eventually saw truckloads of students, followed by
truckloads of army troops, heading towards the edge of town, and followed them.
A free speech forum had been blocked in Los Palos several weeks prior, and an
Australian journalist kicked out for inquiring about troop movements through nearby
Lautem. What we attended was a meeting (monologue) which had been organized by the local
Bupati (basically the mayor) and governor Abilio Soares to trumpet the virtues of autonomy
in a tightly controlled setting. Students had been invited as well, and perhaps 100 of
them came from Dili.
The students were pretty nervous when we arrived. There were hundreds of troops in the
building where the meeting was to take place, a clear attempt at intimidation. They
refused to go in until their safety had been guaranteed by the Bupati.
Inside we estimated that perhaps one-third of the attendees were military. On one side
of the floor was a company of Team Alpha,a local paramilitary organization (they even had
a plaque on the floor with their name). Next to them were local civil servants, and then
the section of students, then a company of troops from the local territorial battalion. On
the podium were the local military and police commanders, the bupati, and Abilio Soares,
and ranking officers sitting behind them. To their left were civilians, and to their right
perhaps 200 combat troops. The rest were civilians. At least 400-600 military were
present.
The proceedings began with Abilio Soares giving an hour long speech on the merits of
autonomy. There was no response at all from the audience. At that point the question and
answer began and the situation spun out of Indonesian control. One student denounced the
moderator and the undemocratic nature of the proceedings, to the cheers of the rest. For
two hours after that a parade of students called for a referendum and rejected autonomy as
tantamount to integration. One particularly vocal student denounced the military
themselves and called for the elimination of ABRI and the Intelligence forces from East
Timor.
It was an extraordinary sight, seeing students in an arena crowded with hundreds of
soldiers directly challenging their right to be in East Timor. No one could remember this
ever happening in Los Palos. Certainly before May nothing of this sort could have taken
place. The Indonesian attempts to control the proceedings were a complete failure, two
weeks after a free speech forum had been blocked. It is difficult to overestimate the
significance of the event.
After that the meeting broke up and everyone left peacefully. Some students, clearly
exhilarated by what had taken place, jeered the soldiers as they drove by in their trucks.
The episode is symbolic of the fluid situation in Timor right now. The Indonesian military
presence outside of Dili is as strong as ever, but a space has opened up due to the
confusion in Jakarta which has filtered down to East Timor, and the East Timorese are
taking advantage of the moment. We were neither questioned nor harrassed as we left.
| "In order to be a pacifist one must first be a revolutionary. In a
world founded on violence a non-revolutionary pacifist is a contradiction in terms, a
monstrosity." A.J. Muste |
Back to September Menu
Back to Main Postings Menu |
