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Subject: The Age: Graves May Give Answers To Dili Massacre
also East Timor: Massacres and Miracles by Shirley
Shackleton
The Age (Mlebourne, Australia)
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Graves May Give Answers To Dili Massacre
Jill Jolliffe, Dili
TWENTY-EIGHT years after Timorese families began searching for the
remains of loved ones killed in an Indonesian army massacre, 16 bodies
have been unearthed by Timorese investigators and experts from the
Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine.
If their identities are proven they will be the first bodies found of
resisters to Indonesian rule shot down in Dili's Santa Cruz cemetery in
1991. They were discovered in unmarked graves at Hera, 15 kilometres east
of the capital, last week. The last of the 16 cadavers was brought to Dili
on Monday.
Gregorio Saldanha of the 12 November 1991 Committee said the
breakthrough had come after a local gravedigger had testified that the
army had forced him to bury the massacre victims in the local cemetery.
"It was important to find a reliable source to recover the first
bodies," he said. "It wasn't easy."
The massacre occurred after a UN-backed Portuguese parliamentary
delegation due to visit East Timor was postponed after Indonesia vetoed
several journalists due to accompany it.
A new generation of East Timorese nationalists had placed enormous
faith in the visit. They took to the streets and for the first time since
Indonesia's 1975 invasion unfurled banners demanding independence and
supporting guerilla leader Xanana Gusmao.
The occasion was a funeral procession for Sebastiao Gomes, a student
who had been killed by the army days before. When the youths reached the
cemetery they were surrounded by soldiers who fired on the peaceful and
unarmed crowd.
The filming of this event by journalist Max Stahl produced landmark
footage that shocked the world, showing demonstrators who were often
little more than children smeared in blood and praying for salvation from
the bullets.
There were some estimates as many as 200 people may have died.
The killings triggered worldwide sympathy for East Timorese
independence.
Mr Saldanha, a former East Timorese parliamentarian, was himself shot
in the massacre and later served years in Semarang prison, Java, for his
role in the demonstration.
Last year he formed the 12 November Committee to gather evidence from
family members on the numbers of those killed and the possible whereabouts
of bodies.
After months of investigation, the Victorian Institute of Forensic
Medicine under Soren Blau became involved, with funding from the
Australian Government. Their team vainly searched various sites indicated
by family members last year.
Mr Saldanha said that after the massacre the Indonesian government had
claimed only 19 people had been killed, and that the Hera site appeared to
have held those 19 bodies, in separate unmarked graves, but the
investigators found that three were empty.
"One had held the body of Kamal (Bamadhaj) but it was exhumed some
time around 1995 and returned to his family," he said.
Kamal Bamadhaj was a student at the University of NSW and the only
foreigner killed in the massacre, although various foreign journalists and
activists marched with the demonstrators.
"Later the Indonesian government admitted under pressure that
maybe 50 people had died," Mr Saldanha said, adding that the
committee's current figures list 74 confirmed deaths.
Some family members had yet to be contacted so the number could be
higher.
----
East Timor: Massacres and Miracles
Shirley Shackleton
ETLJB 9 April 2009 Melbourne In response to Jill Jolliffe's report
in The Age on 1st April 2009, it should be noted that there were
several massacres in Dili. The first occurred on 7th December 1975
when thousands of Chinese and Timorese were murdered.
A second Dili massacre took place the day after the Indonesian
invasion when over a hundred citizens forced to the wharf witnessed
the murders of Roger East and more than a hundred victims including
Isabel Lobato and Rosa Muki Bonaparte.
Though the cemetery is in a suburb of Dili, I submit that to name it
the Dili massacre marginalises all the other massacres that took
place in the city during the Indonesian occupation.
See James Dunn 'East Timor a rough passage to independence' page 292
for details of massacres outside Dili.
Though I don’t suppose the demonstration at the Pope’s mass at Taci
Tolu in 1989 could be described as ‘taking to the streets,’ it was
an extremely courageous act since it took place in the presence of
thousands of Indonesian soldiers dressed as scout masters or
tourists. They were armed with cameras which they used to record the
demonstrators, many of whom were subsequently disappeared. Brave
Timorese youths also unfurled banners which had to be smuggled into
Taci Tolu through military checkpoints. Rods designed in
interlocking sections placed their carriers in particular danger.
Taci-Tolu is a place where thousands of Timorese had been butchered
to the extent that people attending the Pope's mass wept as they
entered the arena. ‘We are walking on the bones of our loved-ones.’
For weeks before the Pope's arrival, the site at Taci Tolu was
out-of-bounds and bulldozers were observed clearing the grounds.
There was much speculation about the disposal of the remains of many
thousands of Timorese.
When the youths carrying the banners ran towards the dais where the
Pope was standing, the batik-shirt brigade moved in and began to
beat anyone who got in their way. A group of Timorese standing close
to the dais saw what was happening; they found the courage to raise
their fists. The cameras were adjusted to include them. Uniformed
police appeared from nowhere hurling chairs and clouds of dust began
to rise as if the Taci Tolu massacres were being repeated.
A hundred or so Timorese found the courage to try to help the
protesters; they were beaten into the earth with riot sticks and
chairs. A Filipino journalist's camera was torn from his hands and
the film ripped out. I saw one man clutching his fractured jaw as a
scout master continued to kick him.
A reporter from Darwin told me that when the protest began he asked
his Indonesian press minder what was written on the banners. While
looking straight at them, the minder had replied: ‘What banners?’
The banners read: MAUBERE PEOPLE WELCOMES PAPPA. LONG LIVE FRETILIN.
VIVA FRETILIN. POPE SAVE EAST TIMOR.
The Santa Cruz massacre did not take place during a funeral
procession. When a Timorese burial takes place the mourners lay the
Bitter Flowers. When time has elapsed so that the grief has lessened
the ceremony of the Sweet Flowers is held. On 28 October, Gomes, a
student activist, had sought refuge in the church of San Antonio de
Motael. He was shot in the stomach by an Indonesian soldier in front
of dozens of astonished witnesses.
The laying of the Sweet Flowers for Sabastião was a commemoration of
the burial that had occurred two weeks earlier. On the morning of
November 12th, thousands of East Timorese marched from the church of
San Antonio de Motael to Santa Cruz cemetery after attending a
memorial mass for Sabastião. Marchers were harassed by police and
intelligence agents, who pelted the procession with rocks. As
mourners entered the Santa Cruz cemetery to lay the sweet flowers
Indonesian soldiers marching slowly and deliberately fired at them
at point-blank range.
As to the numbers of the dead, Max Stahl told me he saw as many as
four hundred manacled, desperate Timorese being driven off after the
massacre.
A Paz e Possivel em Timor-Leste (Peace is Possible in Timor-Leste)
published a list of their findings into the number of massacre
victims in leading Portuguese newspapers in November, 1992. Jose
Ramos-Horta described how the data was obtained:
"... has been compiled by 12 teams of East Timorese students, school
teachers, priests, nuns, nurses, paramedics, hospital staff, workers
at the morgues, totalling 72 researchers, working round the clock
for three months, interviewing household members in each bairro,
immediately after 12 November 1991.”
The preliminary report reached Lisbon in February and was handed
over to two specialist groups in Portugal that had been
investigating human rights abuses in East Timor for more than 10
years. A copy was channelled to Amnesty International for
independent verification.
It took six months for the mass of detailed information sent from
East Timor to be processed and analysed. The researchers took
extreme care in double-checking each piece of information."
The Lists: 271 killed; 278 wounded; 103 hospitalised; 270
disappeared.
Google's cache of
http://www.etan.org/timor/SntaCRUZ.htm is a snapshot of the page
as it appeared on 27 Mar 2009 23:30:04 GMT.
For an eye-witness report of the Santa Cruz massacre Google
Democracy Now via Santa Cruz massacre.
Max Stahl’s film footage and the subsequent reporting by Americans
Amy Goodman and Alan Nairn broke the backs of the Jakarta Lobbyist's
compromised assurances that the Timorese fared well under Indonesian
rule. When Alan threw himself over Amy in an attempt to prevent her
from being assaulted by the butt of an M16 rifle being wielded by an
Indonesian soldier, he took the blow intended for her, which
fractured his skull.
The fact that witnesses survived the massacres in Dili is something
of a miracle.
I invite valid criticism of anything I publish in the interest of
accuracy.
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