Subject: AFP: Indonesian rights body to investigate
Liquisa massacre
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 09:53:38 -0400
From: "John M. Miller" <fbp@igc.apc.org>Received from Joyo:
Indonesian rights body to investigate Liquisa massacre
JAKARTA, April 10 (AFP) - Indonesia's state-funded National Commission on Human Rights
(Komnas-HAM) is to visit East Timor to investigate charges that Indonesian-backed militia
massacred 25 people in the town of Liquisa, reports said Saturday.
"We will try to establish what really happened in Liquisa ... there are two
different reports on the incident," Clementino dos Reis Amaral was quoted as telling
reporters.
Nobel laureate Bishop Carlos Belo has said at least 25 people were killed in an attack
on hundreds of refugees in a churchyard Tuesday while the military said five died.
Amaral, secretary general of the Komnas-HAM, said a fact-finding team would leave
Wednesday or Thursday for East Timor, where independent human rights groups have been
collecting names of those missing from the area.
The investigation plans were announced as a senior UN official warned in New York that
a UN-organized ballot on the territory's future status would only be held if peace is
restored.
UN special representative for East Timor Jamsheed Marker said Friday that he had
obtained assurances from both the East Timorese and Indonesian sides that they would
observe restraint.
Marker spoke to journalists after meeting with key exiled East Timorese resistance
leader Jose Ramos Horta, who said afterwards that he took such an appeal as "an
order."
"On our side, the East Timor side, we will continue moderation, with efforts to
engage everyone in dialogue," he said.
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