Subject: AFP: Rights group doubts Timor ballot can
be free and fair
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 05:26:59 EDT
From: Joyo@aol.comRights group doubts East Timor ballot can be free and fair
DILI, East Timor, Aug 24 (AFP) - Next week's landmark ballot on this territory's future
will not be free and fair without a dramatic improvement in security conditions, a human
rights group warned here Tuesday.
"The security situation has become worse and worse, day after day, approaching the
day of the ballot," Joaquim Fonseca, spokesman for the Committee for a Free and Fair
Ballot of the Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, told journalists here.
"UNAMET (the UN Mission in East Timor) obviously recognizes the problem of the
violence but has not done anything to respond to it, much less prevent it from
occurring."
He released a report detailing a series of attacks by pro-Indonesian militia over the
past week.
Without firm action against those responsible and a real improvement in security
conditions "the East Timorese will be forced to participate in a ballot which is not
free and fair," the report said.
Close to 430,000 people are registered in the territory to choose next Monday whether
to accept or reject an autonomy option under Indonesia.
Jakarta has said that it may grant independence if the people of East Timor, a former
Portuguese colony it invaded in 1975 and annexed the following year, voted against the
autonomy offer.
"It appears to us that there is no reason to continue the ballot under these
conditions," Fonseca said. "The time is running out at the moment."
He did not call for a delay or cancellation of the vote but urged a review of the May 5
agreements that gave Indonesian police responsibility for security and left UNAMET
military and police liaison officers unarmed.
"Under that agreement, UNAMET cannot do anything. The mandate is very
specific," Fonseca said.
The Committee's report urged a United Nations peacekeeping force for the territory
"because it is evident that the Indonesian government has failed to fulfill its
obligations."
Militia members surrendered weapons throughout the territory last week but the report
called this "only a symbolic act."
It quoted the commander of the militia in Dili as saying the weapons his force handed
over will by kept in a special warehouse at the militia headquarters, but guarded by
Indonesian police.
After a weapons surrender in the town of Ainaro, committee observers saw militia
members still carrying pistols in holsters, the report said.
The Roman Catholic bishop and 1996 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Carlos Ximenes Belo,
meanwhile, urged the international community to increase pressure on Indonesia to ensure a
peaceful vote in East Timor next week.
"I pray that the United States and other nations will do whatever possible to
persuade Indonesian forces to allow this choice to be made freely, and, if independence is
the result, to accept it without retaliating with violence," the bishop of Dili wrote
in an article in The New York Times on Tuesday.
Despite all his efforts to reconcile opposing forces in East Timor, "I have
concluded that only international pressure on Indonesia's army can end the violence,"
he said.
Ximenes urged Washington to make it clear to the military "that Indonesia will not
receive any military assistance or the loans the country so badly needs unless the army
ends its campaign of violence" in East Timor.
"And Indonesian authorities must permit the entry of international
peacekeepers."
"Diplomatic intervention may be the only hope there is to avert a new blood bath
in my native land," he said.
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