| Subject: New
evidence of militia-TNI links revealed
Also AFP: Militia leader says Indonesian
intelligence ordered nuns massacre
Indonesian Observer Dec 16, 1999
New evidence of militia-TNI links
revealed
JAKARTA (IO) — The commission for
Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) yesterday in Jakarta
revealed it’s new investigation results from East Timor, concerning the
violence which was conducted before and after the UN sponsored plebiscite.
The results show evidence that the militia were paid by local
administrators and the military.
Speaking to a press conference here, the
chairman of Kontras’ working body, Munir, summarised the findings of
investigations in East Timor between late September and late October 1999.
Munir said that the full reports will be given to KPP HAM as inputs to the
effort of upholding the law.
These findings are evidence which proves
the militia and military role in several incidence of violence before and
after the UN sponsored plebiscite in East Timor. Their is also evidence of
the links.
"We found letters which described
the activities of the militia and military, left abandoned in many ‘concentration
camps’ and at their training sites. What surprised us most was finding a
bundle of books which contained the militia salary records. The printed
documents were filed neatly by computer," he explained, and said that
the records show that each militia member was paid as much as Rp. 150,000
per month.
According to Munir, it was very strange
when someone (in this case the militiamen) was paid for fighting for his
political beliefs.
He disclosed that from the testimony of
witnesses, the militia salaries were paid from local bureaucrats and
administrators, either civil or military.
He continued that Kontras also found some
mass graveyards in different areas.
"These showed up from the landscape’s
physical form, scatterings of flowers which littered the sites and
information from local residents."
In respect of this evidence Munir said it
needed more investigation because so far Kontras had not dug up graves to
count the corpses.
Apart from that, Munir said that Kontras
has learned that there was a long history of violence in East Timor from
January to its peak from September 2nd to 10th.
"This process was closely related to
the options which Habibie gave earlier this year," Munir said. He
conveyed that this violent period hadn’t been evaluated properly by the
military and "It was not corrected by the military."
Moreover, the martial law imposed in East
Timor after the ballot was conducted had caused more havoc, arson and
riots which displaced East Timor people as refugees to East Nusatenggara.
"The violations which took place in
January, establishments of militia until March and the ensuing violence in
several areas in East Timor had a systematic relationship and this peaked
in the Suai massacre, which has been reported on by KPP HAM," he
said.
This open violence has been publicly
acknowledged. "Most of the people who lived in east Timor at that
time were eyewitnesses. When Kontras questioned them over what happened
on, for example, September 9, they can always answer consistently,"
Munir explained.
According to Munir, Kontras was convinced
that the military operational pattern in that area had a strong connection
with the violence which intimidated the local people there.
"There were political decisions from
Jakarta which had systematic relationships with everything that happened
in East Timor in those 9 months [January-September 1999]."
Responding to the TNI statement which
said that what they did in East Timor in those months was to execute the
country’s duty, and cursed anybody who questioned this as a nationalist,
Munir said this was all wrong.
"We didn’t see the relationship
between duty to the country and nationalism. Is that true if executing the
country’s duty is by violence?" he asked enigmatically.
Munir also stressed that if they keep
defending their argument that they were just doing their job in executing
the country’s duty, they had to explain which orders they did execute,
the violence within their responsibilities and their failure to prevent
it.
Militia leader says Indonesian
intelligence ordered nuns massacre
DILI, East Timor, Dec 14 (AFP) - A
commander of one of East Timor's anti-independence militias has admitted
he was behind one of the territory's most horrific massacres and claims he
was acting on the orders of Indonesian special forces.
Joni Marques, commander of the Team Alpha
militia in Los Palos town, told an Indonesian inquiry team he had been
responsible for a September 25 ambush in which eight people -- two nuns,
four male clergy, an Indonesian journalist and a teenage girl -- were
killed.
The attack took place near Los Palos in a
remote part of eastern East Timor shortly after international peacekeepers
arrived in the capital, Dili.
"He clearly stated that he's the one
that killed eight people in Los Palos and that he was trained by a
Kopassus (special forces) unit and that he was ordered also to carry out
killings by a number of Kopassus officers," Helmi Fauzi, a member of
the inquiry team, told journalists here.
Fauzi is a member of the Indonesian
Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights Abuses in East Timor.
Marques was interviewed at Dili jail,
where he is awaiting trial.
The inquiry commissioners have spoken to
some 30 witnesses over the last seven days in their second visit to East
Timor.
After an earlier visit they concluded
that the violence that erupted after East Timor's August 30 vote for
independence had involved collusion between the militias, the Indonesian
armed forces (TNI) and national police (Polri).
They said they obtained testimony and
documents that showed high-ranking members of the Indonesian armed forces
and national police were behind the militia.
The commission has now released more
detailed allegations about Indonesian support for the militias.
"SGI, a notorious combat
intelligence unit dominated by Kopassus members, was heavily involved to
set up, arm and co-ordinate the militias in each of the regencies,"
said Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, another commission member.
But she said SGI was not acting alone.
High-ranking military and police officers "actually commanded this
operation," she said.
Nursyahbani said the military and police
collected, dumped and buried bodies from massacres. They also cleaned the
crime scenes to hide evidence, she said.
Military officers were seconded to
militia units to co-ordinate operations, which also had close links to
civilian authorites such as district heads, she said.
Many district heads were in fact leaders
of the militias, Nursyahbani said.
The commission focussed on three
massacres.
Leonard Simanjuntak, an assistant to the
commission, said 50 to 100 people died in an attack on September 5-6 at
the church in Suai town. Another 50 were murdered on April 5-6 at another
church, in the town of Liquica, he said.
An attack on September 8 at the police
station in Maliana left 30-40 people, Simanjuntak said.
Nursyahbani said the commission obtained
documents that show TNI and Polri "planned and implemented the
burning of East Timor, as well as forcefully displaced the population to
West Timor."
She said lists have been found of
pro-independence people targetted for death in what she termed
"indications of genocide policy."
The Indonesian commission was set up
following Jakarta's refusal to respect the results of a UN commission of
inquiry into the post-ballot violence in East Timor.
The UN commission, which spent nine days
in East Timor, is due to report back to Secretary General Kofi Annan by
the end of this month.
On the basis of their report, Annan will
then have to decide whether to recommend the creation of an international
war crimes tribunal for East Timor.
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