| Subject: E
Timor marks bitter anniversary of Indon invasion
East Timor marks bitter anniversary of
Indonesian invasion
DILI, East Timor, Dec 5 (AFP) - The
bodies began to wash ashore about a week after Indonesia invaded East
Timor 24 years ago.
"I buried one man over there on the
beach," said Joao Pereira, 56, who was a waiter at the seafront hotel
Turismo when Indonesian troops landed on December 7, 1975.
Pereira, who still works at the hotel,
said the legs of the East Timorese victim had been bound.
The waiter turned and motioned further
along the water's edge.
"I buried one old man who died over
there, and I buried one little boy."
They were among the first of what Amnesty
International has estimated were up to 200,000 East Timorese who died from
armed conflict, bombardment, execution, famine and disease after the
invasion.
The dead accounted for about one third of
East Timor's pre-invasion population, Amnesty said.
Year after year of brutality followed
until the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly on August 30 this year to
move towards independence, a move that sparked a final Indonesian spasm of
murder, rape, arson, forced relocation and looting.
This Tuesday will be the first time in 24
years that Indonesian troops have been gone from East Timor on December 7.
"There will be no party. It is just
a day that we have conquered our peace back," said Taur Matan Ruak,
deputy commander of the small band of Falintil pro-independence guerrillas
who never gave up their fight against thousands of Indonesian troops.
"It's just mind-boggling the way the
world has turned around in the last 24 years," said Jose Ramos-Horta.
who spent all of those years abroad, trying to make the international
community take notice of East Timor's plight.
Both the American and Australian
governments were aware of Indonesia's invasion plans, writes James Dunn in
his book "Timor: A People Betrayed".
Ramos-Horta said he is not a religious
person, but he said the only way this small former Portuguese colony could
have survived, "must be an act of God".
"God made us strong to survive these
24 years, so on December 7, I will thank God."
The Indonesians first came from the
heavens.
Pereira remembers standing in the
Turismo's garden courtyard about 4:00 a.m. that morning and watching the
Indonesian paratroopers come down.
Indonesian naval gunfire had awakened him
about 90 minutes earlier.
"They were already shooting from the
sea to the hills," he said.
The night before Pereira had served
dinner to the hotel's last guest, the Australian journalist Roger East.
"He ate fish and fried potatoes and
then I heard the telephone," said Pereira.
The phone call came from Francisco Xavier
do Amaral, who had been president of East Timor for 10 days after the
Fretilin political party declared unilateral independence as Indonesian
forces advanced overland into the territory from West Timor.
"See you later. I'm going to
president Amaral's house," Pereira remembered the journalist saying.
He never saw him again.
A witness quoted in Dunn's book said East
was executed on the Dili wharf. His body fell into the sea. Many other
unarmed civilians met a similar fate at the wharf, according to Amnesty.
Against armed opposition, the Indonesians
did not have as much initial success.
"It seems that because of the
Falintil's determined resistance to the invading troops in the first few
months Fretilin was able to intimidate the Indonesian units into
conducting a very cautious campaign," Dunn wrote.
By September 1977 the Indonesians had
intensified operations with air and naval bombardment. The campaign
decimated Falintil, but by 1979 Xanana Gusmao, its current commander, had
set up communications between the surviving guerrillas to keep on the
struggle, Ramos-Horta said.
He said he never doubted that
independence would come.
"For me, what was important was the
dream, or it was this inner voice or power saying, 'no you must not give
up'," Ramos-Horta said.
"The only thing that mattered was
justice for a people. And justice prevailed."
For Ruak, too, victory was assured.
"I never, never had any doubts that
this day would come and always that we will win. And now we have
won," said the Falintil soldier.
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