Bishop outlines continuing Indonesian oppression

Catholics urged to back UDI for East Timor
by Louis Jebb THE CATHOLIC Church in England has been called on to press the Government to support East Timor's right to self-determination.
Speaking in London last week, Mgr da Costa Lopes, former Bishop of Dili and Apostolic Administrator in East Timor, said that the East Timorese people were totally opposed to the eight-year occupation of their country by Indonesia and objected strongly to maltreatment by the occupying army.
Mgr da Costa Lopes's statement comes soon after thirty seven British politicians, led by Lord Avebury, joined politicians from seven other EEC countries in signing a declaration calling for collective EEC action in working for self determination for East Timor.
As part of a tour of European capitals, Mgr da Costa Lopes spoke at a meeting organised by the Catholic Institute for International Relations. Before resigning as Bishop of East Timor in May, he had made repeated statements condemning deportation, torture and murder perpetrated by the Indonesian authorities.
Mgr da Costa Lopes said that the East Timoreans had succeeded in continuing the struggle against occupying forces through classic guerrilla tactics and their knowledge of the country. The Indonesian authorities claim that they are opposed by a few hundred counter insurgents. Mgr da Costa Lopes said that these men should he numbered in thousands. The Indonesian authorities are known to have taken part in negotiations with Fretilin, the force fighting for East Timorese independence, in March. The need to negotiate, recorded on film and tape, indicates that Fretilin forces are far from negligible force, although Indonesia now denies that the negotiations ever took place or that Frctilin's resistance is of any importance. Mgr da Costa Lopes said that the negotiations did take place but that initiatives made by local Indonesian sommanders were later overruled by the government in Djakarta.
When Indonesia first invaded in 1975, soon after Portugese withdrawal, the army is reputed to have killed 100,000 East Timorcans, one third of the population.