Indonesian army attempts to stamp out Timorese culture •

Holocaust in East Timor
by Peter Stanford TO coincide with President Reagan's visit to Lisbon last week. Portuguese church sources have released the text of a secret letter, dated January 1, from the apostolic administrator of Dili, capital of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, in which he speaks of "an upheaval of gigantic and tragic proportions in the social and cultural framework of the Timorese people whose identity is threatened by destruction".
Mgr Carlos Ximenes Belo in his letter accuses the Indonesian army which invaded Fast Timor in 1975 of carrying out "summary executions", enlisting minors as "auxiliary forces" in military operations and launching "successive, systematic and regular cleaningup operations" against Timorese civilians.
Mgr Belo's letter was also signed by the council of priests of the diocese of Dili and was later forwarded by Mgr Belo's predecessor, Mgr da Costa Lopes, now living in Lisbon, to congressional representatives in the United States. A bipartisan group of 131 members of the House of Representatives then addressed an urgent plea to the President asking him to use his visit to Portugal to emphasise American concern over events in East Timor where more than 100,000 civilians have perished since 1975.
However, during his two day trip to Portugal, the President made no public statement on the matter, although it is believed that the question of East Timor was on the agenda for his talks with government ministers.
Since the Indonesian occupation, Fretelin guerrilla forces, with widespread popular support, have been fighting for self determination for East Timor which lies 400 miles northwest of Australia.
In combatting the Fretelm forces, Mgr Belo reports that the Indonesians have carried out waves of arrests among civilians, have concentrated villages in resettlement camps with "inhuman conditions".
The Indonesians, in addition to committing vast military resources to the fight to quell a population of just 600,000, have also attempted to destory the Timorese culture_ Mgr Belo notes. He admits that there have been initiatives in such fields as schooling, agriculture and transport, but balances these against "the horrors of war".
Further, Mgr Belo asserts that "the attempt to indonesianise the Timorese people through powerful Pancasila (Indonesian state ideology) represents a slow assassination of Tinaorese culture. To kill their culture is to kill the people themselves".
The Timorese are predominantly Catholic, in contrast with their Moslem Indonesian neighbours. "By accusing priests, arresting those who teach the catechism, banishing and slaughtering the Christians", Mgr Belo states, the Indonesian army of occupation is "attempting to put an end to the religious feeling of the people and, as a consequence, the identity of the Timorese people itself".
The letter concludes by appealing for human rights to be respected in East Timor and for "frank and fruitful dialogue between the different parties involved in the problem". Any such dialogue must include representatives of the Timorese people, Mgr Belo stresses, and not just representatives of the Portugese and Indonesian governments as was the case in talks convened through UN auspices in late 1984.