Telling the truth about East Timor

ON 1 I LSDAY morning Fr Francisco Fernandes made his way to the Foreign Office in London. His mission. in his own words. was "to tell the British government the truth about East Timor".
Realistically. he did not hope to achieve much more than that, at least in the short term. East Timor is a long way away in the ocean and its problems are easily ignored or forgotten.
Fr Fernandes is a refugee who fled East Timor following the invasion by the Indonesian army in December 1975. The truth. as he sees it, is that a people now numbering about a00,000 are being forced against their will and in conditions of terrible hardship Li) become the 27th province of Indonesia.
A former Portuguese colony, East Timor began to move towards sell-government after the downfall of Portugal's dictatorship in 1974. In August 1975 a civil war broke out between rival groups competing for power, leading to one of the groups, FRETILIN (Revolutionary Front for an Independent Fast Timor) declaring independence in November. The Indonesian invasion followed 10 days later, on the orders of President Su harto Since then the numbar of deaths has been estimated at between 100,(XX) and 200,000. In the last two years hundreds of thousands are said to have been forced from their homes and about 300.000 are no in 150 "resettlement sites" under Indonesian military guard.
The Indonesian government has prevented much information from emerging from the territory. But evidence of widespread Famine and disease was uncovered when foreign ambassadors visited the sites in 1978, It was not until late 1979 that outside relief agencies were allowed in (see story below).
In the last few months fierce fighting has been reported between Indonesia troops and Timorese guerillas.
One curious sideline which has emerged from the Indonesian efforts at the "integration" of East Timor is the sharp difference in attitudes between the Protestant and Catholic churches.
Before the invasion there were very few Protestants in East Timor, while about one third of the population was Catholic. Gradually, however, Protestant churches have moved into the area. regarding it, as does the government, as part of Indonesia. The Catholics, meanwhile, under the leadership of the one bishop there. Bishop Martinau da Costa Lopez, have remained firmly opposed to Indonesian rule. The bishop has refused to let the East Timorese Church be "merged" with the separate hierarchy in Indonesia, saying that his loyalty is to the local people and to the Vatican. The Vatican, fcfr its part, has remained silent about the whole issue.