East Timor: an abandoned people

A personal view by Peter Stanford on the suffering of the East Timorese.
IT is fen years this week since Indonesian troops occupied the Portuguese colony of East Timor. Reliable sources suggest that over this decade some 250,000 of the island's population of 700s00 have died.
Those who survive either live in mountainous hideouts, or else have been herded by the occupying forces into what have been described as "concentration camps".
In the face of this Indonesian policy which amounts to genocide, the international community has chosen to remain, for the most part, silent.
Official United Nations recognition of the annexation of East Timor by the Indonesians has been withheld. Yet earlier this year the UN Commission on human Rights voted in Geneva to remove East Timor from its agenda despite the fact that all the evidence which seeps out of this closed island points to widespread and brutal human rights abuse which continues unabated.
The rest of the world has chosen to turn a blind &ye to the plight of the East Timorese and their homeland, 400 miles north of Australia. They prefer to accept the de facto situation and hope that the de jure complications will eventually be sorted out. Even Australia, Once
East Timor's outspoken advocate, has accepted the annexation.
Britain seems in two minds. Mrs Thatcher, on her Easter tour of the Far East, told reporters that she would not raise East Timor with the Indonesians because it was a purely domestic dispute.
Sir Geoffrey Howe, however, months before, had asserted that there could be no solutiofl to the problems of East Timor without the consultation of the Timorese themselves.
Through this decade of Oppression for the Timorese, the one defender of their rights has been the Church. In the international arena Vatican spokesmen have urged both the Portuguese and the Indonesian governments to work towards a solution which takes account of the wishes of the East Timorese.
During a visit to Portugal in 1982, Pope John Paul discussed the issue with President Eanes and celebrated Mass for Timorese refugees at Fatima. in 1984 he cancelled a planned visit to Indonesia without any reason, and later that year told the new Indonesian ambassador to the Holy See that "the Vatican continues to follow the situation in East Timor with preoccupation."
Inside East Timor the Church has become the sole line of information as to what is happening there. First Mgr Martinho da Costa Lopes and then his successor Mgr Carlos Ximencs Belo, have consistently debunked the official picture presented by the Indonesians — of the pacification of East Timor, save for a few desperate guerrillas who continue to hold out against the benefits of the Indonesians' educational and
health care programmes.
What in fact the two apostolic administrators of Dili have told the world is that the Fretellin guerrillas who oppose the invading forces have the support of the East Timorese people. Despite pouring vast quantities of military hardware (purchased from western allies) and manpower into the area, the Indonesians have failed to pacify the Timorese.
They have adopted progressively more brutal methods. In a letter dated January 1 this year, Mgr Belo accused the Indonesian army of carrying out "summary executions", of enlisting minors as "auxiliary forces" in military operations, and of launching "successive, systematic and regular cleaning-up operations" against Timorese civilians.
He also described the "inhuman conditions" in which the population was forced to live, in so-called "rehabilitation camps". As well as employing brute force, the Indonesians are also trying to destroy the culture of the East Timorese.
However, the Church has pledged itself to continue to be the voice for the Timorese people that the rest of the world would rather forget.