ASIET has received information from the Jakarta based Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) that seven East Timorese youth have been shot dead, four severely injured and 38 with lesser wounds at a peaceful gathering taking place inside the Mahkota Hotel in Dili.

The incident took place on the 23 March. More than 200 students at the University of East Timor had been waiting for UN Special Envoy for East Timor, Jamsheed Marker, to attend a dialogue session at the university. When he did not arrive the students went to his hotel to try to see him. This occurred at 5.00am on 23 March. Frustration in the community was already high due to the closed nature of envoy Marker's meetings and the fact that, apart from the two catholic bishops, he was mainly meeting government officials.

At 6.00am hundred of soldiers surrounded the hotel. Soldiers entered the hotel and started to beat the students. The students attempted to defend themselves with bare hands. Soldiers began shooting the students using weapons with silencers. Students who escaped sought refuge in houses and in the Motael Church and Voice of East Timor newspaper office.

According to YLBHI, several students, including six women were also detained.

ASIET, a national organisation with groups in all Australian cities, is calling on the Australian government to publicly condemn this latest atrocity by Suharto's military and to cut all military ties with the government.

"We are in constant contact with the East Timorese resistance and the Indonesian democracy movement and are kept fully up-to-date with the repression in all areas," ASIET National Co-ordinator. "The killings in Dili as well as the ongoing arrests of democracy activists in Jakarta are more evidence of the dictatorial nature of the Suharto government. The massive sentiment for a boycott of the May elections in Indonesia also shows how unstable the dictatorship is becoming. The Howard government must end all military ties with Suharto now."

To increase pressure on the Howard government to act on this issue, ASIET is organising a week of protest actions nation-wide in the week before the Indonesian "general elections" in May.