Jakarta – The commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) yesterday in Jakarta revealed it's new investigation results from East Timor, concerning the violence which was conducted before and after the UN sponsored plebiscite. The results show evidence that the militia were paid by local administrators and the military.

Speaking to a press conference here, the chairman of Kontras' working body, Munir, summarised the findings of investigations in East Timor between late September and late October 1999. Munir said that the full reports will be given to KPP HAM as inputs to the effort of upholding the law.

These findings are evidence which proves the militia and military role in several incidents of violence before and after the UN sponsored plebiscite in East Timor. There is also evidence of the links.

"We found letters which described the activities of the militia and military, left abandoned in many 'concentration camps' and at their training sites. What surprised us most was finding a bundle of books which contained the militia salary records. The printed documents were filed neatly by a computer," he explained, and said that the records show that each militia member was paid as much as Rp. 150,000 per month.

According to Munir, it was very strange when someone [in this case the militiamen] was paid for fighting for his political beliefs. He disclosed that from the testimony of witnesses, the militia salaries were paid from local bureaucrats and administrators, either civil or military.

He continued that Kontras also found some mass graveyards in different areas.

"These showed up from the landscape's physical form, scatterings of flowers which littered the sites and information from local residents." In respect of this evidence Munir said it needed more investigation because so far Kontras had not dug up graves to count the corpses.

Apart from that, Munir said that Kontras has learned that there was a long history of violence in East Timor from January to its peak from September 2nd to 10th.

"This process was closely related to the options which Habibie gave earlier this year," Munir said. He conveyed that this violent period hadn't been evaluated properly by the military and "It was not corrected by the military." Moreover, the martial law imposed in East Timor after the ballot was conducted had caused more havoc, arson and riots which displaced East Timor people as refugees to East Nusatenggara.

"The violations which took place in January, establishments of militia until March and the ensuing violence in several areas in East Timor had a systematic relationship and this peaked in the Suai massacre, which has been reported on by KPP HAM," he said.

This open violence has been publicly acknowledged. "Most of the people who lived in east Timor at that time were eyewitnesses. When Kontras questioned them over what happened on, for example, September 9, they can always answer consistently," Munir explained.

According to Munir, Kontras was convinced that the military operational pattern in that area had a strong connection with the violence which intimidated the local people there.

"There were political decisions from Jakarta which had systematic relationships with everything that happened in East Timor in those nine months [January-September 1999]." Responding to the TNI statement which said that what they did in East Timor in those months was to execute the country's duty, and cursed anybody who questioned this as a nationalist, Munir said this was all wrong.

"We didn't see the relationship between duty to the country and nationalism. Is that true if executing the country's duty is by violence?" he asked enigmatically.

Munir also stressed that if they keep defending their argument that they were just doing their job in executing the country's duty, they had to explain which orders they did execute, the violence within their responsibilities and their failure to prevent it.