D. Aveiro – Ximenes Belo, former archbishop in Dili and Nobel peace laureate, said Wednesday that, 17 years after the massacre at the cemetery of Santa Cruz, is yet to make the accounting of the dead.

Invited to talk about the massacre of Santa Cruz Municipal Library in Estarreja, D. Ximenes Belo, bishop of Dili at the time, said we do not know for sure how many people died in the incidents and reported the moments then lived.

"I repeat here what I said in Dili in 1991: it is better to ask why the Indonesians killed and that they were that they collected the bodies. So far, we do not know exactly how many were dead, the wounded and missing, because in months following families did not report that the children were missing for fear of reprisals from the Indonesian authorities," he said.

For Ximenes Belo, the massacre of Santa Cruz was crucial for East Timor to achieve independence.

"Respecting the families who lost their children, we can say that the lives of young people massacred on 12 November 1991 served as a springboard for the continuation of East Timor's struggle and independence in law and in fact.

"In memory of those young Timorese martyrs, raise to God my humble prayers for the living and the dead and presto my tribute to those who fell in Santa Cruz," recalled.

Ximenes Belo realized that, days earlier, there was the great influx of young people into confessions, filling the churches, a spiritual preparation for that heroic act.

"Many young people took Communion. Two or three days before the massacre the churches were full of young people and many were up and admit we are surprised with such turnout. We came to learn later that they had agreed among themselves because they knew they were going die and add value to be ready to die defending the homeland, than die in mortal sin," reported.

Ximenes Belo admitted that he initially closed the door to young people who had escaped from Santa Cruz but, before the supplicates them, they open the door.

"I saw groups of young people coming toward my house and told the principle close the door but shouted that they were wounded and dying. I said open the door and were 150 boys and girls who had come from Santa Cruz.

I myself saw that other young people were intercepted by Indonesian troops who had surrounded my house and were killed and arrested there on the road.

The Indonesians tried to immediately collect the bodies. "Manuel Carrascalao saw them to load 50 bodies," he said.

The former Archbishop of Dili explained that after it sent the cemetery and saw "a large group of young, naked from the belt up and with hands on their heads, ready to be put in military trucks." "I came to learn later that some were bound upside down and punched as if they were bags of boxing and some not resisted," he said.

Ximenes Belo, the city was without lights and he charged there were more murders in the hospital: "There were serious injuries that have been taken to the mortuary where, with their large boulder crushed his head."

That night, a nurse's hospital that was coined by a seminary student called and gave account of which he had already washed 70 bodies of young people killed.

On the day of the 14th, he made a visit to the hospital, found that the wards were all full of youth and adolescents, many were completely unrecognizable due to torture. Some of them were those who had received in her house and finds that many have been killed since returned to the hospital the next day and the number was reduced.

Indonesia had appointed a commission of inquiry whose results were not credible and that pointed to a total of only 19 dead and 90 wounded, concluding that it was not a massacre but an incident.

Despite international pressure for the committee to disclose the number right, corrected to 50 dead and 90 wounded.

The process of decolonization of East Timor, according to the Nobel Peace Prize, was all wrong: "Wrong Portugal abandoned because, since Indonesia invaded the wrong and wrong because the Timorese did not have been able unite," he concluded.

[Unofficial translation via Google from Portuguese original. Posted by ETAN.]