Elizabeth Rau – Indonesian soldiers captured Constancio Pinto on his 28th birthday and beat him so severely over the next six days that his eyes swelled shut.

At one point, his captors pointed a gun at his head and threatened to fire if he didn't disclose details about the resistance movement on East Timor. "Drop him in the sea!" one soldier shouted.

Pinto never gave in. He survived, and eventually escaped, to Portugal, then to Providence, where he's been a student at Brown University for four years.

Yesterday, Pinto, now 34, recalled his suffering as he spoke in favor of legislation, proposed by Rep. Patrick Kennedy, aimed at stopping Indonesia's human rights abuses in East Timor.

The legislation, which Kennedy is expected to introduce today, punishes Indonesia by withholding $26.6 million in military aid. With last year's award of the Nobel Peace Prize to two advocates for the independence of East Timor – Bishop Carlos Felipe Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta – Kennedy said pressure is mounting worldwide for Indonesia to clean up its record.

"We have waited too long for change, and it will not come without a law on the books...," said Kennedy, at a news conference in Brown's Maddock Alumni Center. "The Indonesian government has made endless promises and all of them have been broken."

East Timor, located in a chain of islands that form the Indonesian archipelago, is north of Australia. The island was a former Portuguese colony until 1975 when Indonesian government troops invaded it. About 200,000 people – about a third of East Timor's population – have died from fighting and starvation over the last 22 years.

Pinto was 12 years old when his father roused him at 4 in the morning on Dec. 7, 1975, and told him the island was under attack. The family fled to the mountains, surviving for years on nothing but wild leaves and roots.

They were captured at gunpoint in 1978, and carted off to a prison camp. Eventually, they fled to the capital, Dili, where Pinto joined guerrilla resistance fighters, becoming one of their leaders.

He has never forgotten the beatings. "After five or six strikes, my blood began to run out of my nose, my mouth, my ears. I said, 'I'm going to die.' I said, 'Stop.' It continued."

He called on Congress to approve Kennedy's measure so the people of East Timor "can be free and enjoy their life as a human being."