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Gunmen aim to intimidate press

Source
South China Morning Post - August 27, 1999

Joanna Jolly, Dili – It was after the thousands opposed to independence had paraded through Dili that a hard-core of several hundred militiamen showed the true colours of the pro-integration campaign.

With the main convoy of trucks and buses crammed with Indonesian flag-wavers out of town and on the road to Liquica, the gunmen, in their black shirts bearing the Aitarak militia insignia, marched through the streets shooting wildly in the air.

Streets in the town centre emptied before them as they descended on the main resistance headquarters. In a road beside the office, a South Korean cameraman filmed the militia members shooting their home-made guns.

The militia turned on him, but police intervened and he was unharmed. So, too, was a female colleague who got out of a car to help him. She had a gun forced into her back before police also hurried her away. Both were ordered to shelter behind a truck.

I was among three other journalists told to join them. After a moment of calm, about 150 militiamen marched towards the truck shouting.

Most were armed, some with Kalashnikov AK-47 automatic rifles, Portuguese pistols and sawn-off shotguns while others had knives. Some wore army fatigues, others the red beret of the Indonesian Kopassus special forces. Among them was Aitarak leader Eurico Gutierres, in army fatigues and a beret, brandishing an AK-47. Shouting "kill them all" they came for the truck. Three of us sheltered inside the cabin.

One of the two outside had a knife pulled on him. A policeman yanked back his attacker. The militiamen now shouted "kill all Australian journalists" and tried to kick the two journalists. Police pushed the two into the cabin and told us all to keep our heads down as the fighters rocked the vehicle.

When, after about 10 minutes, they moved away, guns blazing in the air, police radioed for a car but, after a few minutes, escorted us instead to the Hotel Dili.

Other journalists there had been shot at and chased by machete-wielding militiamen across the hotel compound into the main building. The firing lasted more than an hour, they said, until police formed a cordon to keep the gunmen at a distance. In the hills behind, smoke rose from several large fires.

The militias' action could only have been deliberate – and intended, perhaps, to intimidate foreign reporters into getting out of town before Monday's vote.

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