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The tide of protest swells

Source
The Australian - September 11, 1999

In another day of nationwide demonstrations more than 25,000 protesters packed the centre of Melbourne yesterday to hear East Timor independence leader Xanana Gusmao appeal to his Australian "brothers and sisters" to pressure the Howard Government to send peace enforcers into East Timor.

"I thank our friends, the people of Australia, my brothers and sisters, Australian workers and Australian students. Please help us, please help me to save my people," Mr Gusmao said.

East Timorese guerilla leader and Falintil chief of staff Taur Matan Ruak earlier spoke to the rally by satellite phone and appealed for a food airlift from Australia directly into the hills of Timor to aid starving refugees.

Postal, tele-communications and freight bans were imposed on Indonesian embassies by Victorian unions yesterday, while union pickets at Melbourne airport continued to severely disrupt the plans of holiday-makers flying to Indonesia.

About 60 unionists blockaded check-in counters for the 8.55am flight to Bali, leading to two arrests.

In Sydney, scuffles broke out as more than 500 protesters blockaded Garuda's check-in counters at 8am and then tried to blockade the departure gate.

Elsewhere in Sydney, almost 1000 high school and university students stopped lunchtime traffic as they marched through the CBD before joining East Timorese for a sit-in at the Garuda office.

In Canberra, Parliament House faced another embarrassing security breach yesterday when East Timorese activists dodged patrolling guards and spray-painted "shame Australia shame" over the building's entrance.

Four men perched dangerously over the entrance on a glass roof and held police at bay for about an hour.

One of the four protesters arrested after the incident, Gareth Smith, who worked as part of the UN mission, later told Canberra Magistrates Court he had faced a "crisis of conscience", with many of his East Timorese friends being jailed or killed.

Elsewhere in Canberra, people tooting their horns in support of protesters outside the Indonesian embassy were yesterday hit with $90 fines by Australian Federal Police.

Meanwhile, travel retailer Flight Centre has become the first tourism operator to react to the Indonesian tragedy, threatening to pull the plug on millions of dollars of business to Bali.

Flight Centre – which sends around 100,000 travellers to Indonesia each year – has written to Indonesian embassies around the world warning that it will encourage its clients to holiday elsewhere, chief executive officer, Graham Turner, said yesterday.

"We will also be advising people not to fly with Garuda, the [Indonesian] national carrier," Mr Turner said. Flight Centre's business to Indonesia amounts to between $130 million and $150 million a year, or 10 percent of their business out of Australia.

Solicitors in NSW are being encouraged to volunteer to help prepare evidence briefs and prosecution cases arising from alleged human rights atrocities in East Timor.

The chairman of the society's Human Rights Taskforce, Michael Antrum, said solicitors would perform a range of duties, including viewing atrocity sites, taking statements and researching where laws had been breached and human rights abuses had occurred.

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