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Militias offer to reveal all about East Timor

Source
Agence France Presse - October 17, 2000

Jakarta – Four former leaders of pro-Indonesia militias who helped run a campaign of wholesale murder and looting in East Timor last year have offered to reveal everything they know in exchange for guarantees of safety.

In a letter addressed to the UN Security Council, the four accused the Indonesian military of trying to assassinate them before they disclosed army involvment in the violence that swept East Timor in September 1999 after the territory voted for independence.

The letter, dated October 14 and a copy of which was obtained here Tuesday, was sent by four former commanders: Joanico Cesario, Domingo Pereira, Cancio Lopez de Caravalho and Nemecio Lopez de Carvalho.

The writers said copies had been sent to 35 people including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, Pope John Paul II, and the leaders of the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia as well as Indonesia's most senior politicians.

The four offered to "honestly, accurately and thoroughly expose all that we know concerning the various events that occurred in East Timor" in exchange for legal guarantees from the Security Council.

They accused the Indonesian military of "acts of terror and intimidation" and of trying to kill militia commanders for their knowledge of "secrets concerning various cases of human rights violations and crimes against humanity in East Timor."

The four said the military also seemed to believe they knew the circumstances of the murder of three UN relief workers based at refugee camps in Atambua, West Timor, on September 6 this year. They had also become targets "in order to destroy both witnesses and evidence" surrounding those killings, they said.

A UN-supervised ballot held on August 30 last year resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence from Indonesia in East Timor. The result sparked an orgy of militia-led destruction and violence that left around 600 people dead. Indonesia-backed militias forced some 300,000 East Timorese over the border into West Timor, where 130,000 remain, mostly in squalid camps.

The four writers were seeking guarantees of safety for 54 militia leaders, members and advisors, including notorious Aitarak (Thorn) militia leader Eurico Guterres. The letter stated that militia leaders' "lives and safety are being threatened" and asked that the 54 be cantoned in a secure area in West Timor.

It stated the militias were now "fully committed" to their own disarmament and disbandment. "We ... will not use West Timor as the base for physical/armed conflict," the letter stated.

One of the six commanders named as a suspect in Indonesia's own investigation into last year's violence in East Timor was killed and dismembered on September 5 this year.

Meanwhile, Guterres is under arrest in Jakarta and under investigation as a suspect in human rights crimes in the territory. He has dismissed the letter as the "personal statement" of "a handful of PPI members," and urged his supporters to ignore it.

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