A flight from hell

Only a few hours before Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo was forced to leave his home in the East Timor capital of Dili on September 6, 1999, I spoke with him by telephone. Thousands of people fleeing the savage violence of the Indonesian military, mainly women and children, were taking refuge in the bishop’s residential compound, in the very area where people ordinarily would gather for Sunday Mass. Despite the mounting difficulties, the bishop was his characteristic self, making wry jokes until the end. I asked if I could phone again in a few hours, as I had other matters to discuss. Would he be remaining at home?

With 4,000 people to take care of, Bishop Belo jibed, where can I go? But by the time I called back, he was no longer there: it was an Indonesian voice that answered the phone. That had happened many times in the past when his calls were intercepted by the Indonesian intelligence apparatus, so at first it seemed normal. But what took place on September 6 was hardly business as usual. Indeed, in our last conversation before he left Dili, Bishop Belo told me that the military’s ferocious campaign was in reality a coup d’état aimed at overturning the result of the August 30 United Nations-sponsored referendum, in which 78.5 percent of registered voters chose the option of independence from Indonesia, which had illegally invaded East Timor in 1975. Before he put down the phone, the Timorese prelate made an urgent appeal for international peacekeeping forces, one that he had made repeatedly over the past several months. He sounded strong and optimistic, as well as hopeful that the world would finally respond to East Timor’s plea for help.

A violated sanctuary

For years, Belo’s home represented the ultimate in safety to those granted sanctuary there. It was considered inviolate. But not long after I phoned that fateful day, the bishop’s residential compound was viciously attacked by local thugs under the control of the Indonesian army. As in the Nazi occupation of many European nations during the Second World War, Indonesian forces had cultivated a cadre of local collaborators and had forced others to co-operate on pain of death. On September 6, 1999, the collaborators and the far more numerous Indonesian Special Forces attacked the bishop’s compound to drive out the people who had taken sanctuary there. His house was set on fire, and Bishop Belo himself was forced to take refuge in the town of Baucau with his brother bishop, Basilio do Nascimento. The International Red Cross compound next door to the bishop’s house, where another 2,000 had taken refuge, was also overrun.

The assault on the bishop’s residence and the Red Cross, in addition to operations aimed at other religious houses, was clearly designed to attack two of the last symbols of sanity, shelter and protection, in the words of a well-placed international official. And while the pictures on the world’s television screens made East Timor appear like utter chaos, in reality observers on the scene described the situation as more like orchestrated anarchy. Eyewitnesses said that the real leaders of the militia were not rogue elements or even East Timorese, but Indonesian Special Forces in plainclothes and hired criminals. In early September, it was clear that the Indonesian military wanted nothing more than to clear East Timor of journalists, United Nations observers and others, the better to conduct its atrocities in secret. More than that, the military’s objective pointed to a Serbian-style operation to cleanse the population of East Timor.

Before the line went dead, Bishop Belo said that shooting could be heard throughout the night of September 5, and many had been killed. Thomas Quigley of the U.S. Catholic Conference, who stayed at the bishop’s residence that night, learned that paramilitary gangs were bursting into houses and shooting people at close range. One Church source said that the massacres taking place could only be compared with those of 1975, when Indonesia first invaded East Timor, and thousands were executed during those first few days. In fact, coupled with the widespread burning and looting that took place, 1999 was far worse.

A convenient deafness

For many months, the bishop had spoken of escalating bloodshed, and repeatedly warned various governments and the United Nations that a referendum should not be held under such conditions. His warnings fell on deaf ears. Still, few really believed that Bishop Belo or his home would become a target. But the scorched-earth of the Indonesian military ended the bishop’s immunity. Nonetheless, when screaming thugs directed by Indonesian Special Forces (once trained by the United States) burst into his home and began shooting on the morning of September 6, he was not completely surprised. In fact, Bishop Belo, ordered to sit down on the floor by the thugs, quickly walked out of his residence, knowing that in a similar incident months earlier in the town of Liquica, dozens of those who sat down were ultimately slaughtered. More than anything, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo knew he was needed to alert the world in the most forceful terms to the new genocidal pogrom being visited on the people of East Timor by the Indonesian military who, despite all international media’s talk of local militias, were the real authors of the carnage.

The bishop fled Dili for Baucau, the second largest town, where he received shelter from his brother bishop, Basilio do Nascimento. From there he began the long journey to Italy to meet Pope John Paul II in Rome and report on the latest shocking developments in a war that had already claimed a third of East Timor’s population long before the latest slaughter and displacements. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of East Timorese, including those from the bishop’s compounds, were herded out of their island nation by Indonesian troops, just as Kosovars had been driven from their land by Serbian forces.

The world was much too slow to respond, and when it finally did, East Timor already had endured suffering more severe than at any time in the territory’s history, including the Japanese occupation. The tragedy was heightened by the fact that predictions of a fresh outbreak of violence had been made, and might have been averted by timely international pressure.

The courage to vote

Many courageous people of good will in East Timor had counted on such support, and were cruelly betrayed. Along the coastal mountains just outside Dili, a militia gang burned down the thatched huts of 10 families in mid-August 1999, leaving them with next to nothing. This attack, and many others, were designed to force the villagers to oppose independence. Somehow, the villagers managed to safeguard their one most important possession beneath rocks: their U.N.-issued voter registration cards for the referendum on the region’s future. It was determination like theirs that made the vote possible. Nearly 99 percent of those eligible participated. Then the fury began, as Indonesian forces made good on a chilling threat that I had been told of when I visited East Timor in March 1999: We came in blood, a military in one region told villagers, and we will leave in blood.

In fulfilling this terrible promise, the Indonesian military were not the only ones to blame. A history of more or less uncritical support from key governments helped set a pattern in which the army believed that its actions in East Timor would have few tangible consequences. This confidence has remained largely undiminished: for instance, in February 1999, when Bishop Belo sent word to a leading U.S. clergyman of mounting militia assaults on rural communities and begged for more American pressure on Indonesia’s army, a senior Clinton administration official brushed aside the request. There has been enough pressure on Indonesia for the moment,’ the official responded.

In fact, international pressure was far too weak, as was the mandate of United Nations personnel sent to East Timor to pave the way for the referendum. All told, the consequences for the people were gruesome. Church authorities affirmed that 3,000 to 5,000 people, primarily young supporters of independence, were assassinated, most in remote villages far from the scrutiny of the outside world, all in a period of six to eight months through mid-July 1999 alone.

A blind eye

Whatever the facts, East Timor had not been anointed as a noble crusade by leaders of the Western alliance. In a White House briefing only hours after Bishop Belo’s house was attacked in September, Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, dismissed comparisons of East Timor with Kosovo in shockingly callous language: You know, my daughter has a very messy apartment up in college, he said to Washington Post, maybe I should intervene to have that cleaned up.

Though he later offered profuse apologies for his poor choice of words, Berger’s initial phraseology was an accurate reflection of a long-standing American policy of tolerance for Indonesian military atrocities. With the new horrors in East Timor, the effects of this position became evident. For all too long, governments in the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia and elsewhere had made a habit of turning a blind eye to reports of grievous human rights abuses by Jakarta’s forces. Though this changed somewhat in recent years, especially after the massacre of unarmed East Timorese at the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili in 1991 and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Bishop Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta five years later, much remained unaltered. Indeed, with relatively minor exceptions like the temporary suspension of certain forms of U.S. military training after Santa Cruz, the Indonesian Armed Forces saw few real consequences of its appalling behaviour in East Timor. In 1999, Bishop Belo emphasised, the massacres in East Timor were far worse than at Santa Cruz.

In a certain sense, the generals could not be blamed for believing that occasional government statements or Congressional protests were only so much talk that could be safely ignored. Billions in international loans continued to flow, and with all the talk of the ascendancy of Asia, at least until the economic crisis of recent years, it surely appeared that when it came to East Timor, most powerful nations would do little to oppose the Indonesian military, no matter how terrible its crimes.

Massacres and ethnic cleansing

In the aftermath of the August 30 referendum, untold thousands of people, possibly 200,000, were forcibly relocated to the Indonesian side of the island, all before the eyes of the world. There they were threatened with death, and many may have been executed. By late September, about 90 percent of East Timor’s population had been displaced. Many, possibly thousands, were executed by Indonesian forces or their surrogates. Indonesian forces also turned their fury on the Catholic Church, killing at least four priests and a Protestant minister (unconfirmed reports suggest that several more priests and nuns have been killed) and severely damaging many Church buildings. Hundreds of thousands fled into the interior, where it was feared they would starve unless there was an immediate international relief operation.

Bishop Belo was evacuated to Australia after Indonesian special forces units laid siege to his place of refuge in Baucau. Shortly after he landed in Darwin, Bishop Belo told me, We need foreign troops. The world must send forces to East Timor, otherwise East Timor will be emptied, all will be destroyed. What are they waiting for? pleaded the first Roman Catholic bishop ever to receive a Nobel Peace Prize.

In powerful public statements such as these, the bishop helped to rally the conscience of the world. Two weeks after the bishop wrote these words, as a result of tough pressure by Washington and other nations, an international peace keeping force led by Australia entered East Timor. Despite all this, Indonesian forces challenged the peace keepers with violent taunts. It was far from clear that the problem could be easily contained.

Moreover, the problem could no longer be confined to East Timor. Those herded at gun point into trucks, boats and planes and taken to West Timor and other islands were subjected to brutal treatment at the hands paramilitary gangs evidently operating with official sanction. East Timorese clergy as well as Indonesian colleagues rising to the defence of the people were terrorised. Hundreds of thousands of others had fled into the countryside, where some were attacked by Indonesian troops with high powered weapons.

As Bishop Belo stressed in a September 16, 1999 article for The Washington Post, The world must contemplate the fact that by 1979 alone, at least 200,000 people, or about a third of the original population of 688,000, had perished from the combined effects of the war. There were many executions and deaths in combat between guerrillas seeking independence and the Indonesian army, but the vast majority died from war-related starvation that could have been prevented had international relief agencies been granted prompt access to East Timor by the Indonesian government.

The same thing was set to happen again. Only this time, it had the potential to be more severe, because in 1999 hunger in the mountains of East Timor was coupled with the forced displacement of many tens of thousands in West Timor and elsewhere. Virtually the whole population was left destitute and uprooted.

Rebuilding Timor

The United States and other powers urgently need to use the full weight of their influence with the Indonesian military to demand a quick withdrawal from East Timor, and demand that Indonesian forces and those under their control cease their campaign of violence and forced resettlement, whether in East Timor, West Timor or other islands. The United States and other nations that supported the Indonesian military with arms aid as well as diplomatic and financial backing since it first invaded East Timor have a grave obligation to implement the results of the August 30 United Nations-sponsored referendum, protect the people of East Timor from further harm and ensure that all displaced people are able to return to their homes. Furthermore, the nations of the world must provide generous help to East Timor as it seeks to reconstruct its shattered land.

Despite everything, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo was resolute. Shortly before he left Darwin on his long journey to see Pope John Paul II, he told me with great force: We must face reality. We must go forth with high spirits. We must go back to rebuild.