Shall I tell the President?

After his June visit to Padua and Assisi, Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo of East Timor travelled to Washington, where he met with U.S. President Bill Clinton in the White House on June 18, 1997. It was a journey sponsored by the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference. On previous visits to the United States, Belo had met senior officials, but never was able to see the President. Belo became the first person from East Timor to meet an American President: the fact that the meeting took place was more important than the particular details discussed in it, which Bishop Belo has declined to discuss publicly. But the session was described by the White House as a very cordial meeting and added that ...the President expressed his interest in peace and reconciliation for the people of East Timor and our willingness to continue to raise issues with respect to human rights... For his part, Bishop Belo said the president appeared receptive to his concerns. When he left the White House, he described the meeting as Good, very good, useful.

An ambiguous international policy

The meeting with Clinton was preceded and followed by various encounters with senior Congressional and religious leaders, a further expression of the heightened international interest in East Timor since Bishop Belo and the diplomatic representative of East Timor’s resistance movement, Jose Ramos Horta, jointly received the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize. But the main question for Bishop Belo, a humble man without pretences, is what impact the award will ultimately have on the conditions in which his people must live. While he was naturally pleased with the meetings he had at the White House, with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York and a wide range of other dignitaries in the United States and Europe, their effect on the course of American and international policy on East Timor remained unclear.

The question of what concrete effects these meetings might have took on special meaning only days after Belo left Washington to return to Dili. After a seven week journey to Europe and the United States, he arrived in East Timor only to find a massive Indonesian military build-up in the eastern districts and other regions of the territory. A show of force on this scale had not been seen since 1976, shortly after Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of the territory. It is Bishop Belo’s view, based on long experience, that the greater the Indonesian military presence, the more abuses are carried out against the local population.

Ironically, it was attacks by East Timor’s guerrilla movement on Indonesian military and police in late May that had brought on this new build-up. Then came the capture and killing of a top leader of the guerrillas, a man by the nom de guerre of David Alex, around June 25. The determination of the invaders to seize him reached a crucial juncture after the incidents in the latter part of May, including one in which the guerrilla army took credit for throwing a grenade into a truck carrying Indonesian mobile brigade police, called Brimobs. At least eighteen were killed in the fiery explosion. According to one version of events, it was David Alex who ordered the attack.

A summary execution

The death of David Alex was, however, emblematic of the 22 year history of the East Timor conflict. At the end, Bishop Belo had been told, David Alex was ill, and came down from his forest hideout in search of medical attention. A shoot-out with Indonesian troops ensued and Alex was wounded, though not seriously. He was expected to live. Instead, the Indonesian military announced that Alex had died of his wounds. There was a quick funeral: his family was not allowed to view the body. Most East Timorese believed David Alex was killed in custody.

The capture of David Alex set off a roundup of those suspected of supporting him. Many hundreds were detained and beaten, especially in the rural areas around the town of Baucau, the region where Alex was taken. Three truckloads of young people were detained in one place alone, in a small village near the Salesian college at Fatumaca, where Belo himself was once a teacher and later the rector. To make matters more difficult, Indonesian security forces were training mercenary militias of East Timorese youth to fight their brethren. In travels through the country in July and August, the bishop worked hard to separate the two sides.

Heightened repression

Belo was keenly aware that to the disenchanted youth, David Alex and his compatriots were powerful symbols of resistance against injustice. He also knew that, one way or another, active ties with the guerrillas, or simply admiration for them, could bring down harsh repression, with Indonesian forces always ready to crush signs of nationalist defiance. Though the killing of Alex in custody was a crime, and ought to be exposed and punished, the added peril to the youth was Belo’s primary preoccupation.

The resistance movement insisted that attacks on Indonesian troops, and demonstrations in the towns and villages, reminded the world of the feelings of the people. To Bishop Belo, confrontations with the military were dangerously self)destructive. Now that the Nobel Peace Prize had placed East Timor in the consciousness of the world, could it truly be said that one more demonstration, another confrontation, more skirmishes and ambushes were needed to alert the international community? Ferocious repression that followed such incidents was a matter of grave concern.

After his meetings in Washington, Bishop Belo went on to Kansas City, where he addressed the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference:

On one level, there is increased international awareness of our situation, which gives us hope for the future. On the ground, however, the plight of our people has only increased after the Nobel. It is in this context that I appeal to Your Excellencies and to Catholics throughout the world to put pressure on responsible authorities to end torture in East Timor, release political detainees and do everything possible to establish an open dialogue between military officials and the people of East Timor. I firmly believe that the international community must continue to press for fair and democratic consultation in East Timor if there is to be a lasting solution to the tragedy that has beset our nation for the past 21 years. It is not a matter of politics; it is a simple matter of justice and human decency.