/** reg.easttimor: 2709.0 **/
** Topic: ABC: Horrific reports of militia and Kopassus violence **
** Written 11:06 PM Sep 5, 1999 by Joyo@aol.com in cdp:reg.easttimor **
Subject: ABC: Horrific reports of militia and Kopassus violence
Australian Broadcasting Corp. AM News Monday, September 6, 1999 8:10 a.m.
Horrific reports of militia violence
COMPERE: East Timorese activists in Australia are receiving reports of mass killings and deportations across the province. According to the independence supports, Indonesian special forces troops, the Kopassus, are taking a direct role in the killings. One unconfirmed report states that by a road into Dili scores of heads have been pitched on sticks alongside mutilated bodies.
The National Council for Timorese Resistance also claims that that men are being separated from their families for deportation. This report from David Spicer:
DAVID SPICER: News that the dwindling number of Australians in Dili and non-essential UNAMET workers are being given the option today of being evacuated aboard RAAF Hercules aircraft was greeted by dismay by the National Council for Timorese Resistance. A senior officer in Australia, Joao Carrascalao, says the East Timorese people feel abandoned.
JOAO CARRASCALAO: This will be a tremendous blow on the morale of the East Timorese who will feel completely abandoned. When Australians are deserting East Timor, then our faith will be in the hands of God only.
DAVID SPICER: What about East Timorese also wishing to get on board those Hercules for Darwin? Would there be many of them?
JOAO CARRASCALAO: I wish that they could be given sanctuary. I don't think that they will be allowed to get into the Hercules and probably they will be pushed out completely.
DAVID SPICER: Communications between Australia and East Timor is becoming more and more difficult and with the only journalists and UN workers confined to the compound in Dili, it's impossible to confirm the latest claims by independence supporters. What we do know is that the East Timorese people are gripped by terror.
JOAO CARRASCALAO: Of one person who travelled from Dili to [inaudible] , we have the report that alongside the roads were hundreds of heads on sticks, on the side of the road and bodies everywhere.
DAVID SPICER: You're saying beside the road there are hundreds of heads on the end of sticks?
JOAO CARRASCALAO: That is correct.
DAVID SPICER: Outside of Dili the independence supporters are concerned by reports that the militia and the Indonesian military are beginning to round up men and deport them from the territory. Another member of the National Council of Timorese Resistance is Agio Perrera.
AGIO PERRERA: One of the worst events was in Metiout [phonetic] where many people were indiscriminately killed. The report that I received was that hundreds of people possibly have been killed in this widespread killings by Kopassus. And another attack that we cannot say how many dead but possibly hundreds was the attack on the College of Balidi [phonetic] because there were more than 1,000 people that ran into that college of nuns, Catholic nuns, and what happened subsequently is that all male Timorese have been rounded up, taken to trucks or boats and deported to elsewhere in Indonesia.
COMPERE: In Darwin Alfredo Ferrera, the Northern Territory's CNRT's spokesman, says both militias and Indonesian military are involved in the killings and deportations.
ALFREDO FERRERA: Uniformed Indonesian forces, they did that in Kamorrow [phonetic] with a family. I also got the report yesterday, here in Darwin, and another last night I was told the same story. They go in, if people refuse, they kill, they shoot.
COMPERE: Alfredo Ferrera.