NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9597

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From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Army Strangling East Timor
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/** reg.easttimor: 354.0 **/
** Topic: Army strangulating East Timor **
** Written  3:20 pm  Dec 22, 1992 by gn:tapol in cdp:reg.easttimor **
Military operations strangulating East Timor

By: Liem Soei Liong and Carmel Budiardjo
London, 21 December 1992

The capture of Xanana Gusmao was one of the major aims of the
present Indonesian military operation in East Timor. But
Operasi Tuntas (Operation Thoroughgoing or Complete) has not
yet reached its climax. With unprecedented ferocity Timorese
guerillas are being hunted down in the mountains and hundreds,
possibly thousands, of arrests have taken place in the cities.

  Operasi Tuntas, the code name for the present military
operation, was originally to have been called Operasi Naga
Merah (Red Dragon Operation) but Brig.General Theo Syafei
realised that this sounded too ferocious and ultimately
settled for the milder-sounding name. As a military operation,
Operasi Tuntas consists of new elements and has a new thrust.
The main difference is that it reinstates the security
approach as the army's strategy while the key thrust is to
crush the clandestine movement.

"Two-faced" Timorese
The clandestine movement has usually been taken as meaning the
young activists who created a variety of organisations like
Renetil, Fitun, and Ojetil. These organisations were primarily
responsible for the anti-Indonesia actions in Dili and Baucau.
The Santa Cruz procession of 12 November 1991 was largely
organised by the youth. But Operasi Tuntas has gone further
than just hunting down and arresting the youth. Several months
ago, Brig.General Theo Syafei and Governor Abilio Osorio
Soares issued a warning to the so-called two-faced Timorese.
They were referring to people who work within the Indonesian
system while at the same time being involved in clandestine
work for independence. Syafei and Soares are both well aware
of the realities in East Timor and know that these 'two-faced'
people are the bottom line. It is not enough to wipe out the
armed resistance and destroy the clandestine youth
organisations; any operation to break the back of the
resistance must also mean 'cleansing' the entire Indonesian
administrative system in East Timor.
  Some of the defendants in the trials held in Dili earlier
this year were civil servants. The latest waves of arrests
show that one major aim of Operasi Tuntas is to break up the
clandestine network within the Indonesian administration. Most
of the detainees named in recent Amnesty International urgent
actions are civil servants.
  Indonesian press reports during the past month reveal the
extent and range of this clandestine network. Xanana's visits
from the mountains to Dili were partly organised by Timorese
working in the provincial administration, including a village
head. Xanana's arrest took place in the house of police first
corporal Agusto Pereira, another 'loyal' Timorese. It is clear
that Xanana's arrest was not the result of betrayal but
resulted from a major search by the army during November. They
ultimately discovered Xanana's whereabouts after inflicting
the most horrific forms of torture on detainees who they
thought might be able to inform on Xanana. It is understood
that Henrique Gutteres, who was captured a few days before
Xanana was found, finally broke down and revealed his
whereabouts after all his finger-nails and toe-nails had been
pulled out and both his ears had been slashed.

The security approach
Since January this year when Brig. General Theo Syafei was
appointed military commander, much has changed in East Timor.
His predecessor Brig. General Warouw favoured the prosperity
approach, a strategy of using persuasion to convince the
Timorese to accept integration. The security approach used by
Operasi Tuntas regards every Timorese as suspect. The
prosperity approach has been shelved.
  It is not possible to estimate the number of people arrested
since Xanana was captured. The level of brutality has also far
exceeded anything experienced by the Timorese for many years.
According to information from church sources on 8 December,
things are "far, far worse" than what Amnesty International
has been saying. "Numerous people have been arrested and a
significant number have been forced to betray others after
being tortured. The reality is far worse than observers can
see on the surface... The torture is so terrible that people
defect to the Indonesian side. Many people who are released
look like zombies... the lines to the prisons are
tremendous... the beatings and tortures are out of this world.
There has never been anything like it." Considering what
Timorese have lived through for the past seventeen years,
these words suggest a level of brutality quite beyond human
endurance.
  Central to the strategy currently being employed is an
attempt to thoroughly demoralise the people of East Timor, so
as to destroy their will to oppose integration. A key element
in the campaign is the staging of 'loyalty ceremonies'. This
method has been widely used in Aceh during military operations
since 1990, but it is a new phenomenon in East Timor. In
stage-managed ceremonies attended by the press and TV, young
and old are forced to declare their loyalty to the Indonesian
Republic. These ceremonies have taken place in many parts of
East Timor but the ultimate showpiece was staged at the sports
stadium in Baucau on 7 December when 3,000 citizens were
ordered to watch an act of 'repentance' by 200 members of the
'clandestine movement'. Youngsters proclaimed the dissolution
of their organisation. The organisation was not identified by
name; it was referred to simply as 'the clandestine'. In their
pledge of loyalty, they disbanded "any clandestine
organisations in whatever form which have existed to undermine
the Republic".
  Moreover, repentance was not enough. As a punishment,
several hundred people in the Baucau region were forced to
participate in a pagar betis (fence-of-legs) campaign, walking
hand-in-hand in huge circles into the forest to force
suspected guerillas out into the open. Brig.General Syafei
told the media that this was a 'voluntary act' by hundreds of
people who spent three days in the forest to convince
relatives in the bush to surrender.
  Throughout the current operations, 'surrender' is the key
word. By giving the impression that hundreds, even thousands,
of 'rebels' have 'surrendered', the army hopes to present the
international community with a fait accompli, making further
diplomatic effort irrelevant. Once an entire nation has
'surrendered', what more is there to talk about? This is why
Indonesia was so inflexible at the UN-sponsored talks on 17
December. The delay of four months till the next round of
talks should give the army the time it needs to end, once and
for all, any remnants of East Timorese resistance.

The dissolution of KOLAKOPS
Kolakops is the special military structure for East Timor. It
is a special operations command, unlike command structures
anywhere else, designed for a region still in a state of war.
It has powers to deploy fresh troops from all over Indonesia
at a moment's notice.    Earlier this year Brig.General Theo
Syafei announced that Kolakops would be dissolved in
September, then he postponed it till the end of the year. Now
it has again been put back, this time to March 1993. The huge
operations now under way suggest that the army hopes to be
able to disband Kolakops before the appointment of Suharto for
a sixth term as president. The date fixed for the next talks
between Indonesia and Portugal also fits in with this
timetable.
  Whether Syafei will be able to achieve this is another
matter; even Indonesian press reports suggest that East
Timorese resistance is still widespread. To achieve their aim,
the Indonesian military would need to wipe out practically the
entire population. The arrest of Xanana Gusmao and the way in
which he has been manipulated by his captors is a heavy blow
for the Timorese but there is nowhere any sign of the collapse
of the resistance.
  In the past 17 years the Timorese have experienced many
different phases of Indonesian rule. Every time they have
developed new ways to overcome their oppressors with new forms
of resistance. The present wave of terror under Operasi Tuntas
is possibly the most difficult period of all for the Timorese,
but their will to overcome and their will to resist is sure to
prevail.

** End of text from cdp:reg.easttimor **

/** reg.easttimor: 354.1 **/
** Written  8:19 pm  Dec 23, 1992 by gn:tapol in cdp:reg.easttimor **
This article was published in full in the Lisbon
daily, Publico, on Wednesday 23 December 1992, under
the title, 'Indonesia wants to annihilate the
resistance by April'.
** End of text from cdp:reg.easttimor **