<nettime> East Timor Digest (GENDER-SELECTIVE ATROCITIES)

[nettimes_digestive_system <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>]

GENDER-SELECTIVE ATROCITIES IN EAST TIMOR
SEPTEMBER 1999
Updated 11 September 1999

Compiled by Adam Jones, Ph.D.
Research Associate, Department of Political Science
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada
adamj@interchange.ubc.ca

For more on gender-selective atrocities against men, including extensive
Kosovo materials, see the "Gender Page" of my website:
<http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/adamj>

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Stephen Powell,
"INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE BUILDS ON TIMOR CRISIS"
Reuters dispatch, 7 September 1999

[...] A leading campaigner for East Timor independence, Jose Ramos-Horta,
said Indonesia was seeking to repeat the "ugly, tragic years" of 1975-79
when some 200,000 East Timorese died in the aftermath of Indonesia's
invasion, "without one single international witness." 

"I have information that many males have been disposed of, have been
killed and dumped into the sea," he said. [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Perry,
"DILI BURNS, RESIDENTS FLEE ANARCHY"
Reuters dispatch, 7 September 1999.

[...] Within walking distance of the besieged U.N. compound in Dili,
Catholic sisters sheltering 300 refugees, mainly women and children, said
militias had threatened to attack at nightfall. [...]

"The police and military are clearly collaborating with the militias, they
are not doing anything, nobody can defend the people.  We have been
threatened yesterday and the day before. Some of our refugees have fled to
the hills." 

"All the stores are burned and there is lot of looting. The shooting is
getting closer. *The militias are shooting at the men in the hills and
behind them the military are also shooting." 

"We need help, nobody is here to defend the people." 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

John Aglionby
"'TO SURVIVE I KNEW I HAD TO GET OUT'"
UK Guardian, 10 September 1999

[...] Just as he [a prominent pro-independence activist], his wife and his
children were about to leave, a young man ran into the house telling a
terrible story. He had come from the port, where he and some
pro-independence friends had been trying to leave on a ship. The women
boarded, but the men were dragged away. Five were stabbed to death in
front of him and their bodies dumped in the sea. [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Lindsay Murdoch
"STACKS OF BODIES WENT UP TO THE ROOF"
The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 September 1999

The destruction of the capital is greater than anybody could imagine. 
Hundreds of houses are blackened shells. The doors of government offices
are ajar. Banks, cafes, hotels, boarding houses, service stations: all
burnt or trashed. 

One building - the police station - hides one of the most shocking of many
shocking stories that have emerged so far from East Timor's killing
fields. 

Two days ago Ina Bradridge, wife of Mr Isa Bradridge, 45, of Ballina,
walked the corridors of the station looking for a toilet. 

According to Mr Bradridge, who told her story last night after evacuation
to Darwin, she happened to glance inside a large building that she knew
was once used as a torture cell for political prisoners. 

"My wife told me she saw bodies. Thousands of them. Stacks of bodies went
up to the roof. I know it is hard to believe but it is absolutely true. 
My wife saw arms and legs and dripping blood." 

Now, from the safety of Australia, Mr Bradridge plans to do a lot of
talking on behalf of his wife, who can't speak English, in the next few
days. 

"They [the Indonesian military] are going to obliterate everybody," he
said before boarding one of the evacuation trucks with his family. The
East Timorese have a choice ... they either leave or die." 

Leaving Dili to fly out in the same RAAF shuttles that take out the
Bainbridges, we drive in silence through the mass destruction, past street
after street of smouldering ruin. 

There are looters and thugs carrying pistols who walk with the arrogant
swagger of the victor. 

But Dili is basically empty. In five days 70,000 people have gone. The
bare-footed teenagers with fresh fish tied to their poles are gone. The
clapped-out taxis, the naked kids playing on the debris-strewn beachfront,
the old people hawking Portuguese-era coins who used to bother us at the
hotel, the people who used to sit in the gutter every morning and read the
local newspaper. All gone. [...]

We drive past the two-storey Australian consulate, which was abandoned in
great haste two days ago after the militia had spent two days terrorising
the diplomats. 

The high-iron gate is open and Indonesian soldiers are walking inside.  We
see the militia in greater numbers along the road from the consulate,
towards the airport. One pushes an empty trolley, his head down, almost
running. But it's hard to imagine there's anything left to loot. 

It is here that for the first time we see ordinary people. Hundreds of
women and children are camped out in the grounds of Dili's main police
station. [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Craig Skehan and Malcolm Brown
"REFUGEE PLIGHT COMPARED TO NAZI TERROR AGAINST JEWS"
The Sydney Morning Herald
10 September 1999

[...] One distraught young mother said she witnessed the murder of two
refugees on the back of a truck inside West Timor. She said she saw the
two men tied up in a truck by militiamen on a road inside West Timor. 

"Suddenly, in front of lots of people, a militia member drew a sword and
slowly stabbed one of the people in the truck. Lots of blood began
gushing, flooding the floor of the truck until it began to drip out,"  she
said. 

"The other man's hands and feet were tied like a pig and he was thrown
like a bag of rice onto the asphalt then thrown into another truck." 

Another man said he watched terrified at the West Timor port of Akapupu,
near Atumbua at the northern end of the border, as militia used machetes
to kill men alleged to be independence supporters. They were among East
Timorese disembarking from a ship which had come from Dili. 

"Other men had their hands tied and they were put on trucks and taken
away," said one source, who is collecting accounts for presentation to the
international community. [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Robert Garran, Richard McGregor, and Don Greenlees
"TEARS FOR THE SLAUGHTERED"
The Australian, 11 September 1999

[...] The rampage [at the U.N. compound] came just after the UN had pulled
out 350 international and local staff on evacuation flights to Darwin,
leaving 80 foreign staff in the besieged Dili compound. 

Last night, there were reports of heavy gunfire behind the compound as
refugees who had taken cover there attempted to escape to the hills. 

After arriving in Darwin yesterday, British police sergeant Philip Caine
expressed the general concern about the East Timorese left behind, saying:
"I was thinking to myself as we were coming out that all I was facing was
a hairy ride to the airport and they were probably facing death." 

The Australian-based National Council for Timorese Resistance said two
truckloads of East Timorese women and children were taken from refugee
camps in West Timor in recent days and slaughtered by militiamen. [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Patrick McDowell
"U.N. Compound Menaced in East Timor"
Associates Press dispatch, 10 September 1999

[...] Comparisons to Kosovo and Cambodia have increasingly been made as
television footage shows men, women and children, their hands raised,
being herded at gunpoint from burning homes. [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Lindsay Murdoch
"TIME TO PRAY, AND RUN THE MILITIA GAUNTLET"
The Sydney Morning Herald
10 September 1999

Pat Burgess wipes away the tears. He doesn't want to make the
life-or-death decision. 

The Australian political officer working for the United Nations has just
been told that staff and their dependants, including Timorese, are
evacuating from the besieged UN compound in Dili. 

But everybody inside knows that if we leave behind 1,500 refugees who have
crammed with us into the compound the young men among them would be
accused of being pro-independence and probably killed. 

Burgess, like many other UN staff, hates the decision to evacuate that was
made on the other side of the world in New York. But he has no choice. 
"Tell the young men to run," he tells his interpreter, wiping away more
tears. 

Burgess knows very well the lies that Indonesia's military and police
officers have told the UN for months. 

Promises that the Indonesian armed forces and police would not harm the
refugees mean nothing. Asked what he thinks will happen to the women and
children, he says: "They will probably rape the women." 

Families sit around candles and pray for a long time. Some weep. They talk
in whispers. These are intimate moments we do not want to disturb. 

Only the gunshots and distant explosions break the near silence. But as
the night wears on we step over babies and children sleeping on concrete
and distribute our remaining food. It is only a few cans of corned beef
and some packets of noodles but we are on our way to Darwin, away from the
gunshots, the explosions, the orchestrated terror. 

Or so we think. 

The men run in the early hours as smoke continues to rise into the air
from dozens of fires across the largely deserted town. 

So too do many of the young women, particularly the pretty ones. For 24
years Indonesian soldiers in East Timor have violated the women, for their
selfish pleasure, with impunity. 

As they run, fresh gunfire erupts. Short, sharp volleys. 

Soon some of the men return exhausted after trying to climb the hill that
rises almost vertically from the back of the compound. They report that
the Indonesian troops who are supposed to be protecting us from attack
fired over their heads, forcing them to return. 

But soon others try other routes and find ways past the troops. With the
fittest leading the way, others follow, including mothers carrying babies,
cooking utensils and their few possessions. 

As they shuffle into the darkness many of us are deeply concerned,
justifying our helplessness by thinking that the East Timorese have shown
remarkable resilience during decades of immense suffering. 

We can only hope their instincts will keep them alive. [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"EAST TIMORESE FORCED INTO CAMPS"
BBC Online
10 September 1999

[...] Conditions in the camps [in West Timor] are reported to be very
poor. 


"They are like Nazi camps," said Adalberto Alves, a Timor resistance
spokesman from the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor. 

"They [the refugees] cannot leave the concentration camps. They are
receiving food, one meal a day only,as food is being saved for the women
and children," he added. [...] [?]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"FIDDLING AS TIMOR BURNS"
The Guardian (UK), 11 September 1999

[...] The Catholic church, a key target for Muslim militiamen, vainly
denounces a new genocide as its priests, nuns and congregations are
slaughtered, its cathedrals set ablaze. At least 200,000 people - almost a
quarter of the population - have fled. An untold number of
pro-independence supporters, especially men, have simply disappeared. 
Even the 80-year-old father of the Timorese leader, Xanana Gusmao, was not
spared; he was murdered this week, his wife is missing. [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------------
John Aglionby
"HERDED, SIFTED AND CUT OFF"
The Guardian (UK), September 10, 1999

[...] For most of the tens of thousands of refugees now in West Timor,
dignity is in short supply. Whether they have arrived from East Timor by
land, sea or air, the welcome is the same. They are whisked off by police
and soldiers to camps guarded by pro-Indonesian militiamen and dumped
there for processing. 

The first stage is political identification, according to Manuel, an East
Timorese who was able to get into the Noelbaki camp eight miles outside
Kupang. He said when people arrived their names were checked off against a
list of 20,000 known pro-Jakarta supporters. If they were on it, or could
demonstrate support for Indonesia, they were put to one side. 

All the others were taken to another part of the camp. Here the conditions
are much worse, with people squashed together with little food and water. 

"Many of the men are then 'taken away for questioning'," said Manuel. 
"The women have no idea what happens to their husbands. Many have not
returned ." 


One woman said a militia camp guard told her: "You may have got your
country but it will be a land full of widows." The woman had arrived in
Noelbaki with her husband and two children on Monday. She has not seen her
husband since. [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net