East Timor still searches for justice, 50 years after Indonesian invasion

East Timor – Lospalos has a quiet afternoon.

Just the clucking of chickens, the grunt of a pig and in the distance, a transistor radio playing Portuguese reggaeton, a typical small-town soundtrack in this country of 1.4 million people situated in the Timor Sea between Indonesia and Australia’s northern territories.

Berta dos Santos recalled the brutal attack on Lospalos’s tranquility in December 1975 in her home’s living room.

“They came down by parachute and started shooting”, dos Santos told Al Jazeera, recounting the attack on the rural town located some 210km (130 miles) east of the capital, Dili.

Dos Santos was a young girl, but she and other people hid in the nearby mountains. The invading Indonesian forces were determined to find them – especially the women and girls.

She recalled how Indonesian soldiers brutally raped her when she was just nine years old and how the army searched for her in the bush, captured her, and then took us back.

Her mother, Helena, was dragged away and forced into sexual slavery.

Dos Santos, her mother, and many others were just the start of Indonesia’s brutal 24-year occupation of East Timor, which was also marked by the crimes committed in Lospalos.

What followed was violent military rule typified by massacres and the forced starvation of civilians, sexual violence and the torture, imprisonment and execution of those who resisted Indonesia’s occupation.

Resistance – Ximenes’s story

More than 300 years ago, East Timor was a Portuguese colony in Southeast Asia.

A coup in 1974 backed by left-wing forces in Lisbon was the impetus that started Portugal’s process of decolonisation and retreat from its overseas territories, with East Timor declaring independence on November 28, 1975. The Timorese would only be able to celebrate their freedom briefly.

Under the pretext of fighting communism and backed by the United States, neighbouring Indonesia invaded the tiny half-island just over a week after independence was declared, Jakarta’s forces quickly captured East Timor’s capital, Dili, on December 7.

Some of East Timorese’s emerging leaders, like the current president Jose Ramos-Horta, fled when the invasion occurred, and would continue to campaign abroad for years while keeping the world’s attention on the plight of the Timorese people.

Others fled into the mountainous jungles to embark on a decades-long armed resistance.

Major-General Americo Ximenes, also known as Sabika Besi Kulit, who translated as “Metal Skin,” was one of them.

Ximenes now lives on the outskirts of Dili in a house provided through a veterans ‘ pension. He is rarely seen in public and, after years of military action, has always viewed him as a national hero in East Timor.

The 72-year-old was originally part of East Timor’s Portuguese-run armed forces before independence. He joined the resistance after Indonesia’s invasion in 1975 and fought alongside the Indonesians for almost 25 years as a leader in FALINTIL (the Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor).

Isolated from any outside assistance in the mountainous and jungle interior, and faced with the firepower of the US-backed Indonesian army, Ximenes said it was a struggle just to keep resisting.

He remarked that “we had to find our own weapons to fight, even to get food,” describing how FALINTIL fighters relied on Indonesian soldiers’ bodies when they were in battle.

“If you have 10 or 20 guns, you’ve got to figure out how to use the guns to capture more guns”, he said, describing how fighters in his platoon would run to pick up not only weapons but “boots, food, ammunition and clothing” from slain Indonesian soldiers.

He kills his target as he shoots. There’s another soldier behind him without guns. He claims that he is the one who runs away with the equipment as soon as he shoots.

“All this action would take only two or three minutes. One kill is made of every shot and bullet. And by the three minutes, there will be a ceasefire, and we will collect what we need to collect and disappear”, he said.

Due to his ability to survive numerous encounters with Indonesian forces, “Metal Skin,” as he was known at the time, would not see his family for 24 years. He told Al Jazeera how the 1980s were a particularly difficult decade, when there was no international media attention and East Timor had no contact with the outside world.

The political party’s political leadership, which included FALINTIL, would only send one letter a year to him and his fighters alone in the jungle.

It was during the 1980s that much of East Timor’s civilian population was forcibly displaced and starved, an estimated 200, 000 people died, almost a third of the population, in what is widely considered a genocide.

Based in the mountains, Ximenes told how he and his fighters would hear of atrocities perpetrated against civilians, especially those inflicted against local women. The revolts resisted many in FALINTIL, including the civilian villagers who relyed on the resistance for food, supplies, and information about Indonesian troop movements, rather than instill fear.

“More villagers were willing to help us because of the atrocities against women”, he said. Despite the murder and torture, “more Timorese villagers would like to support us, protect us, feed us, and share information”” were reported.

After more than two decades of occupation and armed resistance, political advocacy by supporters abroad, and under pressure from the international community, the Indonesian government eventually agreed to hold a referendum to determine the first steps towards East Timor’s independence.

In 1999, a national vote was held under the auspices of the UN, and despite widespread hostilities and intimidation from the Indonesian army and local armed groups, 78.5% of East Timores voters cast ballots in favor of independence.

By 2002, the long and bloody road to nationhood was complete.

Although East Timor finally gained its independence, Indonesia’s occupation continues to have a profound impact on society.

Repercussions – Kristina Siti’s story

Kristina Siti was not a typical child growing up in Lospalos.

She was teased mercilessly by other children and shunned by adults because of her origins.

They viewed me as an unmarried child, an Indonesian child, and a child without a father. Some neighbours and even relatives wouldn’t let their children play with me”, Siti said.

Siti’s father served in the Indonesian army. Siti’s mother had been forced into a relationship with the soldier in order to protect her brothers, who had fled to the jungle to join the resistance.

The now 43-year-old woman told Al Jazeera, “My mother was forced to marry an Indonesian army commander to protect her family.”

“When I was two years old, my father left East Timor and went back to Indonesia. She said, “We never heard from him again, and he never came back.”

Siti’s mother would later marry a local Timorese man, yet the horror continued. At just two weeks old, Siti described the forced adoption of a half-sister from her mother’s second marriage by an Indonesian soldier.

“My mother suffered a lot during the occupation. She was resilient, Siti said, but she also suffered during that difficult time.

“There are several women who suffered the same fate as my mother”, she said.

“And they also have children my age, some younger than me, and some older.” In almost every village, there are women who fell victim to the Indonesian occupation for various reasons”, she added.

Accountability

The exact number of women who were subjected to sexual and other forms of violence under Indonesian occupation remains unknown, and few of the Indonesian soldiers and commanders who committed human rights abuses during the occupation have ever been brought to justice.

No one from Timor has ever fought alongside them, leading armed groups to terrorize their own citizens and destroying the nation before escaping to West Timor following the 1999 referendum that eventually led to its independence.

Hugo Fernandes, the director of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (known by the Portuguese acronym CAVR), described East Timor in 1999 after the rampages by Indonesia’s local collaborators as the nation’s “Year Zero”.

“People were still mourning the victims of the infrastructure fires that nearly 90 percent of the country had destroyed. A lot of mass atrocities happened”, he said.

A 2, 500-page report on the human rights violations committed during the occupation was released in 2005 by CAVR. While the truth and reconciliation process brought a form of healing for many, Fernandes told Al Jazeera that one of the key unresolved aspects of the decades-long occupation remains bringing perpetrators to justice.

While some people “still demand justice,” while Ramos-Horta, the country’s current president, and Xanana Gusmao, its prime minister, “definitely prefer to talk about reconciliation.”

Even efforts within Indonesia to bring perpetrators to justice for crimes in East Timor have been stymied by a “lack of political will” and the fact that some perpetrators are considered “national heroes” among Indonesians, according to Human Rights Watch.

18 people were brought before an “ad hoc” court in Indonesia in 2001 to investigate human rights violations in East Timor, and only one conviction was made: that of Eurico Guterres, a pro-Indonesian militia leader.

But demands for justice have reached the highest level of the Indonesian government, including the current President Prabowo Subianto. Subianto, a former Kopassus special forces commander in East Timor, is the subject of allegations of severe human rights violations.

Subianto has strenuously denied his involvement in such abuses, including a massacre in 1983 that led to an area in East Timor being referred to as “Valley of Widows” after more than 200 local men were killed there.

Fernandes claimed for Al Jazeera that the current East Timor government prioritizes maintaining a positive relationship with Indonesia despite the country’s history of violence.

“A good relationship with Indonesia is important, more important than anything”, Fernandes said.

Jakarta recently supported Dili’s successful application for membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is Indonesia’s most significant trading partner.

Justice

For those with still vivid memories of Indonesian rule, differing views on justice prevail.

Kristina Siti claimed to not be seeking justice for what transpired during the occupation.

“What our family experienced was only a small part of the consequences of the war”, she said.

She told Al Jazeera, “Many people suffered far more than I did.”

“Some died in the war, some were separated from their wives and children, some had their children taken to Indonesia, and some disappeared without a trace”, she said.

Justice must begin at home, according to Major-General Ximenes.

He told Al Jazeera that he was deeply disappointed with the direction his country has taken and condemned politicians who “steal from the people”.

He said that only those who have fought in the jungle have empathy for one another.

While Berta Dos Santos suffered more than most at the hands of Indonesian troops while still a very young girl, she said justice involves “healing and reconciliation”.

Dos Santos remarked, “I have long ago let go of my pain, anger, resentment, and bitterness.”

“The joy that independence has brought is worth more than my pain and anger and bitterness”, she added.

Source: Aljazeera