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Pasifik Nius 15 Feb 2001 Timor Bilboa Five Will Not Be Ignored
After a seven-month investigation, however, United Nations police investigators have made a formal request for arrest warrants for daSilva, General Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah and an East Timorese called Domingos Bere. They are accused of murdering Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Tony Stewart, Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie in Balibo, East Timor, on October 16, 1975. The journalists were working for Australian TV networks when they were shot as Indonesian troops led by Yunus attacked the border town at dawn. Peters and Rennie were British, while Cunningham was a New Zealander. DaSilva's alleged links to a series of 1983 massacres in the Kraras region, near Viqueque, are also being investigated. Belo, a widow, rejects the allegations against daSilva, who, she says, helped support her young family after her husband's death. Her children played with his three daughters, Estela, Neni and Nuki, and, she adds, he "helped many people here". The now-derelict house in which daSilva and his Timorese wife lived for more than a decade is just a stone's throw from Baucau's Catholic church, where a priest, who asks not to be identified, testifies to daSilva's pious habits. "He came to me four years ago with tears in his eyes," he recalls, "saying he wanted to return to the bosom of the church. I knew he had served with the military, and have since heard from others about crimes he had committed, but I knew nothing of that." Viqueque is 50 kilometres further south. Here, locals accuse daSilva of shared responsibility for the many dead who lie in mass graves deep in the jungle. Kraras does not appear on any map. In Portuguese, Campo Kraras, as it is known, means the "field" or "plain" of Kraras, and it refers to a large triangle bounded by the Viqueque-Ossu road, the Viqueque-Luca road and the Bi-Tuku river. One of the victims of the Kraras massacres was elderly Celestino dos Anjos, a World War II hero decorated by the Australian Government for his services to Australian troops. An anguished letter from his son Virgilio to the late Captain Arthur Stevenson of Sydney first alerted the world to the Kraras killings. He wrote: "On 27/9/83 they summoned my father and wife. They ordered my father to dig his grave and when it was deep enough fired a round and the poor old man with his last force tried to fit his body into it. After that they told my wife, who was pregnant, to dig another grave for herself, but she insisted she wanted to be with her father-in-law and placed herself in front of his grave. They pushed her in and killed her as they had killed him." Antonio Nahafaik is one of three survivors of the principal Kraras massacre. It was allegedly commanded by General Prabowo Subianto, then a captain, and occurred on the banks of the Bi-Tuku river on September 17, 1983. Nahafaik was one of 184 male villagers summoned to go there to collect food supplies by a handful of Indonesian policemen. When they reached the riverbank, he says, they were ordered into the water. A large force of Indonesian soldiers armed with semi-automatic weapons then emerged from the jungle and surrounded them. They set up two machineguns. "They told us to sit. Some people prayed. Then they counted, and started shooting. I was in the middle and didn't see where the bullets came from. I went down after the first shots, but I wasn't hit. Some people fell on top of me. I stayed there about an hour. Then the Indonesians called out: `Whoever is still alive, you can come and join us as a TBO [porter].' I didn't open my eyes, but there were two children who stood up when they said this, and were shot. I prayed to God that nobody on top of me would move in case they started shooting there again. It was a well-prepared ambush." Throughout the 24 years of Indonesian occupation, a list of the 181 massacre victims has been kept hidden in Viqueque, waiting for the day the truth could be told. However... The Indonesian government will not allow United Nations administrators in East Timor to try retired three-star general Yunus Yosfiah on charges of killing five Australia-based newsmen there in 1975, a senior minister said yesterday. "As of today, we have not yet received an official letter concerning the case from the United Nations," Foreign Affairs Minister Alwi Shihab told reporters in Jakarta. "Even if Yunus Yosfiah is proven guilty, we will not hand him over for trial abroad," he added. Armindo De Deus, a deputy chief prosecutor in East Timor, earlier this month said the UN Temporary Administration for East Timor (UNTAET) has instructed his office to try Yunus, a former information minister, over the 1975 murders in the territory. Deus said the order follows the findings of sufficient evidence to charge Yunus, who served as Wiradharma military chief overseeing security in Dili, East Timor, in October 1975 when the five foreigners were murdered in the so-called Balibo incident. Shihab said the government is waiting for a possible formal request from the UN administrators in East Timor to extradite Yunus for trial. The minister admitted his office has not yet studied the case in detail, but said he will meet with Yunus to clarify whether he was involved in the Balibo incident. Shihab said it would be tantamount to foreign intervention in the sovereignty of Indonesia's justice system if UNTAET wants Yunus sent to East Timor. "If they ask us to hand over Yunus, it cannot be accepted because it's part of intervention." Separately yesterday, the Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI) dismissed the accusation against Yunus, who brought freedom of the press to Indonesia in 1998 when he served as information minister under former president B.J. Habibie. Major General Timor P. Manurung, head of the military's legal advice body, said at least four witnesses have made conflicting testimonies on the murder charges against Yunus. Some of these testimonies have been made to Australian Broadcasting Corp. television. Manurung questioned the veracity of such statements. "The conclusion is that the testimonies [against Yunus] were taken from developing opinions, and they were strange. Technically, it is impossible for a military professional to commit the kind of crime that Yosfiah has been accused of," he told Antara. "We are prepared to give legal protection to Mr Yunus Yosfiah," Manurung said after a visit from the former information minister. He his office has set up a defense team for the accused former general, adding the murder case should be tried in Indonesia under local laws. The five slain journalists were Australians Greg Shackleton (27) and Tony Steward (21), Britons Malcolm Rennie (28) and Brian Peters (29), and New Zealander Garry Cunningham (27). Yunus has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying he never issued an order for a special team of troops to kill the newsmen covering events in Balibo village, Bobonaro district. Jakarta has always claimed the five were caught in the crossfire between rival East Timorese factions and not murdered by Indonesian troops. Reports say the US and Australia knew the five had been gunned down by Indonesian forces, but were unwilling to risk damaging relations with Jakarta by demanding justice. Vietnam - Book Online,Banned In Streets Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) has published on the internet extracts of a novel by a Vietnamese writer banned last year by the authorities here, an RSF statement said Wednesday. The book entitled "The Tale of the Year 2000" by Bui Ngoc Tac was banned in March 2000 by Vietnam after a circular by the ministry of culture and information ordered its "banning, seizure and destruction," said the statement by RSF who campaign for press freedom. The book was first brought out by the publishing house Thanh Nien in February 2000 which was sanctioned by the Communist party youth wing for failing to weed out "a book so dangerous, reactionary and defamatory of the regime," RSF said. The 600-page novel tells the story of Tuan, a north Vietnamese journalist, who is unfairly jailed and banned from publishing. "The description of the prison camps and the accounts of police humiliation and harrassment are testimony to the degrading conditions experienced by thousands of political prisoners in Vietnam for more than 40 years," said the RSF. Some of the banned extracts have been published in French and English jointly by Reporters Sans Frontiers and by the Association for Democracy in Vietnam (Montreal), on the RSF website www.rsf.fr PNG - The Pay Also Rises Papua New Guinea trade unions are warning they will push for significant pay rises in the coming weeks, ABC National Radio reports. The unions say a recent huge pay rise for politicians makes a mockery of the Government's call for wages restraint. Dr Bob Danaya, the head of the National Doctors and Health Workers Association says unions had respected the Government's call for moderation in the national interest. But the secret pay rise for politicians and bureaucrats means all bets are off. Dr Danaya says the Government has insulted Papua New Guinea workers, and is taking from people who have very little in order to further enrich the country's elite. Leading social justice campaigner Sir Anthony Siaguru says he is concerned about a possible conflict of interest in the politicians pay rise. The commission that approved it is headed by the speaker of Parliament whose salary almost doubled. Sir Anthony has urged the Government to make the process independent of politicians. .
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