AUT: (fwd) Timor: demo and union action in Melbourne

[pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Steve Wright)]

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[Image]
The tide of protest swells
By staff reporters
11sep99

IN another day of nationwide demonstrations more than
25,000 protesters packed the centre of Melbourne yesterday
to hear East Timor independence leader Xanana Gusmao
appeal to his Australian "brothers and sisters" to
pressure the Howard Government to send peace enforcers
into East Timor.

"I thank our friends, the people of Australia, my brothers
and sisters, Australian workers and Australian students.
Please help us, please help me to save my people," Mr
Gusmao said.

East Timorese guerilla leader and Falintil chief of staff
Taur Matan Ruak earlier spoke to the rally by satellite
phone and appealed for a food airlift from Australia
directly into the hills of Timor to aid starving refugees.

Postal, tele-communications and freight bans were imposed
on Indonesian embassies by Victorian unions yesterday,
while union pickets at Melbourne airport continued to
severely disrupt the plans of holiday-makers flying to
Indonesia.

About 60 unionists blockaded check-in counters for the
8.55am flight to Bali, leading to two arrests.

In Sydney, scuffles broke out as more than 500 protesters
blockaded Garuda's check-in counters at 8am and then tried
to blockade the departure gate.

Elsewhere in Sydney, almost 1000 high school and
university students stopped lunchtime traffic as they
marched through the CBD before joining East Timorese for a
sit-in at the Garuda office.

In Canberra, Parliament House faced another embarrassing
security breach yesterday when East Timorese activists
dodged patrolling guards and spray-painted "shame
Australia shame" over the building's entrance.

Four men perched dangerously over the entrance on a glass
roof and held police at bay for about an hour.

One of the four protesters arrested after the incident,
Gareth Smith, who worked as part of the UN mission, later
told Canberra Magistrates Court he had faced a "crisis of
conscience", with many of his East Timorese friends being
jailed or killed.

Elsewhere in Canberra, people tooting their horns in
support of protesters outside the Indonesian embassy were
yesterday hit with $90 fines by Australian Federal Police.

Meanwhile, travel retailer Flight Centre has become the
first tourism operator to react to the Indonesian tragedy,
threatening to pull the plug on millions of dollars of
business to Bali.

Flight Centre - which sends around 100,000 travellers to
Indonesia each year - has written to Indonesian embassies
around the world warning that it will encourage its
clients to holiday elsewhere, chief executive officer,
Graham Turner, said yesterday.

"We will also be advising people not to fly with Garuda,
the (Indonesian) national carrier," Mr Turner said.

Flight Centre's business to Indonesia amounts to between
$130 million and $150 million a year, or 10 per cent of
their business out of Australia.

Solicitors in NSW are being encouraged to volunteer to
help prepare evidence briefs and prosecution cases arising
from alleged human rights atrocities in East Timor.

The chairman of the society's Human Rights Taskforce,
Michael Antrum, said solicitors would perform a range of
duties, including viewing atrocity sites, taking
statements and researching where laws had been breached
and human rights abuses had occurred.

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