Re: East Timor was Re: "They found absolutely nothing"

["João Paulo Monteiro" <jpmonteiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Borba100@xxxxxxx wrote:

> 3) By the way, this 200,000 figure is a puzzle.  It' IS the same as the
> number of people who were apparently killed during and after Indonesian
> occupation.  ANOTHER 200,000?  I don't know on what basis anyone can speak of
> such a figure today - we were also told bodies were everywhere but news
> accounts now indicate virtually no evidence of death.  Also: does this figure
> include tens of thousands of ANTI'S forced into West Timor -  by someone?
> And again, since these people apparently do exist, who forced them out, why
> was this news suppressed.  Most puzzling.
>

This news was not "suppressed" at all. It is very well documented that
the
integrationist militias and the indonesian army have forcefully
conducted the
deslocation (by truck and boat) of about 200.000 people to West Timor
and other indonesian islands. These people - assembled en masse and in a
haste - are both pro-integrationist and pro-independence. Later on they
were separated and distributed in different camps (following their
political orientations), all of them under the vigilance of the
integrationist militias.

The camps have been visited by the UN High Commissioner for refugees,
Sadako
Ogato. Indonesia has promised to allow the return of all these
dislocated persons
(so to speak), if they so wish, but made so far no move on that
direction.

Appart from these, there are still hundreds of thousands of people
missing, most
of them living on the hills in East-Timor. There are reports of bodies
having
been dumped in the sea. Any accounting of the dead is speculative right
now. They
can go from the hundreds to the tens of thousands.




João Paulo Monteiro