| Subject: Irish Times 6th
October - Xanana's visit Wednesday,
October 6, 1999
I would do same again, leader says
'Xanana' Gusmao has gone from exile to advocate for his
embattled country. David Shanks met him in Dublin
EAST TIMOR: The putative president of a free East Timor, a
state missing half its people, yesterday took his first walk as a free man on the streets
of Dublin. There would be no questions on the short walk from the Conrad Hotel to Iveagh
House. "I just want to look around," said Jose Alexandre Kay Rala
"Xanana" Gusmao, a man clearly taking his new destiny in his stride.
Almost half of his 53 years have been spent as a mountain
guerrilla or as a prisoner of Indonesia, the last year of it under house arrest in
Jakarta; "Yes, my holiday bungalow", he smiles as if at a private joke. He would
admit to no personal regrets: "I would do the same again." His face is clear and
open, his carefully delivered quiet words exude dignity, savvy and passion.
"My people do not need food and medicines. They want
above all to go home, women to find their husbands, fathers, or to find the bones and bury
them," the future president of Timor Lorosae told a group of solidarity and NGO
activists at Iveagh House.
We could send tons of food and medicine, but the people
needed to bury their dead. "They cannot eat when they are crying. It is not a
relief."
He wanted to dramatise the situation of 250,000 East
Timorese held in Indonesian West Timor's "concentration camps". Indonesia has
said they can return home. But to make sure the Indonesian military follows through on
what may well be "bluff and lies" by President B.J. Habibie and the Foreign
Minister, Mr Ali Alatas, more international pressure must be exerted.
Even rebuilding houses destroyed by Kopassus's proxy army
of anti-independence militias is less of a priority than getting the people home. He wants
an international agreement so that ships can be chartered to bring them from Kupang, the
West Timorese capital, and from Indonesia's main island of Java, where there are 4,000
students moving from house to house each day hiding from militia murderers.
Gusmao's FALINTIL army is at odds with the international
peacekeeping force, Interfet, over decommissioning. But that does not stop him backing the
extension of the UN mandate to allow Interfet into West Timor "if the situation
remains as it is with infiltrations" from across the Indonesian border. He is
pressing for an international consensus on this too.
As it is, Interfet is not even yet able to control the
entire territory of East Timor. But the mandate could be broadened, he says, even before
the UN force gets to its envisaged full strength of 8,500 and the process enters
"phase three".
This would happen after the Indonesian parliament (MPR)
presumably approves independence at the end of this month, when he hopes to return to his
ruined country. Here he is, however, open to "the possibility" that the MPR
might try to thwart the ballot result by, for instance, revoking the invitation it gave to
the UN force.
FALINTIL wants to help with the peacekeeping but Interfet's
demand that the now 600 guerrillas disarm is so serious that Portugal has offered as a
venue for negotiations a frigate, the Vasco da Gama, with a helicopter. It is now on its
way to nearby Darwin.
"I think Interfet doesn't understand the substance of
the problem in East Timor," Gusmao says. "FALINTIL is a liberation army, not a
group of banditos and criminals." The struggle that led to the ballot is because of
FALINTIL and 24 years of international agitation. The rebels never responded to violence
and provocation. It is a "a legitimate force and that is why we don't agree to
disarm". It should be part of the peacekeeping effort. His fighters are willing to be
stationed on the border and protect Interfet troops.
The genocidal intention of the Indonesian special forces
(Kopassus) and the militias is still there. "It is part of their character", and
the only thing that will stop it is if the top brass in the military aware, he says. With
political confusion in Jakarta as its parliament prepares to select a new president he is
confident Indonesia knows what side its bread is buttered on.
IMF and World Bank aid is under threat because of the
"barbarity that shocked the whole world at the end of the millenium. No one believed
such will to kill just like in the Stone Age." Nor does he care who wins the
Indonesian presidency because all candidates are aware of the seriousness of the country's
economic crisis.
But Xanana Gusmao had come to Ireland to express thanks to
the Government and solidarity activists for their support which was "extremely
meaningful to us because it comes from a small country just like ours", especially
one connected to the EU. He was also here to mark a shift from activism to liberation, to
nationbuilding "from ashes and rubble". Even most of East Timor's vehicles have
been taken west by militias.
Another purpose of his trip, including New York,
Washington, Lisbon, Dublin and today London, is to underline that his National Council for
Timorese Resistance (CNRT), as an "umbrella, is the only interlocutor of the Timorese
people", following the 78.5 per cent vote for independence of August 30th.
Yet another was to talk to the World Bank, which is sending
an assessment mission to his country to revise its pre-violence figures for
reconstruction.
Nursing bitterness is no part of Xanana Gusmao's message.
Just before the vote he offered a "general amnesty for all political crimes committed
until now". Now, however, after thousands of post-ballot murders, he does not want
the amnesty promise to be "an incentive for other violence and animal-type
behaviour".
In the context of a spirit of national unity he says that
all those who were pro-autonomy (pro-Indonesia) but anti-violence can be encompassed. And
he had some names here for a government of national unity. Among them are Mario
Carrascalao, a former governor of East Timor under Indonesia and brother of Manuel, a CNRT
leader whose son was murdered last April during the visit of the Minister for Foreign
Affairs, Mr Andrews, and of Joao, the official CNRT spokesman.
But "for all those who are murderers and destroyers of
our people they must return and explain what they did to the people and acknowledge
seriously their crimes," Gusmao said. Amnesty can hurt the feelings of people so the
people must decide.
Accompanying "President Gusmao" was Jose Ramos
Horta, the Nobel laureate who has been known as East Timor's "foreign minister in
exile". He says he is tired of travelling and, while he will work with his leader
until December, he has not yet decided to accept an offer of a place in government.
But Gusmao deferred to him on several questions yesterday
as if Ramos Horta were his prime minister. And Ramos Horta suggested another name, Father
Filomeno Jacob PhD, for the foreign portfolio.
So it may not be true that he will write silly books and
open "an Irish bar in Dili" as he has been telling me.
Turning the other cheek has been the mark of Gusmao's
recent leadership of FALINTIL. Had the army become a mainly "symbolic force" of
just 600? No, FALINTIL's observance of a ceasefire and cantonment, unlike the militias,
had been a deliberate decision "not to feed into what the Indonesians were
doing".
In fact FALINTIN had recently engaged the army and militias
twice. In one fight they captured 19 modern weapons before freeing captured soldiers. In
another, after a priest and two nuns were murdered, FALINTIN killed 13 militia fighters.
In the new state, "a market economy with selective
intervention of the State to ensure equity, transparency and efficiency", the
Indonesian Bahasa language will continue to be taught along with "the mother
tongue", Tetum.
Forgiveness is intended to be the mark of the new country
of the new millenium. Gusmao says he has already told Mr Alatas that "all that has
happened has damaged the image of Indonesia and we are willing to overlook this and put it
in the past." But, he says, to restore a "cleaner image" to Indonesia its
government must help.
In East Timor "we don't feel revenge but
justice", says the president, stressing the need for accountability to help the
people's feelings of deep trauma.
'My people do not need food and they do not need medicines.
They want above all to go home' `The barbarity that shocked the world at the millennium.
The will to kill like in the Stone Age'
East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign Suite 16, Dame House
24-26 Dame Street Dublin 2 Telephone 00 353 1 671 9207/ 677 0253 /623 3148 Mobile 087 286
0122 Fax 00 353 1 671 9207 Timorese Community in Ireland 00 353 1 453 1462 web
http://indigo.ie/~etisc/ Offices in: Dublin Belfast Laois Galway Claremorris
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