road trip, timor leste

One day in Timor, maybe a week and a half ago, we caught a bus out from Baucau. It was going east along the coast, then south down to the town of Los Palos; we wanted to stick to the coastal road so we got off at a village named Lautem. The plan was to catch a bus from Lautem to Com, a seaside village further east. We were unaware that there is very little traffic travelling this way. (If there had been a bus that day, it would have appeared very early in the morning; it was now around noon.) Seeing no bus, we decided to start the walk - 20kms to Com - and hopefully hitch a lift.

There was no traffic, no lift. We walked the 20kms.

On August 30 1999, the people of East Timor voted resoundingly for independence from Indonesian rule in a referendum. What followed was a nightmarish period of violence as the Indonesians withdrew; Indonesian army and police officers, and pro-Indonesian militia, killed hundreds; over half the population were displaced.

On September 25 1999, a militia team commander and several others drove from Com to Lautem. They said they were going to get rice from a warehouse near Lautem, but “[t]he most obvious indication that they were not in fact intending to get rice was that they drove right past the rice warehouse.” They were also armed with SKS automatic weapons (used by Indonesian security forces) and carrying machetes and knives.

About one kilometer past Lautem, the militiamen passed two young men pushing a cart. The militiamen chased the two men, hurling rocks and shooting at them. One of the men was wounded but managed to escape. The second was caught and tied to a tree near the side of the road.

The militiamen next set up a roadblock, placing large stones on the road. Some used a nearby hill as a lookout, and others took up positions in a ditch, aiming their weapons on the road. And then they waited.

“At about 2:30 p.m. the same day, a gray four-wheel drive vehicle came into sight from the direction of Lautem heading west toward Baucau. There were eight people in the vehicle, including two nuns, three Brothers/Priests, a journalist and two other lay persons.”

When the car stopped at the roadblock, three militiamen simply opened fire. The driver and some passengers were killed.

“As one of the surviving passengers tried to get out of the vehicle, a militiaman grabbed him and dragged him to the river where he was shot and killed. The same militiaman poured petrol over three other survivors and lit them on fire. One of the three ran from the car to the river”, but was shot and killed.

A nun got out of the car and, kneeling on the side of the road, began to pray. Someone slashed her with a machete. One of the nuns, Sister Erminia, got out of the vehicle and knelt down by the roadside to pray. As she prayed, a militiaman (Horacio) slashed her with a machete. Another militiamen shouted “Don’t kill a Sister!” but the commander roared: “Kill them all!”

Someone picked up the nun and threw her in the river, then shot her twice.

The militiamen pushed the car into the river. There was still one person alive in the car; he tried to get out, but was shot and killed.

The militiamen then remembered their earlier capture, one of the men pushing a cart who they had tied to a tree. One militiaman cut off his ear and hacked his neck with a sword, then pushed him into the river and shot him. “Finally [the commander] Joni Marques threw a grenade into the river, where the dead and wounded lay, to be sure that there would be no survivors.”



East Timor 1999 Crimes Against Humanity Geoffrey Robinson 2003