From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Thoughts from the Lusitania Expresso
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 09:40:13 GMT

From: PENN@MITLNS.MIT.EDU (steve penn 26-567, 253-1521 Remember Our Humanity; Science is Not Neutral; MIT War Research Kills.)

Included below is an article from the New Liberation News Service
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NLNS  Packet 2.8  -  31 March 1992
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Thoughts from the Lusitania Expresso
East Timor Update
Lorne Rider, NLNS

TIMOR SEA, MARCH 11, 1992--For those of us aboard the Lusitania 
Expresso, it has been an astonishing Wednesday morning, but half 
way around the world it is still Super Tuesday.  Anchored just 
outside the territorial waters of East Timor and surrounded by three 
Indonesian warships, it's hard to imagine the banter being broadcast 
over American airwaves right now.  Yet I can state with conviction 
that none of the candidates are putting East Timor high on their 
foreign policy agenda.
	Especially for former CIA director George Bush, who 
understands fully the embarrassing parallels between Iraq's illegal 
occupation of Kuwait and Indonesia's illegal annexation of East Timor, 
any mention of the situation would further puncture his already-
deflated "foreign policy president" balloon.
	Even for the enlightened Jerry Brown, who has been afforded 
the luxury of becoming a presidential candidate by his family's flow 
of Indonesian oil wealth, East Timor (whose oil reserves could make 
Australia a net exporter for a half-century), is a touchy subject 
indeed.  Only Tom Harkin had kept the genocidal situation in East 
Timor on the congressional agenda, but in the end, Harkin must have 
felt that US-sponsored slaughter does not command sufficient 
American concern to turn it into the cornerstone of his campaign.
	Although our video is more dramatic than pictures of a man 
wearing a gas mask in a tent, I'd be truly surprised if any of it pre-
empted Super Tuesday exit poll results.  In Portugal the story of a 
peace boat's face off with the Indonesian navy is a story writ as large 
as the Gulf War.  One might think that images of an unidentified ship 
suspensefully trailing the Lusitania Expresso throughout the night, 
followed by pictures of our dawn reception by the force of 
Indonesian warships, helicopters, and spy planes, might pique the 
curiosity of network media moghuls. But as we were informed days 
ago by CBS and NBC:  no blood, no story.
	It's a sadistic paradox.  Sinking a boat full of 120 students and 
journalists from 21 countries, a scenario which some Indonesian 
hard-liners publicly advocated, would have guaranteed us a flash of 
US media attention.  But unlike a quarter of a million East Timorese 
who have died in the past 16 years, we are not martyrs, and none of 
us ever intended to be.
	Despite the prudence the Indonesian navy showed in their 
restrain from physical attack which would have been recorded by 
dozens of cameras, the unchallengeable threat of violence was never 
absent. The captain of the Lusitania Expresso was told seven times to 
turn back or risk retaliation.  At no time did the Indonesian 
commander allow us to plea the case we had hoped to articulate: 
international law does not recognize Indonesia's authority over East 
Timor and we should therefore be allowed to proceed without 
further molestation.  The captain, who had been informed by Reuters 
in Jakarta last night that the Indonesians unequivocally intended to 
sink the unarmed peace ship, was not prepared to run the risk of 
provocation by his persistence.
	We were prevented from achieving our objective of laying 
flowers at the Santa Cruz cemetery in memory of the 180 East 
Timorese massacred last November.  Yet in the context of East 
Timorese tradition, we were still able to honor those slain.  The East 
Timorese believe that flowers thrown into the sea to pay reverence 
to the deceased will be received by their spirits on the peak of 
Mount Ramelau, East Timor's highest mountain.  After reciting words 
of prayer in a dozen languages, we threw wreaths, flowers, and olive 
branches given to us by the East Timorese communities in Lisbon 
and Darwin into the sea, all while navy helicopters circled noisily 
above.
	On our voyage home to the United States, we feel contented 
with the idea that we have set a historic precedent today.  For the 
first time, a group of individuals from many countries have acted 
independently from their governments to uphold international law 
as decided by the United Nations.  We return with the profound 
understanding that individuals can succeed, however slightly, in 
drawing world attention to injustice which our leaders, whose hands 
are too deep in the coffers, seek to conceal.

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