From: Kerry Miller <ASTINGSH%KSUVM.bitnet@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Subject:      WBAI: Goodman/Nairn witness Dili Part 2 <13K>
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 16:54:22 GMT


THE DILI MASSACRE, Part 2
   Transcribed from a broadcast by Pacifica Radio station
                WBAI-FM Radio (99.5)
                505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
                New York, NY 10018
                (212) 279-0707

[Robert Knight is speaking with Amy Goodman, WBAI News Editor, and Allan
Nairn, journalist, who witnessed the massacre of 80 citizens of Dili,
East Timor.]

RK: Amy, I saw you the night before you left this radio station on this
trip, and see the two of you here now. Allan, I see you are wearing a
bandage on your pate, around the top of your head. Take us now into the
events of that funeral commemoration on Nov 12, and tell us of those
things that transpired.

AN: Everyone was standing outside the cemetery, a couple thousand
people. This is a high-walled cemetery, and across the street is a
low*walled cemetery, so people were really enclosed, and didn't have
much room to move. Troops approached from two directions: a troop
transport, came down and sealed off one escape route; it was full of
soldiers with helmets. Marching down the street from the other
direction, following the same route the procession had taken, were
hundreds and hundreds of troops, in formation, carrying M-16s in firing
position, wearing dark-brown uniforms. They were doing a semi march
step, they were walking very slowly and deliberately, moving down the
road. They just kept coming; we never saw how many there were in the
end, because they never stopped coming.
   We saw them and figured, If we go out and stand between them and the
Timorese, they probably won't fire, because they'll see there are
foreigners there. We held up a camera, Amy had a tape recorder out, and
thought That'll deter them, because  they don't want an international
incident. That was wrong. It didn't work.
    We stood on the corner between the Timorese and the soldiers. The
soldiers kept marching. They swept round the corner, and all at once,
the front rank of soldiers raised their M-16s and opened fire into the
crowd. A couple seconds later --  I had my camera up at the time, Amy
had her mike up --  they attacked us, swinging their M-16s. They took
away the camera and the mike, and started to beat us, as they were
firing into the crowd.
   The firing went on for five to ten minutes. It was systematic: they
were just gunning people down. People were falling all around us, shot
in the back, shot in the chest as they backpedalled with their arms up.
The soldiers were aiming and firing at people's bodies, and at their
heads; the street was just full of bodies falling everywhere.

RK: Amy?... Amy, what did you see?

AG: I was standing at about the same position as Allan, up near the
troops. I would also add that there was a New Zealander there, a student

from the University of New South Wales, in [Kensington,] Australia. He
had a camera, and was right near us. When we decided to walk to the
front, we turned to him and said, "Why don't you join us? If we could
get all the Western journalists in the front..." -- there were a couple
of others, there was a man, a filmmaker from Yorkshire TV, there was an
English still photographer, but they were far in the back.
   But he didn't respond to what I said, and he slowly moved back as the

troops opened fire.  He was one of those who got killed.
   As this firing was happening, people were screaming, people were in
shock. There had been no warning; there was no chance to get away. After
they had beat me for a while, kicked me, hit me with rifle butts, and
were doing the same thing to Allan -- he threw himself on top of me, and
got a much more brutal beating as a result -- at one point I tried to
get away from this area of the road, because so many soldiers were just
coming in formation, [they would] first get us and then move on to the
crowd and start shooting.  I tried to move a little, to another road,
and somehow they pushed Allan over there as well, and started hitting
him with their rifle butts extremely hard in the head. Finally, he was
just covered with blood.
   I think the significant point here, aside from the horror in all of
this,... we were on the ground, they were not letting up, and we were
just saying "Please, we are from America. We are from America." They
turned the M-16s on us, they put them to our heads, and we just said,
"We are from America." They stripped us of everything we had, I only
had my passport in a waist pocket -- Allan had already had his taken --
and I showed that passport. Also, I was born in Washington, D C, which
was even more significant than the passport: "Washington." We are from
America -- the same place as those M-16s were from. And that is probably
the most important thing, here: sadly, and fortunately, it's what saved
our lives: America. America. We said it over and over and over, until
they turned the rifles from us and began beating mercilessly an old
Timorese man who was right next to us, beat him into the sewer ditch,
kicked him in the head, and beat him with rifle butts. We were keeping
our heads down, because it seemed like any time we looked anywhere, it
further enraged the soldiers. Looking out of the corner of my eye, there
were just bodies everywhere, just down the road everywhere.

AN: And they were still shooting. They were running through the bodies,
picking off the people who were still standing. Also, by this point,
they were going into the cemetery, gunning down people who were fleeing
among the graves. You can't tell what was going through the soldiers'
minds, but when we said we were from the States, it did seem to make a
difference; I think they knew that if they killed us, there might be
political complications, but they could keep on slaughtering Timorese,
there would be no complications at all, because the US has responded to
the Indonesian slaughter of the Timorese, year after year, with a
renewal, indeed an increase, in military aid.
   The year after Indonesia invaded Timor, the US *doubled* its military
aid. In fact, the way the State Department responded to this massacre,
was to call in the Indonesian Ambassador, and "protest" it; say they
were very disturbed by it -- and then to say, in the next breath, that
they would not cut off US military aid to Indonesia. We had a press
conference in Washington last Friday, [at which] we said the US was
responsible for this massacre, just as the troops who pulled the trigger
were, just as the government in Indonesia was.
   The State Dept responded to that by saying that the US was not
responsible, because even though the US provides military aid to
Indonesia,
it urges them to use it in accord with "humanitarian and democratic
principles."

RK: The commander of the Indonesian troops who committed this slaughter
of Timorese
claims not to know how long the troops were firing, and claims a number
[of casualties] that is one-quarter or less of that reported by other
observers, such as the Bishop, the nurse, and others. How long do you
recall the firing taking place, and how many bodies did you see fall?

AN: It seemed like five to ten minutes; in fact, yesterday, Gen Waru,
the E Timor commander gave an interview with Reuters, where he said five
to ten minutes. He said, "That doesn't seem to me like an excessively
long time." -- excessively long time for soldiers to be standing and
firing at defenseless people. We saw dozens and dozens of bodies, and as

we got out of E Timor a few hours later, well-informed people were
saying 50 to 60 people had died. Since then, I think the Bishop has been

quoted as saying 160- 180 had died. It's impossible to know the exact
numbers, because they swept up the bodies and put them in mass graves
and did not give the families any access.
   Also, as people who were still living and bleeding on the street, a
group of religious came up and the Army wouldn't let them treat those;
they were turned away. So there's no way to get an accurate count: it
was a mass slaughter, we know, and that really all you need to know.

RK: [...] One central question that occurs to me in [terms of] your
reaction in this situation, where you went over to gather information,
where one might naturally seek refuge, (whether its under the name, for
the value that it carries, of the US) that one would seek to avoid
imminent danger such as this. Yet according to your description of
events, you sought to intervene by identifying yourselves as
journalists. Why did you do that?

[AN repeats essentially what he had said earlier.]

AG: When the Indonesians changed their reason -- they've changed their
story for over a week, I think at the start they said it was a march of
100 armed guerrillas, armed with grenades and rifles [...] they have now
switched that story to say that there were over 3000 people -- I can say
for myself I never would have come between the Timorese and the soldiers
if I had felt there was even one weapon among the Timorese. I'm scared
of guns, and would not have wanted to get caught in the crossfire. This
was a defenseless crowd, of girls in catholic school uniforms, of old
women in Timorese costume, and young men, high-school students.
   I also want to say something about the press, and what Congress is
doing... In terms of the US press, this has been somewhat covered in the
print press. By the way, Juan Gonzales wrote a piece yesterday in the
"Daily News"; Mary McGrory wrote a column Tuesday in the "Washington
Post," and the NYT has a few articles.
   But the TV networks say, "We need visuals." The problem with this, if
they persist in this policy, is that governments like Indonesia will
then persist in their policy of killing and beating up journalists and
confiscating everything they have, because then there are no visuals.
And, at least in the US press today, if there are no visuals, there's no
story.

AN: In fact, in this case there is some film shot inside the cemetery.
You can hear the bullets in the background and the crowd fleeing,
stumbling over the graves to get away --

AG: He buried that in the cemetery as the soldiers were coming, and came
back late at night and dug it up.

AN: -- Even with the availability of that film, American networks have
not considered this massacre important enough to put it on the air. ABC,
NBC, CBS have done nothing. CNN had something initially, but the other
three networks have done absolutely nothing.
   One very important point. Right now, in the US Congress, there is a
bill which has been proposed by Sen Pell, and Rep Tony Hall, which calls
for the US to press for self-determination of the people of E Timor. Sen
Bob Dole of Kansas is trying to scuttle this bill on the Senate side,
and Congressman Steven Solarz of New York has been trying to weaken it
on the House side. Within the next few days, the fate of this piece of
legislation will be decided.
   Another NY Congressman, Rep Bill Downey, is pushing for sanctions
against Indonesia because of this massacre. Solarz and Dole are against
it.

AG: That's very significant. We met with the Congressman Downey, and he
says he is hoping to introduce a bill that would cut off military aid
to Indonesia.

RK: Interested listeners can communicate with their federal
representatives by calling the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.
   I'm very glad that we can continue being colleagues in journalism
with Amy Goodman, with WBAI, and Allan Nairn, with the New Yorker. Thank
you for being here with us.
                    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

     Once you are able to visualize women and children being
gutted or decapitated by gunfire -- babies being strangled
and crushed to death -- you may feel just a twinge of the
justified terror and fury that these victims felt. But then
you find yourself asking, if it was my wife, my brother, my
baby who was being so heinously murdered, would I lift a
finger to protect them?  And if you answer honestly, then
conscience dictates that you work to protect these suffering
people.
     It's that simple: we must work FOR government FOR the
people, and AGAINST government AGAINST people -- whether it
is by direct repression of news such as this, or by complicity
inthe events themselves. Only thus may we avoid the day when
it is, in fact, your own family's blood to be sacrificed.
     You have what you need: your sovereign individual
political power, endowed to you at birth by the Constitution.
Use it. Depend on it. Act on it.
     Then focus that political power upon the scoundrels who
occupy the People's Congress of the United States. Let the
battered and abused peoples of the world know that, at last,
the USA is abandoning its policies of imperialism and exploitation.

     Numerous organizational channels can be found; one is the
Christic Institute. Contact: Daniel Sheehan, Lead Attorney,
The Christic Institute, 1324 North Capitol St. N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20002.

***************   kerry miller    astingsh@ksuvm
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive