Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Fri, 10 Apr 1992 06:48:14 PDT
From:         "Indonesia Publications/Task Force" <apakabar@IGC.ORG>
Subject:      Timorese Trials
X-To:         seasia-l@msu.edu

Forwarded from PeaceNet reg.indonesia conference:
Topic 555Indonesian Student Trials
nlutzreg.indonesia11:34 pm  Apr  9, 1992

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education   Date: April 8, 1992
Story Type: News                        Original Language:English
Dateline: Jakarta                       Byline: Margot Cohen
Text: Full

    INDONESIAN STUDENTS GO ON TRIAL ON CHARGES OF SUBVERSION
               AND 'SPREADING HATRED'

The two chie}if organizers of a pro-independence student group and
three undergraduates from Indonesia's troubled province of East
Timor have gone on trial here on charges of subversion and
"spreading hatred".

The five were arrested last November following a Jakarta rally
protesting a massacre in Dili, East Timor, where soldiers fired
into a crowd of pro-independence demonstrators and killed at
least 50 people. Indonesia annexed East Timor, a former
Portuguese cqolony, in 1976, but its sovereignty has not been
recognized by the United Nations. Several soldiers are to be
court-martialed for their part in the Dili shootings.

The trials of the students, which are expected to last about
three months, are seen as part of a broad government effort to
squelch student protest.

Two defendants charged with subversion face the death penalty:
Fernando De Araujo, a literature student at Udayana University in
Bali, and Joao Freitas Da Camara, who dropped out of the law
program at Atma Jaya Catholic University in Jakarta after the
government withdrew his scholarship.

7-YEAR MAXIMUM SENTENCE

For the lesser crime of "spreading hatred", a maximum seven-year
prison sentence faces Agapita Cardoso of Udayana University,
Virgilio Da Silva Guterres of the National Institute of
Technology in East Java, and Dominggus Bareta De Jasus Vas of the
Catholic University in Central Java.

Mr. De Araujo and Mr. Da Camara founded a pro-independence
student group in 1988, the National Student Resistance Movement
of East Timor, known as RENETIL, for its initials in Portuguese.
The group, which attracted members from universities across Java
and Bali, concentrated on non-violent activities such as
disseminating information on human-rights violations and holding
discussions on political and economic problems in East Timor.
It was suspected of drawing funds from an armed rebel movement.

The students operated clandestinely until the November 12
massacre jolted them into public protest. They were subsequently
detained and interrogated by the police -- and denied access to
lawyers, according to the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, a
human-rights group that is helping defend some of the students.

In a country lacking an independent judiciary, the students are
in a difficult position. The Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation has
never won a subversion case. However, other recent casees of
alleged subversion in Indonesia's Aceh province that involved
faculty members at several universities ended with prison terms
rather than the death penalty.

Besides incidents in which protestors were beaten or arrested,
the government has used more subtle forms of pressure to deter
dissent. After the massacre in Dili, the government suddenly cut
off scholarship payments to East Timorese university students.
They were resumed on the condition that the students sign a
statement that they agreed with the integration of East Timor,
that they are not involved in any anti-integration activities,
and that they apologize for any such activities in the past.

Thus far only a handful of students reportedly have refused to
sign the statement.
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