There was not much to see in the dry creek bed that runs through the center of the town of Liquica, 35km west of Dili. What the local villagers were eager to show the Interfet soldiers who secured this town two weeks ago was little more than a mound of dirt, directly below where an embankment had collapsed. But this was no occurrence of nature. The embankment, the locals said, had been deliberately collapsed by the militia group Besa Merah Puti last month to hide the bodies of roughly 10 men whom they had murdered. A quick scratch in the dirt by the Interfet commander confirmed the story.
Human bones lay just centimeters from the surface.
Encouraged, the locals then directed the soldiers to two more sites in the town, one down by the beach, believed to hold four or five bodies, and then to a home that once belonged to a militia commander. Meanwhile, there were rumors that a well 10km from town contained as many as 15 bodies. But the sites, made public just last week by Interfet headquarters, and claimed to be the largest mass graves discovered in East Timor so far, were hardly new discoveries. The well outside Liquica did indeed contain bodies, as documented by an Australian television broadcast at the beginning of this month. When questioned by the media why Interfet had not disclosed the discovery sooner, spokesman Colonel Mark Kelly refused to comment.