No sooner had most of the staff evacuated the besieged UN compound in East Timor on Friday than men with hand grenades arrived to menace the remaining workers and the 1,000 terrified refugees taking shelter there. Witnesses said the men looted supplies with the help of uniformed soldiers and fired at refugees who tried to flee.
As international pressure grew, the armed forces chief, Gen. Wiranto, said for the first time that Indonesia might in the future accept the deployment of the UN peacekeeping force that has been the insistent demand of foreign nations.
Pressure this week came from a broad range of sources, but it is not clear which influence might have changed the general’s mind. A UN delegation came to Indonesia to press the government to allow peacekeeping troops to try to bring order to East Timor.
And Secretary General Kofi Annan on Friday said that continued violence in East Timor and repeated rejections of outside help could lead to charges of crimes against humanity.
President Clinton, en route to an economic meeting in New Zealand, said Friday in a statement from Air Force One, “It is now clear that the Indonesian military is aiding and abetting the militia violence.” He has already warned the government that the violence must stop.
The commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, Adm. Dennis Blair, traveled to Jakarta to emphasize to Wiranto his responsibility to control the Indonesian military, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry Shelton, has talked by telephone with the Indonesian military commander several times this week about East Timor.
The turbulence in East Timor has begun to shake the political position of President B.J. Habibie, who has come under criticism from his own party as well as his political opponents, and is the subject of increasing derision in the press.
Reports on Friday from the East Timor capital, Dili, described a scene of continuing tension and fear.
Staff members who had evacuated the compound said upon arriving in Darwin, Australia, that they had been fired on as they headed in a convoy to the tiny airport in Dili. Around them, they said, was a devastated city where almost every building had been burned or vandalized and where the only people in evidence were armed men on motorcycles.
As night fell, Brian Kelly, a UN official reached at the compound by telephone, said the air of tension at the unguarded compound had intensified as the armed men continued to threaten the occupants.
“What this is, is a further ratcheting up of intimidatory tactics and a further example of the porosity of the security fence we have been offered by the military,” he said. “It’s all part, I’m sure, of a game plan. The fact is that there is no way of predicting day-to-day how much more they will attempt.”
Recent violence has included the burning of churches and the killing of priests and nuns around the territory. Pope John Paul II sent a telegram to Roman Catholics in East Timor condemning the violence. “I implore those responsible for so many acts of wickedness to abandon their murderous and destructive intentions,” it said.
In what seemed to be a plea for international understanding, Wiranto said: “We do not object to the idea of foreign peacekeeping troops, but it is not really the appropriate time for a foreign security force to enter East Timor. But we are open for future discussions on such matters.”
After weeks of absolute refusal to consider the involvement of foreign troops, the admission by the general that he might need outside help to control the situation — and even to bring to heel some units of his own military — illustrated the political toll East Timor has begun to take in the Indonesian capital.
The violence is the direct result of what now clearly seems to have been a precipitate offer of independence by Habibie and of what also clearly seems to have been a deliberate plan by the military to undermine the process by instigating a campaign of terror by irregular, military-backed militias.
“Last week Wiranto sent battalions supposedly to protect people, but in the night they dress as militia with guns and weapons and they go around the villages shooting,” said East Timor’s spiritual leader, Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo. He spoke in London after having been forced to flee the territory when gunmen burned his home in Dili and shot some of the 6,000 refugees who had taken shelter there.
In the referendum on Aug. 30, the former Portuguese colony voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia, which invaded it in 1975 but never completely subdued a separatist insurgency.
Habibie’s political stock had already been falling sharply. Many commentators now say his disastrous policy regarding East Timor, and the weakness he is now demonstrating, have doomed his hopes for re-election.
The chief opposition leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri, has maneuvered adeptly around the issue of East Timor, voicing support for the politically powerful military, which is resisting the separation of East Timor, while asserting that she will honor the East Timor’s legal status.
