'Soldiers in Dili massacre'

The Australian - February 21, 2007

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent

Uniformed Indonesian soldiers were among the attackers in the 1999 slaughter of East Timorese independence supporters at the home of prominent Dili figure Manuel Carrascalao, a survivor of the attack claimed yesterday.

Florindo de Jesus Brites, a school student at the time, said he saw his older brother shot dead by an Indonesian soldier, whom he recognised.

Asked how he could be certain of the attacker's status, Mr Brites, who suffered severe machete wounds in the attack, said: "He was wearing his uniform."

The claims sit uncomfortably against blanket denials of military complicity made by former foreign minister Ali Alatas a day earlier at hearings by the Truth and Friendship Commission.

The suave diplomat insisted that he had "no knowledge" of any Indonesian military involvement in the violence that swept East Timor in the months leading up to and days immediately after its 1999 independence vote.

The commission - hearing its first public submissions this week in Bali - is a largely symbolic event with no power to force criminal prosecutions.

It follows a series of national and UN inquiries into the chaos that killed thousands, but so far only one man, former Jakarta-backed militia leader Eurico Guiterres, has been jailed over the events.

The commission has called former military commander General Wiranto and former president BJ Habibie, but neither is expected to appear.

Mr Alatas's statement on Monday was the latest in a series of forays by the man who now serves as a foreign policy adviser to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to distance himself from East Timor's trauma.

He last year published a memoir, The Pebble in the Shoe - East Timor being the said stone, with the shoe being Mr Alatas's career. He read from it in his evidence on Monday, in order to suggest: "as quickly as we can, we should finish this job and don't look backward any more".
But for many East Timorese, the relative toothlessness of the friendship commission does not diminish their determination to remind Jakarta of the brutality perpetuated in its name.
Mr Brites asked commissioners' leave yesterday to remove his shirt to display machete wounds sustained during the April 17, 1999, attack on the Carrascalao compound in Dili that left 12 people dead.

He admitted he saw only two deaths: those of his older brother Eduardo, shot by the TNI soldier; and of a friend with whom he took shelter in a bamboo grove after members of two pro-Jakarta militias, known as Red and White Iron and Aitarak (Thorn), invaded the house.

Mateus Carvalho, a leader in the Dili-based Aitarak group who gave evidence on Monday, said the incident was merely "an issue of revenge within the (Carrascalao) family" and that his members had helped the injured.

Among the dead in the April 17 attack were Mr Carrascalao's teenage son Manuelito.

Mr Brites said he escaped the assault by running from the back garden of the Carrascalao home after being taken for dead by militia members. He said he was taken to hospital for treatment but before receiving medical care for his wounds was forced to sing the Indonesian national anthem.