Subject: 'austraLasia' #250
THIS MAKES A GOOD READ - COMES VIA TONY BAILEY IN THE UK
Canon Devane, parish priest of St Mathews' (West Norwood) sen tme the
following story (I think it is from the "Irish Times") I liked it so much I
scanned it, so there may be a few typing errors
Asia Letter by Conor O'Cleary
WHEN armed militiamen prowling through a Salesian convent in a suburb of
Dili looking for pro-independence figures among the terrified refugees, they
came across nuns slopping out a shower room, the floor of which was awash
with soapy water.
They did not enter but passed along the corridor, and soon left the
building. Shortly afterwards more militiamen came with guns. The nuns began
mopping out the bathroom again, though its tiled floor was perfectly clean,
and once more the armed intruders passed by. Three times the death squads
missed the "special guests" concealed in the bathroom, Manuel Gusmao and his
wife, Antonia Henriques Gusmao, the parents of East Timorese resistance
leader, Xanana Gusmao, and prime targets for assassination.
The elderly couple were whisked secretly into the convent as the terror in
Dili began on September 4th. Anxious friends thought they had been killed.
This news was even conveyed to Xanana, then in the British embassy in
Jakarta, who broke down and cried.
Sister Marlene Bautista, one of the couple's protectors, told me the story
in a room of the convent where a sign reads: 'I believe in the sun, even
though it is not shining. I believe in God, even when he is silent." God
appeared to be silent for two weeks in the East Timor capital, but if faith
has triumphed it has been with the help, more than once, of this remarkable
38-year-old woman from the Philippines who was educated in California and
has dedicated her life to the East Timorese
Dark rings under her eyes betray a deep exhaustion after two weeks of living
dangerously during which she also rescued a nephew of Xanana's, called
Elvis. "They were looking for all the Gusmao family," she said. "He told me,
'They are out to kill me'." I put him in the back of the car and drove him
along a back road
I could not believe what was happening. I was saying to myself, 'Don't be
ridiculous'. We expected problems but we didn't expect it would be like
this."
They were spotted by a militiaman on a passing motorcycle who told a pickup
truck full of militia in front. "They started shooting at the car. They're
lousy shots, by the way. They missed, I couldn't believe it. Elvis Gusmao
said, 'Sister, now step on the gas, please don't stop'. I came very fast to
UNAMET (United Nations Mission in East Timor) which was barricaded by the
Indonesian military (TNI)
The TNI would not let me pass and kept telling me to move my car back but I
wouldn't. Then a UN observer came along transporting refugees. I said,
'Please help me.' He let me between two of his cars and I got past."
Sister Marlene was able to witness the looting and destruction of Dili at
first hand. ---It was the same pattern every day. The military would take
the electric stuff and carpets and TVs, and the militia would take the rest.
They stole everything from us, clothes couches, everything, even the
kindergarten chairs."
She spent the two weeks with seven other nuns looking after 105 women and
children and two in-capable men in the convent, where they were under siege
from September 7th to 20th. There was shooting by militia and soldiers every
night, as the town was laid waste. Somehow they were spared. "We prayed a
lot every night the shooting started," she said. "We slept on the floor to
avoid shots, though a ricocheting bullet hit beside my foot. The children
were wonderful. They instinctively knew to keep quiet at night because our
survival depended on our behaviour."
She got the children to draw "thank you- pictures when the peace- keepers
arrived. Among the poignant messages pinned up in the convent yard today are
"Your presence is a gift - thank you", "I thank you because nobody shot me",
"I thank you because no bullet touched me".
Also thankful that no bullet touched them are the journalists who made the
same assumption last week as Sander Thoenes, Jakarta correspondent of the
Financial Times, that with most of the militia gone, Dili was relatively
safe.
No one really believed that Indonesian soldiers would coldbloodedly kill a
Western journalist. But that is just what happened. Five hours after
arriving in a chartered plane on Tuesday, Mr Thoenes ventured on to the long
straight road through the pro-independence suburb of Becora, where he was
killed by six TNI soldiers on motorcycles.
Several of us had made the same journey that day, including RTE reporter
Aoife Kavanagh riding a motorbike with cameraman Paddy Higgins on the
pillion. They saw the six soldiers wearing militia-style bandanas and fled
back into town.
It wasn't the first time the Indonesian army has brutally disposed of a
journalist in East Timor. Five members of two Australian television crews
were murdered by infiltrating troops in 1975 and on December 7th that year,
!he day of the Indonesian invasion, an Australian journalist, Roger East,
was captured, shot in the head and dumped into the sea after filing his last
report via Marconi radio. Little has changed in 24 years. The Indonesian
army sees reporters as the enemy because they shame it by exposing what it
does.
Like many of his colleagues, Mr Thoenes was staying at the one- star
Turismo Hotel, which is now a media centre under the command of a platoon of
the Australian army led by Capt Dan Skinner. He makes sure that members of
the Australian press "pool" billeted in the east wing of the fire-damaged,
trashed hotel get daily rations, water and electric light.
The rest of us who liberated rooms a day before it was requisitioned, to the
evident chagrin of the Australian military, have to forage for ourselves,
write our stories by candlelight and endure the early-morning (5.30 a.m.)
roar of an army generator next to our rooms.
Capt Skinner lectures us daily at housekeeping sessions in the lobby on
security and on our behaviour: no walking in bare feet, no cooking food in
the rooms, no stroking the hotel cats as "they carry diseases". That risk is
reduced now as one of his patrolling soldiers kicked one of the skinny
orange cats to death in the garden on Thursday night.
The bespectacled, glove-wearing officer told the pool correspondents at one
of these sessions not to give official-issue drinking water to the
"unaccredited" reporters. He likes to remind us that the Australian army
travels on "the bones of its arse" and has nothing to spare for the
unwashed. As he said himself, he is not into PR.
By contrast, an East Timorese family in a bungalow nearby is giving free
lodging and food to an overflow of reporters. Their reward was a lecture
from an Indonesian officer who arrived and accused the owner of giving
succour to the enemies of Indonesia and that he should remember that the TNI
had not yet gone away.
The owner's courage and hospitality will long be remembered by the first
reporters to arrive after "liberation", as will that of Sister Marlene,
who despite everything, offers coffee, food and a shower to visitors
Tony Bailey
Thornleigh House
Sharples Park
BOLTON
BL1 6PQ
Tel 01204 305 125
FAX 01204 305 210
Salesian Web Site
www.salesians.org.uk
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