• by IPS Correspondents (new york)
• Monday, November 14, 1994
• Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Nov 14 (IPS) - U.S. activists supporting East Timor's struggle for self-determination Monday called on Washington to protect a group of Timorese demonstrators who breached the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.

The U.S. offices of the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) called on the U.S. government to ensure that 29 East Timorese students and workers who broke into the Jakarta compound would be protected from reprisals by Indonesia.

ETAN also warned that some 49 other Timorese failed to breach the compound's security and that 14 were unaccounted for and may have been 'disappeared' by Indonesian security forces.

"We expect the embassy to protect the demonstrators and their supporters whether they remain on embassy grounds or leave," said Charles Scheiner, the U.S. coordinator of ETAN.

The demonstrators want U.S. President Bill Clinton, who is in Bogor, Indonesia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meeing, to pressure Indonesian President Suharto to meet with East Timor's resistance leaders.

They are also pleading for Clinton's help to release jailed resistance leader Xanana Gusmao and other Timorese and Indonesian political prisoners.

Indonesia invaded East Timor, then a Portuguese colony on the verge of independence, in 1975 and annexed it a year later. Some 200,000 Timorese were killed in Jakarta's ensuing crackdown.

Scheiner said the United States "bears special responsibility...for the suffering in East Timor over the past 19 years. It has actively assisted Indonesia's occupation of East Timor by approving the invasion and providing most of the weapons used to kill one-third of (its) population."

Clinton promised before arriving in Indonesia that he would broach the matter of East Timor privately with Suharto this week, while other APEC governments -- notably Canada, Japan and New Zealand -- also discuss the issue.

But the Timorese cause, which has attracted scant media attention in recent years, gained a big boost from the highly visible protest going on now in the Jakarta U.S. Embassy.

Embassy officials said they had no plans to remove the demonstrators, while U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said he was "sympathetic" with their cause.

John Miller, a spokesman for ETAN, said, "This should be a wake-up call for President Clinton."

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

Where next?

Advertisement