Section B·Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Thursday, October 14, 1999
World
Militiamen return to Timor to battle with peacekeepers
The Associated Press
The United Nations has urged the
LIQUICA, Indonesia — Dozens of anti-independence militiamen who fled East Timor are secretly returning with plans to launch a guerrilla campaign against the international peacekeepers charged with keeping them out.
The Associated Press accompanied a militia leader and his armed followers through the mountainous interior of the half-island territory this week. The Australian-led multinational force has clashed with, and killed, several militiamen in the past week.
"We are East Timorese. Why are the peacekeepers] trying to keep me out of East Timor?" militia leader Eurico Guterres asked Tuesday. "This is the place where I was born. I will fight to be in my own land, my own place."
The peacekeepers were deployed on Sept. 20 after the Indonesian army and its militia allies unleashed a wave of killings following an overwhelming vote for independence by East Timor's 850,000 people in a U.N.-sponsored referendum.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas urged Indonesia's parliament yesterday to approve East Timor's independence, saying the country could face economic sanctions if the legislators delay their decision.
Richard Bachman/ KANSAN
militias to disarm and to help rebuild an independent East Timor. However, guerrilla leaders such as Guterres have ignored the appeal.
This week, he traveled from a militia stronghold on the border of Indonesian-controlled West Timor to a village in Liquica, about 30 miles west of Dili, East Timor's capital, where the peacekeeping force is based.
There, he inspected a group of about 150 militiamen, who he said had slipped into East Timor last week. Most had M16s, AK-47s and other automatic weapons; others carried homemade arms. All wore uniforms of Indonesia's military, which is accused of covertly supporting them.
"We are going to send more militias in soon. Maybe then we will fight," Guterres said as his men gathered in a secluded bamboo grove.
He and his Aitarak militia are accused by independence activists of several bloody attacks, which
the United Nations plans to investigate.
Hundreds of militiamen retreated into West Timor ahead of the arriving peacekeepers, and Guterres said they now are returning.
"I want to tell the world that the militias are not still just on the border, like the media says," he said. "We are back in East Timor and behind [the peacekeepers] lines."
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Despite the mililtia presence, a company of Australian mechanized infantry rolled into Liquica yesterday in their M113 armored personnel carriers.
"We're going to stay here permanently," said Capt. Jeremy Gillman-Wells, the Australian commander of the newly established garrison.
He said he planned to go into the hills overlooking the coastal town and appeal to an estimated 30,000 displaced people to return to Liquica and surrounding villages.
"The people up in the hills won't come down until they see that security has been re-established," Gillman-Wells said.