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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