Indonesia’s international reputation is again at stake in its
failure and inaction to stop the rampaging pro-Jakarta militias that have
forced tens of thousands to flee and the evacuation of up to 150 United
Nations personnel from East Timor.
A new tragedy is in the making in East Timor, especially as the pleas
of the United Nations and the United Nations Mission in East Timor
(UNAMET) for Indonesia to improve security in East Timor fell on deaf ears.
Pro-independence sources said at least 100 East Timorese were killed in two days of bloody unrest since Saturday's announcement that a U.N.-organized ballot on August 30 had recorded a 78.5 percent vote in favor of the territory's independence from Indonesia.
Timorese resistance leaders living abroad warned that Indonesia was preparing an "ethnic cleansing" of East Timor after the landslide vote for independence, claiming that they have evidence Indonesia was massing between 30,000 to 40,000 troops along the border of East Timor, in preparation for an "invasion" and "a plan of genocide and social disintegration to literally kill the independence movement".
ASEAN and the international community cannot stand idly by at the prospect of an "ethnic cleansing" in East Timor, and DAP calls on ASEAN Foreign Ministers to convene an emergency meeting to send an ASEAN Mission to East Timur to facilitate the implementation of the independence referendum and end a new carnage and genocide.
ASEAN will lose all moral authority in the international arena if it allows a "Bosnia-Herzegovina" of ethnic cleansing and genocide to take place within its region.
(6/9/99)