25 People Killed in E. Timor ‘Massacre,’ Island Bishop Says
Anti-independence militiamen backed by the Indonesian army shot or hacked at least 25 people to death in East Timor, the region’s Roman Catholic bishop said Wednesday.
Saying he was “ashamed to be an Indonesian,” Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo condemned the violence in an emotional news conference held after inspecting a bloodied churchyard where Tuesday’s killings took place.
“This is a massacre,” he said.
Citing witness accounts, he feared the toll might rise in Liquica, a town 18 miles west of East Timor’s capital, Dili.
Belo called for calm and demanded that Indonesian President B. J. Habibie investigate Tuesday’s violence, the latest between bitterly divided armed groups either for or against independence from Indonesia, which annexed East Timor in 1976.
The bishop, who shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, also demanded that the international community help prevent more violence in the half-island territory.
The violence has cast a shadow over plans by the United Nations to hold a July ballot for East Timor’s people on whether to remain within Indonesia as an autonomous state or become independent.
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