Chief of Feared Militia Vows to Wrest Part of E. Timor

Armed militias now operating out of the Indonesian province of West Timor will continue fighting until at least part of neighboring East Timor is returned to Indonesian control, the leader of one of the most infamous anti-independence groups said Tuesday.

In a wide-ranging interview, Eurico Guterres also accused U.N.-sanctioned peacekeepers of bias in favor of East Timor independence and said the Australian-led troops have designs on the territory’s natural resources and potential as a Southeast Asian military base for U.S. forces.

“The Australian troops caught militia and burned them alive,” he also alleged. “This is what makes us so mad, [especially since] U.N. forces are assigned to East Timor to keep the peace and restore order.”

At least 16 militia members have been killed by peacekeepers, he alleged. U.N. officials deny the troops have killed any militia members.

Aitarak, whose name strikes terror in many East Timorese, operated in and around the territorial capital, Dili, until the peacekeepers first landed Sept. 20. After that, Guterres and many of the group’s members fled to West Timor.

Guterres refused to provide details of Aitarak operations, say what he was doing here on the Indonesian island of Bali or even acknowledge how many militia members are under his command. “That’s a secret,” he said.

Aitarak and other militia groups are accused of destroying Dili and almost every other East Timorese town of any size, terrorizing the population and working closely with the Indonesian military to exact revenge after the territory’s residents voted overwhelmingly Aug. 30 to seek independence. The United Nations has estimated that more than 200,000 East Timorese were driven from their homes during the rampage, and a still-undetermined number were killed.

Indonesia seized the former Portuguese colony in 1975, and its troops controlled East Timor until shortly after the peacekeeping force arrived.

Guterres, 29, was dressed in a white T-shirt with a black Playboy bunny insignia, silver-trimmed black cowboy boots, shoulder-length black hair tied in a knot and gold-rimmed sunglasses.

He would not explain what the relationship is between Aitarak and Indonesia’s armed forces. Analysts believe that the Indonesian military has at various times supported the militias with money, intelligence and weapons.

“I’m an Aitarak and I’m an Indonesian,” he said. “It’s normal that I should go along with the Indonesian army. It doesn’t mean the military is supporting me.”

As he spoke, an Indonesian army official came up and greeted Guterres. Asked about his connection to the soldier, Guterres replied: “It’s because I’m well known everywhere.”

Speaking in a highly animated manner and at times in angry tones, Guterres said the international force in East Timor was supposed to be neutral and keep peace between the militias and the pro-independence Falintil guerrillas. Instead, he charged, the troops have conducted aggressive military operations biased in favor of Falintil, even as the peacekeepers drove militia members out of the territory.

“I’m born there, I don’t want Australians or the U.N. chasing me out,” he said, vowing to die in East Timor. “I feel that I’m being chased out by whites.”

The mandate of the peacekeeping force in East Timor, U.N. officials say, is threefold: to restore peace and security to the troubled territory, protect U.N. operations and assist humanitarian efforts.

Maj. Gen. Peter Cosgrove, head of the peacekeeping force, has denied playing favorites. “The policy is: We disarm any East Timorese who are not in [the Indonesian military],” he said recently. “We disarm them all.”

Shortly after the international force landed more than two weeks ago, militia members set fires in the hills around the capital and launched armed attacks near Dili’s port. They continued to destroy towns, and late last week held several thousand villagers hostage in the northern port of Com until the refugees were rescued by peacekeepers. In an earlier incident, militia members were accused of killing a group of nine priests, nuns and church workers.

As the eastern area of East Timor has come under the protection of more frequent peacekeeper patrols, militias have concentrated their activities in the border area near West Timor.

Peacekeepers spokesman Col. Mark Kelly has said the international troops might shoot across the border if fired upon from West Timor but that they will not cross into the Indonesian province. On Tuesday, he also said the force will ask local Indonesian soldiers for help in controlling the militias.

Militias operating out of West Timor also control many of the refugee camps in that province, said Trishit Biswas, head of Indonesian relief efforts for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Guterres declined to answer directly whether Aitarak burned, killed and looted much of East Timor, as his group and other militias have been widely accused of doing. But he argued that any accounting of the destruction must include the times Western powers have been responsible for the deaths of East Timorese.

That includes the Australian decision during World War II to station troops in the territory, he said, a move that led enraged Japanese troops to massacre many East Timorese.

The count also must include Portugal’s killing of East Timorese in 1959, he said. That year, Portugal’s brutal response to a rebellion resulted in hundreds of deaths.

And it must include Portugal’s decision in 1975 to leave 25,000 guns behind when it gave up the colony “so that they can be used by East Timorese to kill each other,” Guterres said.

Asked if he was concerned about the threat of an international human rights investigation headed by U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson, Guterres dismissed it as part of a European effort to put Asia on the defensive. “Asia has a right to defend its dignity,” he said.

He said pro-independence forces won’t be persuaded to rejoin Indonesia nor is it possible to force independence on those who don’t want it.

“The only way to avoid conflict in East Timor, to restore security, is to divide the territory,” he said. “Without dividing the territory, it is impossible to have peace even in 100 years.”