Mob Kills 3 U.N. Workers in West Timor

JAKARTA, Indonesia — An Indonesian mob, angry over the death of a notorious militia leader, stormed a U.N. building in West Timor on Wednesday and killed at least three foreign aid workers, authorities said.

Pro-Indonesian militia members and their supporters hauled the bodies into the street and set them on fire before a crowd of thousands of people armed with machetes and homemade rifles, witnesses said.

Four U.N. helicopters flew to the Indonesian province from neighboring East Timor and airlifted 54 people from the town of Atambua, the scene of the violence. As many as 32 of them were injured.

The killing of the aid workers from Puerto Rico, Croatia and Ethiopia--the first civilian U.N. staff members to die in current peacekeeping and relief efforts on the island of Timor--highlights the inability of the government of Indonesia to rein in militia groups responsible for thousands of deaths across the Muslim nation.

Indonesian security forces stood by during Wednesday’s riot, the witnesses said.

Sadako Ogata, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said the mob was led by militia members bearing the body of their slain leader.

“They were attacking with machetes and went around manhunting, looking for international staff to attack,” she said Wednesday at the United Nations. “This was a very, very barbaric act.”

One witness, who was too frightened to give his name, told the Associated Press: “The militiamen beat them to death inside the building. They then dragged the bodies outside, put them on a pile of wood, poured gasoline over them and set them on fire.”

The Reuters news service cited Indonesian government reports that a fourth aid worker, from Malaysia, was killed in a separate attack, but there was no confirmation from the U.N. One aid worker, a woman from Brazil, was reported seriously injured after she was attacked by a man wielding an ax.

Wednesday’s attack echoed the violence of last year, when pro-Indonesian militias--with at least the tacit acceptance of government forces--went on a rampage and killed hundreds in East Timor after its residents voted to secede from Indonesia. The militias destroyed much of the infrastructure and drove 280,000 refugees across the border into West Timor.

Today, about 90,000 refugees still live in the squalid West Timor camps, which are in effect run by the brutal militias. U.N. workers have been providing food and assistance.

For Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, the timing of Wednesday’s assault was a major embarrassment. Within hours, he took his place among world leaders at the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York and listened as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and President Clinton called for an end to the violence in his nation.

“I urge the Indonesian authorities to put a stop to these abuses,” Clinton said during his opening speech.

Wahid met later with Annan and agreed that the situation was “unacceptable,” said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. Wahid had ordered two battalions of troops to Atambua, more than 1,300 miles east of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, and one of them was already on its way, Eckhard said.

Whether the Indonesian army has the will--or the ability--to restore order remains to be seen. The army has been an active participant in much of the violence that has plagued Indonesia since the fall of President Suharto in 1998. Some suggest that the fighting that has erupted in several provinces in the past few months is aimed at undermining Wahid, who took office in October after Indonesia’s first free presidential election process in decades.

Tension on Timor has mounted in recent months as armed militia members in the western half have crossed the border into U.N.-administered East Timor.

Earlier this summer, two U.N. peacekeepers in East Timor were killed in separate incidents near the border. The U.N. suspended relief efforts after the killings, but it resumed work last week.

Wahid’s government announced last week that it will prosecute 19 people, including two generals and a former top police official, for their alleged part in last year’s violence.

One of the 19 was militia leader Olivio Mendosa Moruk. According to Indonesia’s official Antara news agency, Moruk died Tuesday near Atambua.

The circumstances of his death remain unclear, but his supporters maintain that he was slain and his body mutilated.

After Wednesday’s violence, Ogata said that her office is closing operations indefinitely in West Timor and that the entire staff of 105 local and international workers will be evacuated by today.

She also said eight aid workers--one foreigner and seven locals--were in hiding until rescuers could reach them.

An Indonesian military official identified as Col. Jurefar said his troops had done their best but could not control the rioters. “We tried to quell the situation,” he told Reuters, “but some [protesters] just went wild.”

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Times staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Proposed Changes

Comparison of jury instructions in current use across the state and the simplified instructions proposed by the Judicial Council:

current: Circumstantial evidence

proposed: Indirect evidence

current: Burden of proof

proposed: Obligation of proof

current: Preponderance of the evidence

proposed: More likely true than not true

current: Evidence means testimony, writings, material objects or other things presented to the senses and offered to prove the existence or nonexistence of a fact.

proposed: Evidence can come in many forms. It can be testimony about what someone saw or heard or smelled. It can be an exhibit admitted into evidence. It can be someone’s opinion. There is really no end to the forms that evidence can take.

current: Failure of recollection is common. Innocent misrecollection is not uncommon.

proposed: People sometimes honestly forget things or make mistakes about what they remember.

current: You are the sole judges of the believability of a witness and the weight to be given the testimony of each witness.

proposed: You alone must judge the credibility or believability of witnesses.

current: Statements made by the attorneys during the trial are not evidence.

proposed: Nothing that the attorneys say is evidence.

current: A person who while unconscious commits what would otherwise be a criminal act, is not guilty of a crime.

proposed: The defendant is not guilty of [insert crime] if (he/she) acted while legally unconscious.

But some things remain the same:

aiding and abetting

malice aforethought

beyond a reasonable doubt

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Sources: California Jury Instructions, Criminal; Book of Approved Jury Instructions; Judicial Council Task Force on Jury Instructions, draft copies of criminal and civil jury instructions.