Eyewitness (44 page)

Speak of the devil, it was the Colonel himself. He was mobbed like a film star. In close-up he looked like one – a man who woke up too early in a tent, went to make-up for a long day’s appearances on TV. His pancake was thick. He wore a sporting white jacket and a green-andwhite horizontally striped shirt. It was the uniform of a decaying playboy or Mediterranean yacht owner on the rocks.

Gaddafi appeared among a loose scrum of uniformed security men, unfortunately not the famed Revolutionary Virgins, for the Libyan TV cameras. He chatted with a few hijackees. He spoke a few words of encouragement to them, presumably ‘you are free in freedom-loving Libya.’ I couldn’t get close enough to hear. Harried-looking Australians were not asked to Come On Down.

But there was a result. Later that day I was sitting at a window seat of another Egypt Air flight to Cairo. The Egyptian Foreign Minister, Amr Moussa, had come to town and negotiated our release. Gaddafi showed he was a freedom-loving person, Egypt got its aeroplanes back, and would not object too strongly if Libyan planes flew pilgrims to Mecca over Egyptian airspace.

On the ground in Cairo there was an announcement: great dignitaries were waiting for us, and would like to greet us personally. Egyptian ministers for Tourism and the Interior. The chairman of Egypt Air. Lights, more cameras, action: a party.

The voice on the intercom asked our Japanese friends to rise and walk forward, tell the attendant on the door their name, and be announced to the waiting throng. And then the Canadian friends – there were 40 of them. Then the very good friends from Britain … from France … and our American friends …

We were noticed by a hostie, a minute later. And now … the Non- Egyptian Europeans!

That was us. We walked out, and were not greeted by ambassadors. Our names were not called out. Nor were our nationalities. We did not have our hands shaken by a minister.

I caught up with the
Times
(London) of Thursday, March 28th, 1996. I thought, once again, how lucky I was to be hijacked by either a professional who’d had second thoughts, or an amateur who hadn’t really gone off half-cocked. In this paper, our adventure didn’t rate.

But there were sobering stories about a German gunman holding seven hostages at Leienkaul; the British mine clearance expert captured by Khmer Rouge deserters in Cambodia; the unrepentant assassin of Yitzhak Rabin haranguing the court in Israel; and seven French Trappist monks abducted by the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria.

A few days later, I left Cairo. My plans were out of sync. To catch up, I flew to Amman in Jordan, and travelled for the next month by bus through Syria, into Turkey, to a Greek island or two, and on to Istanbul and Gallipoli.

From Istanbul I caught the train to Athens, on what was reported to be the Worst Train Journey In Europe. The reports were correct.

Stumbling out of Athens Station at three in the morning, accosted by ouzo-influenced street crones, I found a railway hotel not far from the station.

The desk man, a dapper European gent in a tight black coat and rose-red tie, asked where I had come from. Istanbul, Damascus, Amman, Cairo, Melbourne.

‘Ahh, Cairo. You have heard the news?’

No, I had been on the train.

‘The massacre. Eighteen Greeks. Old ladies. In Egypt …’

Where in Egypt?

‘The Pyramids Road. At the hotel.’

What hotel? Surely it couldn’t have been the one I had stayed at …

That was when a great wash of emotion hit me, like being dumped in the surf. It was a combination of exhaustion, travelling on nerves and a fractured schedule, and the backwash of the hijacking.

I stared at the desk clerk. He must have thought I was another Australian macadamia. I picked up the key, went upstairs, and took a very long shower.

Perhaps I had seen too many tombs and cemeteries between Alexandria and Athens, too much historical death. I couldn’t cope with any more.

Postscript
: The hijackers were extradited to Egypt from Libya for trial. In November 1996, Mohamed Mahmoud Hemid Selim, 43, was given a life sentence. His son, Khaled Mohamed Mahmoud Hemid, 17, received ten years. Ahmed Hussein Kamel Selim, three years. Abdel- Wahab Mukhtar Said, who supplied the explosives, was sentenced to seven years.

Lindsay Murdoch

Lindsay Murdoch first visited East Timor in 1988.

As Jakarta correspondent I found myself anchoring the
Age
’s coverage of the tumultuous events in East Timor in 1999. I have covered
wars in Iraq and many coups and riots but I have never been as scared as I was working in East Timor in 1999. The militia were out of control. Nobody knew how far they would go. I remember cowering in the bathroom of my room at the Turismo Hotel with several other journalists as armed militia searched the rooms for foreigners. We were convinced they wanted to kill us. I stayed longer than most other journalists because I was determined to expose the killers.

The Walkley Award judges said that his ‘decision to stay inside the United Nations compound in Dili after the majority of UN personnel and journalists had been evacuated placed him at considerable risk. His reports from the compound were personal, courageous and moving. Working under obviously extremely difficult conditions, he was able to craft several fine pieces of narrative.’ Lindsay Murdoch has worked for the
Age
since 1977. He won two Walkleys for his East Timor coverage (1999 and 2000).

*

Dili, Friday, September 4th, 1999.
A skinny boy in filthy threadbare clothes hangs around my hotel. Ameu, ten, is a good kid, keeping an eye on my room when I am out. He has suffered a great deal; both his mother and father are dead. This morning he was running his finger along the blade of a sharp dagger. I asked him where he got it, but he just shrugged. ‘I will not be killed,’ he said.

Everybody in East Timor seems to be scared. East Timorese have suspected for days something was terribly wrong. That’s when almost everybody except Eurico Guterres’ gang members deserted the potholed streets of Dili. The word is that many people have taken to the mountains, just like tens of thousands of them did in 1975 when Indonesia’s troops invaded and started beating and killing people. Others only venture out to buy essential goods from shops that open briefly or not at all. Thousands have taken refuge in school or church grounds.

We haven’t seen much this week of Guterres, the commander of one of the biggest militia groups – Aitarak, or Thorn. He presided over the funeral of one of his men, a cousin. A few hours later, Aitarak men wielding machetes were caught on television hacking a man to pieces only metres from the United Nations headquarters in Dili.

The killing of another man, Placido Ximenes, 41, shows how this conflict is rapidly deteriorating into a vicious cycle of violence, perhaps even civil war. Ximenes was riding his motorcycle along a road through the suburb of Becora, which is a stronghold for independence supporters in Dili. He was pulled off his bike by a group and bashed. Apparently the most vicious attacker was a big-muscled pro-independence supporter known as Rambo.

CNN showed Rambo dragging an unconscious Ximenes along the road as others jumped on him. He was thrown into a taxi and then, according to Aitarak, buried alive in a riverbed. The body was unrecognisable when it was recovered.

Unlike the hundreds of other murders committed by Aitarak, the death is not the end of the story. From the white-washed, rambling jail-house in Jakarta that he cannot leave, the pro-independence leader, Jose ‘Xanana’ Gusmao, apparently saw the CNN footage and was appalled, even if Ximenes was from the enemy camp.

Gusmao, a former guerrilla leader recognised by almost everybody in this conflict as the strongest force for reconciliation, telephoned Rambo. Within hours the man had surrendered to Indonesian police, obeying the order of his commander even if it meant spending the rest of his life in jail.

Four days after the euphoria of 438,000 eligible people voting on East Timor’s future, Dili is rife with rumours. A full-on attack by the militias is imminent, one has it. They want to kill a large number of people so that all the UN people and journalists will go away, goes another. The militias are roaming the streets looking to kill a foreign journalist wearing a red hat, said yet another.

The militias seem to want to terrorise everybody, apparently in revenge for the ballot they believe they have lost. Most of the UN staff members and journalists who stay at my hotel were away yesterday morning when six militiamen brandishing home-made pistols ran into the lobby, screaming threats. As a few us locked ourselves in my bathroom, they roughed up a Canadian woman eating a late breakfast in the restaurant. They told her and the terrified staff they would be back later to kill a foreign journalist. Only a few of the bravest staff stayed to find out that they didn’t.

David Wimhurst is a hardened UN worker, having served as spokesman for the world body’s bloody operation in Angola. He is disappointed that foreign journalists are pulling out of East Timor just before the ballot result is known.

‘Your presence has been crucial here,’ he said. ‘While the UN cannot guarantee your safety, your continued observation of the process is important. I hope as many of you as possible will stay to see it through.’

But the words were little comfort. Wimhurst admits the security situation is spiralling out of control. The news outside Dili shows the militia killing and burning. In the town of Maliana, they rampaged for hours, burning houses and hunting down locally employed UN staff members. Two are dead and five missing. Thirty-three UN staff have taken shelter in a police office. The UN headquarters is deserted.

The coffee-growing town of Gleno is now militia territory. Even the police are apparently cowed. Houses in Liquica, where
60 Minutes
reporter Richard Carleton provoked militias this week, were burning. A church has been attacked in Becora. The list of trouble spots seems endless. The militias appear to control all roads from Dili. At roadblocks militias armed with automatic rifles mingle with Indonesian police and soldiers, who kowtow to them.

We try to see what is happening outside Dili but militiamen drag us out of the car 14 kilometres along the road to Hera. We lie that we are French because we know they hate Australian journalists. As our car reaches a mountain peak five kilometres towards Dili, 20 independence supporters suddenly appear, waving us down. They are carrying swords, bows and arrows and machetes.

‘If the Aitarak try to come on this road to Dili we will kill them,’ said one man clutching a large sword. ‘They have rifles and guns. We don’t care. If they come it will be war.’

But less than an hour later the ABC’s Tim Lester calls from the same spot. ‘The independence boys have gone and Aitarak are here,’ he said.

*

Dili, Sunday, September 6th.
It had been one of Bishop Carlos Belo’s longest nights. As 2000 terrified residents of Dili fled to his house, the gunshots kept getting louder and more frequent. Smoke from scores of fires across Dili’s suburbs drifted across his large, rambling waterfront house.

By the time it came to say Mass at the open-air chapel in his garden, Bishop Belo, the Nobel laureate, was angry, very angry. Asked for his reaction to yesterday’s announcement that 344,580 East Timorese – 78.5 per cent of eligible voters – rejected Indonesia’s rule, Bishop Belo said: ‘This is a consequence of the lies we have been living these past 24 years. This ballot should have been made in 1974 or 1975 … it should have been done at that time, not 24 years later.’ Asked why he believed the pro-Indonesian militia were rampaging throughout the disputed territory, he snapped: ‘You ask the military commander. He is the man who organises.’

The worshippers at the Mass were grim-faced. The euphoria of having voted in a UN ballot last Monday was gone. There never was any time to enjoy the result: within minutes of it being announced, the militia were on Dili’s streets, burning, attacking, killing. Nobody knows how many people are dead or wounded. Suburbs are deserted. Scores of houses have been torched. Thousands of people are huddled in churches, without food or water. Outside Dili, where the militia have seized control of many towns and villages, the situation could be even worse than in the capital, UN officials say.

Ms Olandina Kairu, a pro-independence leader, went to Bishop Belo’s house yesterday to hear over the radio the UN Secretary- General, Kofi Annan, announce the result. ‘After the announcement we all cried because we were so happy,’ she said. ‘But we were also sad that we could not celebrate our freedom … we could not go into the streets to sing and dance. We had to remain quiet and save ourselves.’ Ms Olandina, a member of East Timor’s local parliament, also directly blamed the Indonesian military for the violence. ‘I have always said the militia have no real plans,’ she said. ‘From the beginning, this has been the plan of the military. They are the ones who gave the militia the weapons. The militia are Timorese as well. If they are killing then I believe they were forced. If the militia withdrew their support, I believe there would be no militia.’

Most of the 500 foreign journalists who were in Dili for the ballot have left, along with thousands of Indonesians in Indonesian military Hercules, boats and road convoys. About 20 guests, including foreign reporters, are holed up in the Hotel Turismo with little food and few staff. They have dangled a rope out the back from the roof. If the militia come, they plan to drop into the grounds of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Among them, James Dunn, a 71-year-old East Timor expert and Australia’s consul in Dili in the 1960s, is probably the least pessimistic. ‘The UN is here. There is massive international interest and attention,’ he said. ‘There are also signs that Dr Habibie (Indonesia’s President) and General Wiranto (the armed forces chief) have lost patience with the operation, which is severely damaging Indonesia’s reputation.’

Dunn decided to stay because he cares deeply about the fate of the East Timorese. A few days ago he huddled with a family in one room while they expected a militia attack. He will never forget how a frightened boy squeezed his tiny hand into his or how a mother kissed him on the head the next morning, thanking him for staying with the family.

‘They are killing and burning to create mayhem and total economic collapse,’ he said. ‘This is clearly an operation commanded by Indonesian military officers. They want to be able to say, look, we had to stay in East Timor for 24 years because the East Timorese are incapable of running the territory.’

Dunn said the worst possibility was widespread slaughter. ‘At this point it doesn’t seem to be widespread,’ he said. ‘It seems to be very carefully targeted.’ He said the situation was eerily similar to 1975, when Indonesian soldiers invaded the territory. ‘It is the same wanton destruction and killing,’ he said.

*

Dili, Monday, September 7th
. There’s no escape; the militia have the United Nations complex in Dili surrounded. We can see them down the road, gesturing angrily with their automatic weapons and homemade pistols. The gun-fire only ever stops briefly.

I thought when I arrived here last night with 22 other foreign journalists on the back of an Indonesian military truck that we were in the middle of a full attack. Shots were pinging around us as we made the ten-minute ride from the waterfront Hotel Turismo, which we fled amid reports that the militia, having trashed the town’s biggest hotel, the Mahkota, were on their way. The shots intensified as we raced inside the UN compound. But several hundred UN staff camped out in the former Indonesian school didn’t seem too worried. ‘They shoot all the time. You’ll get used to it,’ an Australian Federal Police officer said. ‘Usually they are walking around shooting in the air to put the wind up us.’

But as the night wore on we found ourselves diving more often under tables or behind doors. Tension turned to fear when somebody lobbed a hand grenade outside the front fence. UN military officers became even more worried when they heard self-propelled rocket grenade launchers being fired in the distance. ‘They would only have to lob a couple in here and we would be all gone,’ said an American military officer serving with the UN. The militia have never been seen with these weapons of war: it could only be the Indonesian soldiers ignoring the orders of their civilian government to restore order in East Timor.

The compound had been orderly until the militia opened fire on hundreds of residents who had sought refuge in an adjoining schoolyard a couple of hours after nightfall. People panicked as a 15-minute burst of automatic fire splintered into the school. Between the gun-fire and the UN compound stood a razor-wire fence. Terrorised mothers threw children over it, some of them breaking bones. Older children braved deep cuts to legs and hands to climb over the wire. Within minutes UN guards had thrown open the complex and hundreds of refugees were streaming in. UN staff carried wailing children, some only toddlers. Pregnant women fainted and were carried.

As the gun-fire continued, aid workers tried to calm the several hundred refugees crammed into a hall, leading them in East Timorese songs. When dawn arrived, 200 UN staff were throwing their gear into bags ready for the drive through the militia-controlled streets and past dozens of burning houses. Many hugged the ones they left behind, but their terror was not over. On the way to the airport, where Australian airforce planes were waiting to evacuate them, militia opened fire, blasting the back window out of the last Land Rover.

As the empty vehicles returned and the staff, some of them Australian Federal Police, were flying to Darwin, Indonesian soldiers fired volleys into the air. This is one of their signs of triumph. Last night, we saw another: militia running on to the road, giving ‘highfives’ to soldiers who were supposed to be guarding us but who did nothing to stop us being shot at.

Refugees, mainly women and children, are crammed into every available space in the UN compound. Food and water are scarce. Sanitary conditions are deteriorating. People are washing from a couple of water taps. Tempers are fraying. Many break into tears and are comforted by their companions. I have only my clothes, my computer and a satellite phone. All of my belongings are at the Turismo Hotel, now looted.