East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta yesterday said Indonesian troops tortured and mutilated the “Balibo Five” foreign journalists whose 1975 killing has sparked calls for war crimes charges.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner made the allegation at the Melbourne launch of the thriller Balibo, which depicts the deaths of the five Australian-based journalists during Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor.
Ramos-Horta, a rebel commander at the time, said he looked into the deaths of the five soon after they were killed in the border town of Balibo. Indonesia says the journalists were killed accidentally.
“They were not just executed, from what I remember researching at the time, back in ’75, ’76, at least one of them was brutally, brutally tortured,” Ramos-Horta told reporters.
He added that the film was largely accurate but its makers were unable to depict the gruesome nature of the killings because the scenes of torture and mutilation by the Indonesian military would be too shocking.
Jakarta has always maintained that the reporters died in crossfire as Indonesian troops fought East Timorese Fretilin rebels, a version of events accepted by successive Australian governments.
An Australian coroner found in 2007 that the journalists died as they tried to surrender to Indonesian forces and recommended war crimes charges be brought against the killers, but the inquest heard no allegations of torture.
One of the alleged killers was special forces captain Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah, who later became a minister in the Indonesian government.
Ramos-Horta said Indonesian officers ordered troops to burn the bodies to conceal the crime.
“They knew what the consequences would be, so they had to burn any evidence that those people had been captured alive and then were brutally murdered,” Ramos-Horta said. “That’s why they burned the bodies, to cover the evidence of torture and mutilations.”
The “Balibo Five” — Australians Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart, Britons Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie and New Zealander Gary Cunningham — were covering Indonesia’s advance into East Timor for Australian TV networks.
A sixth journalist, Australian Roger East, who went to East Timor to investigate their fate, was killed in the Timorese capital of Dili six weeks later when Indonesian forces captured the city.
Ramos-Horta said Indonesia had changed beyond recognition in the past decade.
“It is better. Indonesian democracy today is one of the most inspiring in the Southeast Asia region,” he said.
“Indonesians themselves are the ones who have to deal with their own past,” he said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese