Singapore – An American journalist and activist deported from Indonesia said Monday he was convinced armed forces chief General Wiranto was behind the militia killings in East Timor.
Allan Nairn was in Dili for about two weeks before Indonesian authorities detained him for violating visa regulations by entering the country as a tourist.
Keith B. Richburg, Jakarta – In the port town of Balikpapan, on Borneo island, an Australian diplomat was dispatched to help rescue Australian mine workers besieged by people demonstrating against foreigners. He spent most of his time hiding from angry crowds, running down back stairwells and being trundled into a getaway van.
Seth Mydans, Jakarta – When international peacekeepers land in East Timor in the days ahead, they will witness the departure of a defeated Indonesian army at the lowest ebb in its history – humbled, hesitant, embittered and convulsively violent.
Andrew Marshall, Jakarta – Indonesia's decision to allow an independent auditor to probe a damaging banking scandal has backfired spectacularly – instead of placating foreign donors and investors it has highlighted the myriad risks they face.
Grainne McCarthy, Jakarta – The drastic deterioration in relations between Indonesia and Australia over East Timor threatens to damage trade and investment between the two countries, business executives say.
Jill Jolliffe, Darwin – East Timorese independence guerrilla commanders warn that Indonesian forces are preparing to resist United Nations troops.
Speaking from the Los Palos district, the deputy chief of the Falintil army, Mr Lere Anan Timor, said Indonesian soldiers were threatening to "kill the international troops, using the [pro-Jakarta] militia".
London – The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair came under a hail of criticism Sunday over the imminent delivery of British military planes to Indonesia despite a European Union embargo resulting from the East Timor crisis.
Lewa Pardomuan, Dili – Nine warships of a multinational UN peace force sailed for East Timor on Saturday and the force commander was expected to hold talks with the Indonesian military in the shattered territory on Sunday.
Joanna Jolly in Darwin and Irwan Firdaus of Associated Press in Baucau – As international troops prepare to go into East Timor, fearful refugees are coming down from the mountains in the territory and returning to homes still smouldering and in ruins.
Jakarta – Some 2,000 Indonesian students on Friday converged on the national parliament to protest against a draft security law and demand a trial of former president Suharto.
Some 1,500 students marched towards the parliament from the Jayabaya private university in in South Jakarta about one kilometre southeast of the legislative complex.
Lisbon – Indonesian soldiers and militiamen are laying mines in Dili, the capital of East Timor, as they stream out of the province ahead of the arrival of a multinational peace force, a resistance leader told Portuguese radio Friday.
Jakarta – Opposition to the state security bill continued on Thursday, with the National Mandate Party (PAN) and National Awakening Party (PKB) demanding the House of Representatives drop the government-sponsored draft law.
Don Greenlees and Robert Garran – Australia's battered relations with Indonesia suffered a new blow yesterday when Jakarta terminated the bilateral security treaty.
Philip Cornford – An assistant to East Timor's spiritual leader, Bishop Carlos Belo, claimed yesterday that he saw the Indonesian intelligence official Major-General Syafrie Syamsuddin direct the separation of boys and men from refugees forced from Bishop Belo's home 11 days ago.
Surabaya – Hundreds of Indonesian students protested in the country's second largest city on Thursday against a controversial draft security bill which they say would increase the power of the military.
Some 600 demonstrators gathered in front of two local government offices in the commercial city of Surabaya, 700 km east of Jakarta.
John Aglionby, Jakarta – Thousands of people in Aceh province in western Indonesia demonstrated yesterday to demand a referendum on independence from Jakarta amid reports of unabated military brutality both there and on the eastern spice island of Ambon.
Compere: East Timor's anti-independence militia have now been seen on the streets of Jakarta, threatening pro-independence East Timorese and foreign journalists. There were scenes which seemed quite out of place in the Indonesian capital, as Geoff Thompson reports from Jakarta.
Dennis Schulz and Louise Williams – Pro-Indonesian militias are fleeing East Timor ahead of the arrival of peacekeepers, some saying they fear they will now be killed by Indonesian troops to wipe out evidence of Jakarta's leading role in the carnage.
Bernard Lagan, Darwin – Two suspected East Timorese militia members and a suspected Indonesian soldier are being held by Australian authorities after infiltrating the UN compound in Dili and being flown by the RAAF with 1400 refugees to Darwin.
Strasbourg – Deputies at the European parliament on Thursday passed a resolution demanding that the European Union (EU) and its member states recognise an independent East Timor.
Sydney – Pro-Jakarta militia are harassing East Timorese refugees throughout the eastern islands of Indonesia, an Australian aid agency said Thursday.
Janet Hunt, executive director of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA), said the situation was dangerous in Flores, Lombok and Bali – a popular holiday spot.
Jakarta – The deputy commander of East Timor's pro-Indonesia militia has warned that the militia will put eight of the territory's 13 districts off limits to multinational troops, a report said Thursday.
Anne-Marie Evans, Macau – Rui Lopes could count former president Suharto's son-in-law, Prabowo Subianto, and General Gleny in Jakarta among his closest friends.
They have been fighting and working together since the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Since 1985, Mr Lopes, 47, had also been working for Xanana Gusmao's resistance guerillas.
Anne-Marie Evans, Macau – The political cleansing of East Timor was planned as early as February, one of the militia leaders present at a meeting which hatched the deadly plot has revealed.
Jakarta – Protests erupted here Wednesday as the UN approved sending troops to East Timor, with security forces opening fire outside the UN building at students protesting Indonesian military atrocities.
Susan Sim, Jakarta – Indonesia's powerful defence forces (TNI) chief General Wiranto will likely step down next month to prepare for his presidential campaign as a parliamentary investigation into a banking scandal looks certain to implicate close friends of Dr B.J. Habibie and kill off his chances.
Hong Kong – The Indonesian foreign ministry organized and paid for leaders of the pro-Indonesian militia in East Timor to be trained in public relations ahead of the recent election, the Far Eastern Economic Review said Wednesday.
London – British ministers were under fire Wednesday after it emerged that millions of pounds of public money had been used to help Indonesia buy jets and secure industrial contracts, newspapers reported.
Vaudine England, Jakarta – On the same day that an independent commission to investigate military abuses was visiting Aceh for the first time, seven leading political parties announced proposals for "special autonomy" for the rich, violence-wracked province.
The UN forces in East Timor at first are likely to be involved more in fighting terrorism than keeping the peace, argues Hugh Smith.
One of the few journalists remaining in East Timor is Allan Nairn, Who writes for The Nation. We caught up with him in Dili today and asked him about the reaction there to news of an international peacekeeping mission.
Compere: Which brings us to the war crimes issue more generally. And fresh evidence is emerging of the Indonesian military's complicity in the crimes against humanity in East Timor. The Senate Committee on East Timor heard first-hand accounts today of TNI links with the militias that rampaged through the country before and after the referendum. Karon Snowdon reports:
Macau – A former pro-Jakarta militiaman has claimed that Indonesian forces eliminated more than 2,000 East Timorese by dumping them in waters off the East Timor coast.
Doug Lorimer – The Democratic Socialist Party has called on supporters of democracy in Australia to mobilise to demand that the UN and/or the Australian government immediately send troops to East Timor to help the East Timorese people resist and defeat the Indonesian occupying army's genocidal campaign to physically extinguish the East Timorese people's struggle for liberation from
Jakarta – Indonesia's armed forces (TNI) appears to have organised the mass bloodshed that hit East Timor, after it voted overwhelmingly for independence, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said yesterday.
Derwin Pereira, Jakarta – President B.J. Habibie's decision to allow foreign troops into trouble-torn East Timor sparked an upsurge of nationalist sentiments especially in the government and local media, with many resentful of international pressure on Indonesia.
[Dita Sari, the workers leader who was released from prison in July this year after serving three years of a five-year sentence, is now in the UK at the invitation of the TUC. She gave this interview to Tapol before departing for Brighton yesterday.]
Q. What was the impact in Indonesia of the result of the referendum in East Timor?
Jay Solomon, Jakarta – An investigation into a politically charged banking scandal here has uncovered "numerous" indications of fraud, as well as the transfer of millions of dollars to senior Indonesian officials and politically connected individuals, an audit by the US accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers says.
Doug Struck, Kupang – A human rights organisation has documented atrocities in East Timor that implicate the Indonesian military and militias in at least seven mass killings and dozens of individual slayings.
Darwin – An East Timorese support group claimed here Monday to have received reports that tens of thousands of people had died in a deliberate genocidal campaign by Indonesia.
Max Stahl, Dare – This once peaceful hill station overlooking Dili was turned into a death site at the weekend as Indonesian forces surrounded and fired on terrified refugees living rough in nearby plantations. Dare, once a popular resort for Portuguese colonists escaping the heat of the coastal capital six miles away, is today a scene of misery and terror.
Kupang – A terror campaign by pro-Indonesian militia that started in East Timor has moved across the border to West Timor, where more than 100,000 refugees have fled, fearful sources said.
People, who have visited the border town of Atambua, described it as a lawless place of gunfire, murder and kidnapping.
Indonesian soldiers used rape as a secret weapon, but their "orphans: bear silent witness. Louise Williams and Leonie Lamont report.
Sister Maria leaned forward and quietly confided the truth about the Catholic orphanage which lies along the lonely northern coastal road of East Timor: "Most of the children are mixed race, the babies of women raped by Indonesian soldiers."
By Michelle Grattan, Hamish McDonald, Bernard Lagan and Peter Cole-Adams.
Indonesia buckled last night and invited a United Nations peacekeeping force "from friendly nations" to enter East Timor.
A. Lin Neumann, Bangkok – When machete-wielding thugs set upon journalists in East Timor after the territory's August 30 vote for independence, it looked like another gruesome case of the press caught between warring sides. Deplorable, yes, but it comes with the territory if you choose to cover the front lines in conflict zones.
Ordinary Australians took to the streets in their thousands today demanding urgent government action over the slaughter in East Timor.
Protesters stormed Prime Minister John Howard's Sydney office, blockaded airline terminals and maintained vigils as nation-wide anger continued to mount over the genocide in the violence-wracked region.
Jakarta – After a week of chaos and terror in East Timor, Indonesia's powerful military boss sang "Feelings" on Sunday to show why he can't walk away from the independence-minded province.
Darwin – Indonesian troops and pro-Jakarta militiamen were Sunday attacking thousands of refugees massed in the East Timorese town of Dare, a spokesman for the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) said here.
John Pilger – It had been a long night of waiting for the Indonesian troop convoy to pass.
Two of us then crossed the border into East Timor clandestinely, through a forest of petrified trees which appeared as silhouetted needles around which skeins of fine white sand drifted, like mist. As the sun rose, there stood the surreal crosses.
Lindsay Murdoch Dili and Craig Skehan Kupang – Piles of bodies have been seen stacked in cells at the police headquarters in Dili, while East Timorese forced to flee into Indonesian West Timor have arrived with accounts of murder and continuing intimidation by Indonesian militias.