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From Andrew.Bacelis@directory.Reed.EDU (Andrew Bacelis)
Date 20 Sep 99 10:18:40 PDT
Subject globe_l: [ykboo] Allan nairn

--- Forwarded Message from MichaelP <papadop@peak.org> ---
>Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 09:55:31 -0700 (PDT)
>From: MichaelP <papadop@peak.org>
>Subject: [ykboo] RE: Alan nairn
>Sender: owner-ykboo@peak.org

 Alan Nairn was deported from Indonesia today, and gave a
press conference !!

====================
Agence France Presse


Deported American activist says military chief behind Timor killings

     SINGAPORE, Sept 20 (AFP) - 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.
     
     He said here Monday that during his detention at the military
     headquarters in East Timor, he saw pro-Jakarta Aitarak militiamen
     living and working out of there.
     
     "While I was being held there and questioned there, you could see
     that the whole back-half of the base was full of uniformed Aitarak
     militia, with their black tee-shirts and red and white headbands,"
     added the 43-year-old journalist, who is also an activist on East
     Timor affairs.
     
     He said one of the officers who questioned him told him the
     militiamen "live here, they work out of here."
     
     "You can see them going out on their motorbikes and their trucks,
     fully armed to do their attacks on Dili," said Nairn, adding it was
     the same situation in the police headquarters in Dili where he was
     also held.
     
     "There you would see the uniformed Aitarak people wandering in and
     out of intelligence and operations room. So clearly at both places,
     the militia was operating out of the main army and police bases,"
     he said.
     
     Asked whether he was convinced Wiranto was behind the militia
     actions, Nairn said: "Yes, definitely.
     
     "Organisationally in the Indonesian military, the only person that
     both the army and police report to is General Wiranto."
     
     UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Sunday accused the Indonesian
     army of cooperating with East Timor militias in committing
     atrocities against the territory's people.
     
     Nairn said he saw militiamen inside a plane in which he was flown
     from East Timor to West Timor last Wednesday, wearing black
     T-shirts and carrying pistols, knives and swords.
     
     "I actually recognised by face some of them from the streets of
     Dili as being among the street-level militia leaders. But it turns
     out all these men were police intelligence and they were being
     rotated back .. after having fulfilled their assignments in Dili."
     
     Nairn also said he saw a police intelligence document referring to
     a specific operation which had moved out a total of 323,564 people
     from East Timor.
     
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

September 20, 1999

Reporter Discusses Indonesia Rebels

Filed at 11:36 a.m. EDT

By The Associated Press

SINGAPORE (AP) -- The commander of Indonesia's armed forces will determine
whether militiamen in East Timor fight U.N. peacekeepers sent to restore
order in the province, a U.S. journalist deported from Indonesia said
Monday. 

``Once Gen. Wiranto gives the order to the militias to stop the terror,
the militia will stop,'' said Allan Nairn, a free-lance reporter for the
New York-based magazine The Nation. ``This has been a tightly controlled
army and police operation.''

Nairn said the Indonesian military was behind the terror that pro-Jakarta
militias inflicted on the East Timorese after they voted overwhelmingly
for independence from Indonesia in a U.N. sponsored referendum on Aug. 30. 

One of the few Western journalists to remain in Dili in recent weeks,
Nairn was arrested Sept. 14 in Dili, questioned by the military, and
deported. He flew from Jakarta to Singapore on Monday. 

Nairn witnessed a massacre of civilians by Indonesian troops in 1991 in
East Timor, and he entered the territory this time on a tourist visa. 

Nairn said that while he was detained at Koren military headquarters in
Dili he saw groups of militiamen. Nairn said one of the officers
questioning him said they were with the notorious Aitarak militia. 

``You could see them going out on their motorbikes and their trucks fully
armed to do their attacks around Dili and it was the same story at Polda,
the police base in Dili,'' he said. ``You could see the uniformed Aitarak
people wandering in and out of the intelligence and operations rooms, so
clearly the militias were operating out of the army and police bases.''

Nairn, 43, of New Jersey, said he hopes to return to East Timor as soon as
possible. 

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