"Every day, I ask myself: By going over there, have I actually committed myself to something that I’ll never be able to do penance for?" 29-year-old Ravinder Bhatia, Caltech postdoc in physics, speaks these words in a haunted voice, a slight slump in his shoulders.

Bhatia is one of more than 100 international volunteers who recently returned home from East Timor, an Indonesian-ruled half-island in the South Pacific. As an observer for IFET (International Federation for East Timor, a United Nations—accredited organization), he spent three weeks recording the human rights abuses and campaign violations that took place there in August during the historic election for East Timor’s independence from Indonesia.

Unfortunately, after the East Timorese people voted for independence on August 30, their greatest fears were realized. Pro-Indonesian militias–who had originally been appointed by the Indonesian government to protect the local population but who now ruled most parts of the territory in a state of unofficial martial law–unleashed a wave of death and destruction, forcing the already embattled population to flee from their homes.

In the wake of this violence, the entire IFET observer project, which had wanted to remain after the election to help protect the East Timorese, was forced to flee the country. Bhatia has yet to hear if those he had come to know and admire, who had "risked their lives to give me information," were able to escape in time. "There are only two things keeping me going right now," says Bhatia. "First, the East Timorese told us that they had had enough. They didn’t care if they were endangering themselves. They wanted to vote, for the sake of their children. Second, the fact that I’m able to get the word out about what I’ve seen through stories like this."

Bhatia’s story begins about a year ago, when he and his observational cosmology labmate, Byron Philhour, graduate student in physics, helped start a local chapter of the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) in Pasadena. When IFET announced this past summer that it was accepting volunteers to observe the election process, Bhatia applied and was accepted.

His first day in East Timor, August 10, was spent in Dili, the capital, amid grim reminders of the violence that had wracked the island for more than two decades. "We walked by the Santa Cruz cemetery, where many of the people who were massacred in the 1991 protest are buried. That was a very sobering kind of thing to see."

The Santa Cruz massacre was one of many attempts by the Indonesian government to subjugate the East Timorese. Indonesia’s occupation of the region began in 1975 when it invaded the tiny country–which had recently won its independence from Portugal–an offensive that would over the next several years claim the lives of an estimated 200,000 East Timorese, about a third of the preinvasion population.

Over the last decade, however, East Timor’s struggle for independence slowly but surely captured the attention of the international community. In May, Indonesia’s newly appointed president, B. J. Habibie, agreed to allow a referendum under United Nations sponsorship in which the East Timorese would be able to decide if they would remain an autonomous part of Indonesia or declare their independence once and for all.

But it didn’t take long for Bhatia and other IFET observers to determine that although Indonesia had signed an agreement to run a fair election, the government was "unwilling to control its own local militia groups," who terrorized the local population in an attempt to coerce them to vote for autonomy.

Observers notified the IFET office in Dili, which notified UNAMET (United Nations Assistance Mission to East Timor, comprising the official United Nations staff members in the territory).

Bhatia, who for his field assignment was chosen to be the team leader in the town of Maubisse, a dangerous area with a very strong militia presence, noted that "the general political climate was a lot of fear, a lot of tension, but otherwise reasonably calm. Since the militias had the support of the army and police and could do whatever they wanted, they didn’t really feel that they had anything else to prove." He also noted the militia’s reactions to UNAMET’s assurances that the vote would be secret and the resulting change in their scare tactics.

"When we first got there, the threat was that if one particular individual or one village did not vote for autonomy, the militias would come to this particular person or village and execute them," Bhatia explains. Certain attacks on and "disappearances" of pro-independence supporters lent credibility to this threat. "But once UNAMET started to emphasize that the vote would be secret, the militias and pro-autonomy groups started saying that it didn’t matter how an individual person or village voted; if the East Timor territory as a whole voted for independence, the militias would come back and wipe out entire villages."

Threats to the villagers were not the only challenge that IFET observers faced. Up early every day, the volunteers worked long hours under intense scrutiny, observing and interviewing everyone from villagers to militia leaders. "Although we were the observers, we were the most closely watched people out there," says Bhatia. "Every single thing that we did was monitored by the militias and other pro-autonomy groups. From a personal viewpoint, being out in the limelight every single day was very grueling."

Throughout this increasingly tense period, Bhatia’s only outside communications were the daily reports he made to the office in Dili, using a satellite phone with a frustratingly unreliable connection. He called the reports in at night while hiding outside "as openly armed militia and military patrols cruised by."

While he doesn’t downplay the dangers he faced, Bhatia says that he drew strength from the courage and fortitude displayed by the East Timorese. Not long after he arrived, he and fellow team members attended a rally that a group of pro-independence supporters deliberately held in one of the militia’s strongholds. A line of about 300 demonstrators five or six abreast marched out onto a school field holding a pro-independence flag, and tied it to the flagpole underneath the Indonesian flag. Up to this point, most villagers had not even put up a pro-independence flag outside their homes, much less in the heart of militia territory. Dead silence ensued for about 15 minutes.

"We all expected gunfire," says Bhatia. "It was very tense, and there was a real danger the militias and the military would shoot with their M-16s. But at the same time, there was an incredible determination in the villagers’ eyes. These people were willing to risk their lives. They were not going to give in to intimidation."

Bhatia also found that the rallies themselves were a hotbed of campaign abuses and violations. "We monitored numerous campaign violations, every one of them carried out by the pro-autonomy groups. The majority of these violators were people carrying weapons, mostly knives. We didn’t see pro-autonomy supporters openly carrying guns during the rallies, but we would see them before and afterward sitting with rifles in the backs of trucks, openly mixing with the militias and the military."

Amid this intensifying climate of threats and intimidation, Bhatia and his team found themselves hauled in on false charges. A story went around that UNAMET members had searched a pro-autonomy house for weapons–a
serious violation of the neutral code of conduct. One of Bhatia’s team members had been in the area, and Bhatia was called in to speak in his team’s defense.

"We were all terrified," Bhatia says. "Although we were international observers, we were well aware of the fact that we could have been tortured and killed."

As Bhatia soon saw, the situation was even worse than it first appeared. "They were trying to use this case to discredit the entire IFET organization so that they could then discredit UNAMET and prove it wasn’t neutral." After repeated interrogations over the next few days, Bhatia, his team, and UNAMET were finally cleared of the charges.

Although Bhatia had originally intended to stay for one week after the vote, the election was delayed by nine days by the United Nations, due to concerns about security. And since Bhatia had to be in Paris for a physics meeting on September 1, his last day in East Timor was August 30–election day. He didn’t see any violence at the polls, but, as he would later discover, this was the calm before the storm.

Shortly after the election results were announced–nearly 80 percent of those voting chose independence–the militias made good on their threats, initiating an onslaught that included murder, kidnapping, and the destruction of many homes and businesses. The full extent of the situation is impossible to calculate, although estimates place the number of homeless in the hundreds of thousands.

The rest of the world has now reacted. In September, an Australian-led peacekeeping force began to try to restore order in the ravaged nation. In October, Indonesia elected a new president, who has said that he is willing to meet with East Timorese independence leader Xanan Gusmao, who is expected to be the new nation’s first president. Finally, at the end of October, the United Nations announced that they were formally taking control of East Timor and sending a force of 9,000 troops to the half-island nation to restore order.

But several hundred thousand East Timorese are still hiding in the mountains of East Timor or in refugee camps in Indonesian-controlled West Timor. Building materials are in short supply as the treacherous rainy season begins. And perhaps most importantly, East Timor is lacking in many vital institutions, including schools, courts, and police. Much work remains to be done before East Timor can survive on its own as a nation.

If you would like to find out more about the situation in East Timor, check out the East Timor Action Network’s Web site at www.etan.org.

Ryan Poquette