Mandela versus Suharto?
B. Skanthakumar
B. Skallahula In Occupied East Timor there has been an upsurge in armed activity in recent months. Shortly before the rigged Indonesian general elections on May 29th units of FALINTIL, the armed Timorese resistance, launched bold attacks on army and police units killing over fifty of them.
The timing of this campaign suggests that it was aimed at disrupting the fake electoral process and at demoralising further the Indonesian military stationed there. It appears to have succeeded in both those objectives.
Meanwhile in a number of large towns the unarmed resistance which operates as a clandestine front of all East Timorese groups organised attacks on polling booths and was involved in street fighting with police and • army personnel.
Indonesia's army of occupation responded in its customary way. It launched punitive raids on villages in areas of FALINTIL activity terrorising their inhabitants. Many have been beaten, arrested and taken to torture centres to extract information and false confessions. The whereabouts and fate of others abducted or arrested is unknown.
The absence of foreign journalists and independent human rights monitors and the censorship of local publications and broadcast media make it difficult to establish an accurate picture of the ground situation.
Fresh detachments from the feared Kopassus (Special Forces Command) unit headed by President Suharto's son-in-law Major-General Prabowo Subianto have been rushed from Indonesia.
The capture on June 25th and probable death in custody of David Alex, the legendary second-in-command of FALINTIL, is a blow to the resistance forces and the Maubere people as a whole.
The military claim that Alex died from injuries sustained in his capture but other sources claim that he was either tortured to death or murdered in some other way. He was buried under tight secrecy and his family members were not shown his body nor have military authorities acceded to requests for exhumation and an autopsy of his body. South African involvement