News - East Timor - Catholic World Report

East Timor______________________________________________________________________
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Acting through their proxies in local militia groups, Indonesian military leaders wreaked their vengeance on the people who had chosen independence, and the Church that had supported their aspirations.

For the third time in a long, ugly half-century, the word “genocide” is being used to describe events in East Timor.

The elderly residents of the former Portuguese colony can still remember the bloody years of World War II, during which 65,000 Timorese—over 10 percent of the population at that time—were killed by the Japanese occupiers, despite the fact that the island was neutral territory. The adult children of those World War II survivors have still more vivid memories of the Indonesian invasion in 1975, and the brutal decade of political oppression and economic devastation that followed, costing the lives of 200,000 Timorese—a staggering 30 percent of the population. Now yet another Timorese generation is paying in blood for the desire to preserve a separate culture.

Tucked away on the southern end of the Indonesian archipelago, about 300 miles north of Australia, East Timor is far removed from the attention of the Western media, and the sad history of this small, isolated land has not commanded the attention of world leaders. In 1975, when Indonesian troops rushed into the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Portuguese colonial administration, the United Nations condemned that move —but took no action to stop it. A year later, when Indonesia annexed the territory, the UN again voiced its opposition. But while the international community has never formally recognized Indonesia’s claim to sovereignty over East Timor, there has been precious little international support for the Timorese independence movement.

This indifference on the part of the international community reflects some harsh political realities. East Timor is a relatively small land, with only about 800,000 residents, most of whom are Catholic. Indonesia is the world’s largest Islamic nation, with a population of over 200 million. It is also a powerful economic force in the South Pacific, and while the country’s international trading partners might have looked upon Indonesia’s heavy-handed rule in East Timor as a source of irritation, they have apparently not seen the issue as important enough to jeopardize their friendly trade relations.

On a few occasions, the ferocious Indonesian suppression of Timorese independence efforts was enough to capture worldwide headlines. In 1991 the international community was shocked by the Santa Cruz massacre, in which Indonesian soldiers ruthlessly gunned down 270 peaceful demonstrators who had gathered in Dili, the Timorese capital city, to rally support for an autonomous government. In 1993 there were international protests after a Timorese leader, Xanana Gusmao, received a heavy prison sentence for his activities. And in 1996 two Timorese leaders—José Ramos-Horta and Dili’s Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo—were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to promote political autonomy in the region. Largely because of the persistence of those Timorese leaders, the UN passed a series of resolutions condemning Indonesian rule of East Timor, deploring the persistent human-rights abuses there, and calling for a free and democratic vote by which the people of the region could choose their own political future. All such resolutions sailed through the UN without provoking significant opposition—but without producing significant action.

The precipitous collapse of the Indonesian economy during the summer of 1998 caused a chain reaction of events that eventually led to a breakthrough for the cause of Timorese autonomy. Thousands of Indonesians found themselves suddenly unemployed and moved to new locations in search of work. The abrupt shift of population across Indonesia’s hundreds of islands—many of which have their own indigenous cultures—upset the delicate ethnic balance of this complex nation, and led to a series of racial and religious conflicts. At the same time, unemployed workers were rioting in downtown Jakarta. The resulting chaos brought down the regime of President Suharto. In his effort to bring stability to a country that was teetering on the edge of anarchy, Suharto’s successor, B. J. Habibie, promised to allow a referendum on independence for East Timor. After a series of complicated negotiations—involving independence advocates in Timor, military leaders in Jakarta, and former colonial administrators in Portugal—that vote was tentatively scheduled for August 1999.

As soon as that referendum was announced, a new sort of violence began to occur in East Timor. Armed bandits, forming themselves into paramilitary groups, launched a series of assaults on individuals, organizations, and even entire towns that were identified as supporting the independence movement. The Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmao charged that these militia groups had been formed and supported by the Indonesian military, in order to intimidate voters; he urged the people of Timor to take up arms, in order to defend themselves against the aggressors. Bishop Belo resisted that call to arms, but did not disagree with Gusmao’s analysis. He agreed that the Indonesian military “are now encouraging the militia groups, with money and any support they have available.”

During the spring and early summer of 1999, the militia attacks increased in frequency and escalated in severity. The Catholic Church—the most visible institution in an impoverished society, and the symbol of a Christian Timorese culture amidst Indonesia’s Islamic society, became a special target of the violence. In April gunmen burst into a parish hall in the village of Liguica—where 2,000 people had sought refuge from the paramilitary groups—and killed at least 20 people; the parish hall was left stained with blood and pockmarked with bullet holes. In June an Australian Catholic charitable agency revealed that the militia groups had compiled a “hit list,” including the names of both Timorese political activists and Catholic Church workers. Later in the same month, another militia group opened fire on a UN outpost, where election observers were preparing for the August referendum; several people were wounded.

Responding to these incidents, the head of the Indonesian armed forces, General Wiranto, announced that more government troops would be flown into East Timor. But if the Indonesian army was backing the paramilitary groups—as the advocates of Timorese independence claimed—then the reinforcements were likely to pour fuel on the fire. As the weeks passed, and the paramilitary groups stepped up their intimidation campaign, that analysis was borne out. The Indonesian soldiers were not the solution; they were the problem.

The referendum had originally been scheduled for August 8. It was postponed twice, on the advice of UN advisers, because the militia attacks had impeded preparations for the vote and because UN officials feared that the campaign of intimidation was succeeding. But when the people of East Timor finally went to the polls on August 30, the results erased all doubts about their preferences. Well over 450,000 people—98 percent of the eligible voters—cast their ballots. The early returns showed overwhelming support for independence.

Then, before all the votes could be tallied, East Timor was engulfed in violence.

Having failed to prevent the referendum, or even to intimidate the voters, the paramilitary groups now did their utmost to make it impossible to carry out the voters’ mandate. In an orgy of violence they swept across the territory, killing thousands of people and sending tens of thousands into exile.

As thousands of people fled from the carnage, they reported Dili had become a “city of fear,” with hundreds of people decapitated and their heads mounted on sticks, lining the streets of a city in which militia groups roamed, killing indiscriminately with their guns and machetes.

An early rumor suggested that Bishop Belo had been one of the militia victims. In fact the bishop had been taken into custody by Indonesian troops, and flown by helicopter across the territory to Baucau, just hours before his episcopal residence was razed by marauders. (At least 20 people who had flocked to the bishop’s residence in search of sanctuary were killed.) Among the first humanitarian workers to be airlifted from Dili to Australia, one Protestant missionary reported hearing rumors that every Christian church in Dili would be destroyed. Missionaries stationed in Dili sent word to the Vatican’s Fides news service that the militia groups “appear to have gone mad.”

Bishop Belo—who had flown to Australia, looking for a secure base of operations—broadcast a series of messages back to his homeland, begging for peace and reconciliation. “Let us forget the bitterness of our lives, and the recent dark days,” he pleaded. “Let us look to a future that is full of promises, hopes, and challenges.” In a statement marked by the rhetoric of desperation, he continued:

After two weeks of bloodshed, no semblance of public order remained in East Timor. The UN estimated that at least 10,000 people had been killed, and 200,000 had been forced to leave their homes.

Catholic churches, rectories, convents, and schools were special targets of the militia raids. [See sidebar, page 44.] For the opponents of Timorese independence, union with Indonesia implied union with Islam, and the Catholic Church stood out as a symbol of the hopes for a separate Timorese culture. Just two days after Indonesian soldiers had taken Bishop Belo from Dili to Baucau, apparently thinking that he would be safe in the bishop’s residence there, the city’s own Bishop Basilio Do Nascimento was bloodied in an assault on the diocesan headquarters. Fortunately the bishop’s wounds were superficial; he recovered quickly, and remained in Baucau to help coordinate the Church’s first efforts to cope with an enormous influx of refugees.

UN missions and humanitarian agencies also bore the brunt of the violence. The UN had long been anathema to the supporters of Indonesian sovereignty over Timor, because of the long series of resolutions condemning the Indonesian occupation. During the weeks leading up to the referendum, the militia groups had complained that UN officials were encouraging the independence movement; support for a free and open vote was seen as support for Timorese independence. When the referendum was completed, and the results seemed to confirm the opponents’ prejudices, a wave of anger was loosed against UN representatives. Within days after the vote, UN election observers were forced to withdraw into their own protected enclaves; by mid-September the UN had closed its outposts in East Timor, and airlifted its representatives to safety in Australia.

After the first wave of killing, the Timorese survivors faced a new round of threats. Power lines had been cut, homes destroyed, food supplies cut off; clean water became hard to find, and medical facilities were totally exhausted just at the time when thousands of homeless refugees became subject to infections and contagious disease. Illness and malnutrition now threatened to kill more Timorese people than the paramilitary groups; the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 300,000 people were at risk.

“So now Timor is almost completely destroyed,” Bishop Belo lamented. “Dili is a ghost city.”

“Now more than ever, we need an international peacekeeping force in the territory,” Bishop Belo told the Italian newspaper Avennire. He explained that the Indonesian military could not be trusted to restore order, since the government soldiers were now wholly identified with the militia groups. In fact, the bishop suggested that the militia violence had been deliberately organized by military leaders in Jakarta, in order to “make people believe we are caught up in a conflict that pits Timorese against each other,” when in fact the real instigators of the violence were “complete strangers.”

(A similar pattern had emerged in other parts of Indonesia after the fall of the Suharto regime. On the island of Ambon, for example, the early months of 1999 saw a series of confrontations between Christians and Muslims, in which dozens of churches and mosques were attacked. Eyewitnesses on the island swore that the ringleaders of the mobs were not natives of Ambon. They also pointed out that the same individuals had been in the vanguard of attacks on both Christian and Muslim houses of worship; clearly they were not motivated by religious zeal. General Wiranto cited these religious clashes as a reason for the deployment of more Indonesian soldiers in Ambon, but the riots became even more violent when the government troops arrived.)

On September 8 Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran—the Vatican’s top foreign-affairs officer, in his role as Secretary for Relations with States—disclosed that the Holy See had thrown its support behind the effort to send an international peacekeeping force into East Timor. Speaking on Vatican Radio, Archbishop Tauran said that the international community “cannot tolerate” the violence which now threatened to overturn the results of the referendum.

“In East Timor, an event of capital importance has taken place, and it cannot be erased,” the top Vatican diplomat said. Reporting that 80 percent of the Timorese people had voted in favor of independence from Indonesia, he added that the crisis must be resolved “through respect for the history and traditions of the people, and of international law,” and “certainly not through violence.”

At his weekly public audience on September 12, Pope John Paul II added his voice to the chorus of international leaders now calling for UN intervention. “Yet again I must express my unequivocal condemnation of these grave offenses against human rights,” the Pontiff said.

“I cannot hide my bitterness for an enemy stripped of every vestige of humanity,” the Pope said. He spoke of “fratricidal hands” raised “to kill and destroy without pity.” He said that the militia violence must be seen as “a vain attempt to do away with the wish expressed by the people, and their legitimate aspirations.”

By now the consensus in favor of UN intervention had become overwhelming, and on September 13, Indonesian President Habibie said that he would allow international peacekeepers into East Timor, despite the steadfast opposition of his country’s military leadership. However, Habibie insisted that the UN force should complement, rather than replace, the Indonesian military forces that were already in place on the island. In other words, while he agreed to allow an international peacekeeping mission, the Indonesian leader did not agree to cede authority over the province.

As violence engulfed Timor, the beleaguered Catholics of the island received some moral support from their fellow Catholics in Indonesia. Bishop Joseph Suwatan of Manado, speaking in his capacity as the president of the Indonesian bishops’ conference, announced that Sunday, September 12, had been designated as a “day of prayer for the victims of the heinous acts” of violence in East Timor. Bishop Suwatan called for Catholics all around the world to join in that day of prayer, and in the public condemnation of “the systematic massacre and forced removal of the people of East Timor.”

But if Catholics in Indonesia were ready to speak out against the militia violence, the Muslim majority in that country—and, for that matter, the Islamic leaders all around the world—were silent. From the Vatican, Archbishop Tauran voiced his regrets that not a single prominent Muslim leader had spoken out to condemn the militia violence against the predominantly Catholic population of East Timor. “Pope John Paul II was a daring defender of human rights when the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina faced the same fate,” the archbishop told the French newspaper La Croix. While he avoided drawing any general conclusions about the character of Christian-Islamic relations, Archbishop Tauran conceded, “It gives you something to think about.”

Meanwhile the Australia-based East Timor Human Rights Centre announced that it had discovered the existence of an Indonesian “hit list,” carrying the names of individuals who were associated with the movement toward Timorese autonomy. The list included not only the names of leaders and members of the National Council for Timorese Resistance, but also representatives of several humanitarian agencies and of the Catholic Church. These individuals, the Human Rights Centre reported, had been hunted down by militia groups in East Timor. And when dozens of the people on that “hit list” escaped from East Timor, the militia groups pursued their quarry relentlessly, conducting new house-to-house searches in the towns of Kupang, Atambua, and Kefamenanu in West Timor, and other locales in Indonesia.

The existence of such a “hit list” was later confirmed by a former leader of a pro-Indonesian militia unit. Tomas Goncalves, who once headed a group called the Peace Force and Defender of Integration, had heartily supported the cause of Indonesian unity, and saw East Timor as the historic “27th province” of the Indonesian nation. But Goncalves told reporters in Hong Kong that he had begun to entertain misgivings about the militia movement after attending a February 1999 meeting in Dili, and hearing Colonel Yahjat Sudrajad, the intelligence chief of the Indonesian special forces, outline plans for the systematic elimination of Timorese independence leaders. According to Goncalves, Colonel Sudrajad said that all independence leaders must be killed, together with the members of their immediate families.

Goncalves added that he had attended one subsequent meeting, at which Abilio Soares, the Indonesian governor of East Timor, said that Catholic priests and nuns should also be killed, since they were supporters of the independence movement. It was at that moment, Goncalves says, that he—a Catholic—realized that he could not continue to support the militia movement. He soon seized an opportunity to flee to Macau.

By the time the Indonesian government had agreed to allow an international peacekeeping mission, the militia groups had already finished their own mission in East Timor, leaving the province in complete devastation. Now the paramilitary groups were conducting a “mopping-up” operation, and chasing down the refugees who had fled into the hills of East Timor, or across the boundary into the western part of the island.

Bishop Anton Pain Radu of Atambua, in West Timor, told Fides that the militia groups were carefully searching through the refugee camps in his diocese, hunting for specific members of the East Timor independence movement. At least 100,000 Timorese had arrived in the camps in Atambua, the bishop said. And he observed, “This is supposed to be a protected area, and these people have come here for safety and help.”

Nevertheless, a local government official admitted to Fides that he could not hope to keep the militia groups out of the refugee camps. “We check the people as they arrive, but the camps are by no means sealed, and we cannot patrol the whole area,” he said. And independent witnesses confirmed that they had seen bands of armed men on the roads around Atambua and Kupang, the provincial capital.

The pursuit of suspected Timorese leaders continued across the entire Indonesian archipelago. Several students who had been studying in Jakarta, and returned to their homes in East Timor in order to participate in the referendum, were reported missing; they never returned to their classrooms in the Indonesian capital. At least 15 people who were being evacuated from East Timor on an Indonesian naval vessel were killed while they were on board.

Sister Bernadita Guhit, the chairman of the justice and peace commission for the Indonesian bishops’ conference, told Fides that she had received dozens of requests for help from Timorese students living in Jakarta, who reported that they have been intimidated by phone calls or anonymous letters. Father Ignatius Ismartono, a spokesman for the Indonesian bishops, confirmed that a group of some 50 students from East Timor were searching for a safe place to live, after a series of threats convinced them that their current lodgings were not secure. The Jakarta-based Committee for Solidarity and Peace in East Timor received an ultimatum from an anonymous telephone caller, who warned them to leave the city within 24 hours “or we will not guarantee your safety.”

In the mountains that ring the south of East Timor, thousands of refugees were hiding from the paramilitary groups. But with the food supplies nearly exhausted, they would soon be forced to come down from the mountains—if only in order to pick up relief supplies from humanitarian agencies. These refugees were surrounded by militia groups and Indonesian army units, and they were convinced that their enemies were waiting to open fire on them as soon as they came out of hiding. ”This is a final and extreme act of terror, before the arrival of the UN forces,” said the local Carmelite superior, Mother Maria del Carmen Aparicio.

According to David Ximenes, an East Timor resistance leader, the paramilitary troops were poised to attack, in an area where some 60,000 Timorese civilians have taken shelter. “The plan is to attack on several fronts,” he reported. “We have no place to hide, nothing to eat; our children are dying.”

From his perspective in Jakarta, Father Ismartono of the Indonesian bishops’ conference confirmed that there has been talk of an attack on the refugee camps—although he hastened to add that he could not confirm the accuracy of these rumors. Father Ismartono pointed out that, having lost the referendum vote decisively, the opponents of Timorese independence now had “nothing to lose,” and—especially if they continued to enjoy the support of the regular Indonesian troops in the region—would be likely to take advantage of any pretext for an attack on “the closest available enemy.” He added that it would be easy for these militia groups to claim that the refugee camps in the southern hills were hosting Timorese guerrilla groups; such claims might be enough to justify bombardment of the camps.

According to Sidney Jones of the Australia-based Human Rights’ Watch in East Timor, “the most dangerous time is the interval between the announcement of the sending of the UN troops and their actual arrival.” And the danger to innocent civilians is particularly clear in this case, he reasoned, because of the history of dilatory tactics by the Indonesian army and the Jakarta government. From Hong Kong, another human-rights organization, the Asian Conference for People’s Progress, agreed: “There is a danger that the actual process may be deliberately delayed to allow the terror campaign to continue, while international attention has lessened.”

As this report is written, the final plans for the arrival of the peacekeeping force are not yet in place. But as one Jesuit priest in Dili observed: “Even if an international peace force should arrive today, it would still be a week too late. Seven days earlier, even a small force would have saved a lot of lives.”

There may be another reason for paramilitary leaders to conclude that they have “nothing to lose.” On September 15, after a meeting with President Habibie, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, reported that she had secured a promise from the Indonesian leader that there would be a determined effort to investigate the gross violations of human rights that had clearly taken place in East Timor.

Any serious investigation was likely to produce indictments, Robinson predicted, explaining that during her stay in the region, “I have heard many accounts that name names.” The former Irish president did not stipulate exactly what form an inquiry into human-rights violations would take, but she did allow for the possibility that it might warrant the work of a full-scale international court, similar to the one that is currently gathering evidence and conducting trials related to war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. “It may be, in due course, a question of a tribunal,” Robinson said.

Having escaped from the whirlwind in his own homeland, Bishop Carlos Belo flew from Australia to Rome, to meet with Pope John Paul and other Vatican officials. (In a sign that the old colonial ties are not entirely forgotten, the government of Portugal supplied a military plane to transport the bishop.) Arriving in Italy on September 13, Bishop Belo traveled immediately to the papal summer residence in Castel Gandalfo for a luncheon meeting at which he briefed the Pontiff on the deteriorating situation in East Timor. After that private meeting, the Salesian bishop told reporters that he was “anguished” by the situation in his homeland, had been unable to sleep since he left Dili, and was anxious to return to his people.

Bishop Belo told reporters that in the latest brutal assault on East Timor, the Indonesian military—acting through its paramilitary proxies—is planning “a repetition of what happened in 1975.” A generation ago, Jakarta’s brutal strategy of intimidation and starvation eliminated any effective resistance to Indonesian rule on the island. Now, having declared martial law even before the arrival of international peacekeeping forces, Indonesia’s military leaders are poised to argue that the UN force should support their efforts to maintain order in the rebellious province, rather than oust the Indonesian troops and help build the infrastructure for an independent East Timor.

The August referendum gave the world an unmistakably clear picture of what the Timorese people want. But the cataclysmic violence that followed may have made that referendum result nugatory. Bishop Belo conceded that international peacekeepers might lean toward some “compromise” solution, in which East Timor is partitioned and some portions of the land remain under Indonesian rule. “But that would be a tragedy,” the bishop said, because “a Timorese nation that is divided can never be a real nation.”

Bishop Belo’s Reflections

On September 13, while he was in Rome to meet with Pope John Paul II, Bishop Carlos Belo offered his latest thoughts on the chaos in East Timor, in an interview with the Fides news service:

Fides: Bishop Belo, what is most needed in this situation?

Bishop Carlos Belo: The first thing is to send in an international peacekeeping force. On this we must insist. Within days a UN force must take over the island to restore calm. The second step is a humanitarian mission to provide assistance to the people who are displaced in Timor and in other Indonesian islands.

Fides: Do you think there can be collaboration between the UN forces and those of Indonesia?

Belo: I have lost all confidence in the Indonesian army. It appears to be there only to oppress the people. It would be better if they were excluded, and the peace mission run by the UN multinational contingent. The Indonesian military has lost all credibility; it has demonstrated that it is unable or unwilling to keep peace and order.

Fides: And yet you were rescued by Indonesian troops.

Belo: “Rescued?” To be more explicit, I was “taken.” And then the contradiction is evident: They save a bishop, and murder his flock!

Fides: Why is Indonesia afraid of little East Timor? What does East Timor mean for Jakarta?

Belo: There are various reasons and the situation is complex. Besides economic and political goals, behind the campaign of violence there are strong feelings of revenge against resistance leaders and against the Church. The point is that the difference in principles is too great—between those who speak the truth and those who spread lies. The army and the government want the people to be like obedient sheep, without their own will or independent reason. But the people have their dignity; they want to be Timorese. The referendum was a slap in the face for Jakarta, and the violence is the reaction.

Fides: The Church has been targeted because she is identified with the pro-independence movement. Perhaps it would have been better to be less involved?

Belo: The Church became involved to defend principles and human rights. Self-determination is also a value. And even if we were “too much” involved, this is no reason for murdering clergy and religious and destroying church structures. Where is their respect for civilization, where is their respect for human rights? A government must be expected to have a minimum of respect for these values.

Fides: Would you describe this as inter-religious conflict?

Belo: No, I would not say so. I have no evidence to that effect. But there is clear violation of human rights. A country which upholds the Pancasila [the official Indonesian national ideology, which stresses harmony among the different religions of a nation], and which professes belief in God, now acts in a fashion which is ferocious and repressive. How is this possible?

Fides: What do you expect from the universal Church?

Belo: The Church and the Pope have lifted a voice to stop the massacres. Now we must involve all the bishops’ conferences, justice and peace commissions, charitable agencies, and other humanitarian organizations in a campaign of solidarity to bring assistance to the victimized people of East Timor.

Fides: When will you return to Dili?

Belo: I am ready to go, even tomorrow—as soon as the multinational troops land on the island. I cannot wait to be back among my people.

Slaughter in Religious Communities

Ten days after the outbreak of post-referendum violence, the number of men and women religious in East Timor had been cut in half by the slaughter, according to a report from the Vatican news agency Fides.

Fides based its report on statistics collected from the missionary congregations that are most active on the island. Prior to the massacres, the members of religious orders easily outnumbered the diocesan priests in East Timor. The diocese of Dili and Baucau together boasted only 53 diocesan priests, while there were 460 members of religious orders—160 men and 300 women—in those two dioceses.

During the spasm of violence after the referendum, dozens of religious were forced to abandon their houses, and several were killed. In the town of Suai, three priests were murdered, including Father Francisco Barreto, the head of the Caritas relief agency in East Timor. Two more priests died in Dili, including Father Karl Albrecht, head of the Jesuit Refugee Service. The Indonesian bishops’ conference reported that four nuns were slain, and eight more religious—four priests and four nuns—were missing and feared dead.

In the chaos of East Timor, Church officials could not account for dozens of priests and religious. But several religious orders were able to provide some reports on their members’ whereabouts.

•    The Salesian priests, brothers, and seminarians who had been serving in Dili took refuge in West Timor or in the hills of East Timor, helping refugees. One Salesian home in Dili was burned to the ground.

•    Four Divine Word missionaries in Baucau were missing, while one remained in the town of Maliana.

•    Two Jesuits were killed in Dili, while six remained there; one was missing, and others were in hiding in the hills.

•    Three Canossian convents—in the towns of Balide, Lecider, and Comoro—were razed. Some of the 31 nuns who were assigned in East Timor gained sanctuary at the UN compound in Dili, while others went to the hills with the flood of refugees.

•    No damage was reported at the Salesian convents in East Timor, and 26 nuns remained there; 24 others fled to Indonesia, Italy, or Cambodia.

•    Of 60 Carmelite nuns in East Timor, only 15 remained; the others moved to West Timor, where they found shelter in a residence formerly occupied by Carmelite priests.

All 8 of the nuns of St. Paul de Chartres who had been in East Timor were forced by government troops to move into West Timor; their convent was destroyed.