From: John MacDougall <apakabar@access.digex.net>
The following is a translation of a letter written by one
of the defendants currently on trial in Maumere, Flores. The letter was given
to a family member some time ago during a jail visit.
"On the 1st of May I was asleep in my home. A soldier came
up and took me to KODIM ( Military HQ ). When we got to
KODIM he began to interrogate me. While he was questioning me he was hitting
and cutting me along with another of his soldier friends. I told him that I
didn't understand but he kept forcing me to answer with punches. While he was
beating me and interrogating me I couldn't understand what he was saying. I
asked him "Why do you have to force me like this?" He kept on beating me
throughout the night. Until midnight the twelve of us were all chained. They
chained us to the flagpole and ordered us to go to sleep. We were stripped
naked out in the open yard. We felt almost like dogs, pigs animals.
At daybreak they unchained us. They unchained us all and
ordered us to sit down in thhe room where we would be interrogated. We all sat
down there. We waited until later that morning when the Military Police (PM)
and Brimob (Mobile Brigade) came. When they came they began asking us about a
soldier who was dead. But we all answered that we didn't do it. Then they began
beating us again.
If we didn't confess they kept on beating us like animals.
They kept beating us until midday when they took us to the Police Station. At
the Police Station they began questioning us again about the man who was
killed. But we told them again that we did't know. The Police ordered us to
confess that we did it. We kept on saying that we didn't do anything, so why
should we be made to confess?
Then they searched us again and ordered us to go inside a
cell. When we entered the cell they ordered us to take off our clothes. Then we
slept in our underwear. We were in that cell in our underwear for a week. Food
and water was also hard to get. One time a policeman called SUMARJANA came. He
tortured us too and said to us, "If your Jesus Christ is a real Saviour then
why doesn't He come and save you right now?" When we heard him say that we kept
silent. But we remember his face and eyes and also his name.
We were in the Police cell for a week before we were taken
to the prison. When we got to prison we began to feel as if we were human
beings again. Not like animals, not like when we were kept in KODIM and the
Police cell."
The author of this letter is presently on trial in Maumere
on charges relating to the demonstration against the persecution of the
Catholic Church which occurred in Maumere last April. He and his 33 fellow
defendants are pleading not guilty to all charges. The author's name is being
withheld in the interests of his family's safety.
Alan Dermody.