Killing of militia chief was revenge: Australian academic
SYDNEY, Sept 8 (AFP) - The killing of militia leader Olivio Mendoca Moruk in
West Timor may have been intended to avenge the murder of a East Timorese
priest last year, an Australian academic said Friday.
Moruk was killed almost a year to the day after the massacre of more than 100
women and children and three priests in the East Timor border town of Suai,
for which most East Timorese blame Moruk.
The death of Moruk, who headed the notorious Laksaur militia blamed for the
massacre, triggered the murders this week of three foreign UN staff workers
in Atambua on Wednesday.
In an article published by The Australian, James Fox, director of the
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Canberra-based Australian
National University, argued that Moruk was killed to avenge the death of one
of the priests in particular, a Father Hilario.
Moruk was one of 19 suspects to be named by the Indonesian Human Rights
Commission investigating atrocities in East Timor and would have been called
soon for trial in Jakarta.
"Personal vendettas and primordial passions, fuelled by deep suspicions, are
now at play in relations between the local populations on each side of the
border," Fox said.
He said the next critical step was yet to come.
Eight of the 19 individuals named are associated with the Suai massacre.
They include the former district chief of Suai, Colonel Herman Sediono, and
former head of the police, Lieutenant Colonel Gatot Subiyaktoro, together
with three other military officers and two other militia members.
Fox argues that the district chief known as a bupati and the head of police
are key figures. "For them, the death of Father Hilario is a personal matter."
"At a mass of reconciliation celebrated by Father Hilario just a week before
he was murdered, Sediono, a Catholic, and Subiyaktoro, a Muslim, led the
offertory procession in the Suai church, followed by a group of militia in a
ritual surrender of weapons", Fox says.
"Moruk did not attend that ceremony.
"Father Francisco, another of the priests who died with Father Hilario,
remarked on his absence."
He also presented an alternative scenario in which Moruk may have been killed
to keep him from testifying and to warn other militia of what might happen if
they did testify freely.
If the Suai case were to collapse, the tribunal might have difficulties with
its other prosecutions.