Witness to the Persecution
Sundell arrived in East Timor on August 21, part of the International Federation for East Timor Observer Project. The group of 190 people–5 from Chicago–was to monitor the vote that had been authorized by Indonesian president B.J. Habibie and that was being overseen by the UN.
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This past summer Sundell arrived in Same, a city six hours from the East Timorese capital of Dili, during the last days of the campaigning on the vote. She says it was already clear that sentiment was strongly in favor of independence and that a bloodbath was likely as a result. An East Timorese friend of the observer group who knew the radio frequencies used by the Indonesian secret police had taped transmissions of orders to militia members in the city and played them for Sundell and her five colleagues. They heard instructions telling the militia to go back to a village where earlier they’d laid down their arms as a symbolic gesture and bring the weapons back to Same. They also heard orders telling the militia to hold off until the vote was in, then set up roadblocks around town and execute specific people.
The next morning Sundell and the other observers went back to the UN compound to watch the ballot boxes be packed into a helicopter headed for Dili. She says they were exuberant, but their driver lamented the number of lives that had been lost over the years to give East Timorese that vote. By afternoon the mood in the city was one of fear. The city quickly emptied of men. The women and children who remained rarely made eye contact. Members of the militia began appearing on the streets.
Sundell wound up staying in the house of a supporter of the observer project, where she watched as the election results were broadcast on CNN on September 4. Around nine in the morning came the announcement that 78.5 percent of the people had voted against autonomy and therefore for independence. In the days that followed, the militias would kill 7,000 people, and 300,000 to 400,000 of the country’s roughly 800,000 people would flee their homes. At night there was gunfire all around the house where Sundell was staying, and the next day a U.S. embassy official asked her and her colleagues to leave.
