Australia is to reopen an inquiry into the deaths of five Australia-based journalists in East Timor in 1975. New charges have emerged that an Indonesian army commander - now a senior government minister - ordered their killing during the Indonesian invasion of the former Portuguese territory.
The Australian Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer, said the case should be re-examined after a witness to the shootings gave a detailed account of what happened. The affair is embarrassing for both Indonesia, which claims the journalists died in crossfire, and for Australia and Britain, which readily accepted the Indonesian version despite widespread scepticism among journalists and human rights groups.
Mr Olandino Maia Guterres (39), an East Timorese irregular fighting with the Indonesian army, told Australian television on Tuesday that Lieut Gen Yunus Yosfiah had personally ordered the killings. Lieut Gen Yosfiah, appointed Indonesia's information minister in May, denied the charge, saying yesterday: "People can say anything they want. I wasn't involved, that's it."
Following recent representations from the British Foreign Office minister Mr Derek Fatchett, President B.J. Habibie of Indonesia has promised to re-examine the deaths, a British embassy spokesman said in Jakarta. The East Timorese Nobel peace laureate, Dr Jose Ramos-Horta, has appealed to the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, to press President Habibie for a full investigation.
Mr Guterres, who fought with Indonesian troops during the invasion, told ABC television there was no gunfire from East Timorese resistance fighters when Indonesian troops invaded Balibo in East Timor on October 16th, 1975. The journalists - Australians Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart, Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters, both British, and New Zealander Gary Cunningham - took refuge in a house.
He said Lieut Gen Yosfiah, then a captain of the special Red Beret force, ordered troops to shoot them through the window, because he did not want witnesses to the invasion. Four died in the gunfire, the fifth was knifed in the back. Mr Guterres said he heard Lieut Gen Yosfiah yell "Just shoot, just shoot." The journalists' corpses were dressed in military uniforms and guns placed beside them.
Lieut Gen Yosfiah allegedly took photographs before the bodies were burned. Another witness, a Fretilin (East Timorese) fighter, told the Sydney Morning Herald he watched from an old Portuguese fort nearby and heard the newsmen shout "We are Australian," before being shot.
A 1996 Australian inquiry by a senior official, Mr Tom Sherman, found that the journalists were killed by irregular Indonesia troops and East Timorese commanded by Indonesian officers in the heat of battle. Mr Downer said: "I certainly think that the account given [on ABC] can't just be lightly dismissed. I think it has to be examined." Mr Downer said reports that Indonesia would re-examine the deaths were a step in the right direction.
The Indonesian ambassador to Australia, Mr Wiryono Sastrohandoyo, admitted Indonesia was not "blameless" in the deaths, which he compared to "Bloody Sunday in Belfast", a reference to the killings by British troops in Derry in 1972.
"These kinds of thing happened," Mr Wiryono said. "The important thing is that's the past . . . We don't claim that we were blameless, but in such a situation what can you do?"
A spokesman for the Indonesian Foreign Affairs ministry said: "I haven't heard of a new investigation. As far as I know the matter was closed with the release of the Sherman Report in Australia in 1996. I understand this is the Australian government's position as well." Jakarta formally annexed East Timor on July 17th, 1976, but no western country except Australia recognises Indonesian sovereignty over the territory.
Dr Ramos-Horta, a joint Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1996, said he was disgusted by the attitude of successive Australian and British governments to the deaths of the newsmen. "They are cowards and hypocrites," he told reporters before joining relatives of the two dead British men, Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie, to hand in a letter to Mr Blair at 10 Downing Street on Tuesday.