Bearing Witness
Suares, Filomena
ALL AROUND town houses were burning. We heard gunfire all the time. On the 5th of September [1999] the police came to us and said that if we wanted to stay alive, we had to come to the police...
...Then they took their bodies to a house, threw them inside, and burned it down...
...I said I wouldn't go, that I wouldn't leave him...
...We stayed there for three days...
...He must be on his way now At four in the morning, I was shaking, I could not stand waiting anymore...
...We just wanted to stay alive...
...They said I had to leave...
...I came back again in the morning and they confessed...
...I had to go, but I was so afraid for him...
...One man threatened to stab me...
...Each hour I kept telling myself he'd come home...
...They said they couldn't tell me...
...I knew he was dead...
...On September 20 [the date Indonesia agreed to let a UN peacekeeping force enter East Timor], we were forced to go to West Timor...
...They told us if we didn't leave we'd be killed...
...I waited all night, awake...
...I asked them where he was...
...They said all of the men were dead...
...When I came back the people investigating the killings told me what had happened that night...
...Then we left and went to a nearby town to stay with my husband's relatives...
...It was packed with people, hundreds were there...
...It was dark and I didn't want him to go by himself, so I went with him...
...On the 5th of September [1999] the police came to us and said that if we wanted to stay alive, we had to come to the police station...
...After they killed my husband, they put his body in a rice sack...
...They did the same with all the men...
...They said, "Now it's war" I kept asking, and they told me that if I didn't leave, I'd be killed too...
...They told me they only wanted men, not women...
...I went back to the house, back to where the militia were, where I had last seen my husband...
...When we arrived, there were so many people...
...Soon, though, the militia came there too...
...I stayed in the camp there till the end of October...
...My husband's brother was there too...
...They were proud...
...I knew they had killed him...
...We went...
...On the 13th of September, the militia came to the house and said my husband needed to go to the house of the Liurai la village leader] . We thought he would be safe there...
Vol. 49 • January 2002 • No. 1
