---------------------------------------------------------- FREE for JOIN Indonesia Daily News Online via EMAIL: go to: http://www.indo-news.com/subscribe.html - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - Dengan mengClick banner sponsor anda menyumbang Rp. 1000,- untuk HomePage IndoNews. ---------------------------------------------------------- * Yield arms or be shot, army warns Ambon rioters * Australia ready to join UN team in Timor * Pramudya to make first visit overseas in 40 years --------------------------------------------------------------- Yield arms or be shot, army warns Ambon rioters =============================================== Reuters - March 15, 1999 Ambon -- Indonesian forces on the ravaged island of Ambon have been ordered to shoot residents who refuse to surrender weapons, a senior commander said. "The security apparatus will take the policy of asking the people to surrender their weapons voluntarily at least three times," Colonel Karel Ralahalu told a news conference late on Sunday. "If they do not want to, we will act firmly in the form of shooting on the spot whether to paralyse or to kill," said Ralahalu, military commander on Ambon. Witnesses said security forces on Monday were searching in six trouble spots around Ambon, 2,300 km east of Jakarta, and confiscating weapons. Over the weekend various crude weapons were seized. Ambon city was calm on Monday with some schools reopening after recent violence. Witnesses said about 14 abandoned houses were torched on Sunday night, but there were no immediate reports of casualties. Clashes between Moslems and Christians erupted on January 19 and have killed more than 200 people. On Wednesday, tens of thousands of people fought pitched battles in the city centre using machetes, knives and Molotov cocktails, killing up to 10 people. One died in new violence on Saturday. Australia ready to join UN team in Timor ======================================== Sydney Morning Herald - March 15, 1999 Michelle Grattan -- Australians could be in East Timor by late next month as part of a United Nations contingent helping to plan for a July-August election on independence. The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, said at the weekend that a team would go as soon as autonomy proposals were finalised, hopefully in late April. "We would want [an] Australian contribution," he said. Australia, together with many other countries, had already been approached, he told SBS television. Mr Annan said it was not yet known whether the contingent would be military, police or just a political presence. It would build up closer to the ballot. The Foreign Minister, Mr Downer, said yesterday: "We hope it won't be necessary to send in a peacekeeping force." While Australia was planning for a range of contingencies, "what we hope will be necessary is to send administrative assistance, observers, some technical assistance, perhaps some people to assist with policing functions". "We obviously hope that the sort of contribution that the UN will make will only need to be a relatively low-level confidence- building contribution. "It will be important to have some UN people there to help provide confidence for the East Timorese that the ballots, if that is the way it is going to work, or the consultation process, however it works, works well." No indication of numbers from Australia was available. Mr Downer said negotiations on the autonomy package should be finished about April 21-24. Mr Annan expected the ballot would be in July-August. The Foreign Minister met Mr Annan in January and the head of the Foreign Affairs Department, Mr Ashton Calvert, met him about a fortnight ago. There have also been detailed talks between officials. "We haven't really talked with him about a peacekeeping force," Mr Downer said. "What we've talked through is ... the broader question of the need for UN involvement. The type of UN involvement will depend on the types of needs that there are on the ground." He said Darwin would be an important logistical support base for a UN presence. Separately from the UN operation, two Australian AusAID officers arrived in East Timor on Saturday to assess food and medical needs. Mr Annan said the Indonesians had reaffirmed that the detained resistance leader Xanana Gusmao would be released as part of the settlement. "So I am hoping he will be free before the actual vote takes place." Pramudya to make first visit overseas in 40 years ================================================= Agence France Presse - March 15, 1999 Jakarta -- Leftist author Pramudya Ananta Tur hailed by international critics as Indonesia's leading modern novelist but gagged here until the fall of Suharto, is travel abroad for the first time in 40 years, Fordham University said Monday. Pramudya, 74, who has been nominated for the Nobel prize will leave here April 4 for his first tour of the United States which will also take him to Canada, the university said in a press statement. It will be the first time he has left the country since 1959. At the invitation of Fordham and the Association of American Publishers, Pramudya will take part in a seminar on his work marking the launch of the English language edition of his work, 'The Mute's Soliloquy,' the statement said. Most of the ageing novelist's work was banned for decades in Indonesia, where he spent a great part of his life in jail. Born to a modest family in Blora, a small town in the northeastern coast of Central Java, Pramudya was a thorn in the side of successive adminstrations. During Indonesia's independence struggle against the Dutch, the colonial administration threw him in jail from 1947 to 1949. The country's first president Sukarno imprisoned him between 1960 and 1961 for writing about the Chinese in Indonesia. In the 1960s, Pramudya was one of the main figures of Lekra, a communist-affiliated art organisation which harshly suppressed liberal writers, through the media outlets under its control at the time. Under the Suharto government his links to the communists landed him in jail without trial for 14 years following a bloody 1965 coup attempt, officially blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). He spent years at the notorious Buru Island prison labour camp, and the decade following his release from Buru in 1979 under house surveillance. In 1996 Pramudya was questioned over his possible links with a pro-democracy group, the People's Democractic Party (PRD), which was deemed to be pro-communist at the time. Pramudya never showed any remorse for his past or his communist links, and in May 1987, the government barred him from accepting an invitation to attend the Pen Club congress in Lugano, Switzerland. He was nominated to the Nobel Prize for literature for the first time in 1986. It went to Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka and although nominated several times since, the coveted prize has eluded him. In May 1995 Pramudya was awarded the Ramon Magsasay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, an annual Manila-based award encompassing Asia. Several authors and intellectuals harshly protested Pramudya's nomination for the award citing his suppression of liberal wiritings while under Lekra, and Jakarta again barred him from leaving the country to accept the prize. He wrote eight of his novels during his stay at the infamous Buru island prison where thousands of alleged communist members and supporters were jailed without trial. His "The Earth of Mankind" and "Greenhouse", part of a tetralogy retracing the rise of Indonesian nationalism at the turn of the century, was translated in eight languages, including English, Dutch, German, Swedish, Russian and Chinese. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Didistribusikan tgl. 17 Mar 1999 jam 06:52:07 GMT+1 oleh: Indonesia Daily News Online <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.Indo-News.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
