Tokyo Twins Chapter 24 - The roots of terrorism, part two.

an online serialized story

by Tommy Schmitz



"Ah. Good tea." 'A' said.

"Would you like a cup?"

Three nods came from Henry and Mieko and the hooded old man.

" 'B', keep them in half hood, all three of them this time, and take off their hand cuffs, and make them tea, please.

"Now, shall we continue?

Let's go back in time seven years

before the massacre of Santa Cruz in 1991 I just described."

'A' sat on the floor now. Back slouched. Legs crossed.

In February 1984 my fourth child was born.

Yet another son, making four.

To my husband I met as a girl in our village,

and he, a boy I grew up with.

We married in 1974. Still children ourselves.

And one year after the other,

I bore three sons.

And each was abducted in their toddler years

and killed.

And now I was bearing a fourth.

But in the months of this pregnancy

he was under suspicion by militia in a neighboring village

and by the ever present secret police

that went where ever and when ever they pleased.

He was forced to hide in the hills.

But when I delivered the baby,

my husband decided to surrender.

And he lived in our house for one month

and then the ABRI, the Indonesian Armed Forces,

made him a TBO (Tenaga Bantuan Operasi, Operational Assistant).



On the day he reported for duty

he was executed.

Our new baby boy died at 14 months

because of illness and we had no medicine.



The ABRI then forced me

to join a women's night patrol

to guard the village, Lalerek Mutin"

from Falintil (the resistance) attack.



Sending out women to patrol the night

was only an excuse for raping us.

An ABRI Kopassus (special forces) officer

soon forced me to live with him as his wife.

He showed me off in public

and in private beat me mercilessly.



I escaped to my home village

and was confronted by the men

in my family and community

that for the sake of their lives

I should return to the officer.

'Better to sell your soul to save our necks.

No one will blame you.' they said.



And for these men I did so.

And I lived with the officer for one year

until his tour of duty was completed.

He left Timor Leste and I soon miscarried his child.



"Yet blame me they did.

Doing what humans beings do

finding fault with the victim

as cover for their cowardice

turned to shame.



"My father, Mrs. O'Brien,

labored for assistants to the ruling Japanese commander

of Timor Leste in 1942, Yuichi Tsuchihashi.

He learned enough Japanese in two years

to remember the phrase...

how does that go in English, Mr. O'Brien?

'if you see a stinking hole...?'

finish the phrase, please?"



"If you see a stinking hole, cover it." he said.



"Thank you." `A' said.



"And what stinks more," she went on,

"and curtained with more tedious care

by the best that man can build -

in wall or monument or church or skyscraper -

than the smoldering stink of shame.

I digress.



"I became the scapegoat of my village,

forced for many years

to appease the violent enemy

because I am a woman.



So the village men urged me again

to marry an Indonesian officer - a third time.

while the same men turned their backs

and condemned me

for association with the enemy.

My new husband was a Hindu from Jakarta.

His mother's side came from a Christian village

on the Indonesian island of Ambon -

and he had already experienced first hand,

the treachery of Indonesian armed forces.

His father's side came from Hindus here in Kashmir,

a family that over years made their way to Indonesia

when the faith they lived became detrimental.

And why? For religious purposes?

No. Because the vast majority of the population,

who had long been Muslim in Kashmir

wanted self-determination,

which, in this case, was their desire to be

integrated with the new state of Pakistan.

The self-determination of these Muslim people, of course,

was negated by the guns of Hindus,

and my husband's family wisely decided

not to get involved.



But I learned to love this Hindu man

and some time later bore our daughter,

my first daughter after bearing four sons,

the same baby girl I cuddled dead in my arms

at the massacre of Santa Cruz.

Excuse me, again please. I need a rest."



And 'A' stretched her legs

and spread her body on her back upon the floor

and stared blankly at the ceiling for a few moments,

then in a low voice, whined, and quickly sat up again.



"And before that... on December 7, 1975

there was the invasion of East Timor ...

Operation Lotus...

from Indonesian military primarily trained on Bali,

the only Hindu island in a vast Muslim land.



One third of us, of our entire population,

were slaughtered in the first several months.

Over 200,000 people.

A genocide unmatched in scale

by the death of Russians during the Second World War,

or according to western newspapers

even by the devil himself, Pol Pot,

doing his own work simultaneously.




And two days before the invasion -

with an irony so vast and hideous

it continues to this day

to mask itself in shame -

on December 5, 1975

US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

were wrapping up meetings in Jakarta, Indonesia

giving their blessings, their money, their weapons,

and their military expertise

for training their puppet Indonesian army

for the quick and dirty deed

of a secret genocide

of the people of East Timor.



And if there is a lesson to this story

it is, without a doubt, this:

Of course neither Ford nor Kissinger

are genocidal,

nor was their blessing to invade

ever described as such.

But they knew from

a wide range of their own intelligence,

and in their secret hearts,

that genocide would happen.

And it mattered,

compared to the expediency of capital markets,

not even the droppings of a mouse.



And before that

For all of two or three weeks

we had just begun to taste the freedom

we had long prayed and thirsted for

by democratically and peacefully gaining our independence

from centuries of Portuguese colonial rule.



Only days of freedom

viciously taken away from a kind and a deserving

and peace loving people.

And why?



For direct US control of strategic sea lanes for their ships and submarines,

for direct or indirect US control of newly found oil fields,

for the US to make nice with a monopolistic, capital-market dictator, Suharto,

who had already committed genocide among his own countrymen

ostensibly out of fear of Communism,

in reality out of fear of losing the unspeakable wealth

he had recently stolen from his very own people.



And finally, not to forget the icing on the cake,

the Ford-Kissinger team accomplished these objectives,

by sending this muscle bound,

American-armed Muslim crusade

to slaughter a virtually unarmed Christian people.

Each of us has a point, Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien,

where we will draw a line in the sand, do we not?



Here I draw the line.



And your people call this terrorism?

You asked me to tell my story.

As you know, Mr. O'Brien,

We Christians do not call holy

our unending train of wars.

We simply say they're justifiable,

validated by history

and by the will of God,

by virtue of the fruits of righteous nations

and the rule of canon law."



And here, 'A' stood up and left the room.

*******
(End of Chapter 24.)