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Courage Under Fire
Typhoons, civil wars: piece of cake
By ADI IGNATIUS
September 20, 1999
Web posted at 9 a.m. Hong Kong time, 9 p.m. EDT
I learned something about courage last week as typhoon York crashed its way through Hong Kong.
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It was the first No. 10 typhoon in 16 years, and it was no joke. Two trees came down on my driveway alone; several more fell on my street. All told, at least two people were killed, hundreds were injured and many more had to be evacuated.
TIME Asia, as it happens, was crazy-busy last week. So I foolishly stepped over the fallen lumber and braved the 140-km/h winds to make it to work. I was amazed to find a dozen colleagues already in their office pods, toiling away. Each had his or her own horror story of traipsing through punishing winds or dodging flying metal and glass.
O.K., maybe the point is we all need to get a life. But the fact was, we had major project that required urgent attention. So a lot of us braved the elements, voluntarily, to ensure that what we were producing would be top-notch.
But that was nothing compared with the bravery of TIME's Indonesian stringer, Zamira Loebis. Several days before international troops were scheduled to land in East Timor, she boarded a small charter plane from Jakarta to Dili, East Timor's capital.
No one ordered her to go, and in fact we, her editors, kept trying to make it easy for her to back out. True, the military had offered to shelter and protect the group. But there are no certainties in a killing zone. Moreover, the flight she got on was one-way; anyone who flew in had to find their own way out. And, as you can imagine, there aren't a lot of commercial flights flying into Dili these days.
Still she flew in. What emerged was a dramatic piece of reporting, first-hand from Dili, one of the most dangerous capitals in the world. The piece will appear in TIME magazine this week, but here's a sneak preview:
A Drive into the Dark Side
By ZAMIRA LOEBIS Becora
Heading east from Dili to the village of Becora, the highway is deserted except our little convoy--a military truck bearing two tons of rice, and two cars carrying military officers and journalists. Half a dozen Indonesian soldiers guard the sacks of rice, their rifles pointed into the surrounding jungle. Their wariness does not inspire confidence.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, two young priests in white robes appear beside the road. After speaking briefly with the truck driver, the pair hop on their motorcycle and lead the way to Becora, where the rice is destined for pro-independence refugees hiding in the mountains near the village of Motaulun.
Reaching the bridge at Motaulun, the priests turn right toward the hills. The river below the bridge has run dry, matching the hot, dusty landscape. The few houses on the slopes nearby are deserted; two of them are on fire. There is no one to be seen, until the two priests stop, followed by the truck and cars behind them. People begin to emerge from the forest. Within minutes, two dozen--mostly men, with some women and children--stand near the truck, listening to the priests giving instructions in the Tetum language. Two men then come down the hill, carrying a wounded man, Martino Makno.
Makno, 30, says he was coming down the hill to meet the truck, to help carry the rice uphill, when he was shot in the right shoulder "by a soldier in Indonesian military uniform." The right half of his body has gone numb; the bullet has lodged in the shoulder. The priests ask the officer in charge to bring Makno to the hospital at military headquarters to be treated. But the officer refuses, telling them to come to the hospital to get medicine. "It's going to be a total headache if I take him with us," the officer says. "The pro-Jakarta refugees will look for him, since he's clearly on their target list." He denies that Makno could have been shot by one of his men. "It's very easy to wear one of our uniforms," he says. "The shot would have killed him if it had been fired by an Indonesian soldier."
As troops unload the sacks of rice, more and more refugees appear--5,000 are said to be hiding in the area--and watch curiously as their compatriots are interviewed by TV crews. When one of the priests tells everyone in Tetum to take the rice to the mountains, the crowd goes wild as people start to fight over the sacks. The priest shouts for them to stop shoving each other, but no one takes notice. "Don't expect people's ears to listen when they're hungry," the other priest says helplessly. By then, the bare hills are lined with hungry faces.
Fortunately for the refugees, more food and medicine are on their way. On Friday some 20 tons of supplies were dropped from C-130 cargo planes, and the Red Cross had begun to fly supplies into Dili's bedraggled Comoro Airport. "We are going to send at least two planeloads of supplies every day from now on," says Cymeon Antoulas, head of the Red Cross Timor office. For these hungry and frightened people, that aid will be as welcome as the international troops soon to arrive.
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