NSW:Activsts begin inquiry into Australian East Timor role

AAP General News (Australia)
12-04-1999
NSW:Activsts begin inquiry into Australian East Timor role

East Timor activists in Sydney say Australia was complicit in Indonesia's invasion
and 24-year occupation of East Timor and should be investigated by a United Nations war
crimes tribunal.

At the launch of its a so-called "people's inquiry" into successive Australian governments'
actions towards East Timor, the group known as Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and
East Timor said the information it gathered would be passed on to the UN.

A spokesman says the group will be putting a submission that not only the direct perpetrators
of the crime should be brought to account by a UN tribunal, but also those who were accomplices.

The group will present what it says is documentary evidence and feature Australian
and East Timor speakers at what it's calling its "hearings" in capital cities around Australia
this month.

A gathering at Newtown in inner-western Sydney today marked the 24th anniversary of
the beginning of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975.

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KEYWORD: TIMOR SYDNEY (SYDNEY)

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