Scenes From East Timor.

• Author: JARDINE, MATTHEW

I left East Timor on September 4, 1999, only hours after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the results of the historic balloting there. Despite widespread acts of terror and intimidation by the Indonesian military and its militia groups, 98.7 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots and 78.5 percent opted for independence.

I was in a convoy of hundreds of cars and trucks heading to Indonesian West Timor. The convoy was made up mostly of Indonesian civil servants and their families fleeing in anticipation of an impending wave of terror. On the edge of Dill, the territory's capital, militia members armed with automatic weapons had set up a roadblock. They scoured our papers to ensure that no East Timorese were traveling with us. Indonesian police officers were present at the roadblock, and uniformed soldiers in trucks passed by. It was clear to all of us that the militias, the Indonesian police, and the military were all working together.

This was my fourth visit to East Timor in the last seven years. The first three times I went there to write about the occupation. But now I was an international observer accredited by the United Nations Assistance Mission to help ensure that the election process worked smoothly.

I arrived in July, and in many ways it was a time of unprecedented hope and political freedom. The National Council of Timorese Resistance, the umbrella group of all major pro-independence organizations, opened an office in Dill and in several other towns, where it held massive demonstrations. Such political expression was unthinkable in years past; anyone who engaged in it would have been arrested, tortured, perhaps killed.

But alongside the exhilaration, there was another feeling, as well: fear.

"They've told us that they will kill us all if independence wins," Francisco told me two weeks before the vote as we sat in the front room of his modest home. Francisco and his family lived across the street from a post of Aitarak (Thorn), the local militia group, in a poor neighborhood in central Dill. The family, well-known supporters of independence, was under constant threat. Francisco's wife, Maria, rocked nervously in her chair, and she rarely raised her voice above a whisper. (Francisco and Maria asked that their real names not be used.)

Aitarak members carried machetes and automatic weapons around the neighborhood, and they sported T-shirts that warned of a "bloodbath" if East Timor's voters rejected continued association with Indonesia.

Such intimidation was pervasive. Just three days before the August 30 ballot, a group of armed militia members attacked and, firebombed the office of the National Council of Timorese Resistance in the town of Lospalos. It took the police one hour and fifteen minutes to arrive on the scene, even though the police station is...