Published on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Washington)
Bush Has Chance to Hold Terrorists Accountable
by Amy Goodman
The troops marched slowly, their U.S.-made M-16s raised. It was Nov. 12, 1991, a day that would forever be seared into my memory, and into history. I was reporting in East Timor, a small island nation 300 miles north of Australia, brutally occupied by Indonesia since 1975. A third of the population -- 200,000 Timorese -- had been killed in one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.
Thousands marched that morning toward the Santa Cruz cemetery to remember Sebastião Gomes, yet another young Timorese killed by Indonesian soldiers. I was doing a documentary for Pacifica Radio. My colleague Allan Nairn was writing for The New Yorker magazine.
In a land where there was no freedom of speech, press or assembly, we asked people: 'Why are you risking your lives by marching?'
'I'm doing it for my mother,' one replied. 'I'm doing it for my father,' said another. 'I'm doing it for freedom.' "
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