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Juliana dos Santos says she had been a “conflict trophy” for 22 years when she determined it was time to flee the person she claims stored her a prisoner and a slave.
Days after Timor Leste’s independence poll in 1999, Juliana was kidnapped at 15 by a pro-Indonesia militia chief and taken throughout the border to Indonesian West Timor.
She stated she was raped, compelled to marry her alleged kidnapper Egidio Manek, and gave start to his youngster on the age of 16.
“He took different wives, the fifth one lived with us,” she stated.
“I used to be handled like a slave and compelled to serve him and his spouse. All of the family chores, together with tending the fields, have been left to me.”
Juliana stated her captor was abusive.
“Typically he would beat me till my eyes have been black and swollen,” she stated.
“I might simply keep silent as a result of the kids have been nonetheless small and I attempted to be affected person.”
However in January this yr, Juliana may take no extra.
Along with her youngsters’s encouragement, she made a daring sprint for the border.
However she stated her captor was not keen to let her go and not using a battle.
‘He grabbed my hand and stated I needed to marry him’
Juliana dos Santos and her household nonetheless reside with the trauma of the day she disappeared.
It was per week after the Timorese had voted overwhelmingly to help independence and an finish to the 24-year Indonesian occupation.
For months main as much as the vote, militia gangs waged a marketing campaign of terror throughout Timor Leste, murdering and torturing those that supported independence, burning their properties and livestock, and deporting Timorese civilians by the truckload to West Timor.
Juliana and her household have been amongst tons of who had fled to the Catholic Church at Suai on Timor Leste’s south coast, as militia thugs backed by Indonesian troopers circled with rifles, swords and machetes.
Her 13-year-old brother Carlos was murdered, together with as much as 200 different those who day.
One of many militia leaders who ordered the killings at Suai, Egidio Manek, seized the then-15-year-old Juliana and compelled her into a close-by automobile.
“As we tried to flee the church, Egidio was ready on the door,” she stated.
“He grabbed my hand and stated I needed to marry him. I did not even know him. He compelled me right into a automobile that was closely guarded by his males.
“I used to be crying uncontrollably when my mother and father got here out of the church, however I could not even embrace them as a result of I used to be locked contained in the automobile.”
‘Once we’re older, we’ll observe you’
Juliana stated she was within the possession of Egidio Manek, then deputy commander of the Laksaur militia, which carried out the Suai bloodbath.
The United Nations-administered Particular Panel for Critical Crimes later indicted him and 13 others with crimes in opposition to humanity.
Egidio Manek was charged with a number of counts of homicide, torture, rape, enforced disappearance, deportation and inhumane acts, a lot of them regarding the slaughter at Suai.
The true demise roll stays unclear as a result of like Juliana, tons of of victims — lifeless and alive — have been taken to West Timor. Among the our bodies have been later recovered from mass graves.
UN prosecutors additionally accused Egidio Manek of abducting Juliana dos Santos.
However the trial by no means went forward, as a result of he and so many different militia members had disappeared into Indonesia.
Juliana dos Santos stated she was taken to reside at Betun in West Timor with the captor who referred to as himself her husband.
Juliana stated she was allowed to return to Suai a few occasions when there had been a demise in her household again house.
She was by no means allowed to take her youngsters, which she believes was a means of forcing her to return to her husband.
She stated she was threatened with a beating if she returned even a day late.
However Juliana stated it was her youngsters who lastly persuaded her to flee after their father threatened to stab their mom to demise.
“They informed me, ‘after we are older, we’ll observe you,'” she stated.
“I’m at all times in contact with them. I’ve informed them I will give them cash to get passports. They need to come.”
5 hours in croc-infested water
Juliana’s escape was fraught with hazard.
As she approached the border of Timor Leste, she says Egidio Manek’s nephew and a gaggle of Indonesian troopers arrived at the hours of darkness, searching her with torches.
She was compelled to leap into the crocodile-infested river that runs alongside Timor Leste’s border.
“The water was as excessive as my neck,” she stated.
“I knew that the Indonesian troopers have been after me, and so I swam, greedy maintain of the roots of timber to assist maintain me afloat.”
Juliana stated she spent 5 terrifying hours within the water earlier than she lastly reached a bamboo grove on the Timor Leste aspect of the river.
“All through the night time my father had been calling me always,” she stated.
“Miraculously, I had managed to maintain my telephone away from the water and it was nonetheless working, [but] I had turned it to silent to keep away from being heard by the Indonesian troopers.”
Juliana was lastly a free lady.
‘There are a lot of Julianas nonetheless struggling’
Juliana dos Santos has been essentially the most publicised case amongst tons of — if not hundreds — of Timorese ladies and ladies who have been raped, kidnapped or subjected to sexual slavery within the months and years surrounding Timor Leste’s independence poll.
Some ladies who have been additionally taken to West Timor have since managed to return house, a lot of them with youngsters born from rape.
However what number of extra ladies are nonetheless trapped in Indonesia, maybe nonetheless beneath the management of their kidnappers, is unclear.
A UN report in 2001 stated after the Suai bloodbath alone, 20 ladies have been taken to West Timor.
“We will presume that there are numerous Julianas nonetheless struggling in silence or who perished,” stated ladies’s rights campaigner Kirsty Sword-Gusmao, the previous spouse of Timor Leste’s independence chief Xanana Gusmao.
“However exact figures are unavailable to us.
“The disgrace issue and the normalisation of violence by males in opposition to ladies in Timorese society, significantly at a time of battle, mitigate in opposition to us ever acquiring a real and correct snapshot of the issue of sexual violence and slavery as weapons of conflict.”
Ms Sword-Gusmao took Juliana dos Santos’s case to the UN Human Rights Fee in 2001 and lobbied tirelessly to have her freed.
When she established a Dili-based organisation to lift consciousness of sexual violence in opposition to ladies, Ms Sword-Gusmao wished to honour Juliana.
Juliana is named Alola to her family members, so Ms Sword-Gusmao referred to as her organisation the Alola Basis.
A number of inquiries over time discovered that Indonesia’s safety forces and the militia teams they managed carried out widespread and systematic sexual violence in Timor Leste.
The involvement of Indonesia’s safety forces partly explains why militia leaders like Egidio Manek have evaded prosecution for therefore lengthy.
Kirsty Sword-Gusmao stated Indonesia has refused at hand over greater than 300 of its residents, together with former militia members charged with crimes in opposition to humanity, amongst them Egidio Manek.
“As a substitute of cooperating with the UN, and to go off calls for for a global conflict crimes tribunal, Indonesia arrange its personal advert hoc tribunal,” she stated.
“Just one man… was jailed on account of this course of.”
Egidio Manek denies kidnapping Juliana
Neither the Indonesian army nor the federal government would reply questions the ABC requested about its failure at hand over Indonesians accused of finishing up the violence of 1999.
Egidio Manek denies all allegations in opposition to him.
“What occurred in 1999 is just not my enterprise. It is the enterprise of the state,” he informed the ABC.
“The allegations of violence aren’t true. If that violence truly occurred right here in Indonesia, I might have been prosecuted by now. I might have been jailed.”
Whereas not denying he was a member of the Laksaur militia, Mr Manek stated Juliana dos Santos had chosen to stick with him and their youngsters in West Timor.
“If she wished to return to Timor Leste then she may have. However she stated she would keep right here as a result of her husband was right here,” he stated.
What now for Juliana?
Juliana plans to remain in Timor Leste, and hopes to construct a home and run a small enterprise to assist help her mother and father.
After twenty years of her life have been stolen, she stated she needs her abductor to face justice.
“He deserves to be punished for the struggling he prompted me,” she stated.
“However my youngsters have requested me to overlook about him and I do not take into consideration him in any respect.”
Many Timorese ladies who’ve given start to youngsters from rape have confronted discrimination from their very own households or communities in Timor Leste, and even the Catholic Church.
However Juliana’s mother and father see her as a hero.
“Not even the bravest man may have finished what she did, she was helped by the spirits of our ancestors,” stated her mom, Maria Martins.
“All these years of Alola’s struggling are over now.
“I’m indignant for what he did to my daughter, however I’m simply glad that she has come house.”
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