António Tomás Amaral da Costa

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António Tomás Amaral da Costa (2019)

António Tomás Amaral da Costa , fighting name Aitahan Matak , is a former East Timorese freedom fighter. As coordinator, he is head of the CPD-RDTL (as of 2016), an organization of the veterans of the liberation struggle against Indonesia (1975-1999).

Career

In 1977, as a Social Democrat, Costa was imprisoned in FRETILIN by supporters of the Marxist-Leninist wing and locked in a pigsty for a week. In 1979 he and about 500 other FRETILIN supporters were taken prisoner by Indonesian Battalion 202. Costa was tortured with electric shocks and many other prisoners were murdered. In 1981, Costa was arrested again and tortured with electric shocks. In 1983, he was hung by his legs at the Military Police Headquarters (Korem) in Balide until they broke. The torture was used to extract confessions and accusations from other prisoners.

In August 1983, Costa was arrested in Dili after the Kraras incident . It was found that he was keeping funds for the resistance. Together with 68 other East Timorese freedom fighters, he was transferred to the prison in West Timorese Penfui without a trial . Each of them received only a spoonful of rice as a daily ration. Only 14 East Timorese were alive when the International Committee of the Red Cross reviewed the prisoners' conditions in August 1984. The survivors ate papaya leaves . This is where Costa's battle name comes from, which means "green (raw) leaves" in German. That same year, Costa was transferred back to the Becora prison in Dili and sentenced to three years in prison. In 1992, he was locked in a dark cell for three months and tortured. In 1993 he was forced to take a blood oath in which he had to drink blood with young people from all 13 districts of East Timor . In 1994, 1997 and 1999, Costa was arrested and tortured again.

In 1990 the Comité Executivo da CNRM na Frente Clandestina was founded in Dili, which organized the work of the various resistance groups in East Timor for the umbrella organization CNRM . Costa became the vice secretary of that executive committee.

In 1999 the Indonesian occupation ended and in 2002 East Timor became an independent state. Costa became the head of the veterans organization CPD-RDTL, which opposed the state on many points and called for a return to the 1975 constitution . On June 15, 2007, Costa was sentenced to eight months of house arrest and one year probation by the Dili District Court for defamation. He claimed that in 2004 police officers shot two CPD-RDTL supporters in Bobonaro . In 2012, Costa and his supporters occupied land in Suco Clacuc , which he wanted to use to found a municipality. In 2014, the National Parliament of East Timor declared the CPD-RDTL a threat to the constitutional order. Costa turned himself in to the authorities and was under house arrest for a while.

In 2018, Costa is Vice President of the Fundação de Desenvolvimento de Formação e Capacitação (DEFORCA).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Timor Agora: CPD-RDTL SEI LA PARTISIPA ELEISAUN 2017 , June 3, 2016 , accessed on June 4, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b "Chapter 7.6 Political Trials" from the "Chega!" Report of the CAVR (English)
  3. ↑ a b Chega Exhibition
  4. ↑ "Chapter 7.4: Arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment" (PDF; 2.5 MB) from the "Chega!" Report of the CAVR (English)
  5. ↑ UNSW Canberra: Companion to East Timor - Massacres in the 1980s , accessed June 21, 2019.
  6. ↑ "Part 5: The History of the Conflict" (PDF; 564 kB) from the "Chega!" Report of the CAVR (English)
  7. ^ East Timor Law Journal: [1] , accessed June 21, 2019.
  8. ↑ Ex-Guerrillas Threaten Political Stability in East Timor , April 1, 2014 , accessed March 8, 2015.
  9. ↑ President of East Timor: PR HUSU DEFORCA MUDA MENTALIDADE KONSUMU BA produz , October 8, 2019 , accessed on 8 October of 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Costa, António Tomás Amaral da
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aitahan Matak (battle name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION East Timorese freedom fighter
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century