Armindo Soares Mariano

Armindo Soares Mariano is a politician in the Indonesian occupied East Timor ( Timor Timur ). Here he was the provincial head of the Indonesian state party Golkar .

Career

In the Portuguese colonial times, Mariano was a primary school teacher. As Portugal the withdrawal from its colony prepared which joined Mariano Timorese Popular Democratic Association (APODETI) that a funded Indonesia party that promoted the connection of East Timor to the neighboring state but hardly received support from the population. At that time, Mariano did not play an outstanding role in APODETI.

After the Indonesian invasion in late 1975, Mariano held various administrative posts, initially in the Department of Education. From 1989 to 1994 Mariano was district chief (Bupati) of Dili . He then moved from APODETI to Golkar, became second assistant to the provincial secretary (Asisten II Sekwilda Timtim ) and provincial chairman of Golkar. In 1992 and 1997, Mariano ran for the office of provincial governor, but was defeated both times by José Abílio Osório Soares (unrelated) from APODETI, with whom he had a strained relationship. In July 1997 Mariano was appointed chairman of the provincial parliament on the recommendation of the Armed Forces Group in the Council of Representatives of the People (DPRD).

With the resignation of the Indonesian dictator Suharto , the pressure from students in East Timor to call for an independence referendum increased. Mariano rejected this as a “dream”, instead advocating an autonomy solution within Indonesia and continuing a tough line against the independence activists. Salvador Ximenes Soares , Golkar's moderate national MP and editor of the Suara Timor Timur newspaper , dismissed Mariano from his post in Jakarta on the grounds that the latter was disloyal to the Golkar. When President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie announced the independence referendum for August 30, 1999 , Mariano criticized it sharply and began to campaign aggressively for the autonomy solution from February 1999. He co-founded the pro-autonomy organization Forum Persatuan, Demokrasi das Keadilan (FPDK, German  Forum Unity, Democracy & Justice ), which later became part of the United Front for East Timor (UNIF) with the help of Mariano . Several violent incidents occurred during the campaigns. He strongly advocated arming the pro-Indonesian militias . General Wiranto's proposal to disarm them without disarming the East Timorese resistance movement FALINTIL , he emphatically rejected.

Mariano downplayed the extent of the Liquiçá church massacre on April 6 and called foreign reports a lie. Mariano assumed five dead. Official Indonesian sources speak of 61 deaths, East Timorese sources of up to 200. Militia chief Eurico Guterres Mariano and Domingos Maria das Dores Soares , the successor of Mariano as Bupati of Dili, at the massacre in the house of Manuel Carrascalão with at least 19 dead on April 17th , complicity. On May 11, 1999, a secret meeting of pro-Indonesian militia chiefs, local military chiefs, the secret service and the police took place to discuss plans to commit violence against East Timorese independence activists. The initiator was the Commander in Chief of the Indonesian Armed Forces in East Timor, Colonel Tono Suratman . The organization was taken over by Mariano and Domingos Maria das Dores Soares, which is why the two are considered the leading politicians behind the following actions by the militias. Around 2,000 people died in this last wave of violence . 480,000 people were forced to flee.

In the independence referendum, 78.5% of voters were in favor of independence. Mariano questioned the result because the autonomy solution in Dili received less than 50,000 votes. Mariano had expected that because of the large number of civilian employees and officials there, 100,000 votes would have to be cast for Indonesia in the capital. Mariano and UNIF therefore spoke of election fraud by the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET). Mariano's attempt to persuade the Indonesian parliament not to recognize the referendum and to hold an Indonesian-wide referendum on the independence of East Timor failed.

When the Indonesians withdrew from East Timor in 1999, Mariano fled to the Indonesian West Timor , where he became a member of the East Nusa Tenggara Province Parliament for the Great Indonesia (Gerinda) party in 2009. In 2002 Mariano was the managing director of the University of Timor Aswain (UNTAS).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Masters of Terror: Domingos Maria das Dores Soares ( Memento of the original from August 29, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 27, 2017. 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} ETAN: Joao Taveres - militia leader dies , June 8, 2009 , accessed on November 27, 2018.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Masters of Terror: Armindo Soares Mariano ( Memento of the original from November 28, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 28, 2018. 
4. ↑ "Part 4: Regime of Occupation" (PDF; 563 kB) from the "Chega!" Report of the CAVR (English)
5. ↑ ETAN: E. Timorese exiles could mount revolt against Dili: leader , May 7, 2002 , accessed on November 28, 2018.