THE BEHREND BEACON
3 million southeast residents
sought shelter inland
by Linda Kleindienst
Knight-Ridder New.paper.
TALLAHASSEE. I Li. - 'When Li/
Gallagher left her St. Augustine home
to escape the oncoming fury of Hurri
cane Floyd, she had no idea ‘s here she
would end up. "We just said, "Go north
and west. — she said on Wednesday
from a Tallahassee-area shelter where
she found refuge. Millions of other
coastal d‘Aellers front South Florida to
North Carolina's Outer Banks had the
same idea.
As a result, the largest e acuation
in U.S. history, according to federal
emergency managers, turned into the
nation's biggest traffic jam. More than
million e \ aCIieCS fled homes. con
dominiums, and resort hotels. heading
for the closest highways to mo \ e ay. ay
font a raging storm the site of Texas.
Instead Of a quick escape. however,
man \ found gridlock.
hi Florida alone. about I.; million
residents were ordered out of the path
of possible storm surges. high winds
and drenching rain on Monda . \ and
TLICS(II, - almost Hine Mlles as many
people as the D-I)a\ invasion force
that stormed ashore at Normand‘.. In
rc ic wing how Florida handled the
largest es acuation in its piston - and
the I irst of an entire coastline
Jeb Bush said he found Olth one ma
jor glitch: traffic flow - We normalk
ha \ e a lot of traffic in this state. - Bush
said. - But ire has c serious inlrastruc
ture needs in general. and that play s
out in a dramatic \\ a\ during an enter-
But Bush said the C) acuation order
accomplished IK purpose h), getting
people out ul 11ovd'', ))ith time
ti) spare. -We gave people enough ail
allee notice and their lies Acre not
in leopard). - he said. - That's the most
important thing. The) e)acuitted...
In G et)nl i a , about 500.000 re,ulenh,
11 1 / 4 .!. the vcgiow, (Jul
leading 11, th
into the North Carolina mountains,. In
Georgia. eas,thound lanes, were con-
N, cried to \A estbound to speed the exo-
dus of ears.
13) Wednesday, an estimated
850,000 South Carolina residents also
were on the move, some spending up
to 17 hours in traffic. Go‘. Jim Hodges
was criticized for waiting to() long to
turn Interstate 26 into a one-spay high
way inland. Pat V:\ lie said it took his
hrother-in-law 10 3/4 hours to get from
Charleston to Greens ills - a trip that
Puerto Rico grandly welcomes freed prisoners
!lector obar
L os A mic k, Time.,
SAN JUAN. Puerto Rico. - Vilified
in the United States as unrepentant
terrorists. hut revered by nian i in this
Caribbean island as patriots, a group
of Puerto Rican nationalists freed
from prison President Clinton
were w eleomed here Saturday as
heroes.
Local officials lionited them as
saviors of Puerto Rican honor. Air
port security guards posed for pic
tures with four of the activists. who
just hours earlier had been locked up
in federal penitentiaries. Children
presented them v ith kisses and bou
quets of flowers.
But the activists themselves, part
of a group of 16 offered clemency
last month, seemed subdued. Most
did not promise to continue the mili
tant struggle for Puerto Rican inde
pendence that landed them in prison
nearly two decades ago, when they
were linked to more than 100 bomb
ings on U.S. soil.
Instead, as a throng gathered at
the airport chanted "Freedom, free
dom for the patriots now!" and other
slogans, the freed inmates hinted that
they were being silenced by the strict
conditions of release placed on them
by the Clinton administration.
"My jail has now become a cell
with invisible bars," said Adolfo
Matos, 48. "And the words I speak
will be like those of a caged bird."
Under the conditional clemency
offer by President Clinton last
month, the activists may not associ
WORLD AND NATION
Satellite view of Hurricane Floyd as it approached the Carolina coast
usually lakcs 3 3/4 hours. don't
think the politicians had a clue.'' he
said. "The \ e\ acuated e\ervhod‘, and
the . \ . ., had no plan Imr the nunthers. -
Charleston Nltt or Joseph P. Riles Jr.
\\ as more blunt. "What you're doing
is running the risk ul killing Inv
people. - he said in an uncharacteris
tic attack on Hodges, a lellovt Demo-
At Ica,t 401,Mn North Carolina
re , ,idctlN
mam, ordered to Clr acti
ate Ihe Uutcr Bank for the ,econd
time ihh, month. In Florida. resident,
the Jackson area
humper-to-bumper traffic on all ma
jor escape routes on Tuesday. includ
ing Interstate 10. the only major east
west hiChwati in North Florida. At one
point. state officials asked Central
Florida residents to help relieve sonic
of the congestion h).. avoiding north
bound Interstate 95 and using
Florida's Turnpike.
ate \\ nit uthet Minh. a requirement
that pre \ cut them Irom speak
ing to one . tinothcr. "1 he reed prison
ers must also report . ILlCllay to the
Probatitm ( )dice in San Juan.
Nine of the 12 prisoners released
Frida Irom a \ ',trick of U.S. jails said
then ss ould resettle in Puerto Rico and
mans ,u - rived here on ON. ern ight
nights.
"We arc going to take some time
to see all that We' ye missed these
pears being absent, — said Carmen
Valentin, 53, NA, ho served much ()flier
19 years in prison in Dublin, Calif.
Valentin and the others left behind
a political climate that had become
overwhelmingly hostile to their
cause. Their fate became tied up with
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's
presumptive hid for U.S. Senate in
New York as Republicans charged
that the president's aninesty oiler was
a sly attempt to improve her standing
with the states Puerto Rican voters.
There was little if any mention of
Mrs. Clinton on Saturday as the
former prisoners . arrival was covered
live on local television and radio.
Some reporters were dispatched to
remote. provincial villages to cover
the emotional scenes as the released
prisoners were reunited with family
members they hadn't seen in a uen-
Lration
Mattis, rcprie ed from a 70-year
sentence, traveled to his native town
of Lajas. On the southern end of the
Lajas Mayor Marcos Irizarry told
a local paper that Matos was, "a hero
who never killed anyone or stole any
For some. the trip from Jacksonville
Beach to"Fallahassee, normal]) a three
hour drive, took as long as 12 hours.
Jackson) i Ile Mawr John Iklaney
asked the Florida HighwaN Patrol to
turn one Of I-10's eastbound Lines into
a 5) esthound route. hut patrol officials
said police agencies didn't have the per
sonnel to guarantee that drivers would
he heading in the right direction.
By law l'uesday, however. the state
lolled out tankers to help refuel west
bound motorists who had run out of
gas. "\\ you undertake the largest
evacuation in the state's history, there
will he lessons learned,'' Bush said.
\ c called e\ erg emergenQ manage
ment officer to get MI ormation tram
them and a sense of how we're doing.
We'll he looking at evacuation routes
and how we time and go about evacua
tions."
Bush net On Wednesday with some
of the 500 evacuees who spent the night
in a Tallahassee shelter. Most had left
thine. What he did wi.ts, defend his
country. — The mayor's welcome was
not unusual: even the pro-statehood
daily El Alumlo greeted the news of
the first activist's arrival Friday night
with the headline: "He's Homer'
The \varin reception for the con
victed terrorists may seem. on the sur
face, paradoxical; only a small frac
tion of voters on the island has sup
ported independence in recent refer
endums. But Puerto Rico has a long
tradition of embracing its most radi
cal militants as symbols of national
honor even while rejecting their stated
Residents of the island have been
American citizens since 1917, but
can't vote in presidential elections and
have no voting representative in Con
gress. Even many political moderates
believe that the U.S. Congress has ex
traordinary power over the island's
local affairs.
The sense of victimization has been
heightened by the ongoing contro
versy over the U.S. military presence
at Vieques Island, which the navy uses
as a bombing range. The prisoners
themselves, given sentences of up to
88 years for what some consider a
purely intellectual crime. "seditious
conspiracy," have become national
martyrs to many.
"There's a tremendous groundswell
for these people because they're seen
as defending the culture," said Roland
Fernandez, a sociologist and author of
The Disenchanted Island. "It's all
about dignity and respect."
Such sentiments helped fuel a long
running campaign on the prisoners'
SEPTEMBER 17, 1999
their homes in the wee hours of 'rues
dm. Russell and Lynda Kessler left
their home in Edgewater, near Or
lando. at 4 a.m. and needed six hours
to reach Tallahassee. Along the way.
Kessler said. "We stopped at every
rest area to see if we could find a
motel and, of course. we couldn't."
Part of the problem. he said. was a
lack of signs along the road to help
them decide where to go.
Wednesday evening. Bush took
an aerial tour of I- It) and the connect
ing roads between Jacksonville and
Tallahassee to get a firsthand look at
the e ac uat ion process in reverse - as
residents of northeast Florida re
turned to their homes. "I think we
have the best emergency system in
the country, - Bush said. "We have the
most experienced, sadly. And be
cause of that, we have a very good
stein. But there's always more that
\\e can do. We'll learn from this and
make it better.''
behalf here and elsewhere. This year,
their supporters submitted 75,000
signatures to the White House de
manding their freedom.
Alter Clinton offered conditional
clemency last month, more than
100,000 people marched in San Juan
to call for their unconditional re
lease.
At the same time, sentiment in
American political circles could not
have been more different. Although
prosecutors never linked the prison
ers to any deaths or injuries, the
clemency offer was seen as a surren
der to terrorism.
Last week, the U.S. House voted,
31 1-41, to condemn Clinton's action.
The Senate will vote on a similar
resolution Monday. A draft text con
demns the President for making a
"deplorable concession to terror
ists."
Elizam Escobar, freed from a 68-
year-sentence he was serving in
Oklahoma, was one former prisoner
to express the defiant tone that made
the inmates famous during their tri
als in the early I 980 s, when many
declared themselves "prisoners of
war" and refused to participate in
any legal proceedings.
Escobar promised to comply with
the conditions of clemency, but also
said he would "do everything pos
sible to behave in a way that is wor
thy of Puerto Rican history. We will
try to open new trenches in the
struggle."
PHOTO NOAA WEBSITE
Evidence points to
systemic killings in Timor
by Doug Struck
and Keith B. Richburg
The Washington Post
KUPANG, Indonesia - Jani thought he
was safe on the ferry. After three days
of terror in East Timor, the boat would
take him and two college friends to
refuge, he thought.
Then the militiamen hoarded. No
young men may leave East Timor, they
announced as the boat prepared to de
part. Jani, 27, tried to hide; the mili
tiamen caught his friends. "Are there
any others'?" the militia demanded.
Jani recalls. "No, no other young
men," replied his friends in a last gift
of kindness.
They marched Armando Gomez,
29, and Armando DiSilva, 30, to the
front of the boat and killed them be
fore 200 refugees. Gomez's body was
dumped in the sea: DiSilva's on the
ground by the dock.
Jani raced through the boat.
"Please help me," he whispered to the
other refugees. A mother motioned to
him to hide between her and her chil
dren. The searching militiamen walked
by.
The account of Jani. now a fearful
refugee in western Timor, adds to the
mounting evidence that victims of the
murderous rampage in East Timor, fol
lowing the territory's overwhelming
vote for independence from Indonesia,
were systematically culled from the
others.
Young men, political opponents,
Roman Catholic clergy and anyone
else suspected of favoring the indepen
dence opposed by the militias were
targeted, in a chilling echo of the tech
niques of systematic killing seen in
Kosovo.
In the capital, Jakarta, on Monday,
the top U.N. official for human rights
said she had gathered consistent and
credible evidence that members of the
Indonesian armed forces and police
engaged in a "well-planned and sys
tematic policy of killings, displace
ment, destruction of property and in
timidation- that could lead to prosecu
tions before an international tribunal.
Mary Robinson, the U.N. high corn
missioner for human rights, said Presi
dent B.J. Hahibie agreed in a Monday
meeting on the need for an interna
tional commission of inquiry, the first
step toward establishing a hill-fledged
criminal tribunal, similar to the war
crimes panels set up after the genocide
in Rwanda and the massacres in the
former Yugoslavia.
She said it's urgent for an interna
tional peacekeeping force to he de-
ployed quickly to begin amassing evi
dence because "there has been some
burning of bodies and dumping of bod
ies into the sea" as the perpetrators of
East Timor's massacres attempted to
"cover up tracks."
But she said the scale of the abuses
was so massive, and the witnesses so
numerous, in Darwin, Australia, and
in the refugee camps of western Timor,
that a committee of experts should eas
ily find enough evidence for prosecu
tions, and members of the armed
forces, or TNI as it is called here, likely
would be implicated.
"I don't know how far up the scale
that can be traced," Robinson said,
- but certainly there will be account
ability on a significant number wear
ing army uniforms or in a position of
local authority."
Besides the killing and the forced
expulsion from East Timor's cities,
Robinson said relief agencies told her
of, "very worrying allegations of rapes
of women," in refugee camps in west
ern Timor. She said those accounts
must he verified.
The move to begin an international
inquiry into the Indonesian military's
conduct in East Timor is a delicate one
for Hahihie, given his precarious rela
tionship with the armed forces and his
need to secure military backing if he
is to have any chance of being re
elected next month when the People's
Consultative Assembly, one of two
Indonesian parliaments, convenes to
choose the country's next president.
No member of the armed forces
attended Habibie's meeting Monday
with Robinson at Merdeka, the presi
dential palace.
Marzuki Darusman, chairman of
Indonesia's National Human Rights
Commission, attended the session, and
said the initial inquiry commission will
likely involve Indonesian investiga
tors hut also have international ex
perts: the panel, he said, could he
given "a certain status or recognition
bv the U.N."
Here in Kupang, the militias "had
names of all of the (pro-independence)
party members, and they were killing
them one by one," a refugee said.
"The militias had names, pictures,
addresses. They had lists," Jani said.
"They went to the houses and to the
port and to the police headquarters,
and they took people who were pro
independence."
"At night, the militias would come
to the houses," in Dili, the capital of
East Timor, a third refugee said. "They
were looking for young men. The mi-
"Do you want to
live or die?"
-Indonesian militiaman
litias knew that most of the young
people there were for independence.
If they found us, they would kill us."
All of the refugees spoke in secret
ith a reporter, and all pleaded that
their MI names not he used. The mi
litias that terrorized them in East
Timor reign over the refugee camps
here in western Timor, and move
freely in the town. Accounts from the
camps say the militias are searching
for opponents; the refugees fear the
killing lists still exist.
The fear is pervasive, even though
western Timor was supposed to he a
place of safety. Refugees here shun
foreigners, and several refugees
stopped in mid-interview because they
said they were scared. Foreigners and
local journalists aren't allowed inside
the camps. Foreign aid workers do not
enter; Indonesian officials who make
toUrs of the refugee camps insist that
no foreign reporters accompany them.
But in clandestine conversations,
refugees described the campaign of
terror that followed the announcement
of East Timor's vote for indepen
dence.
With a turnout of more than 98
percent, independence was approved
by 78.5 percent of the voters.
The fires that soon engulfed so
many homes in Dili were not set ran
domly, but were used to drive people
from their homes, said a 23-year-old
student.
"They threatened us with guns and
machetes, and we heard all the men
were going to he killed and the houses
burned. They came at night to our
house, hut I ran out and hid in an
empty Red Cross house, - he said. The
next night, his home was burned. His
family fled, and he doesn't know
where they are.
The refugees also said Indonesian
soldiers encouraged and sometimes
participated in the violence. Jani said
he heard soldiers at the port order the
militiamen onto the boat before it left.
"The military told the militias to go
ahead and get the pro-independence
people on the boat. They said, 'lf you
don't do it, we will,' " he said.
The accounts also include acts of
bravery. A 24-year-old seminarian
named Mario fled to a church in Dili
after his house was torched and his
family scattered. In the days after the
referendum results, the militiamen
prowled past the church and used any
pretense for violence, Mario said.
"I saw them kill a man with hedge
clippers," he said. "They put the
blades around his neck and squeezed
them together."
More than 100 refugees were gath
ered at the church when a militiaman
aimed his weapon at them. Mario said
he stepped in front of the gunman.
"The gunman grabbed my collar,
yanked me toward him and held a pis
tol to my head," said Mario, 24. The
militiaman asked, "Do you want to
live or die?"
told him, 'As you wish.' I think
he was surprised by my answer, and
he let me go. He said, 'Someday you
will be a priest.' I told him, 'Then we
can live in peace.' "
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