Killings In East Timor, 16 October 1975

EDM number 1606 in 1997-98, proposed by Don Foster on 24/07/1998.

That this House notes that the British television newsmen Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters were murdered, with three other Australian-based newsmen, at Balibo, East Timor, on 16th October 1975, to prevent them from informing the world that Indonesia had begin its invasion of East Timor; notes that on 22nd May 1998 the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists protested to President Habibie over the appointment of Lieutenant-General Yunus Yosfiah as Indonesia's Information Minister, given his alleged role in the murder of Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters and their colleagues from another television company; notes, further, that the willingness of successive British governments to accept Australian government assumptions that the newsmen died by accident in a civil war appears to have been interpreted by the Indonesian military as British Government approval for genocide in East Timor; and therefore urges Her Majesty's Government to institute its own inquiry into the Balibo murders of 16th October 1975 without further delay.

This motion has been signed by a total of 51 MPs.