Balibo killings rational: ex-colonel

A former Indonesian army colonel has admitted Indonesian soldiers deliberately
killed the so-called Balibo Five journalists to cover up the invasion of East Timor.

Gatot Purwanto says a rational decision was made to kill the Australia-based
newsmen, contradicting Indonesia's long-held official line they died in crossfire.
"If we let them leave they would say that this was the Indonesian invasion,"
Purwanto, who was a low-ranking special forces soldier when he took part in the 1975
assault on Balibo, told Tempo magazine.
"If we let them go there would be evidence."
Speaking after seeing Robert Connolly's Balibo, the Australian film about the
killings that has been banned in Indonesia, Purwanto said he and his fellow soldiers
had been surprised to find the men in the East Timorese border town.
Purwanto claims his superior Yunus Yosfiah - often accused of ordering the killings
- tried to ask Jakarta what to do about the men as soldiers surrounded the house
where they were hiding.
But those soldiers decided to open fire, before Jakarta responded, after they were
"provoked" by gunfire from the journalists' direction, Purwanto said.
Afterwards, soldiers took the bodies to another house to be burned.
"To make it easier we tried to make them disappear," Purwanto said.
"We would say that we didn't know anything.
"That was our spontaneous reaction at that time."
Purwanto said Connolly's film overdramatised the killings, insisting "there was no
torture".
Purwanto was "honourably discharged" from the Indonesian military after his
involvement in the 1991 Santa Cruz Cemetery massacre in Dili.