Sir, - I write to condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the murder of my fellow journalist, Sander Theounes, in the Dili suburb of Becora on September 21st. Sander, who had been the Financial Times's Jakarta correspondent since 1997, also worked for the Christian Science Monitor and the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland and had been a correspondent in Central Asia.
He was shot dead after approaching a roadblock with his local motorcycle driver. Armed men wearing Indonesian uniforms fired on them, even though they had already turned away.
I met Sander Theounes on several occasions in Dili's Hotel Turismo and Hotel Mahkota; he always carried himself with extreme professionalism. He did not shrink from the obvious dangers his work there entailed, but neither did he see any glamour or machismo in the job of correspondent in a war zone.
His death illustrates the increasing campaign of brutality and intimidation carried out by the thugs and torturers of the "prointegration" death squads and their Indonesian military tutors. The strategy is to frighten foreign journalists into staying away from Timor and to take revenge on the civilian population for daring to challenge the army bullies in Jakarta.
I only hope that his killers do not escape justice as has happened with virtually all who have blackened the recent history of the territory. - Yours, etc.,
Tom Farrell, Elm Mount Road, Dublin 9.