Regensburg, 11. September 2024
At the moment, the Southeast Asian country of East Timor, a predominantly Christian country, is the focus of the Catholic world’s attention: Pope Francis is there! The visit also marks a quarter of a century in the past: the Jesuit Father Karl Albrecht, a German with an Indonesian passport, was martyred there on the night of September 11-12, 1999.
1999 was an eventful year for East Timor. On August 30, a referendum was held on the independence of the small island state, in which 78.5 percent of the population voted in favor of secession from Indonesia. From then on, the Indonesian army and civil administration only pursued a “scorched earth policy.” They supported militias that murdered almost 2,000 people and destroyed more than three quarters of the entire infrastructure; well over 200,000 residents were displaced. This was the background to the violence in which the Jesuit priest Karl Albrecht, a German with an Indonesian passport, was also murdered.
The Jesuit and philosophy professor Father Franz Magnis-Suseno writes in the “German Martyrology of the 20th Century” about his fellow brother Father Karl Albrecht, who was murdered a quarter of a century ago, that he had become a witness to his Christian faith by “not running away in the moment of greatest danger, but staying with the people who needed him, despite the risk, of which he was fully aware. He remained faithful to them until death. He had found Christ in the frightened, hungry, homeless refugees of East Timor.”
In the same biography, Father Magnis-Suseno tells us that Father Albrecht was an eyewitness to the Santa Cruz massacre on November 12, 1991, and that this experience had a decisive influence on his attitude. That was a low point in the oppression of the freedom-seeking population of East Timor by the Indonesian occupiers and a turning point in the history of the former Portuguese colony. The mass murder is named after the cemetery where a memorial procession of several thousand East Timorese went that day for the independence campaigner Sebastiao Gomes, who was shot dead in a church on the night of October 27-28, 1991. Among the mourners were many children and old people. Some units of an Indonesian battalion eventually followed them, while other units, together with the military police, were already waiting for them at the cemetery.
As people gathered there to lay flowers at the grave, the soldiers opened fire on October 27, 1991. At least 271 people were killed, with some of the victims lying defenseless after being shot and stabbed with bayonets or suffocated in a mass grave with corpses. Other injured people who were taken to hospital were later murdered with poison capsules; young women were taken into the care of the military hospital and often raped. Another 270 people disappeared without a trace, which the East Timorese Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) confirmed in its report. Death and terror were intended to silence observers. Film footage by the courageous British journalist Max Stahl brought to light evidence that this was a meticulously planned military operation. In view of these events, which Father Albrecht witnessed, it is a miracle that he continued to muster the courage and strength for years to assist this suffering people.
One explanation for his strength is certainly his deep faith, which Magnis-Suseno reports and which also describes him as a kind, calm, wise, discreet and humorous person. Albrecht was born on April 19, 1929 into a farming family rooted in the Catholic faith in Altusried near Kempten in the Upper Allgäu and grew up with three sisters and a brother. At the age of just 16, he was forced to interrupt his time at high school because the Nazi regime drafted him into military service during the Second World War and used him as an anti-aircraft assistant. On September 16, 1949, he entered the Jesuit novitiate in Pullach near Munich. He soon felt a calling for the mission in India. The order accepted this. In order to improve his necessary English skills, he was first sent to Ireland, where he first studied philosophy and then theology.
After being ordained a priest in Munich in 1957 and spending another time in Austria for the final part of his training in the Jesuit order, Albrecht came to Central Java in Indonesia in December 1958. The goal of India remained unattainable because the Indian authorities no longer issued visas to missionaries. He learned Indonesian in Java and soon came to the capital Jakarta as a chaplain, where he stayed – with a short interruption – for around 30 years. In addition to his service in parishes, his time there was very much marked by social service; he founded Catholic trade union and cooperative initiatives and Caritas, which he headed as director. In order not to miss out on being close to the believers, he was transferred back to the priest’s service, where he worked for ten years until he came to East Timor.
Father Albrecht came to the country, which had been occupied by Indonesia since 1975, in January 1990. Three months earlier, Pope John Paul II had visited there and thereby gave the freedom movement a major boost: Catholic scouts stormed the podium at a public appearance by the head of the Catholic Church and unfurled a protest poster against the Indonesian occupation. The occupying regime reacted with arrests and torture. Father Albrecht could have known where he was going, but this apparently did not shake his decision. He was initially employed in training and later – after a sabbatical year in Germany in 1996 – in social services, particularly for the promotion of women in village development.
In view of the escalation of oppression by Indonesian civilians and military personnel, Father Albrecht became director of the Jesuit refugee service in East Timor at the beginning of 1999. He was also the local liaison officer for the German aid organization “Doctors for Developing Countries”. In July 1999, the father wrote to the Altusried priest Gebhard Schneider and described the situation in the letter as “highly explosive”. Many people had to “endure endless suffering through no fault of their own”, as the priest told the local press.
The events of the night of September 11-12, 1999 can be reconstructed in retrospect as follows: For days, armed paramilitary, pro-Indonesian fighters had been staying at the Jesuit residence in East Timor’s capital Dili, where the 70-year-old lived. The Jesuits initially suspected that they were after the vehicles of the refugee service. The priest had already gone to sleep, but was then startled by noises in the house and looked with a flashlight. He surprised the burglars, presumably Indonesian soldiers. They immediately shot at the unarmed priest. One shot hit him in the stomach. The Foreign Office called the act “a cowardly and cruel murder of a man who had been working for years to protect the poor and persecuted in particular” and a heavy blow “for all those who fought for the universal validity of human rights”.
A few days later, Father Albrecht would have wanted to celebrate a round jubilee with his order: “Now he has sealed his almost 50 years of membership in the Jesuit order with his blood,” writes fellow brother Magnis-Suseno.
Michaela Koller
(say)
