In Front of hundreds of curious villagers gathered in the mountain town of Aileu, a dozen East Timor and Indonesian officials lined up on a wooden stage to have their fingers pricked so that drops of their blood fell into glasses of whisky.
The contents were then poured into a bowl shaped like a bed-pan and each drank a spoonful from the resulting cocktail.
This ceremony of blood-bonding between East Timorese and Indonesians was the high point of a pro-integration rally staged in Aileu, which lies 80 km south of the East Timor capital Dili, on a forest road fringed with poinsettia and other tropical blossoms.
In contrast to recent militia rallies in Dili, there were no guns on display, but this did not lessen the apprehension of pro-independence inhabitants that it would be followed by attacks on their houses, as happened elsewhere.
I was told by a woman who declined to give her name that some villagers who openly came out in support of independence in the heady days of last year after Indonesia's President Suharto was toppled were believed to be on a list of people to be singled out by the militia.
A schoolteacher said that every government employee had been ordered to attend and the headman in each village in the district had been instructed to gather 40 people each for the rally, which many of the mountain people attended wearing traditional dress and head feathers.
As additional encouragement they were all given a free lunch of rice and chicken in cardboard boxes and treated to pop music as well as speeches.
Col Surapto Tarman, the Indonesian-born administrator for Aileu, announced the formation of a new militia group to be called Ahi, meaning "Fire".
"We are a peace-loving people", he said, "but if need be we will go to war."
The rally was one of a series held throughout East Timor in recent weeks with the backing of the army to demonstrate the ability of pro-Indonesian groups to mobilise people.
Some militia leaders have grown so confident of their power that they now boast that the Indonesian army should withdraw before the July vote on autonomy to show that they can prevail in the political war over East Timor's future.
A leading member of Ahi, with long black hair and a red and white Indonesian flag draped over his head, said: "We will show the world we support integration and that ABRI [Indonesian army] can leave."
The government is the only employer in the district where the people are mostly subsistence farmers living on corn and vegetables and growing some coffee and oranges as cash crops.
An army guard was put around the house of Bishop Carlos Belo in Dili yesterday. Mr Manuel Carrascalao, a resistance leader whose teenage son was among those killed at the weekend, left the bishop's house where he had taken refuge. He agreed to go only because the bishop feared his home would come under attack, sources said. Mr Carrascalao was among 96 people who took refuge at police headquarters, said Col Timbul Silaen, East Timor's police chief.