---------------------------------------------------------- FREE for JOIN Indonesia Daily News Online via EMAIL: go to: http://www.indo-news.com/subscribe.html - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - Please Visit Our Sponsor http://www.indo-news.com/cgi-bin/ads1 ---------------------------------------------------------- Precedence: bulk AFTER 23 BLOODY YEARS: INDONESIA, EAST TIMOR AND U.S. IMPERIALISM By Deirdre Griswold The Clinton administration and the U.S. Senate are claiming the moral high ground in calling on the Indonesian government to find a "political solution" to the status of East Timor. But they are conveniently forgetting how this small territory became enslaved in the first place. The island of Timor is in the South Pacific. It fell under colonial domination hundreds of years ago. Holland claimed the western half as part of its vast Dutch East Indies. Portugal took over East Timor. Dutch rule ended after World War II when the many islands it had exploited in the Pacific united and became the Republic of Indonesia. However, Portuguese colonial rule continued in East Timor until 1974 when, weakened by the loss of its African colonies, Portugal yielded to the independence movement led by Fretilin, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor. East Timor's independence was short lived. Some 30,000 Indonesian troops invaded the small country on Dec. 7, 1975. Nearly a quarter century of brutal occupation and heroic resistance have followed. Some 200,000 Timorese people are estimated to have died in this unequal struggle--about a third of the total population. The leader of the independence movement, Xanana Gusmao, has long been imprisoned, along with many others. Now, for the first time in all these years, top officials of the Indonesian government-- President B.J. Habibie, Information Minister Yunus Yosfiah and Foreign Minister Ali Alatas--have made statements indicating that independence could be an option if the people of East Timor reject autonomy in a referendum. So far, this has not been translated into any action, such as removing troops from East Timor, disbanding paramilitary thugs or releasing political prisoners. The East Timor Action Network reports that the killing of Timorese civilians by the Indonesian military continues. However, even a mention of the possibility of independence would have been impossible just a year ago. What has happened is that the reign of General Suharto as Indonesian head of state has ended. Suharto had been the strongman running Indonesia ever since a bloody military coup in 1965. The 1975 invasion of East Timor was carried out under his orders. Economic crisis sinks Suharto Suharto was a casualty of the severe economic crisis gripping Indonesia that last spring led to massive demonstrations demanding his resignation. When the protests began to move from peaceful student marches to street fighting with the military involving masses of poor people, he finally stepped down, leaving Habibie in charge. The U.S. Senate recently passed a resolution, SR 237, that called on the Indonesian government to enact political reforms and protect human rights. It also urged the United States to work actively to support self-determination for the East Timorese. But it is deceptive, to say the least, for the U.S. government to lecture Indonesia today about East Timor, or to deplore the human rights situation there. For it was Washington that secretly backed Suharto's 1965 coup, which led to the decimation of the Indonesian progressive movement. Estimates ran as high as one million people slaughtered by the military in fascist pogroms. And Washington also gave Suharto its blessing for the invasion of East Timor. The day that Indonesia launched its troop ships--Dec. 6, 1975--U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on a state visit. There was no uproar when they returned to Washington amid news of the invasion. No cries of betrayal that Suharto had lied to them. It was business as usual. In all the years since, as news of the brutal suppression of the Timorese struggle filtered out, the Pentagon went on with its training of the Indonesian military. U.S. corporations like Mobil, Atlantic Richfield, Tenneco, Union Carbide, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Alcoa, Freeport Sulphur and Uniroyal lined up for contracts to exploit Indonesia's rich oilfields, minerals and timber. A low-paid work force, mostly women, was rounded up for sweatshops making high-priced sneakers and other clothing for the West. None of this has stopped now that Suharto has "retired." In fact, the imperialists see Indonesia's deep economic depression and the widespread opposition to Suharto as an opportunity to take the reins of the economy more tightly into their own hands. Oil companies target Pertamina Take, for example, what is happening to Indonesia's biggest state-owned monopoly, Pertamina, which controls the nation's petroleum industry. Pertamina was Suharto's way of making sure that some of the great wealth being extracted from Indonesia by foreign oil companies stayed in the hands of his family and cronies. Suharto did not nationalize the oil. On the contrary, Pertamina served the interests of foreign capital very well, as seen in the title of an article in the July 1973 issue of Fortune magazine: "Oil and Nationalism Mix Beautifully in Indonesia." However, the general had to balance his own profiteering with more popular measures, like keeping gas prices low and providing a certain number of middle-class jobs for Indonesians who would become a social cushion for the military regime. But now, all this is under attack. A report in the Dec. 24, 1998, Far Eastern Economic Review says that "as the spirit of reform spreads in Indonesia," legislation is working its way through the parliament that would break up Pertamina's monopoly in refining, distributing and selling oil. The resulting competition--from foreign oil companies--will help the government "peel away subsidies that provide Indonesians with some of the world's cheapest petrol, diesel fuel and kerosene." Indonesian workers and farmers are already reeling from currency devaluations, soaring prices and mass layoffs. This "reform" will make their situation much worse. The drive to break up Pertamina is coming from foreign investors who criticize it as corrupt and inefficient. One executive at a Western oil company said, "What we want is Pertamina off our backs so we can regain control of our businesses." "Another issue ...," says the Review, "is personnel. Not only does Pertamina prohibit them from firing, hiring or promoting anyone without approval but also they say it often applies pressure to replace foreigners with Pertamina-chosen Indonesians." This campaign by foreign, largely U.S., capital to sweep aside any obstacles to their total control over the economy is accompanied by sweet diplomatic talk about democracy, reform and respect for human rights. While born-again oil companies like Mobil and Atlantic Richfield wax suddenly indignant over Suharto's corruption, it is the threat of Indonesian nationalism that they find particularly hard to take. "Pertamina's backers are taking shelter behind a web of laws rooted in the 1945 constitution," says the Review, "stipulating that Indonesia's natural resources belong to the state and that economic areas affecting people's livelihood shouldn't be in private hands." >From U.S. imperialism's point of view, the invasion of East Timor in 1975 was important to slap down a revolutionary outpost that was seen as a potential Asian Cuba. Vietnam had just become free. So had Cambodia and Laos. Washington was fuming. An example had to be made. But now, after so many bloody years, the war is a diversion from the larger task at hand: stabilizing Indonesia in the post-Suharto era so that the real rulers, the imperialist banks and corporations, can continue to skim off superprofits from this fourth most populous nation on earth. Before the 1965 coup, when the independence leader Sukarno was president, the buzzwords used by the imperialist sharks to ingratiate themselves with newly independent nations weren't "human rights" or "democracy" as much as "foreign aid." After many struggles against bribery, subversion and CIA dirty tricks, Sukarno shocked the West by declaring, "To hell with your aid!" He was right. The military "aid" Washington provided was really used to train the counter-revolutionaries who overthrew the Sukarno government. Any high-sounding statements from the U.S. government today about reform in Indonesia should be regarded the same way: as poison pills with sugar coating.*** ---------- SiaR WEBSITE: http://apchr.murdoch.edu.au/minihub/siarlist/maillist.html ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Didistribusikan tgl. 30 Apr 1999 jam 07:06:01 GMT+1 oleh: Indonesia Daily News Online <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.Indo-News.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
