Australia's under side
Canberra has looked the other way to protect western business interests in
Indonesia and East Timor: special report
John Pilger
Tuesday October 5, 1999
What is the "international community" really doing in East Timor? After
their arrival almost two weeks ago, Australian troops have secured only the
capital, Dili, and a few towns. In West Timor, fewer than a dozen foreign
aid workers struggle to guarantee the safety of 230,000 refugees, including
35,000 children, while the power of life and death remains with the
Indonesian military.
An explanation is offered in a remarkable interview given by John Howard,
the Australian prime minister, in which he described his government as
Washington's deputy sheriff. What mattered was the "stability" of
Indonesia, and the protection of western business interests. His honesty,
or garrulousness, is to be applauded, along with his historical accuracy.
From the Boxer rebellion to Vietnam, Australians have fought the battles
of the great imperial powers. In 1989, Australian troops were sent to
Bougainville, an island off Papua New Guinea, and site of a huge mining
operation by the multinational Rio Tinto. The Bougainvilleans had taken
over the mine and the island, in a bid for independence.
East Timor is no exception. When Australia's then prime minister Gough
Whitlam met the Indonesian dictator Suharto in 1974, his message was that
the Portuguese colony was Jakarta's for the taking. The two leaders,
reported the Melbourne Age, "agreed last weekend that the best and most
realistic future for Timor was association with Indonesia". The East
Timorese were not asked. One year later, Indonesia invaded.
As the UN security council deliberated on how to respond, the US secretly
re-armed the invaders while the Australian representative at the UN, Ralph
Harry, presented the invasion as a civil war with "elements" of the
Indonesian military. In 1982, Whitlam, although no longer in office, made
an extraordinary appearance at the UN, where he declared: "It is high time
the question of East Timor was voted off the UN agenda."
As he spoke, the sea around East Timor was being explored by Australian
companies for vast deposits of oil and gas: a preliminary act of grand
larceny at the centrepiece of the Australian establishment's "special
relationship" with the Indonesian dictatorship.
Richard Woolcott, Canberra's ambassador in Jakarta who had been tipped off
by the Indonesians that they planned to invade East Timor, set up a
propaganda body, the Indonesia-Australia Institute, funded by the
government. On its board was Paul Kelly, editor-in- chief of Australia's
only national newspaper, the Australian, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Kelly
introduced other editors to Suharto in Jakarta and his newspaper described
the dictatorship, one of the most blood-soaked of the late 20th century, as
"moderate".
For years, none of them heard, or wanted to hear, the cries of the East
Timorese. In 1991, when it was impossible to ignore evidence that hundreds
of unarmed East Timorese had been killed in the Santa Cruz cemetery in
Dili, the Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans, described the massacre
as an "aberration". Major-General Sintog Panjaitan, the senior Indonesian
officer responsible for the massacre, was invited to Canberra as an
honoured guest of the Australian military. Ali Alatas, Indonesia's foreign
minister and principal apologist for that and other massacres, was awarded
the Order of Australia, the country's highest honour.
While Prime Minister Bob Hawke raged against Saddam Hussein's invasion of
Kuwait, saying that "big countries can't expect to invade little countries
and get away with it", he neglected to mention that Australia had
recognised Indonesia's illegal occupation of its small, defenceless
neighbour. A "historic" military pact with Jakarta followed, including
plans for Indonesian-Australian operations in "counter-terrorism". The
proud heirs of Anzac were formally integrated into Indonesia's war effort
against the East Timorese.
In July last year, a senior Australian aid worker in East Timor warned that
the Indonesian military was setting up militia gangs. He was dismissed as
"alarmist". In November, Canberra was told that a 400- member assassination
squad of the Indonesian special forces, Kopassus, had been sent to East
Timor. The defence minister, John Moore, flew to Jakarta and reassured the
regime that Australian policy was to "prop up the institution [of the
military] as best we can".
As this summer's bloody events unfolded, the Howard government was told by
Australian intelligence that Indonesia planned a "scorched earth" in East
Timor following the independence vote. Yet it was on Australia's insistence
that the UN gave the Indonesian military responsibility for the security of
the independence referendum in August - a decision that led inexorably to
the deaths of thousands.
The Australians can now stand back; other, more senior, deputy sheriffs are
on the way. This week, a World Bank team arrives in Dili and the
International Monetary Fund will follow soon. Unless Xanana Gusmao and his
East Timorese leadership are both deft and bold, the freedom for which
their people struggled alone for so long may be quietly lost and their
devastated country, slotted neatly into the globalised system of
exploitation, debt and poverty, known as "stability". They deserve a great
deal more.
--
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