Precedence: bulk INDONESIA ALERT! October 1999 EAST TIMOR: SCORCHED EARTH, BETRAYED HOPE John Roosa The East Timorese were crying the morning the results of the ballot were announced. After 24 years of crying tears of mourning, they could finally cry tears of joy. The United Nations Mission to East Timor (UNAMET) declared the morning of September 4 that nearly eighty percent of the population had chosen independence instead of continued Indonesian sovereignty. Outside on the streets, one would never have guessed that the majority of East Timorese had won a historic victory. There were no celebrations. The streets were eerily empty. Nearly everyone was inside their homes listening to the news over the TV and radio. They silently embraced each other and whispered prayers but did not venture outdoors to shout “Viva Timor Leste” and wave their nation’s flag. Dili, like the rest of East Timor, was still under the control of the Indonesian military and its East Timorese camp followers, those the military had organized into militias. They had been threatening for months to launch a major attack regardless of whether they won or lost. If they won perhaps some of them had fooled themselves into believing they might they would have a green light to kill off the pro-independence forces. If they lost, they would wreak vengeance on the society, destroy the infrastructure, and leave an independent East Timor in ruins. They were planning on a lose-lose situation for the East Timorese. For those of us staying in East Timor, it was always a bit of joke to be asked if the military was behind the militias. The militias were directly integrated into the military. It was not as if the militias had an autonomous organization of their own. The government publicly announced in May that militia for Dili, Aitarak, was an official “civil defense squad” (PAM Swakarsa). The top military commanders for East Timor were on its “advisory board.” The militia leaders openly bragged of their connections with military officers. They walked around with walkie-talkies on which they received hourly orders from the military, as some of us confirmed by listening with our own walkie-talkies. Most nights they were seen en masse going in and out of the military headquarters (Korem) and the police station (Polda). Some members of the militias were merely soldiers out of uniform. The military and its militias slowly tightened their grip over East Timor in the days after the August 30 ballot. Militia roadblocks appeared on all the roads on August 31. Eurico Gutteres, the 27 year-old junior mafioso that the military had turned into the militia leader for Dili, appeared at the airport and docks on the 31st to announce that he would determine which East Timorese could leave. Travelers on the roads in and out of Dili, including foreigners and Indonesians, were supposed to obtain a permit signed by Eurico. The police spokesman, Capt. Widodo, told the press that the militia actions were “understandable and conducted under police supervision. They just want everyone to remain in East Timor.” Having restricted the mobility of the East Timorese, the military’s militias then began their offensive. On September 1, the militias attacked the neighborhoods near the UNAMET headquarters in Dili. They hacked to death one youth in full view of the TV cameras. They beat up several journalists (including the BBC’s Jonathan Head) and waved guns at foreign electoral observers. The residents fled for the hills to the south. Hundreds of refugees from previous militia attacks sheltering in a school scrambled over razor wire to get into the UNAMET compound. Black smoke from the burning houses billowed up the hillsides. Predictably, the military claimed that this unilateral attack by militias on unarmed civilians was a “clash between pro-independence and pro-Indonesian groups.” Throughout East Timor, the militias began attacking UNAMET offices and their East Timorese staff. By the time UNAMET announced the results on September 4, it had almost ceased to exist; nearly all of its district offices had been closed down due to militia assaults and its own headquarters was being fired upon. The militias began the full-scale offensive on the 5th as foreign journalists and observers desperately boarded charter flights out. They roamed the streets at night shooting up pre-selected targets, such as the office of the human rights organization Yayasan HAK where I was staying. The gunfire was constant in Dili until dawn. I was in the police headquarters on the morning of the 6th trying to arrange a police escort for myself and others to the airport, past the large Aitarak post just down the street from the police station. Eurico himself, carrying a machine gun, freely walked in and around the grounds of the police station, checking to see if there were any supporters of independence among the refugees sheltering the station. Meanwhile, the militiamen brought in their loot to store at the station, including some vehicles they had stolen from the Yayasan HAK office. I learned later from others fleeing that on the day of the 6th the military and its militias systematically went around neighborhoods, forced people to board trucks, and then looted the houses and burned them down. They also attacked Bishop Belo’s residence where thousands of people had taken shelter. That signaled that no place was safe in the cities. The East Timorese fled en masse to the hills or to West Timor. They had trusted the international community that was arranging the ballot to protect them from the consequences of their choice. They were fatally betrayed. International observer groups, such as the International Federation for East Timor (IFET) with which I worked, had warned the United Nations weeks before that violence was expected after the August 30 ballot. Observers demanded that the UN arrange for troops to be sent either before or immediately after the ballot to deter the military and its militias from fulfilling their threats. It is hard to fault UNAMET for going ahead with the vote knowing that violence likely. The major countries expected to send troops the United States, Australia, United Kingdom had refused to discuss the formation of an international force prior to the ballot. UNAMET could not delay the ballot on the assumption that these countries would suddenly change their policy of relying on Indonesia to “provide security.” UNAMET put as much pressure as it could on Indonesia and hoped that the military would refrain from carrying out the threats of violence for fear of the potential international reaction. The bulk of the blame for the post-ballot violence rests with the United States. As the leading military nation, it was responsible for ensuring that some sort of multinational force was ready. Even after the pogrom, the arson, and mass deportation on the 5th, the Clinton administration said that it was not thinking of authorizing a multinational force for East Timor. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Shelton, said the situation did not affect national security as if crimes against humanity and attacks on the UN were irrelevant to national security. The National Security Advisor Sandy Berger callously compared intervening in East Timor with intervening with his daughter to clean up her bedroom as if mass murder was some trivial matter. One has to wonder what was happening behind the scenes at the Pentagon. The US and Australia intelligence agencies monitor the Indonesian military’s communications with sophisticated equipment at Alice Springs. Either the US military was completely incompetent, failing to learn about the plans for a scorched earth operation, or criminally complicit in learning about it beforehand but failing to support a multinational force that could stop it. US policy since the initial Indonesian invasion in 1975 has had the virtue of consistency. That policy was succinctly expressed by the US ambassador in Jakarta at a briefing with journalists as the pogrom was in process: “Indonesia matters, East Timor doesn’t.” According to the political science wonks in Washington, tiny East Timor, with only 900,000 people can be sacrificed for the sake of maintaining good relations with big Indonesia, the fourth largest country in the world. This is an absurd logic for it presumes that crimes committed by the Indonesia government in East Timor do not reflect something rotten in the central government. The same military-dominated government that commits genocide in East Timor commits similar atrocities in the 26 provinces that are legally part of Indonesia. US policy has been to trust in the Indonesian military as the main institution for national stability and has therefore been all too eager to overlook its frequent crimes. If the ambassador was to be honest, he would have said, “the Indonesian military matters, its barbarities do not.” The same tender-heartedness for the Indonesian military can be found among Asian countries, eleven of which are adamantly blocking attempts at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva to convene a war crimes tribunal for the Indonesian generals. The problem, the Asian countries allege, is that Indonesia would be “destabilized” by such a tribunal at a time when it is “democratizing.” We are supposed to be persuaded that generals who destroy East Timor should be forgiven so that they can help bring about civil liberties in Indonesia at a time when the military is shooting youths in Jakarta for protesting a new law that gives the military emergency powers! Perhaps US policy is changing. The Clinton administration has belatedly cut off military sales and threatened economic sanctions. But one should never underestimate the Washington security establishment’s commitment to the principle, whatever its rhetoric to the contrary, that a military government is best for Indonesia. Unless the US clearly abandons its criminal coddling of the generals, they will continue to feel confident to sabotage East Timor and throttle democracy in Indonesia. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Roosa is a historian of South and Southeast Asia. He was an observer with the International Federation for East Timor -- Observer Project (IFET-OP) for the months of July-September 1999. ---------- SiaR WEBSITE: http://apchr.murdoch.edu.au/minihub/siarlist/maillist.html
