Liberal and Labor cover-up: terror in Timor
By Rohan Pearce and Nikki Ulasowski
As Indonesian-sponsored militias create chaos throughout East Timor and the Indonesian government threatens to send East Timorese Resistance leader Xanana Gusmao back to prison, past enemies of an independent East Timor are repositioning themselves to take advantage of possible independence.
Successive Australian governments have had a long-standing relationship with the Indonesian dictatorship. Australian governments have consolidated business and military links while ignoring human rights abuses.
In a March 13 interview on the SBS Dateline program, former ALP foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans claimed that the ALP has "always been committed to self-determination" for East Timor. He stated that the "circumstances until the economic meltdown and what's followed from it have made it obviously very difficult for that self-determination process to work itself out, certainly to the extent that is now happening. But we [the ALP] did absolutely the best we could for the East Timorese people over that entire period."
Evans stated that there was no reason why the ALP should apologise for its past relationship with the Indonesian regime. He added that while the media have treated "as a great innovation" the change to the ALP's platform on East Timor in 1998, "it was nothing of the kind".
With a "uniquely historical" perspective, Evans claimed that "Gough Whitlam acknowledged [the right of the East Timorese people to self-determination] in 1975, successive ALP prime ministers and foreign ministers did that in the late '80s and early '90s — I did it before the International Court of Justice and in the Timor Gap case and there's absolutely nothing new about that commitment. What is new is that the circumstances have obviously dramatically changed and made it possible for that commitment to be effectively and fully realised in a way that simply wasn't the case before."
While Evans pleads "don't let's rewrite history", this is exactly what he is attempting to do. How does the ALP's current rhetoric on East Timor stack up against its real record?
Leaked classified Foreign Affairs documents, published in the March 6 Sydney Morning Herald, state that Whitlam told Indonesian dictator Suharto on September 6, 1974, that East Timor's "independence would be unwelcome to Indonesia, to Australia and to other countries in the region". According to Evans: "Mr Whitlam made it perfectly clear ... that his preference for the long-term future of East Timor is that it become part of Indonesia. He thought it was in everybody's interest, including the East Timorese, that that occur but he made it absolutely clear in 1975 that he supported an internationally acceptable act of self-determination."
Unfortunately for the East Timorese, self-determination was not "internationally acceptable". This is indicated by a secret cable sent to the then head of Foreign Affairs, Alan Renouf, by Australian Ambassador Richard Woolcott, just prior to Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. The cable stated: "I would suggest that our policies should be based on disengaging ourselves as far as possible from the Timor question ... leave events to take their course and, if and when Indonesia does intervene, act in a way which would be designed to minimise the public impact in Australia and show privately understanding to Indonesia of their problems."
Prior to the invasion, in 1974, a foreign affairs briefing by Whitlam stated, "An independent Timor would be an unviable state and a potential threat to the area".
Today, Evans claims that the ALP was "trying very hard to get the military out [of East Timor and] to get the maximum degree of autonomy and that effort was recognised over a long period".
This is in contradiction to the response of the Australian government following the 1991 Dili massacre. At the time, Evans described the Indonesian reaction to the massacre as "positive and helpful" and "very encouraging". He said the more than 200 victims unaccounted for "might simply have gone bush". When it was proved that these people had been killed, Evans described the massacre as "an aberration". Within two months of the killings, 11 more contracts under the Timor Gap Treaty were awarded to Australian oil and gas companies.
Evans' excuse: "The Timor Gap Treaty [did not in] any way adversely [impact] upon the interests of the East Timorese people ... now everyone acknowledges that with independence the East Timorese will step straight into the shoes of the Indonesians. The East Timorese would have been indirect beneficiaries of [the treaty] in the past; now they will now be direct beneficiaries. In the process of negotiating that treaty, we put very much back on the rails our relationship with Indonesia. I'm very proud of being able to stitch that relationship back together, but to do so in a way which in no way undermined our very fierce and very strong and continuing commitment to the human rights of the East Timorese."
Liberal policy
Do the Liberals have a different policy on East Timor? Australian foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer has stated, "Australia has never considered the East Timorese anything but Indonesian since 1979".
Despite announcing on January 12 that the government recognised the East Timorese right to self-determination, a media release by Downer stated that the "long-term prospects for reconciliation [in East Timor] would be best served by the holding of an act of self-determination at some future time, after a substantial period of autonomy". This policy change "does not alter the government's position, which continues to recognise Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor".
Downer has stressed in interviews that he does not think a referendum on independence is a viable solution. This is because it would lead to further "bloodshed".
This bloodshed is already occurring as East Timorese die at the hands of militias armed and encouraged by the Indonesian government. Downer has accepted the Indonesian government's denial of any links between the Indonesian army and the militias.
As the Australian government walks a fine line between maintaining its ties with Indonesia and courting any potential East Timorese government, it still refuses to cut military ties with the Habibie regime. Downer stated, "the military contact we have with the Indonesian armed forces has been a very useful vehicle for us to encourage the exercise of restraint ... and our view is that by and large the military have exercised restraint".
Defence minister John Moore said on April 9: "We think that ABRI [the Indonesia armed forces] is a very important part of the Indonesian nation, and our training with them can help Indonesian troops in understanding the role of democracy in the armed forces".
Unfortunately, these military ties have not led to the "exercise of restraint" nor have they established greater "democracy" in Indonesia. Since taking power in 1965, the Indonesian armed forces have killed more than 1 million people in Indonesia, more than 250,000 in East Timor and tens of thousands more in Aceh and West Papua.
While Evans may desperately attempt to "rewrite history", the record of both the ALP and Coalition governments demonstrates not only their active backing of the Indonesian dictatorship, but also their complicity in the human rights atrocities it has carried out.