Premiere of Pilger's East Timor sequel
By Michael Goldstein
The Timor Conspiracy is dissident journalist John Pilger's documentary sequel to Death of a Nation. In the latest film, Pilger probes the policies of the governments of the United States, Britain and Australia towards Indonesia and East Timor, and exposes their duplicity.
Pilger mercilessly reveals the cooperation of the US and Britain with Australia in permitting, even supporting, the genocide of the East Timorese by the Indonesian military regime. Pilger graphically demonstrates how the collusion continues at the highest levels of these governments. His trenchant interrogation of key figures in these countries' administrations confirms the awkward fact of their collusion.
Why this collusion? Among the reasons is that multinational companies (and their investors) intent on exploiting the natural resources of East Timor are more comfortable dealing with a monolithic entity such as the Indonesian regime than with independent governments of small nations.
In this gut-wrenching film, Pilger shows how Washington, London and Canberra have remained silent while the Indonesian military has wreaked havoc on the population of East Timor. When East Timor's Nobel Prize winners, Bishop Belo and Jose Ramos Horta, pleaded with the British government to halt the supply of arms to Indonesia, they were met with incredulity.
In the film, Pilger asks Derek Fatchett, British minister of state for foreign affairs, to justify his country's continued arming of Indonesia so that it can attack and kill innocent men, women and children. He can only mumble repeatedly about his government's "new criteria" for the supply of arms.
In The Timor Conspiracy, Pilger reveals how the Western powers, since Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975, have tried to make the UN "utterly ineffective" — in the words of the former US ambassador to the UN, Daniel Moynihan — on the question of the rights of the East Timorese. We see Moynihan congratulating himself on the success of the mission. For the past 24 years the East Timorese have endured torture and death by their brutal Indonesian masters "for their own good".
The president of Portugal, Jorge Sangaio, tells Pilger that more than 100,000 East Timorese disappeared (the correct figure is closer to 200,000) to consolidate the invasion by Indonesia. Sangaio agrees with Pilger that there is only one word to describe what happened — genocide. What does the former Indonesian ambassador to the UN say to Sangaio's words when confronted with them? You guessed it: bare-faced denial.
Pilger is shown a list, drawn up by the Catholic Church, of 300 children, women and men who were slaughtered in the village of Cristiano in 1983. The names, the dates and even the soldiers who carried out this atrocity are documented. The village no longer exists, and no-one knows the whereabouts of the remaining 100 people who once lived in this village.
In one of the most obscene sequences of the film, Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister, is seen drinking a toast with his Indonesian opposite number, Ali Alatas, after signing the Timor Gap Treaty in an aircraft above the Timor Sea.
In this film, the people of East Timor's dignity, goodness and courage are inspiring. Pilger speaks for all those who want to see justice done so that our neighbours can achieve liberty and live in peace.
When this film was first shown on the Independent Television Network in Britain, its switchboard was flooded with 4000 calls a minute. As Pilger says in his introduction, "So much for the myth of public indifference".
The Timor Conspiracy's Australian premiere will be at the Globe Cinema, Stanmore, Sydney, on Friday, June 25, at 7pm. Admission is by donation of $15/$10 (concession). Doors open at 6.30pm for wine and cheese.