REVIEW BY VANNESSA HEARMAN
Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East Timor
By Clinton Fernandes
Scribe Publications, Melbourne 2004
138 pages
Clinton Fernandes, a Melbourne-based writer on politics and international relations, revisits September 1999 and Australia's intervention in East Timor in this excellent and well-researched offering.
Fernandes' home was one of two raided in September 2000 by the Australian Federal Police and Defence Security Authority officers for suspected leaks of intelligence material. These leaks were instrumental in exposing what the Australian government really knew about the situation in East Timor, including the links between the Indonesian generals and the various massacres in Timor in 1999. No incriminating evidence was found and no charges were laid against Fernandes or Dr Phillip Dorling (former opposition Foreign Affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton's policy adviser).
On September 20, 1999, Australian forces at the helm of Interfet (International Force for East Timor) entered East Timor and put an end to 24 years of Indonesian rule there. As Fernandes argues in his book, the Coalition government had not turned into an "enemy" of Indonesia nor the greatest defenders of the East Timorese overnight. It was with a great degree of reluctance that Interfet was formed and intervened in the way that it did in East Timor. In this book, Fernandes emphasises the importance of people power in overturning a bankrupt, decades-old bipartisan government policy on East Timor.
Fernandes demonstrates that in spite of public calls for armed UN personnel to secure the August 30, 1999 independence ballot and more and more evidence coming to light that the militias and the Indonesian military were inseparable, Canberra repeated statements exonerating the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) and privately making "diplomatic representations" to Indonesia.
The Coalition government's "implausible denial" was worse than the US position, which at least acknowledged in June 1999 that there was a potential problem looming in East Timor, and looked at the possible attachment of Australian officers to a US peace enforcement operation in East Timor. The US explored the possibility of using "overwhelming force" to stop the violence in East Timor. Canberra was not interested in these propositions, foreign minister Alexander Downer going as far as firstly denying ever receiving such a request.
The only operation Canberra was ready for was Operation Spitfire, which was preoccupied with evacuating foreigners from East Timor. Fernandes contends that in this way Australia was playing along to ensure that the Indonesian military would be free to carry out its extermination of the pro-independence forces without any foreign observers present. In his interviews with National Audit public servants, it was revealed that the Australian military had not prepared for an intervention, beyond an operation to evacuate foreigners.
Defence department planning to participate in a peacekeeping mission, known as Operation Warden, did not begin until September 7, as public outcry mounted in Australia over what was going on in East Timor. The images of desperate parents throwing their children to "safety" onto barbed wire enclosing the UN compound in Dili were beamed around the world. Yet, according to Fernandes, the images of humanitarian crisis belied the fact that Indonesia's terror operation in East Timor in the aftermath of the ballot was a coldly calculated one, designed to draw Falintil, the armed wing of the national liberation movement, out into the firefight. The TNI could then step in and "restore the peace", using this opportunity to move in and destroy Falintil decisively. In this way, new "facts on the ground" could be created, forming the basis for overturning the result of the ballot, which was a resounding rejection of Indonesian rule.
The chapter "Love in the nick of time" is an account of the heady, exhausting and inspiring days of organising protest rallies and union bans and the lengths solidarity activists went to mobilise the largest numbers possible in Sydney (where the author was located at the time). These public protests and union bans threatened to bring about a political crisis in Australia and forced the government to overturn its previous policy of keeping peacekeepers out of East Timor.
The book is dedicated to the late Dr Andrew McNaughtan, a stalwart in the Timor solidarity campaign who passed away late last year, "and his transnational family of activists".
From Green Left Weekly, October 20, 2004.
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