By Pip Hinman
Internationally acclaimed film-maker and journalist John Pilger has endorsed a campaign to call Australian foreign policy makers to account for their part in the genocide in East Timor over the last 24 years.
"The part played by the Australian foreign policy establishment in the suffering of East Timor is one of the monumental scandals of the late 20th century. It involves four prime ministers, two foreign ministers, a clutch of senior ambassadors and their echoes in the media. Together, they appeased and collaborated with the perpetrators of a crime proportionally greater than those of Pol Pot and Hitler's Nazis", said Pilger.
"They equated the interests of great power and money with the 'national interest', and they gave not a damn for a people to whom they, like all Australians, at the very least owed a blood debt. Their record urgently requires independent inquiry and disclosure."
Pilger is well known for his outspoken criticism of Western government policy, in particular Australia's, on East Timor. His hard-hitting films on the subject, Death of a Nation and its sequel The Timor Conspiracy, have revealed the cooperation of the US and Britain with Australia in permitting, and even supporting, the genocide of the East Timorese by the Indonesian military regime.
Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) has launched a People's Inquiry into Australian governments' "special relationship" with Indonesia and their role in the genocide in East Timor. Around the country, a series of public hearings will gather evidence on 24 years of bipartisan foreign policy that betrayed not only the East Timorese people's demands for independence but also the majority of Australians, who did not agree that Australian business interests with the Indonesian generals and elites should be given priority.
Widespread popular anger at Australia's East Timor policy may have forced the Howard government to help the East Timorese independence forces in September, but the Australian government remains committed to much the same policy for the foreseeable future.
ASIET believes that Australian governments should be forced to pay a high price for such profits-first foreign policy; the People's Inquiry is designed to advance such a goal.
East Timorese activists, former government officials, aid workers and others directly affected by this wrong policy are invited to take part in the People's Inquiry. ASIET is calling on interested people to submit their testimonies or statements to its home page set up at <http://www.asiet.org.au/>.
The campaign's national sponsors are: Susan Connolly RSJ (Mary MacKillop Institute of East Timorese Studies); Helen Jarvis (consultant on documentation for the Cambodia Genocide Program, associate professor, University of NSW); Jacob Varghese (president, National Union of Students); Tim Anderson (Sydney University lecturer); Bruce Haigh (former diplomat); Max Lane (ASIET national chairperson, Democratic Socialist Party); Naldo Rai (East Timorese activist and writer, former Falintil guerilla); Vince Jones (musician); Lynette Dumble (international coordinator, Global Sisterhood Network and associate senior research fellow, history and philosophy of science, University of Melbourne); Shirley Shackleton; Wendy Robertson (national coordinator, Resistance); Anteiro da Silva (East Timorese Student Solidarity Council); Dr Margaret Perrott (veteran peace activist, South Coast, NSW); and Tim Gooden (CPSU ACT government section secretary).
Local sponsors are also being sought, and interested people should contact ASIET (see advertisement, page 16).
According to Pilger, "The investigation proposed by ASIET, bringing together all those with evidence, is both timely and extremely important, because it can be assumed, sadly, that any 'official' inquiry will limit its terms of reference to protect the reputations of establishment figures. The point is, unless we understand fully the Australian role in Suharto's great crime, its repetition is virtually assured in Aceh, West Papua and elsewhere."