In August 1975, as the Suharto dictatorship was preparing to invade East Timor, Australia's ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott, sent a cable to Canberra urging compliance with Indonesia's plans to annex East Timor.
He wrote: "It would seem to me that this Department [of Minerals and Energy] might well have an interest in closing the present gap in the agreed sea border and this could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia than with Portugal; or independent Portuguese Timor. I know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled stand but that is what national interest and foreign policy is all about."
What followed was 25 years of Australian government complicity in an illegal and brutal military occupation of East Timor by Suharto's military. More than 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives to famine, war and slaughter. Tens of thousands more suffered torture, rape and other forms of terror.
All throughout this period, Australian governments — both Labor and Liberal — led Suharto's backers in defending and recognising the invasion and occupation.
This policy helped Canberra to squeeze a good deal for itself out of the Suharto government. The Timor Gap Treaty gave Canberra exploration and taxation rights over oil and gas resources which rightfully belonged to East Timor. In 1989, the world witnessed Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans and the Suharto dictatorship's foreign minister Ali Alatas raise champagne glasses to the treaty as they flew over the killing fields of East Timor.
Canberra received this concession from Jakarta in return for its morally and politically bankrupt support for Jakarta's invasion of East Timor.
The Australian government secured a treaty that established a "zone of cooperation" between Australia and Indonesia. Australia and Indonesia were to jointly manage resources exploration in this area and share taxation imposed on companies working in the region.
But under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, none of this area falls into Australian territorial waters. UNCLOS determines that in the Timor Gap situation, the seabed boundary should be an equidistant median line between Australia and East Timor. If this were applied, the whole of the current zone of cooperation would fall in East Timorese territory. Most of the current oil exploration is inside the zone of cooperation.
Now that the East Timorese people have driven out Suharto's military and are on the way to independence, the treaty is recognised as a document with no validity, if it ever any had in the first place. Negotiations have begun between Dili and Canberra (United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor — UNTAET — cabinet ministers Mari Alkatiri and Peter Galbraith) on a new treaty between East Timor and Australia.
And the Howard government still wants its blood money from the Timorese people's oil! Canberra wants the East Timorese to accept the zone of cooperation as it currently stands, with Canberra getting a 50% share of royalties from the area.
Australia has no legitimate rights over these resources. Indeed, Canberra bears a moral debt to the East Timorese for 25 years of complicity in the destruction and terrorisation of their country.
The Democratic Socialist Party calls on the Australian government to:
1) unconditionally recognise a seabed boundary equidistant between East Timor and Australia, as it already does in relation to ocean resources above the seabed;
2) immediately declare to UNTAET and the Timorese that if the Timorese people decide, for whatever reason, they wish to keep the zone of cooperation, Australia will require no royalties. This is part compensation for the damage done by 25 years of complicity in Suharto's war against the East Timorese people;
3) immediately announce a commitment to hand over to an independent East Timor all royalties already collected from the zone of cooperation
Don't let Howard get away with squeezing the East Timorese people again. Start campaigning now by writing to Australia's foreign minister and UNTAET. Join Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor (ASIET) and help build pressure on Canberra.
Alexander Downer, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600. Fax (02) 6273 7500, e-mail <minister.downer@dfat.gov.au>.
UNTAET, PO Box 2436, Darwin 0801. Fax (08) 8942 2198, e-mail <pwgalb@yahoo.com>.
Send copies to Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor. PO Box 458, Broadway 2007. Fax (02) 9690 1381, e-mail <asiet@asiet.org.au>.