Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

The hand of imperialism

I must say I found the gentlemanly behaviour of the UN peacekeepers in 
East Timor towards their Indonesian military "hosts" more than somewhat 
macabre. After the appalling slaughter in East Timor which ABRI, the 
Indonesian armed forces, had orchestrated and participated in, was all that 
bonhomie between "fellow soldiers" really necessary?

Or did the Australian commanding officer not know that the Indonesian 
officers he was beaming at had just supervised a second act of genocide in 
East Timor?

Surely he was aware that the massacres, arson attacks and deportations had 
not been the spontaneous acts of an "out of control" grassroots militia 
movement fiercely loyal to the pro-Indonesian cause, but a well-ordered 
exercise to first intimidate and then — when that failed — to 
destroy the country, its people and its infrastructure.

It is already well documented that far from being spontaneous grassroots 
movements of pro-Indonesian sentiment, the so-called militias were actually 
organised by and in many cases consisted of para-military units of ABRI 
that had been operating in East Timor (and doubtless elsewhere in 
Indonesia) for a considerable time.

There was an Indonesian paramilitary unit or team in almost every one of 
East Timor's 13 administrative districts. The teams worked closely with the 
intelligence units of ABRI's elite Kopassus forces.

The para-military units were in fact an integral part of ABRI's counter-
insurgency activities, sowing fear and confusion among the population, and 
spying on (and helping to capture) pro-independence and anti-Indonesian (or 
pro-democracy and anti-ABRI) activists.

They were recruited, as much as possible, from local people. Although their 
role was to spy on and harass the East Timorese population, in the best 
traditions of imperialist psychological warfare they were officially 
designated "resistance forces".

Similarly, they were recruited for "people's defence", presumably to 
protect the poor East Timorese from the independence guerrillas of 
FALANTIL, who of course were designated "terrorists" or "bandits".

So the mass murders, the torchings, the "ethnic cleansing" of Catholic East 
Timor was carried out by an integral part of the Indonesian armed forces.

In addition to the official para-military units, a number of senior and 
wealthy former officers had their own private para-military outfits, which 
they financed themselves. If you're going to act like a gangster you need a 
gang.

The Indonesian military had threatened before the independence ballot that 
a "yes" vote would mean a campaign of total annihilation of East Timorese 
society, culture and property. 

After the ballot, they terrorised the international press into fleeing the 
country and then, with the press out of the way, set about carrying out 
their threat.

Why? Because elsewhere in Indonesia itself there are people's and 
territories seeking independence or at least freedom from the domination of 
a corrupt, power-hungry military. The fate of East Timor would be a warning 
to the people of Aceh, West Papua, Sumatra, Borneo and elsewhere throughout 
the archipelago.

There are widespread calls for a war crimes tribunal to punish those 
responsible for the death and destruction in East Timor. But that cannot be 
limited to the ABRI commanders on the spot. Nor should it begin with these 
recent events.

Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger gave the go ahead for Indonesia's invasion 
of East Timor by Suharto's army in 1975. One third of the country's 
population was systematically exterminated after that invasion. A war crime 
if ever there was one. (Suharto and his family still own some 40 percent of 
the land in East Timor.)

British and US (and Australian) business invested heavily in Indonesia.

Britain supplied Hawk fighters and other arms used in East Timor. The US 
supplied arms and training. Australia provided training for the Indonesian 
military and recognised their takeover of East Timor.

Call me cynical, but I can't see capitalist governments agreeing to a 
genuine war crimes tribunal investigating events in East Timor. Too 
many governments and corporations would stand condemned.

I expect a token tribunal with limited terms of reference, and almost 
certainly no reference to 1975.

Britain, the US and Australia also played a part in another, even bigger 
massacre a decade earlier: the slaughter of about a million Indonesian 
communists in 1965 in the coup that brought Suharto to power.

A recent article in the British paper The Observer reminds us that 
Britain helped facilitate that enormous crime against humanity: "To ensure 
that one of the great massacres of the century could be executed without 
the killers being distracted by pressures from abroad, the British Army was 
pulled back from a confrontation with Indonesian forces in the disputed 
colonial territory of Borneo."

According to the paper, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, Britain's Ambassador in 
Jakarta, had told the Foreign Office earlier in the year that "a little 
shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective 
change".

Labour was in office in Britain at the time. Michael Stewart, the Foreign 
Secretary in Harold Wilson's Government, put forward the view that it was 
only Indonesia's "economic chaos" that prevented it from "offering great 
potential opportunities to British exporters".

He told Wilson: "If there's going to be a deal with Indonesia... I think we 
ought to take an active part and try to secure a slice of the cake 
ourselves."

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