Free East Timor

End 21 Years of Genocide

 

On December 7, 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor.  The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to two outspoken East Timorese, Catholic Bishop Belo and diplomat Jose Ramos‑Horta, brought renewed attention to this great injustice.  The invasion took the lives of one-third of the population of East Timor "due to starvation, epidemics, war and terror" the Nobel committee said.  The military assault on East Timor, its subsequent "annexation" and the ongoing abuses of human rights are made possible by U.S. supplied weapons and political support.  The award of the Nobel Peace Prize is a strong rebuke to this policy.

 

The genocide and killing continue to this day.  Human rights groups, the U.S. State Department, and UN human rights investigators have documented widespread human rights violations—including arbitrary arrest, torture and summary executions—by Indonesia in East Timor. In the most publicized example, over 250 East Timorese were killed while peacefully demonstrating for their independence in November 1991.  Indonesian soldiers fired U.S. made M‑16 rifles at the unarmed crowd.  In the face of this and countless other atrocities, East Timorese, young and old, continue to risk their lives in the ongoing struggle for their rights.

 

U.S. companies—like Phillips Petroleum—are now exploring for oil in waters off East Timor.  Profits from this oil won't benefit the East Timorese, but will only help line the pockets of the U.S. corporations and the generals who have ruled for over 30 years.

 

Indonesia must withdraw its troops from East Timor and cooperate with a UN‑supervised referendum. The East Timorese have the right to decide their own future.  Other nations, especially the United States, must make it clear that a vote on self-determination is long overdue.   As a start, arms sales to Indonesia must end.

 

At great risk, East Timorese are resisting Indonesia's illegal occupation.  All that they want is to determine their own future.   Many Indonesians are demanding democracy for themselves and self-determination for East Timor. They deserve our active support.

 

The East Timor Action Network (ETAN) works to support human rights and self-determination for East Timor.  Contact us for speakers, videos and other resources, and to join our campaign.

 

What You Can Do

 

**       Get involved. Write letters‑to‑the‑editor. Organize a presentation  before a group, at your house of worship or in the community. Contact ETAN)
**       Send a contribution to support the work of ETAN.

 

**       Write President Anton and Congress. Urge them to:
 Support a UN‑supervised referendum by the East Timorese; stop all arms sales to Indonesia including the proposed sale of F-16 jet fighters;(sale cancelled 6 / 97) and call on Indonesia to respect human rights; withdraw its troops from East Timor; and free all political prisoners.

 

(Call the White House comment line: 202-456‑1111; fax: 202‑456-2883; e-mail: president@whitehouse.gov; or write President Clinton, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC 20500.  Call Senators and Representatives at 202‑224‑3121.  Not sure who your member of congress is, contact the League of women voters.)

 

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"WESPAC Foundation / ETAN " Return to: East Timor Action Network/NY, PO Box 150753, Brooklyn, NY, 11215; (718) 788-6071; fbp@igc.apc.org  2/97

 

 

             

The Washington Post,                 Saturday, June 21, 1997

A White House Visit

     

         WITH 193 million people, Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world. Its rapid development during the past two decades has moved most Indonesians out of abject poverty,  and now many of them want more political freedom.  How the regime responds to those aspirations will affect US. political and economic interest in a vital area of the world.

 

      President Suharto,  who has ruled the Indonesian archipelago for an astonishing three decades-plus, staged one of his regular election exercises last month.   The intention was to show his people, and the world, that at the age of 76 he remains firmly in command.  The effect was quite the opposite, the world saw that the president is increasingly out of touch with his prospering, multiethnic nation.  The regime's repression of any credible opposition led to violent outbreaks in many parts of the country.   His refusal to establish a process for orderly succession, to deal with growing corruption among his relatives and cronies or to provide any space for a civil society can only cause anxiety about Indonesia's future.

 

Nowhere is the cause for concern greater than in East Timor, a distant island that has been resisting Indonesian colonization for more than 20 years.  Indonesia seized East Timor with a war that cost the lives of perhaps one-third of the Timorese population, originally only 800,000 or so.   Since then a brutal military occupation has only hardened resistance.   Much like the Chinese in Tibet,  Indonesia has used settlement as a political tactic, promoting the migration of Javanese to East Timor to overwhelm and subjugate the native population.   During the election, Timorese frustration at being denied the right a referendum status boiled over, leading to clashes that took at least 37 lives.   Since then, Indonesian forces have stepped up their arrests and torture.

 

President Clinton met in the White House the other day with Bishop Carlos Belo,  who last fall won the Nobel Peace Prize for unflinching devotion to his countrymen and their nonviolent struggle.  Without advocating any particular political solution,  the bishop has said the Timorese people must be consulted about their island's future.  He urged Mr. Clinton to press Indonesia's leaders to respect human rights in East Timor.  They have promised to do so before, but--as the U.N. Human Rights Commission noted in April---their record is one of "extrajudicial killings, disappearances, torture and arbitrary detention."  It's a record that serves Indonesia poorly at home and abroad.  

 

 

 

JULY 10 1997                                 

 

Foreign Affairs

THOMAS L, FRIEDMAN

 

Living Dangerously

 

JAKARTA, Indonesia
     Pound for pound, Indonesia has to be the least understood country in the world.  With 200 million people, it is the globe's fourth‑largest nation and by far the largest Muslim country--triple the population of Iran.  It take the same time to fly across the 17,000 islands and 300 different ethnic groups that make up Indonesia as It does to fly across the U.S.   But ask most Americans about Indonesia and only three things are likely to come to mind: Bali, East Timor and "The Year of Living Dangerously," starring Mel Gibson.

 

The U.S. looms somewhat larger in Indonesia.  The U.S. Congress has been one of the main forces pressing for improved rights for Indonesian workers, as well as for the much ­brutalized people of East Timor.  Hu­man rights activists here say the U.S. spotlight has been crucial in keeping Indonesia's leaders focused on ad­dressing abuses, even if progress is sporadic and at a snail's pace.

 

But in the wake of recent moves by Congress to block the sale of nine F-­ 16 fighter jets to Indonesia and to freeze the training of Indonesian mil­itary officers in America—because of Indonesia's occupation of East Ti­mor—Indonesians are beginning to fear that something new is going on: America is going from criticizing them for certain abuses to turning Indonesia into a pariah state—another Burma, China, Iraq or Iran.

 

If that's where Congress is head­ing, it would be both wrong and stupid.  Indonesia is too complex to be a pariah.  It has probably the best mac­roeconomic management of any de­veloping nation, along with mind boggling corruption; It has political repression along with a tolerance for hundreds of independent nongovern­mental human rights groups and a press that is unafraid to write about abuses;  It has occasional church burnings, but the most popular Muslim leader in the country sent his daughter to study in Israel.  As one banned newspaper editor here re­marked to me:  "The Indonesian Government is a police state about six hours a day.   The other 18 hours you can negotiate with it, bribe It, ignore it or go around it."   And strategically, Indonesia is the keystone of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), which is the main counterweight to China and Ja­pan in this region. Turning Indonesia into a pariah will produce a national­ist backlash here among the good guys, let alone the bad.   Listen to Foreign Minister Ali Alatas.

 

What we had hoped," Mr. Alatas told me," was that public opinion would not forget Indonesia's constructive role in world affairs.  We are not a pariah country that is look­ing inward or that deserves to be hit on one issue only.  Yes, we have an issue, we have East Timor, but that's a complex issue with a long history that we are trying to resolve. We are a huge society in continual growth.  It is not an easy country to govern and we have come very far.

Indonesia: puzzle not pariah.

" We are not causing the world problems because we have dreams of becoming a nuclear power," added Mr. Alatas.  "We don't believe in that Economically, we have been at the forefront of the North-South dialogue, but with a very rational voice.   We are the biggest Islamic population, but we are not an Islamic state.  Take all of these factors and I think, humbly, we don't deserve to be put Into a corner and to say, "You are a pariah nation and we must clobber you all the time because of East Timor."

 

"You can criticize us about human rights; no country is beyond criticism on human rights," continued Mr. Alatas.  "We would prefer that you don't criticize us by shouting from the roofs, but that you sit down and as a friend say:  'Look, we don't like the way you do things.  You better change because you're getting in trouble."  But why link it to such things as IMET?"

 

IMET stands for International Military Educational Trading.  It is a program under which the Pentagon trains selected foreign military officers, in both military matters and human rights.  After the 1991 Dili massacre in East Timor, IMET for Indonesian officers was suspended.

 

"Indonesia Is a friend of the U.S., not an enemy," insisted Mr. Alatas.  "It is important not to make it an opponent.  Because an Indonesia that is feeling unjustifiably pushed around, an Indonesia that feels that Indonesia-bashing is going on reaches a point where it says, "Well, O.K. we've done what we can. If that is not understood then we'll just shrug our shoulders and continue on"

 

 

In Indonesia, Human Rights First, Then Aid

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman (column, July 10) worries that Congress is treating Indonesia as a pariah state because of Its occupation of East Timor.   But Indonesia is a pariah under International law, violating 10 United Nations resolutions that call upon Jakarta to withdraw from East Timor,  where 200,000 people have been killed since Indonesia invaded the island In 1975.

In the past month, the Indonesian Government has arrested hundreds of civilians and bolstered its troops in East Timor by 6,000. The East Timor Action Network reports that troops have engaged in a crackdown on the resistance and the civilian population.

On June 19, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported that United States Green Berets have been pro­viding specialized training to the Indonesian Special Forces. Indonesia is indeed a "complex" society, but that does not mean the United States should train the soldiers meting out such repression.                                                          

EYAL PRESS    Brooklyn, July 10,1997

 

 

East Timor Action Network

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