BY BOB AIKEN AND JOANNE KUNIANSKY
SYDNEY, Australia - A United Nations intervention force in
East Timor, announced as comprising 600 civilians and up to 300
police, is being put together by the Australian government and
other imperialist powers to monitor a "popular consultation" on
autonomy there August 8. As this unfolds, the Indonesian
authorities in East Timor have unleashed rightist militias in a
bloody counteroffensive against the independence struggle.
Since the resignation of General Suharto as Indonesian president in May 1998, thousands of East Timorese students, workers, and farmers have seized new political space to fight against the Indonesian occupation of their country. One of the largest mobilizations took place February 16 when 50,000 people participated in a funeral procession protesting the murder of an East Timorese youth by the Indonesian police.
The Indonesian regime invaded East Timor in 1975, after Portugal's brutal 450-year colonial rule there collapsed, to block the emergence of an independent country. Indonesia's rulers and their imperialist backers, particularly in Washington and Canberra, feared that an independent East Timor would inspire national struggles throughout Southeast Asia.
Since the fall of Suharto, as a deepening social and economic crisis sweeps Indonesia, Australia's capitalist rulers and other imperialist powers have concluded that the impact of the unbroken East Timorese national struggle can only be contained through conceding a vote on autonomy or independence.
A UN-sponsored agreement was signed in New York May 5 between the governments of Indonesia and Portugal, which has never formally ended its claims to colonial rule of the territory. It allows for the United Nations to prepare for an independent East Timor if this wins a majority in the August 8 ballot. It stipulates, however, that the Indonesian military and police remain responsible for security.
Pro-Indonesian death squads
Tensions have mounted in East Timor since Indonesian
president B.J. Habibie unexpectedly announced January 27 that
the East Timorese could have independence if they rejected a
proposal for limited autonomy. Over April 5-6 as many as 62
people were murdered by the pro-Indonesia death squads, with
the open backing of ABRI, the Indonesian military that
maintains up to 20,000 troops in East Timor. The massacre took
place inside the Catholic church grounds in Liquica, 25 miles
west of the capital, Dili.
On April 17 the pro-Indonesian death squads killed scores of people in Dili. Some 1,500 armed paramilitary thugs crisscrossed the deserted city streets in trucks throughout the afternoon, targeting houses of known independence activists, trashing a newspaper office, and the office of a human rights group, burning some buildings and beating up their occupants. In the Dili district of Becora, proindependence fighters set up barricades to guard against the rightists.
The pro-Indonesian militias, led by a narrow layer who have benefited from the Indonesian occupation, have continued to escalate their reign of terror, holding a series of rallies in favor of integration with Indonesia. Although the Indonesian authorities have blocked reporters and aid workers from traveling outside of Dili, there are widespread reports of villagers being attacked by the rightist militias. Australian Channel 9 news crews were able to film what they reported May 9 as up to 10,000 people herded into a concentration camp at Liquica run by the militias and the Indonesian police. When Indonesian troops first went into East Timor in 1975, the initial pretext was to "restore order" after clashes between independence fighters and annexationist pro-Jakarta groupings.
Actions demand independence
Proindependence students and youth in Dili have shown their
continued willingness to carry out public protests, despite the
repression. A rally of 1,000 took place at the University of
East Timor in Dili May 7 - the largest of four successive days
of actions. And on May 9 hundreds of proindependence youth
built barricades and faced off the militias after a student,
Eugeneo Antonio Fatima, was murdered in Dili's Mercado Lama
market.
Earlier, as news of the Liquica massacre broke, Xanana Gusmao, leader of the proindependence coalition, the National Council for Timorese Resistance (CNRT), issued an April 5 statement from house arrest in Jakarta. "I now wish to inform the international community that the situation has reached an intolerable limit in East Timor," he declared. "Therefore, I am compelled to authorize the Falintil guerrillas to undertake all necessary action in defense of the population of East Timor against the unprovoked and murderous attacks of armed civilian groups and ABRI."
Falintil has been waging an armed struggle against the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. The April 12 Jakarta Post reported that "hundreds of prointegration supporters in East Timor on Sunday [April 11] were attacked by CNRT rebels as they were on their way to attend a mass gathering," 125 miles south of Dili. In subsequent days the Jakarta Post reported several skirmishes between Falintil and the Indonesian police and military, including an attack on the jail in Bacau, 70 miles east of Dili.
In April hundreds of East Timorese students in the Central Java capital of Semarang began leaving for East Timor in order to be able to participate in the UN-sponsored direct ballot on autonomy. About 150 East Timorese students on the Yogyakarta campus of Gadjah Mada University rallied April 12 in support of the call by Xanana Gusmao for proindependence groups to defend themselves against armed rightist militias.
A CNRT press release issued on April 6 stated, "Gusmao called for the immediate deployment of a UN peace mission in the territory as proof of the international community's commitment to contribute to and implement a peaceful solution in East Timor."
Imperialist goal: maintain domination
While giving lip service, today, to the right of the East
Timorese to self-determination, the goals of the imperialist
powers are to maintain as stable a government as possible in
Jakarta in order to protect the billions they have invested in
Indonesia, and to maintain repayments on Jakarta's increasing
foreign debt. These were also their goals in backing both the
bloody 1965 coup that brought Suharto to power, and Indonesia's
1975 invasion of East Timor.
The U.S. State Department described Gusmao's call for the East Timorese to defend themselves from the pro-Indonesian militias a "dangerous and troubling development" - views that were echoed by a spokesperson from Japanese prime minister Keizo Obuchi's office. Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer, in his initial response to reports of the Liquica massacre, blamed the violence on both independence fighters and the ABRI-backed death squads, stating that "neither side are saints."
Both the Australian Labor Party, currently in opposition, and the Liberal-National Coalition government support the use of Australian troops as a key part of UN intervention. The Labor Party is campaigning for rapid deployment while the Australian government's stance is that without the agreement of the Indonesian government UN "peacekeepers" can only be sent in if the East Timorese reject autonomy in favor of independence.
In the meantime, the Australian military is preparing a rapid deployment force to be based in Darwin, Australia, 300 miles from East Timor. A high-speed catamaran capable of carrying 500 troops to Dili in less than a day has been commissioned.
The deepening crisis in East Timor and across Indonesia itself is the biggest foreign policy crisis facing Australia's capitalist rulers. They built up close military ties with the 30-year Suharto dictatorship and have extensive economic interests in Indonesia, especially in mining. Development of oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea, the first of which came into production at the end of 1998, was one of the main reasons for Canberra's 1979 recognition of Indonesia's annexation of East Timor.
Big sections of Indonesia's rulers continue to fear that granting East Timor its independence will fuel the disintegration of Indonesia as struggles by other oppressed nationalities in Aceh, Kalimantan, and West Papua (Irian Jaya) intensify.
Many bourgeois opposition leaders oppose independence for East Timor, including Megawati Sukarnoputri, one of the frontrunners in the presidential elections that follow the parliamentary elections of June 7. Military officers who have economic stakes in maintaining East Timor as part of Indonesia are also opposed to Habibie's stance. Many commentators are pointing to divisions in Habibie's cabinet on the question.
The Australian rulers face a stark dilemma in trying to defuse the East Timorese national struggle while retaining their good relations with the Indonesian government. Duncan Campbell, a former Australian diplomat, commented in the April 29 Australian, "East Timorese independence would come as a sustainable jolt, but sustained insurrection could be the undoing of eastern Indonesia, the creation of enormous new responsibilities for Australia, and the onset of persistent tensions with a humiliated and resentful Jakarta."
Concerned over the instability that the renewed repression in East Timor might set in motion, Australian prime minister John Howard called an emergency summit with Habibie in Bali April 27. Faced with Jakarta's adamance that its forces must remain in control in East Timor up to and during the ballot, Howard expressed confidence that the Indonesian army would keep the militias in check.
Joanne Kuniansky and Bob Aiken are members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union in Sydney.