East Timor, situated toward the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, was a colony of Portugal for more than 400 years. Portuguese traders had arrived on the island in 1511, attracted by the natural riches of the region, particularly sandalwood. But in the face of sustained resistance by the indigenous Timorese, the Portuguese colonialists established their rule very slowly and unevenly. They did not bring the interior under their control until the 19th century, and only finally fixed the border dividing the island with their Dutch colonial rivals, who ruled Indonesia, in 1913.
There was a large-scale rebellion against colonial rule in 1910–12, which the Portuguese put down after killing more than 3,000 Timorese. The leader of the rising, Dom Boaventura, remains a hero to independence fighters today.
Portuguese rule was brutal. Slave labor, administered by the knout (whip), existed until the 1940s. As late as the 1970s the illiteracy rate was over 90 percent, and less than 20 doctors served a population of 650,000. The capital, Dili, was still without electricity, paved roads, or a town water supply.
During World War II, Timor became a battleground between the newest imperialist powers in the region, Japan and Australia. The Australian rulers in Canberra, who had grabbed the nearby former German colony in northeast New Guinea during World War I, considered Timor to be inside their sphere of influence.
In 1943, Australian external affairs minister Herbert Evatt declared, "Australia must show a particular interest in the welfare and system of control of those islands and territories which lie close to our shores. From the point of view of defense, trade and transport, most of them can fairly be described as coming within an extended Australian zone."
A wave of anticolonial struggles swept Africa and Asia following World War II. Indonesia won its independence in 1949 after a four-year war against Dutch rule. The independence struggle in East Timor gained momentum in 1974–75, as national liberation movements in Portugal's African colonies won their freedom and a democratic revolution toppled the dictatorship in Lisbon.
In September 1974, youthful pro-independence activists formed the Revolutionary Front for the Independence of East Timor (Fretilin), which rapidly won widespread popular support. Within a few months, Fretilin had launched a literacy campaign, conducted in Tetum, the most widely spoken of the local languages; initiated a number of agricultural cooperatives; set up organizations of workers, women, and students; and organized an armed wing, Falintil.
The other main party formed in this period, the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT), based among officials in the colonial administration, coffee plantation owners, and traditional rulers, was opposed to Fretilin's radicalism. It tried to seize power through an Indonesian-supported coup in August 1975. After Fretilin was quickly able to defeat them in a one-month civil war, many UDT leaders then backed Jakarta's call for East Timor to become part of Indonesia. UDT leader Mario Carrascalao was later appointed Jakarta's governor of East Timor from 1982 to 1992.
In November 1975 Fretilin issued a proclamation declaring East Timor an independent nation. A new government of 18 ministers, their average age under 30, was formed. Each minister vowed to "dedicate all my strength and knowledge to combat colonialism, imperialism, and all forms of domination and exploitation of men by men; to defend and promote the superior interests of the people of East Timor; to work to intransigently defend the integrity of the country and the unity of the nation of East Timor."
The imperialist powers, above all those in Washington, Canberra, and Wellington, New Zealand, fresh from their humiliating defeat in Vietnam, viewed the national liberation struggle in East Timor with unease. They portrayed the Fretilin victory as a "communist" threat, declaring that a "new Cuba" could not be allowed to emerge in the Asia-Pacific region.
The imperialists especially feared the impact on working people elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago, which former U.S. president Richard Nixon had described as "by far the biggest prize in the Southeast Asian area." In a 1965 speech, Nixon had advocated bombing North Vietnam as necessary for protecting the "immense mineral potential of Indonesia" for imperialist interests.
Indonesian president General Suharto, who had led the slaughter of up to 1 million Indonesian workers and peasants in 1965–66 with Washington's support, was a willing ally who shared the imperialists' fears. Together they worked to defeat the East Timorese struggle.
In talks in Indonesia in September 1974, Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam told Suharto that Canberra would not oppose the incorporation of Portuguese Timor into the Indonesian republic.
When, a year later, Fretilin became the de facto administration of East Timor after its victory in the civil war, and with Indonesian troops staging incursions across the border from Indonesian West Timor, Canberra imposed a fuel blockade and banned aid shipments to the territory.
A full-scale Indonesian invasion of East Timor began on Dec. 7, 1975, only hours after U.S. president Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had finished meeting with Suharto in Jakarta. Canberra and Wellington were also part of the consultations with Jakarta that gave the signal to invade.
By April 1976, there were 35,000 Indonesian troops in East Timor. But the Indonesian regime and its imperialist backers underestimated the courage and determination with which the Timorese would fight for their country. Nearly two years after the invasion, Fretilin still controlled most of the rural areas, containing 80 percent of the population.
In September 1977, Indonesian forces, using Bronco OV 10 and F-16 warplanes supplied by Washington, began a massive operation against these unconquered zones, driving the population into concentration camps. It is estimated that in the first five years of the Indonesian occupation up to 200,000 East Timorese, a third of the population, were killed in the military terror or from resulting hunger and disease.
While many of Falintil's fighters were killed in this period, the survivors were able to regroup and continued to wage a popularly based guerrilla war against the Indonesian occupiers. Volunteers steadily joined its ranks. In 1997 it was estimated that the guerrillas numbered 600 to 800 full-time fighters, and 1,500 reserves.
For 24 years, the Australian, New Zealand, and U.S. governments have been the leading defenders of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor. Their armed forces regularly trained with those of Jakarta. U.S. military assistance to the Suharto regime doubled in the year following the invasion, and continued to increase as Jakarta's military terror deepened.
In 1985 Canberra officially recognized the annexation of East Timor as Indonesia's "27th province." One motive for this position was evidenced in 1989 when the Australian and Indonesian governments signed a treaty regulating the exploitation of oil deposits in the Timor Gap, a continental shelf area between northern Australia and the island of Timor.
For decades Australian imperialism had been greedily eyeing these deposits, estimated to be among the 20 richest in the world.
In 1975 the Australian ambassador in Jakarta had cabled his government that a deal over the oil "would be more easily negotiable with Indonesia rather than with Portugal or with an independent Portuguese Timor." The first field came into production in late 1998.
Since the 1980s the East Timorese resistance to Jakarta's rule has organized an underground network in the occupied towns and villages despite savage repression by the Indonesian military.
Indonesian military officers also set up businesses that exploited East Timor like a "milking cow," monopolizing coffee, sandalwood, and marble. Discrimination against East Timorese meant unemployment remained high, fueling opposition to Indonesian rule.
That a new generation had taken up the struggle became apparent to the world in October 1989 when a group of young people staged a public protest calling for independence during the visit of Pope John Paul II to East Timor.
Young people were also in the forefront of the demonstration organized Nov. 12, 1991, at the funeral in Dili of 18-year-old Sebastiao Gomes, who had been shot by Indonesian police. As the march, initially numbering around 1,000, wound through the streets, thousands of Dili's residents joined in. At least 271 people died when Indonesian troops opened fire on what was the largest open display of pro-independence sentiment since the 1975 invasion.
East Timorese students studying in Indonesian universities also began to organize protests against the occupation of their country, and became a component of the student movement against the Suharto regime
A coalition between Fretilin and UDT leaders who had gone into exile was formed in Lisbon in March 1986. Today, Mario Carrascalao is part of the leadership of the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), the umbrella group of pro-independence forces.
The president of the CNRT, Xanana Gusmao, the commander of Falintil, was imprisoned by Jakarta for more than six years after being captured by the Indonesian military. He was released September 7.
The landslide vote of 78.5 percent of East Timorese in favor of independence, in the August 30 UN-sponsored referendum, clearly demonstrated that, despite 24 years of brutal repression by the Indonesian military, backed by imperialism, the desire of East Timor's toilers to win their self-determination remains unbroken.
Terry Coggan is a member of the Engineers Union and is the Communist League candidate for Auckland Central in elections to parliament. Bob Aiken in Sydney, Australia, contributed to this article.
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