But the soldiers from Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States, among others, are not in East Timor to save lives or defend the right of the Timorese people to their self-determination. Under UN camouflage, they have been sent to protect the interests of the billionaire families who rule the main capitalist powers in the world.

How can Washington claim it will protect the independence of East Timor when it maintains its own colonial boot on Puerto Rico?

The target of the occupiers, in fact, is the Timorese people themselves, whose unflagging struggle for independence from Portuguese, then Indonesian, rule has won the respect of working people and the oppressed worldwide. Their example is correctly viewed by the imperialist ruling families as a threat to their efforts to keep workers and farmers in check as they plunder the wealth and labor of that region.

From the beginning, Washington and other imperialist powers have acted in cahoots with the military-based Indonesian regime to suppress the people of East Timor. But the U.S.-backed Suharto dictatorship crumbled, and the new regime in Jakarta is less able to contain the emerging struggles — in both Indonesia and East Timor — for democratic, national, and union rights.

Officials in the labor movement and many organizations in the workers movement have parroted big-business calls for intervention by "their" own governments — from Australian union officials to the Communist Party USA. But they are supporting wolves in sheep's clothing.

All attempts to give the intervention a humanitarian facade, including sanctions against Indonesia and calls for a "war crimes tribunal" conducted by the imperialist powers, must be opposed because they only serve to give credence to the invaders. Only the workers and peasants of the archipelago themselves can call the Indonesian rulers to account — as they have proven capable of doing many times.

The most important aid working people around the world can give the Timorese people and their struggle for independence is to direct our fire at the capitalist governments in our countries and demand their troops get out of East Timor now.  
 
 
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