 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Books Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Unworthy victims of terror
By Noam Chomsky
There are three good reasons for intense concern today over East Timor. First, since the Indonesian invasion of December 1975, East Timor has been the site of some of the worst atrocities of the modern era, mounting again right now. Second, Indonesia has relied on foreign support from the outset, particularly from the United States government, which can easily act to mitigate or terminate the crimes, and might do so under pressure from the domestic population and its allies. It is not necessary to bomb Jakarta or impose economic sanctions. Throughout, it would have sufficed for Washington to withdraw its decisive support and to inform its Indonesian client that the game is over. That remains true, as the situation reaches a crucial turning point -- the third reason.
US President Bill Clinton needs no instructions on how to proceed. In May 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called upon former Indonesian President Suharto to resign and provide for "a democratic transition". A few hours later, Suharto transferred authority to his hand-picked vice-president. Though not simple cause and effect, the events illustrate the relations that prevail. Ending the torture of East Timor would be no more difficult than dismissing Indonesia's dictator.
Not long before, the Clinton administration had welcomed Suharto as "our kind of guy", following the precedent established in 1965 when the general took power, presiding over army-led massacres that wiped out the country's only mass-based political party and devastated its popular base in "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century", comparable to the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, the CIA reported. Hundreds of thousands were massacred, mostly landless peasants. The achievement was greeted with unrestrained euphoria in the West. The "staggering mass slaughter" was "a gleam of light in Asia", The New York Times commented, in a typical reaction.
Corporations flocked to Suharto's "paradise for investors", impeded only by the rapacity of the ruling family. For more than 20 years, Suharto was hailed as a "moderate" who is "at heart benign" as he compiled a record of murder, terror, and corruption that has few counterparts in postwar history.
Suharto remained a darling of the West until he committed his first errors: losing control, and hesitating to implement harsh IMF prescriptions. Then came the call for "a democratic transition", but not for allowing the people of East Timor to enjoy the right of self-determination that has been upheld by the UN Security Council and the World Court.
In June 1999, Western governments and commentators celebrated Indonesia's first democratic election in over 40 years, passing quietly over the reasons for the delay. In the 1950s, Indonesia did have a parliamentary system, no doubt with many flaws, including one that was unacceptable to Washington: it was too democratic, even allowing participation of a party of the left, the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party), which was winning "widespread support not as a revolutionary party but as an organisation defending the interests of the poor within the existing system", developing a "mass base among the peasantry" through its "vigour in defending the interests of the... poor". (Australian scholar Harold Crouch, in a standard historical work).
The US Embassy in Jakarta warned that it might not be possible to overcome the PKI "by ordinary democratic means", so that "elimination" by police and military might be necessary. The Joint Chiefs of Staff urged that "action must be taken, including overt measures as required, to insure either the success of the dissidents or the suppression of the pro-Communist elements of the Sukarno government."
The "dissidents" were the leaders of a rebellion in the islands where Indonesia's oil and other resources are mostly located. US support for the secessionist movement was "by far the largest, and to this day the least known, of the Eisenhower administration's covert militarised interventions," two leading Southeast Asia specialists conclude in a revealing study (Audrey and George Kahin). When the rebellion collapsed, after bringing down the last residue of parliamentary institutions, the US turned to other means to "eliminate" the country's major political force, leading finally to the "gleam of light" of 1965.
It is common to dismiss the past as irrelevant to the post-Cold War era. That is a wise move on the part of those who want to prevent understanding of policy formation and the functioning of institutions that remain largely unchanged. Quite commonly we discover that Cold War considerations were at most marginal, as in this case.
In the internal record, former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles identified Indonesia as one of the three major world crises, along with Algeria and the Middle East, emphasising that there was no Soviet role in any of these cases, with the "vociferous" agreement of then President Eisenhower. The problem was Indonesia's defiant independence and non-alignment, and its excessive democracy, successfully demolished by violence.
In 1975, Suharto invaded East Timor, then being taken over by its own population after the collapse of the Portuguese empire. The US and Australia knew that the invasion was coming, and effectively authorised it. The former Australian ambassador to the US, Richard Woolcott, recommended the "pragmatic" course of "Kissingerian realism", for one reason, because it might be possible to make a better deal on Timor's oil reserves with Indonesia than with an independent East Timor.
The Indonesian army relied on the US for 90 per cent of its arms, which were restricted to use in "self-defence". The rules were followed in accord with "Kissingerian realism". Pursuing the same doctrine, Washington at once stepped up the flow of arms while declaring an arms suspension, while the information system kept the whole story under wraps.
The UN Security Council ordered Indonesia to withdraw, but to no avail. Its failure was explained by UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In his memoirs, he took pride in having rendered the UN "utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" because "the United States wished things to turn out as they did" and "worked to bring this about". As for how "things turned out", Moynihan comments that within a few months 60,000 Timorese had been killed, "almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War."
The massacre continued, peaking in 1978 with the help of new arms provided by the administration of former US President Jimmy Carter. The toll is estimated at about 200,000, the worst slaughter relative to population since the Holocaust. By 1978 the US was joined by Britain, France, and others eager to gain what they could from the slaughter. Protest in the West was minuscule. Little was even reported. US press coverage, which had been high in the context of concerns over the fall of the Portuguese empire, declined to flat zero in 1978.
In 1989, Australia signed a treaty with Indonesia to exploit the oil of "the Indonesian Province of East Timor" -- which sober realists tell us is not economically viable, and therefore cannot be granted the right of self-determination. The treaty was put into effect immediately after the army massacred several hundred more Timorese at a graveyard commemoration of a recent army assassination. Western oil companies joined in the robbery, eliciting no comment.
After 25 terrible years, steps were finally taken that might bring the continuing horrors to an end. Indonesia agreed to permit a referendum in August 1999 in which the Timorese were to be permitted to choose "autonomy" within Indonesia or independence. It is taken for granted that if the vote is minimally free, pro-independence forces will win. The occupying Indonesian army (TNI) moved at once to prevent this outcome. The method was simple: paramilitary forces were organised to terrorise the population while TNI adopted a stance of "plausible deniability", which quickly collapsed in the presence of foreign observers, who could see firsthand that TNI was arming and guiding the killers.
The militias are credibly reported to be under the direction of Kopassus, the dreaded Indonesian special forces modelled on the US Green Berets and "legendary for their cruelty", the prominent Indonesia scholar Benedict Anderson observes, adding that in East Timor "Kopassus became the pioneer and exemplar for every kind of atrocity", including systematic rapes, tortures and executions, and organisation of hooded gangsters. Concurring, Australia's veteran Asia correspondent David Jenkins notes that this "crack special forces unit [had] been training regularly with US and Australian forces until their behaviour became too much of an embarrassment for their foreign friends."
The US Congress did bar training of the killers and torturers, but the Clinton administration found ways to evade the laws, leading to much irritation in Congress but little notice. By now congressional constraints may be more effective, but without the kind of inquiry that is rarely undertaken in the case of US-backed terror, one cannot be confident.
Jenkins's conclusion that Kopassus remains "as active as ever in East Timor" is verified by many other close observers. "Many of these army officers attended courses in the US under the now-suspended International Military Education and Training programme," he writes. Their tactics resemble the US Phoenix programme in South Vietnam, which killed tens of thousands of peasants and much of the indigenous South Vietnamese leadership, as well as "the tactics employed by the Contras" in Nicaragua, following lessons taught by their CIA mentors that it should be unnecessary to review. The state terrorists "are not simply going after the most radical pro-independence people but going after the moderates, the people who have influence in their community." "It's Phoenix", notes a well-placed source in Jakarta, who adds that the aim is "to terrorise everyone -- the NGOs, the [Red Cross], the UN, the journalists."
The goal is being pursued with no little success. Since April, the Indonesian-run militias have been conducting a wave of atrocities and murder, killing hundreds of people, many in churches to which they fled for shelter, burning down towns, driving tens of thousands into concentration camps or the mountains, where, it is reported, thousands have been virtually enslaved to harvest coffee crops. "They call them internally displaced persons," an Australian sister and aid worker said, "but they are hostages to the militias. They have been told that if they vote for independence, they will be killed."
Numbers are estimated at 50,000 or more. Health conditions are abysmal. One of the few doctors in the territory, American volunteer Dan Murphy, reported that 50 to 100 Timorese are dying daily from curable diseases, while Indonesia "had a deliberate policy not to allow medical supplies into East Timor". In the Australian media, he has detailed atrocious crimes from his personal experience, and Australian journalists and aid workers have compiled a shocking record.
The referendum has been delayed by the UN because of the terror, which has even targeted UN offices and UN convoys carrying sick people for treatment. Citing diplomatic, church and militia sources, the Australian press reports "that hundreds of modern assault rifles, grenades and mortars are being stockpiled, ready for use if the autonomy option is rejected at the ballot box", and warns that the TNI-run militias may be planning a violent takeover of much of the territory if, despite the terror, the popular will can be expressed.
Dr Murphy and others report that TNI has been emboldened by the lack of interest in the West. A senior United States diplomat summarised the issue neatly: "East Timor is Australia's Haiti" -- not a problem for the US, which helped create and sustain the humanitarian disaster and could readily end it.
Only those who know the truth about the US and Haiti will fully appreciate the cynicism. Reporting the terror from the scene, Nobel Laureate Bishop Belo called for "an international military force" to protect the population from Indonesian terror and permit the referendum to proceed. Nothing doing. The "international community" -- meaning Western power -- prefers that the Indonesian army provide "security". A small number of unarmed UN monitors were authorised, but delayed by the Clinton administration.
The picture in the past few months is particularly ugly against the background of the self-righteous posturing in the "enlightened states". But it simply illustrates, once again, what should be obvious: nothing substantial has changed, either in the actions of the powerful or the performance of their flatterers. The Timorese are "unworthy victims". No power interest is served by attending to their suffering, or taking even simple steps to end it. Without a significant popular reaction, the long-familiar story will continue, in East Timor and throughout the world.
